Thomson Mason VVETERAN
BIRTH
4 Mar 1759
Fairfax County, Virginia, USA
DEATH
11 Mar 1820 (aged 61)
Fairfax County, Virginia, USA
BURIAL
Burial Details Unknown
MEMORIAL ID
234382388 · View Source
MEMORIAL
PHOTOS 0
FLOWERS 1
Married Sarah McCarty Chichester of Newington in 1784
Mason was born on 4 March 1759 at Gunston Hall in Fairfax County, Virginia. Mason was the fifth child and fourth eldest son of George Mason and his wife Ann Eilbeck, who died when he was an infant. He shared the same name as his uncle Thomson Mason, his father's younger brother who became a prominent lawyer, politician and judge until his death in 1785, and also owned and operated plantations using enslaved labor, mostly in Loudoun County. Meanwhile, as appropriate to their class, tutors at Gunston Hall educated Thomson Mason and his brother John Mason and cousin John Thomson Mason. In 1781, Mason served as a militiaman in the American Revolutionary War.
Through deeds of gift in 1781 and 1786, Mason's father passed to him ownership of four tracts totaling 676 acres (2.74 km2), together with slaves.[4] While his brother George was in Europe trying to recover his health, Thomson operated his plantations, thus gaining experience using enslaved labor. In 1787, this Thomson Mason owned eight enslaved adults and 14 enslaved children near his father's main residence at Gunston Hall, and an additional two enslaved adults and three children in the other Fairfax County district near his brother George's residence.[5]
Mason and his wife Sarah constructed their residence Hollin Hall by 1788. However, fire destroyed that building in 1824, after this man's death. In 1916, industrialist Harley Wilson built an elegant new Hollin Hall in its vicinity.
Thomson Mason represented Fairfax County in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly. Voters in Fairfax and neighboring Prince William County elected him to the Virginia Senate in 1800 and re-elected him to another four year term, and he ended his legislative career in the Virginia House of Delegates with a single term in 1808.