Author: Lee, Richard
Biography:
Lee, Richard (1747-1823: ancestry.com)
Most of the information about Lee comes from his memoir of 1804, A Short Narrative of the Life of Mr. Richard Lee, in which he records his conversion and outlines his errors and misfortunes. He was born in Scituate MA. His mother died while he was still an infant; his father remarried and had a large family. Lee was put to work at the age of five and had no formal schooling. Though his primary work was farming, he suffered illness and injury and in the course of his life tried various other kinds of work, including shopkeeping, tanning, and pewtersmithing. He enlisted as a soldier during the Revolution but served for only a few weeks. Both his work and his avocation as an itinerant preacher meant that he lived in various places in the northeast. His first wife was Mehitabel Bell, whom he married in 1768; he refers to a second wife but her name is not recorded. There were several children, including the four sons of the set of acrostics. He died in Springfield VT. (Lee, Short Narrative; ancestry.com 6 Nov. 2019)