Located on Old San Antonio Road, Lee County occupies land surveyed in 1821 as part of the original colony of Moses and Stephen F. Austin. In 1854 it became the site of a major settlement by Wend from northern Europe, led by Pastor Johann Kilian. It had the only school in the U.S. that taught in Wendish, a language surviving only there and in Australia in the modern world. The county was created from Bastrop, Burleson, Fayette, and Washington counties, organized in 1874, and named for Robert E. Lee (1807-1870), General of the Army of Northern Virginia in the southern Confederacy from 1862 to 1865. Giddings is the county seat.