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| William Mack Lee Atlanta Constitution October 7, 1919 (probably not R. E. Lee's cook) |
In the world of
Confederate history, the story of Robert E. Lee's cooks is fairly well known.
William Mack Lee claimed in a short biographical sketch to have been the
"body servant" and cook for Lee from 1861 to 1865. The small booklet
contains the story of Nellie, the laying hen that Lee kept around headquarters to provide a daily egg for the General's
consumption. Charged with cooking a meal for not only Lee, but Jackson, A.P.
Hill, D.H. Hill, Hampton, Longstreet, Pickett and others, and not having anything
sufficient for the meal, William fixed Nellie. It was the only time that Lee,
according to William, scolded his cook. (You can read the account here.) Of
course, if you have read the account, then you have also realized it has a lot
of problems. Many believe that Mack Lee's account is a fabrication.
Robert E. Lee's
first cook appears to be a man by the name of Meredith. Meredith was
undoubtedly an enslaved man working at the White House plantation in June 1861,
when he first appears in a letter from the General to Mary Lee. Lee had
Meredith with him at Sewell's Mountain, and then Meredith followed to the east
coast in December. On February 8, Lee, writing from Savannah, tells Mary that
he has left Meredith at the headquarters at Coosawhatchie. But the reason is
unknown. (Dowdey and Manarin, The Wartime
Papers of R.E. Lee, 112, hereafter cited Wartime Papers.) The last time Meredith appears in Lee's letters is
on February 23, 1862, when Lee writes that Meredith is well. (Wartime Papers, 118)
It is unclear just
how long Meredith continues to cook for General Lee. However, Lee apparently
has a new cook by February 1863. On that day, he writes Mary that "I have
George as cook now." But something has changed: Lee is no longer a slave
owner. He also writes, "I give him & Perry each 8.20 per month."
(Perry has been with Lee as a body servant since the beginning of the war.) (Wartime Papers, 402) According to the
terms of the will of his father-in-law George Washington Parke Custis, all the
slaves at various properties owned by Custis, like Arlington and White House, were
to be freed within five years. On January 2, 1863, Lee recorded the deed of
manumission in Richmond, freeing not only the Custis slaves, but also the
family of Nancy Ruffin, whom Lee had inherited from his mother in 1835, as
well. Since Lee was now a non-slave owner, he did what so many others likewise
did: he hired someone to take care of his cooking.
Lee apparently
never mentions George again in the surviving letters. A month later, Lee writes
that Bryan [Lynch] has arrived. (Wartime
Papers, 412) Bryan seems to fill the role of Lee's "steward" for
the rest of the war. Bryan was probably Bernard Lynch, an Irish national. It is Bryan that divides a box sent to Lee and Colonel
Corley in December 1863. (Wartime Papers,
632) In December 1864, Lee writes to Mary that Bryan is distressed over a
missing "saddle of mutton." (Wartime
Papers, 879)
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| Lee's Camp Chest Museum of the Confederacy |
In A. L. Long's Memoirs of Robert E. Lee (1886), Bryan
appears again. Long recalls that several of Lee's staff saw a demijohn being
carried into Lee's tent. "The general well knew that several of his staff
enjoyed a glass of wine, or even something stronger," Long wrote. At noon,
Lee emerged and asked if they would like "a glass of something?"
Bryan, "the steward of the mess," was sent by Lee "to carry the
demijohn to the mess-tent and arrange the cups of the gentlemen." It was
only after the liquid was poured that the staff discovered it was buttermilk.
(240)
It appears that it
was Long who first broke the story of Lee's laying hen. Bryan was the one who
had charge of the hen, a hen that accompanied Lee on the Chancellorsville and
Gettysburg campaign. And according to Long, it was Bryan who killed and cooked
the hen in the winter of 1864 "when the General had a distinguished
visitor" for dinner. (242)
No one, including Lee
or his staff, ever seems to have mentioned William Mack Lee. Was William Mack
Lee lying, or stretching the truth? Possibly. He certainly used the accounts of
cooking for Lee to his benefit and for the benefit of others, raising money for
building Black churches. After 1900, Mack Lee was a frequent guest on the
Veterans reunion circuit, telling of his adventures as General Lee's cook.
It would be great
if we had more information on each of these men, Meredith, George, and Bryan,
and even William Mack Lee, and their lives and on the roles they played around
the stewpot and mess table.
