In the early morning hours, the hammering started as a crew from the City of Alexandria attempted to remove the historical marker in front of 607 Oronoco Street, which is on the market for $5.9 million.

The hammering proved unsuccessful during the 3:30 a.m. work detail, so the crew took out a saw and cut through the sign post.  Within minutes, the sign announcing the house was the birthplace of Confederate general Robert E. Lee had disappeared into the back of a departing city pickup, according to the Washington Post.

The fact that the house is on sale is coincidental to the removal of the sign, says the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, which manages the placement and maintenance of the historical markers.  The issue was that the text on the sign, which had been erected in 1968, was inaccurate, a department spokesperson said. 

The sign claimed Lee would climb a nearby wall to see if the “snowballs” were in bloom–referring to flowers on a nearby tree.  The sign also erroneously said that the Marquis de Lafayette, a French ally during the American War for Independence, had visited the house.

“We fact-checked this text and could not find a primary source that confirmed the ‘snowballs’ quote. This information seems to be based on a legend that we could track only to the 1940s,” Jennifer Loux, the DHR’s marker program historian and manager, wrote in an email to the Post. “We also determined that the available evidence does not support the claim that Lafayette visited the house in 1824.”

Loux told the Post that a new sign had been manufactured and would be installed at the site sometime in the future.  The new text, which will have the header “Potts-Fitzhugh-Lee House” instead of “Lee Boyhood Home,” lists Lee’s residing there as one of a number of historical things that happened at the property:

This Federal-style townhouse and its adjoining twin were built ca. 1795. Original owner John Potts Jr., secretary of the Potomac Company, deeded the house in 1799 to William Fitzhugh of Chatham, member of Virginia’s Revolutionary Conventions and the Continental Congress. George Washington visited his friends and business associates Potts and Fitzhugh here. Maj. Gen. Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, Revolutionary War officer, governor of Virginia, and member of the U.S. Congress, moved here in 1811. His son Confederate general Robert E. Lee grew up here and studied at Benjamin Hallowell’s school next door. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and playwright Archibald MacLeish lived here in the 1940s.