The youngest daughter of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee, Nelle Harper Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama (a small town in Monroe County between Montgomery and Mobile) on April 28, 1926. Lee was raised with two sisters, Alice and Louise, and a brother, Edwin Coleman Lee. Both her sisters are still living, but her brother died of a sudden cerebral hemorrhage in 1951.
Amasa Lee grew up in Florida and came to Monroe County in the early 1900s. He worked as a bookkeeper until 1915, when he passed the bar and began practicing law. Mr. Lee also served on the Alabama State Legislature from 1926 to 1938, and as editor of The Monroe Journal from 1929 to 1947.
Frances Finch was from a Virginia family who settled in Monroe County, Alabama, and founded the town of Finchburg. Miss Finch met Mr. Lee while he was working at the Flat Creek Mill Company in Finchburg; they married in 1912. The couple lived briefly in Florida, returning to live in Monroe County in 1913.
By all accounts, Harper Lee is friendly and gregarious with those she knows, but has always been an extremely private person, disclosing little about her life to the public. Consequently, most of the information available about Lee's childhood comes from friends and is largely anecdotal. Because the character of Scout is somewhat autobiographical, readers gain their best access to Lee's childhood — or at least the flavor of her childhood — within the pages of To Kill a Mockingbird.
