The land comprising the Arlington estate, 1,100 acres, was sold by Gerard Alexander to John Parke Custis in December, 1778, for a consideration of £11,000 Virginia currency. John Parke Custis never lived at Arlington, and on his death in 1781 his son, George Washington Parke Custis, inherited the Arlington estate. Mr. Custis lived at Mount Vernon, however, until after the death of Martha Washington, which occurred on May 22, 1802. He then took possession of the tract, changed the name to Arlington, after an old family seat on the eastern shore of Virginia. While he was building the mansion he lived in a small cottage on the Potomac. The two wings were built first. The central portion of the house, with its massive columns, is said to have been built from plans drawn by George Hadfield, an English architect, who came to this country with the intention of designing the new Capitol. The date when the mansion was completed is uncertain, but Mrs. Robert E. Lee is authority for the statement that it was completed just before the Civil War. The family lived in the wings for many years.

In 1804 Mr. Custis married Mary Lee Fitzhugh, daughter of William Fitzhugh, of Chatham, at Alexandria, Va. To this union four children were born, but only one, Mary Ann Randolph Custis (born October 1, 1808), lived. On June 30, 1831, she became the wife of Lieut. Robert E. Lee. Upon the death of her father, in 1857, title to the estate passed to Mrs. Lee.

On May 24, 1861, Union troops occupied Arlington, and it soon became an armed camp. Under an act of Congress passed June 17, 1862, certain commissioners of the Government were appointed to levy and collect taxes in Virginia and elsewhere; and if default in payment was made, to sell the real estate upon which the taxes were levied. Prior to January, 1864, the commissioners had adopted a rule by which payment of taxes in the district where the Arlington property was located would not be accepted unless tendered by the owner in person. Mrs. Lee could not comply with this rule, so she sent a cousin, Mr. Fendall, to pay the taxes. The money was refused, and he was informed that Mrs. Lee must be present in person.

On January 11, 1864, there was due only the sum of $92.07 on the 1,100 acres of the Arlington estate, together with a 50 per cent penalty, when the property was sold “according to law,” as stated in the tax certificate. The United States acquired title to the property at public auction by the payment of $26,000.

Upon the death of Mrs. Lee, in 1873, her eldest son, George Washington Custis Lee, according to the will of his grandfather, George Washington Parke Custis, became entitled to the Arlington estate. He at once took steps looking to the recovery of the property. After petitioning Congress in vain, he began suit in ejectment in 1877 at Alexandria, Va. In 1879 the United States Circuit Court for the Eastern District of Virginia decided he was entitled to the estate and that the United States did not have lawful title. The Department of Justice carried the case to the United States Supreme Court, which decided that the property belonged to Mr. Lee. The United States was thus faced with the question of whether to disinter the remains of thousands of soldiers and sailors and vacate the property, part of which had become a military post, or purchase the same. However, Mr. Lee was willing to sell Arlington for $150,000. On March 3, 1883, the Forty-seventh Congress appropriated the necessary money, and on March 31 Mr. Lee executed a deed which conveyed the title to the United States. The deed was recorded at the Alexandria County Courthouse on the 14th day of May, 1883, just 22 years, less 10 days, from the day, May 24, 1861, when General Scott’s soldiers crossed the Potomac River and took possession.

Mary Randolph, wife of David Meade Randolph, and a relative of the Custis family, is the first person known to have been buried at Arlington. In April, 1853, Mrs. Custis, wife of the owner of the estate, George Washington Parke Custis, died and was laid to rest in a little plot of ground beneath huge oaks not far from the mansion house. The master of Arlington died on October 10, 1857, and was laid beside his wife. To-day their graves may be seen, surmounted by simple marble shafts, within an iron-fenced inclosure, where lilies-of-the-valley cover the ground in profusion. The Quartermaster General’s Department has recently erected a marker beside the grave of Mrs. Randolph, giving a short history of her life.

ARLINGTON AS A NATIONAL CEMETERY

Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, Quartermaster Corps, United States Army, was the first to suggest to President Lincoln that the estate be converted into a military cemetery, and in 1864, by order of Secretary of War Stanton, 200 acres were set apart and dedicated as a national cemetery for the burial of Union soldiers and sailors. However, the first man to be buried there was a Confederate soldier who died in the hospital May 13, 1864.

