Years before he rode into his first Civil War battle, Robert E. Lee took a tour of the entire Florida coastline - a tour that likely brought him to his namesake county.

Lee the man became a legend as the general in command of the Confederate forces.  He moved into that role with ease, his military prowess already honed on battlefields on the other side of the United States.

But before Lee became a war hero, he worked for the Army Corps of Engineers.  The job brought him into Florida for the first time in early 1849, four years after it became the 27th state.

His son Robert E. Lee Jr., mentioned that his father toured Florida in his book, "Robert E. Lee: Recollections and Letters."

Historian Douglas Southall Freeman expanded on that book's brief mention of the Florida tour in his own book, "R.E. Lee."

"Lee was sent off ... with the Board of Engineers to make a study of the lands that should be held in public domain for the construction of fortifications in Florida," Freeman wrote.

"The bureau had previously reserved for this purpose all the islands on the coast, and it was now to decide if any of the islands could be released ... the engineers ... made a circuit of the Florida coast from Pensacola all the way to Cumberland Island, on Georgia's east coast just inside the border with Florida.

"It was not a hurried trip, and it must have interested Lee greatly, as it carried him to a country he had never seen before."

Unfortunately, none of the letters Lee wrote home during his monthslong boat tour of the coastline survived, Freeman wrote.

So could Lee have walked along the powdery white sands of Sanibel Island?

"That's problematic," admits retired Fort Myers volunteer historian Stan Mulford.

He believes there's a very good chance that Lee stopped on Sanibel to scout it as a possible site for a fort.

"It stands to reason - Sanibel is one of the biggest and most outlying islands.  It sounds like a logical place for him to stop," said Mulford, who has researched Lee's four trips to the state.

Unfortunately, the official records of Lee's 1849 tour across Florida no longer exist.

"They were consumed in a fire in the War Department in Washington,D.C., several years later," Mulford said.

Lee returned to the state during and after the war.  He visited the grave of his father, Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee, on Cumberland Island a couple of times, and traveled to Fernandina before his death on October 12, 1870.

Seventeen years later, his name became part of the Southwest Florida landscape.

Formerly part of Monroe County, the 822 square miles that now make up Lee County broke off as a result of collective public frustration after Fort Myers' only school burned to the ground on May 12, 1886.

According to "The Story of Fort Myers" by Karl H. Grismer, none of the school's 49 students was hurt when the wooden structure caught fire late that afternoon but parents were upset, mostly because they wanted their kids back in school.

When the school principal and other concerned residents traveled to the county seat in Key West to get money for a new school, they returned empty-handed a week later and "incensed," as Grismer writes.

"Capt. (Peter) Nelson reported that the county officials had been quite nasty and had intimated that since Fort Myers had been so careless as to permit a splendid $1,000 building to be destroyed by fire it didn't deserve consideration," Grismer wrote.

It was "the last straw," Grismer said.

Considering other complaints Fort Myers residents had, including the distance to Key West to transact business and the fact that they didn't think they were getting their tax money's worth, a last-minute effort by county commissioners to appease Fort Myers residents failed.

That's when prominent Fort Myers pioneer Francis Asbury Hendry got involved.

Hendry, a cattleman, never enlisted as a Confederate soldier but was part of the "cow cavalry," created during the Civil War to protect the precious beef cattle from theft by Union raiders.

It's doubtful that Hendry ever met Lee - highly doubtful, Mulford said - but he had a high regard for the military leader.

"Well do I remember when the time came to organize a new county by the people of the mainland of Monroe County and the mass meeting held under the shade of the tree on the present school lot in Fort Myers," Hendry recalled in his short booklet titled, "A History of the Early Days of Fort Myers." which he wrote in 1908.

"Fortunate indeed is the county of Lee in being named for that distinguished and laudable a character, Robert E. Lee, whom the world has esteemed and delights to honor," Hendry wrote.

"Proud indeed was I that when a name was discussed that I - even I - made a motion to name it in honor of the beloved Robert E. Lee.  Well do I remember the enthusiasm in adopting that motion."

On May 2, 1887, the state Senate passed a bill sponsored by J.W. Whidden creating Lee County.  The House passed the bill a week later, which Gov. Edward Aylesworth Perry signed immediately, Grismer wrote.

At that time, Lee County included present-day Collier and Hendry counties.  Collier County, named for Barron Collier, broke off in 1923, as did Hendry County.

Reminders of the county's namesake can be found in Fort Myers.  A large portrait of Lee hangs in the county commission chambers, and his bust - absent the "L" - stands in the median on Monroe Street amid palm trees.

On Hendry Street, and alcove in the former Lee County Bank building - now empty - at the corner with First Street features a mosaic of Lee on his nearly equally famous horse, Traveller.

Then and now, his namesake county features residents with a mix of backgrounds - natives and newcomers from around the world.

Its name seems appropriate, considering that Lee's appeal reached beyond the borders of the South, said Matt Johnson, education coordinator and historian for the Fort Myers Historical Museum.

"He was one of the most famous people in the South at the time," Johnson said, "and he was just as highly regarded in the North."

by Tammy Ayer.  The News Press.