Francis Lee, the Indian Queen, and Elizabeth Wilson

There's a TON of information online about Francis Lee. The first story I'll point you to is this, as told here a horrific story about a woman who was unjustly accused, convicted, and executed for killing her babies. This version of the story indicates that the woman was a relative of Francis Lee. (In my limited research, I haven't been able to confirm the kinship and it is unclear to me how they would be related.)

Evidently, this story is well known and notorious, with lots of different versions. All of the versions indicate that the Indian Queen Hotel in Philadelphia was involved, which many sources indicate that Francis Lee owned at the time... so we can at least confirm that Francis Lee figured into this infamous story.

Francis Lee of Carrickfergus Antrim Ireland

Here is a picture of the Carrickfergus castle in Ireland, near where Francis Lee was born in 1749. He emigrated to America around 1770. Some sources say he eloped with Jane Alexander, marrying her on the ship. He landed in Philadelphia where he prospered in real estate and other entrepreneurial activities. He was a private in the Revolutionary War.

Francis moved to Chester County after 1796. He was an important guy in Chester County, a major landowner and breeder of horses, and he was appointed Justice for the area by the governor in 1800.

Francis Lee and Jane Alexander had eleven children. Only Jane Lee and three of her siblings survived to adulthood; five died at less than 2 years of age. Jane Alexander died around age 35. Francis Lee married at least twice more after the death of Jane Alexander.

An educated woman!

A History of the Moravian Seminary for Young Ladies At Bethlehem, PA

Jane Lee and her sister Eleanora (in other records spelled Eleanor) were educated at the Moravian Seminary for Young Ladies at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. This type of higher education for women was virutally non-existent at the end of the 18th century. My guess is that Jane Lee, born in 1781, attended this school in the mid 1790s.

I found this passage about a young girl leaving her home to receive her education at this school, which I believe may be reminiscent of Jane Lee's experience:

By 1800, Pittsburgh had a population of only 2,400. Consequently, educational opportunities for girls were still very limited, and some traveled east to boarding school:

[Eliza Leet Shields'] grandmother . . . in 1800 . . . was taken by her father, an officer of the revolution, from her home in Western Pennsylvania on a mule, over the Allegheny Mountains, her father riding beside her and two attendants following behind, with her wardrobe, packed in paniers, a blue satin pelisse being one of the articles, which I remember she never forgot to speak of as having been very much mussed by the close packing. She attended a school at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, kept by Moravian Sisters, where in addition to the usual branches of English, she was taught to cook, sweep, embroider beautifully, paint in oils and play on the piano.

Tracing its institutional history to 1742, Moravian is America’s sixth oldest college, after Harvard, William and Mary, St. John’s (Annapolis), Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania.

The plot thickens: the Francis Lee family

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