Of the many noted colonial houses found in New England, one of the most distinguished is the Colonel Jeremiah Lee house situated on Washington Street, in the picturesque old town of Marblehead, Massachusetts. The quaintness of Marblehead, situated on a rocky peninsula, is world renowned; and its name heads the list of patriotic towns in New England, for from its rugged shores went forth a larger majority of soldiers than from any other place of its size in our country. [Illustration: PLATE XXIV.--The Lee Mansion, Marblehead, Mass.] The celebrated Lee mansion, erected in 1768, is of the purest colonial type, and was the most costly residence ever built in this seaport town. Many traditions relate that the timber and the finish were brought over in one of the colonel's trading ships as ballast. However that may be, the material used was pine, such as was known in the old days as pumpkin pine. The trees of that species sometimes allow for boards four feet in width, and the fact that boards of this width are found in the Lee mansion is claimed by many to refute the idea of English wood, as the pines in the old country did not produce boards of such width when Jeremiah Lee commenced to build. Standing back from the street behind a granite curb and iron paling is the old mansion, its dimensions being sixty-four feet by forty-six feet, and containing fifteen large rooms. The exterior was built of brick, over which were placed huge, bevelled, wooden clapboards, more than two feet in width, and one and a half in height. From a distance the observer might mistake the gray of the exterior for stone, as the block style of construction was employed, the wooden cube being painted and sanded to resemble dark gray rock. [Illustration: PLATE XXV.--Porch, Lee Mansion.] This gray wooden building, with its two wide-girthed chimneys pushing up from the red roof, has the same appearance as in the days when the first housewarming took place, in 1768. The handsome porch and the gray cupola are distinguishing features, and from the former in the olden days the colonel swept the seas with his spy-glass to watch for incoming ships just as sea captains do to-day. In the early part of the eighteenth century Jeremiah Lee came to this country and settled at Manchester-by-the-Sea. The little that can be learned of him shows him to have been a keen trader, who took care to make his savings increase his income. In 1760 we find him living in Marblehead, prominent in town affairs and serving on important committees, being one of the Board of Fire-wards in the first fire department of the town. He was also one of the building committee that had charge of the construction of the powder house erected about that time.