One of the first names I entered on my family tree was "Jane Lee". Jane was the mother to our (large) Mary Harris Hooper. Other than her name, I didn't have a shred of additional information. No parents, no date of birth, no nothing!
I remember thinking at the time that Jane was certainly a small, thin, sickly woman from a poor family. My reason for thinking this? Because I knew a kid in elementary school named Randy Lee, and he was poor, thin, and sickly.
In the Harris Family History, this is all that was said about Jane:
"(Campbell Harris' wife,) Jane Lee, was a daughter of Francis Lee, born in Antrim Ireland, who came to America about 1775, and Jane Alexander. The Lees were at the time of Jane's marriage residents of East Whiteland. She died February 25, 1846."
This abbreviated entry was another reason why I assumed that Jane's pedigree wasn't too impressive, as Joseph Harris, the author of the Harris family history, writes at length about the important families that the Harris line married into. As you see, Jane Lee received only two sentences in the Harris history.
I did a couple of quick searches on Jane Lee, but other than the above information, could find nothing about Jane or her family. Until this weekend. Come to find out... she was definitely not from a poor family and the status of the Lees seems to equal that of the Harris family. More on the Lee family in the next entries.
Photo above is of Francis Bazley Lee, grand-nephew of Jane Lee Harris. Tons of Lee genealogy in this history written by him: Genealogical and Personal Memorial of Mercer County, New Jersey By Francis Bazley Lee
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