Ira E. Lee served the citizens of Lucas County as its Prosecutor on the eve of the Civil War, between 1857-1859. An active Democrat, Lee served as the Toledo City Attorney in 1855-1856, prior to being elected Prosecutor.

Historical records show that in 1844, he was one of the first students to attend the new "Sylvania School" and that he traveled from Toledo to do so. This would indicated both his birth in Toledo as well as the great respect to which his family valued education in those early days of Lucas County.

Records indicate that although a Toledoan, he traveled to Wareham, Massachusetts to marry a Mary E. Tollman, on January 14, 1855. [Waggoner, Clark, Memoirs of the City of Toledo and Lucas County, Vol. 3, 1888, p. 689].

An 1887 list of the members of the Lucas County Bar Association includes his name, as one of the 158 attorneys then practicing law.