Hannah Lee Corbin
Hannah Ludwell Lee Corbin was an American women's rights advocate and member of the Lee family in Virginia. A controversial widow in her own time in part for her refusal to marry her paramour or conversion from the Church of England to the Baptists, she may today be best known for asking that women be given the right to vote.
Personal life
A member of the politically influential Lee family, Hannah Ludwell Lee was born on February 6, 1728, on her parents' Stratford Hall plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia. Her father was prominent civil servant Thomas Lee and her mother was colonial heiress Hannah Ludwell. The fourth of eleven children, her siblings included Philip Ludwell; Francis Lightfoot and Richard Henry, both of whom signed the United States Declaration of Independence; Thomas Ludwell; diplomat Arthur; alderman; William; and Alice. In 1747, Hannah Lee married her cousin Gawin Corbin, who had succeeded his father as burgess but died in 1760 from injuries sustained in a horse-riding mishap; they had one daughter, Martha.Following her husband's death, Corbin inherited vast swathes of property, including in Lancaster County and in Caroline County, as well as slaves. She subsequently cohabited with physician Richard Lingan Hall, although they never married and she gave their children the Corbin surname, so as to not violate her husband's will, which stipulated that her inheritance would be forfeited if she remarried; Corbin and Hall had a son, Elisha, and a daughter, also named Martha. Formerly an attendee of the Church of England, Corbin became a member of the Baptist church around 1764, to the disapproval of her siblings.