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Arlington National Cemetery
Visit Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington National Cemetery is part of a tract of land with a history of ownership dating to 1669. In that year the royal governor of Virginia, Sir William Berkeley, awarded a grant of 6,000 acres to Captain Robert Howsing in recognition of Howsing's bringing settlers from England to the colony aboard his ship. Howsing apparently preferred the life of a seaman to that of landowner, however, and sold the tract to John Alexander in exchange for six hogsheads of tobacco.
In 1778, the 1,100 acre tract which today contains the Fort Meyer Military Reservation and Arlington Cemetery was purchased by John Parke Custis who was Martha Washington's son by her first husband, Daniel Parke Custis. John Custis was an aide-de-camp to General George Washington and died in the battle of Yorktown in 1781. Two of his four children, George Washington Parke Custis and Eleanor Parke Custis, were adopted by George and Martha Washington following his death. It was young George who brought the name "Arlington" to the property.
George Custis inherited Martha Washington's property upon her death in 1802 and came into possession of his step-grandfather's memorabilia. In 1804, he built a Greek Revival-style house on the Custis estate overlooking the Potomac River to store the memorabilia and named it Arlington House; "Arlington" comes from the name of the original Custis estate on the Virginia coast, granted to the family by the Earl of Arlington.
Two of the leading families of this nation's history were linked by Mary Ann Randolph Custis, daughter of George Washington Parke Custis and Mary Fitzhugh. In 1831, Mary Custis married Lieutenant Robert E. Lee thus joining the Washington and Lee families as well as setting the stage for the appropriation of land which once belonged to George Washington (through marriage) for use as a national burial ground.
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