Lee's Summit

Many assume Lee’s Summit was named for Confederate General Robert E. Lee, and a reader asked What’s Your KCQ?, a collaboration between The Kansas City Star and the Kansas City Public Library, to find out the truth. Not only is the Kansas City, Missouri, suburb not named after Robert E. Lee, but the town didn’t take its name from anyone named Lee at all. Rather, it’s named after an early resident, a physician named Dr. Pleasant John Graves Lea. Born in the first decade of the 19th century in Tennessee, Pleasant Lea came to Jackson County around 1850. He settled in the area then known as Big Cedar with his wife Lucinda, their nine children, and his brother. The Leas became respected members of the community; each served a stint as postmaster in the 1850s, and Dr. Lea acted as the town physician as well.