The great man of Marblehead in the colonial day was Colonel Jeremiah Lee, whose still elegant mansion is to be seen there. Unlike many of the gentry of his time, Colonel Lee was a thorough-going patriot. He was, with Orne and Gerry, a delegate to the first and second Provincial Congresses of 1774. When the famous Revolutionary Committee of Safety and Supplies was formed, he became and continued a member until his death in May, 1775. Colonel Lee was with the committee on the day before the battle of Lexington, and with Gerry and Orne remained to pass the night at the Black Horse tavern in Menotomy, now Arlington. When the British advance reached this house it was surrounded, the half-dressed patriots having barely time to escape to a neighboring corn-field, where they threw themselves upon the ground until the search was over. From the exposure incident to this adventure Lee got his death. His townsmen treasure his memory as one of the men who formed the Revolution, braved its dangers, and accepted its responsibilities. Colonel Lee was a stanch churchman, which makes his adhesion to the patriot side the more remarkable. [Illustration: LEE HOUSE.] There is nothing about the exterior of the Lee mansion to attract the stranger's attention, though it cost the colonel, when furnished, ten thousand pounds sterling. As was customary, its offices were on one side and its stables on the other, with a court-yard paved with beach-pebble, in which the date of the house, 1768,[160] may be traced. Entrance was gained on front and side over massive freestone steps, that show the print of time to have pressed more heavily than human feet. The house, long since deserted by the family, is now occupied as a bank. On entering the mansion of the Lees the visitor is struck with the expansive area of the hall, which is six paces broad, and of corresponding depth. Age has imparted a rich coloring to the mahogany wainscot and casing of the staircase. The balusters are curiously carved in many different patterns; the walls are still hung with their original paper, in panels representing Roman or Grecian ruins, with trophies of arms, or implements of agriculture or of the chase between. One panel represented a sea-fight of Blake and Van Tromp's day. Some of them have been permanently disfigured by the use of the hall, at one time, as a fish-market. In a corner, a trap-door led to the old merchant's wine-cellar, which he thus kept under his own eye. It was after a visit to some such mansion that Daniel Webster asked, "Did those old fellows go to bed in a coach-and-four?"