{"id":521794,"date":"2021-05-18T13:20:56","date_gmt":"2021-05-18T17:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=521794"},"modified":"2021-05-18T13:20:58","modified_gmt":"2021-05-18T17:20:58","slug":"no-evidence-prominent-anti-confederate-statue-activist-is-descendant-of-robert-e-lee-despite-claims-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/no-evidence-prominent-anti-confederate-statue-activist-is-descendant-of-robert-e-lee-despite-claims-report\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018No Evidence\u2019 Prominent Anti-Confederate Statue Activist Is Descendant Of Robert E. Lee Despite Claims: Report"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">30<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fno-evidence-prominent-anti-confederate-statue-activist-is-descendant-of-robert-e-lee-despite-claims-report%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=521794&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/GettyImages-1217526735.jpg?w=1200&#038;h=800&#038;ixlib=react-9.0.3\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"  style=\"display:none\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"e12o35pe0 css-1wr5klf\" readability=\"45.198968074815\">\n<p>There is \u201cno evidence\u201d that a North Carolina pastor, who claimed to be a descendent of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and used his family heritage to speak out against statues honoring Confederate generals, is in any way related to the erstwhile military leader, according <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/2021\/05\/14\/this-man-says-hes-related-robert-e-lee-theres-no-evidence\/\">to the Washington Post\u2019s fact-checker<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Rev. Rob Lee, who spoke out against Confederate monuments across the south and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, when the embattled governor announced he was removing a monument to Robert E. Lee from a boulevard in Richmond, Virginia, \u201cis not related to the general,\u201d according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.al.com\/life\/2021\/05\/pastors-claim-to-gen-robert-e-lee-ancestry-debunked-by-washington-post.html\">several outlets<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Rev. Robert W. Lee IV, known as Rob, has, since 2016, parlayed his ancestry on behalf of what many may regard as a noble cause \u2014 removing Confederate statues and memorials,\u201d the Washington Post\u2019s fact-checker noted over the weekend. \u201cRob Lee has made numerous public appearances, including on \u2018The View\u2019 and the MTV Video Music Awards. At a House committee hearing in 2020, he was introduced by then-Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) as a \u2018descendant of the Confederate general, Robert E. Lee.\u2019 In that hearing, he called himself a \u2018nephew\u2019 of the general.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Following a review of genealogical records, the Post noted, assisted by experienced Civil War genealogists from California, researchers discovered \u201cno evidence that Rob Lee, who was born in North Carolina, is related to Robert E. Lee.\u201d<\/p>\n<div readability=\"26.5\">\n<div data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" readability=\"48\">\n<p class=\"font--body font-copy gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md \" data-el=\"text\">\u201cOn his website, Rob Lee describes himself as \u2018a descendant of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.\u2019 At an appearance in Tulsa in 2020, he suggested that he was connected to Robert E. Lee because he is a direct descendant of Lee\u2019s older brother, Charles Carter Lee,\u201d the Post said. \u201cSo we looked for evidence that Rob is related to Charles Lee or any other brother of Robert E. Lee. He did not respond to repeated requests for comment \u2014 via email, text message, and Twitter \u2014 but his own writings are vague on the connection.\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-el=\"text\">\u201c[W]hen we traced the genealogy, the trail quickly ran cold,\u201d the outlet added. \u201cNone of the direct descendants of these Virginians led us to Rob Lee.\u201d Lee\u2019s family tree, it turns out, is one of the most well-documented of any American historical figure, and descendants of the Confederate general are remarkably easy to track.<\/p>\n<p data-el=\"text\">It appears, instead, that the Rev. Lee is actually \u201crelated to a Confederate soldier named Robert S. Lee, who was from Alabama but has no ancestral ties to the Confederate general,\u201d per an Alabama outlet.<\/p>\n<p data-el=\"text\">The revelations triggered a number of corrections within the Washington Post archives, including on essays written by the Rev. Lee about Confederate statues. The Post, however, was reluctant to call Rev. Lee an intentional fabulist saying, instead, that Lee may have\u201d<br \/>\u201cfirmly believed he was somehow related to Robert E. Lee, based on stories he heard at home about \u2018Uncle Bob.\u2019 Instead, he appears to be a descendant of Robert S. Lee, also known as \u2018Uncle Bob,\u2019 who served in the Confederate forces \u2014 but was not a general.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is \u201cno evidence\u201d that a North Carolina pastor, who claimed to be a descendent of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and used his family heritage to speak out against &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2278433,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/GettyImages-1217526735.jpg?w=1200&h=800&ixlib=react-9.0.3","fifu_image_alt":"\u2018No Evidence\u2019 Prominent Anti-Confederate Statue Activist Is Descendant Of Robert E. Lee Despite Claims: Report","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-521794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/GettyImages-1217526735.jpg?w=1200&h=800&ixlib=react-9.0.3","fifu_image_alt":"\u2018No Evidence\u2019 Prominent Anti-Confederate Statue Activist Is Descendant Of Robert E. Lee Despite Claims: Report","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2278433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}