Eleanor Percy Lee

Eleanor Percy Lee, born Eleanor Percy Ware (1819–1849), was an American writer of Mississippi who co-authored two books of poetry with her sister Catherine Anne Warfield; these were published in the 1840s. The sisters were indirect ancestors of the famed southern writers William Alexander Percy and Walker Percy. Eleanor died in a yellow fever epidemic.

Eleanor Percy Ware was born in Natchez, Mississippi in 1819, the second daughter of Sarah Percy and her second husband Major Nathaniel Ware, an attorney and aide to the Mississippi territorial governor. (Sarah was the widow of Judge John Ellis, who died in 1808. They had a son Thomas and a daughter Mary Jane Ellis together.) Eleanor's older sister was Catherine Anne Ware. Sarah Percy was from a prominent Southern family with a noted vulnerability to mental illness. She was 39 when Eleanor was born and suffered from post-partum depression following the birth. She never fully recovered.

Ware moved his family from Natchez, Mississippi to Philadelphia, where Sarah could be treated. She was the highest-paying patient, and the only one accompanied by a resident slave, at the Pennsylvania Hospital, then one of the few institutions that clinically treated the mentally ill.

The girls attended the academy of Mme. Aimée Sigoigne, an émigré from Saint-Domingue, who had left during the revolution that established the republic of Haiti. Her French-language school attracted many upper-class Southerners and Philadelphians. Ware frequently took his young daughters with him on his travels, as well.

In 1831, Ware moved Sarah back to Natchez. She was put under the care of her son Thomas George Ellis, from her first marriage. Catherine Anne and Eleanor would visit their mother every summer when home from school. She died in 1836.

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