Ravensworth, built about 1796, was the home of Anna Maria Fitzhugh and became a refuge for Mary Randolph Custis Lee at the beginning of the Civil War. The newlywed Robert E. and Mary Lee spent part of their honeymoon there in July 1831. In May 1861, after Robert E. Lee left Arlington House for Richmond to become commander of state troops and military advisor to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, he urged his wife to leave her home near the U.S. capital and stay at Ravensworth with her widowed aunt for safety. She went reluctantly, writing later that she had left her home in obedience to her husband's wishes, but after less than a month she moved on to other relatives' homes when Lee warned that her presence might endanger Mrs. Fitzhugh. Mrs. Fitzhugh remained at Ravensworth throughout the war with a few slaves, and although both armies took some of the property's resources, the house and its occupants escaped serious molestation. Federal soldiers cut wood there in February 1863, and on August 23, 1863, Maj. John Scott wrote that Confederate Maj. John S. Mosby and his rangers had slept in a haystack there and awoke to find themselves in full view of and close proximity to a Yankee encampment. After Mrs. Fitzhugh died in 1874, the Lee children inherited Ravensworth. In 1877, the U.S. government rejected a claim from the estate for reimbursement for 3,000 pounds of hay taken during the war. The house burned in 1926.