Amasa Coleman Lee (July 19, 1880 – April 15, 1962) was an American newspaper editor,

politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking ...

, and lawyer.

Family

Lee was born in Georgiana, Butler County, Alabama in 1880 to Cader Alexander Lee, a

Confederate Confederacy or confederate may refer to: States or communities * Confederate state or confederation, a union of sovereign groups or communities * Confederate States of America, a confederation of secessionist American states that existed between 1 ...

veteran, and his wife, the former Theodosia Windham. He was distantly related to Robert E. Lee. He was raised on a farm in or near Chipley,

Washington County, Florida Washington County is a county located in the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Florida, in the Panhandle. As of the 2020 census, the population was 25,318. Its county seat is Chipley. History Washington County was created in 1825, and ...

due south of Butler County. Though he had few years of formal education (and none at a college), Lee passed the Alabama teacher's exam, and moved to Monroe County, Alabama to teach. On 22 June 1910, Lee married Frances Cunningham Finch (1888-1951), the daughter of a local postmaster in Monroe County, the unincorporated community of Finchburg being named after an ancestor. They had three daughters, Alice Finch Lee (1911-2014), Louise Lee Conner (1916-2009) and Harper Lee (1926-2016), and a son, Major Edwin Coleman Lee (1920-1951). His eldest daughter succeeded to his legal practice, and his youngest daughter wrote the award-winning novel ''

To Kill A Mockingbird ''To Kill a Mockingbird'' is a novel by the American author Harper Lee. It was published in 1960 and was instantly successful. In the United States, it is widely read in high schools and middle schools. ''To Kill a Mockingbird'' has become ...

.''

Atticus Finch Atticus Finch is a fictional character in Harper Lee's Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel of 1960, ''To Kill a Mockingbird''. A preliminary version of the character also appears in the novel '' Go Set a Watchman'', written in the mid-1950s but not pub ...

, the lawyer character in the novel, is reputedly based, at least in part, on Amasa Coleman Lee.

Early career

In addition to teaching school, A.C. Lee became a clerk/bookkeeper at the Flat Creek sawmill in Finchburg. In 1912 the Lees moved to Monroeville, the county seat, which had about 1300 residents in the 1930s. He managed a small logging railroad line in nearby Manistee, the Manistee & Repton Railway, for a law firm, then called Barnett & Bugg.

Legal and political career

In 1915, having read law under the guidance of the Barnett & Bugg lawyers, Lee passed the Alabama bar exam and began to practice law, mainly in Monroe County. When he became a partner, the firm was renamed Barnett, Bugg & Lee. In 1929, Lee bought the '' Monroe Journal'', which he would own and edit until 1947. As a lawyer, Lee represented various individuals in Monroe and surrounding counties, as well as the railway. Before Lee concentrated on real estate title legal work, he once defended two black men accused of murdering a white storekeeper. Both clients, a father and son, were hanged. From 1927 to 1939, Lee won election three times to four-year terms representing Monroe County part-time in the Alabama House of Representatives. After World War II, he practiced law with his eldest daughter Alice and hoped to also bring in his youngest daughter Nelle Harper Lee and rename the firm "A.C. Lee and Daughters", but that dream never materialized. After traveling in Europe, Nelle Harper Lee moved to New York City to become a writer, following the track of her friend

Truman Capote Truman Garcia Capote ( ; born Truman Streckfus Persons; September 30, 1924 – August 25, 1984) was an American novelist, screenwriter, playwright and actor. Several of his short stories, novels, and plays have been praised as literary classics, ...

. Within six weeks in 1951, after his youngest daughter moved to New York, Lee lost both his wife (who long suffered fragile health died of cardiac arrest days after receiving a cancer diagnosis) and son (a pilot who succumbed to an aneurysm in his barracks), so he sold the family home and moved into a smaller house with his daughter (and business partner) Alice.

Death and legacy

A.C. Lee grew proud of his youngest daughter's success with ''To Kill a Mockingbird,'' even if she never joined the family law firm, and in his final years often signed copies of his daughter's novel as "Atticus Finch," the central character. Nonetheless, he had suffered bouts of debilitating fatigue following the loss of his wife and son. Lee died in

Monroeville, Alabama Monroeville is the county seat of Monroe County, Alabama, United States. At the 2020 census its population was 5,951. Monroeville is known as the hometown of two prominent writers of the post-World War II period, Truman Capote and Harper Lee ...

on Palm Sunday, 1962.'Harper Lee's Father Dies,' ''The Tuscaloosa News (Alabama),'' 16 April 1962, pg. 2 The following year Gregory Peck carried Lee's pocket watch as he accepted an Academy Award for portraying Atticus Finch in the movie version.

Notes

Sources

article on ''To Kill A Mockingbird''article on Harper Lee and ''To Kill A Mockingbird''Byron Giddens-White. ''The Story Behind "To Kill A Mockingbird"''. (Chicago: Hindemann Library, 2007) p. 6

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lee, Amasa Coleman 1880 births 1962 deaths People from Butler County, Alabama People from Monroeville, Alabama People from Chipley, Florida Editors of Alabama newspapers Alabama lawyers Amasa Members of the Alabama House of Representatives 20th-century American politicians 20th-century American lawyers