There are buried in Arlington a small number of those who fought in the Revolutionary War and some who were in the War of 1812. Their remains were removed to Arlington from an abandoned cemetery in 1892. Thousands of men who died in the Civil War are buried there, with veterans of the Spanish-American War and the Philippine campaign, and now the veterans of the World War are steadily being added to the number.

In front of Arlington House is the tomb of Maj. Pierre Charles L’Enfant, engineer, artist, and soldier, who, under the direction of President Washington and Thomas Jefferson, designed the plans for the city of Washington.

ARLINGTON MEMORIAL AMPHITHEATER

On May 5, 1868, Gen. John A. Logan, commander in chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, issued the following general order (No. 11):

There has been an annual observance of this ceremony in all the national cemeteries of the country since this order was promulgated.

For years a vine-covered pergola, erected by the Quartermaster’s Department of the Army, was used for the Memorial Day exercises. When it was found to be entirely inadequate to accommodate the increasing number of people who attended the exercises, it was decided to erect a suitable building which would serve not only as a memorial to our soldiers and sailors but which would also provide an assembly place for those attending such exercises as might be held in the cemetery grounds.

Accordingly, the first steps toward this end were taken in 1903, when the necessity for such a building and the appropriateness of its erection were first suggested by the commander of the Department of the Potomac, Grand Army of the Republic. Preliminary sketches and plans were prepared in 1905 and presented to Congress by the Secretary of the Treasury, but no action was taken until 1908, when the Arlington Memorial Amphitheater Commission was created, and an appropriation of $5,000 to secure and present more detailed plans for the proposed memorial was made. No further action was taken by Congress for five years, when, by the act of March 3, 1913, the construction of a memorial amphitheater and chapel, in accordance with plans prepared by Carrere & Hastings, architects, of New York City, was authorized. Ground was broken March 1, 1915, the corner stone was laid October 13, 1915, and the memorial was dedicated May 15, 1920.

The main feature of the structure consists of an open-air amphitheater, elliptical in plan, with a seating capacity of about 4,000 persons. Its diameter, north and south axis, is 200 feet, and 152 feet on its east and west axis. It has a height of approximately 30 feet. The amphitheater is inclosed by a marble colonnade with entrances at the ends of the principal axis. The main entrance is from the east, and this section contains a reception hall and stage on the main floor, a museum room or “Valhalla” on the second floor, and a chapel in the basement. Under the floor of the colonnade, crypts are provided for the burial of distinguished soldiers, sailors, and marines. The amphitheater, erected at a cost of $825,000 is built of white marble from Vermont. Inscriptions commemorate the great wars of the United States.

Immediately to the east of the main entrance is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which was completed by the War Department in accordance with plans that provide also for a great approach to the tomb and the amphitheater.

TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER

At the time when the rites for the Unknown Soldier were solemnized, on November 11, 1921, the time for preparation was so short that the location of the tomb on the terrace in front of the amphitheater was quickly decided upon. The casket was inclosed in what was designed to be the base of a monument which was to be erected later. The preliminary work was designed by Thomas Hastings, of the firm of Carrere & Hastings, architects of the amphitheater.

Five years later, on July 3, 1926, Congress authorized the Secretary of War to secure by competition designs for a monument to cost $50,000, and provided that the accepted design should be subject to the approval of the Arlington Amphitheater Commission (the Secretaries of War and of the Navy), the American Battle Monuments Commission, and the Commission of Fine Arts. A competition was held, in which there were 39 competitors, 5 of whom were selected to enter the final stage. The final award was made to Thomas Hudson Jones, sculptor, and Lorimer Rich, architect, of New York City.

The competitors generally based their designs on such a modification of the terrace as would place the monument at the head of a flight of steps, the approaches to which called for rearrangement of the immediate foreground of the terrace. Congress accepted the winning design, and a supplemental appropriation was made for carrying out the design. The work of completing the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was in charge of the Quartermaster General of the Army. The cost of the memorial, constructed of Colorado Yule marble, was $400,000.

Within this marble sarcophagus rests the remains of the Unknown Soldier, a hero of the World War. The Republic has bestowed upon him its most cherished decoration for valor, the Congressional Medal of Honor, and all the major nations associated with America in the Great War have similarly honored his memory and the memory of the thousands of his comrades who laid down their lives in that titanic struggle.