Mason Family Papers: The Digital Edition

In the years after George Mason V’s death, Elizabeth raised her children, oversaw her personal holdings of enslaved people and lands, and managed her deceased husband’s estate. In addition to the enslaved people who helped to care for her children, Elizabeth hired a governess to oversee her three youngest children, hired music masters for her daughters, and arranged for her sons to attend boarding school. Elizabeth Mason billed these types of expenses to her deceased husband’s estate, but she also worked hard to improve the revenues from Lexington and Dogue Neck Plantation. From 1796 through 1803, both plantations produced high yields of tobacco, corn, wheat, pork, oats, and rye, which were supplemented by revenues from blacksmithing, carpentry, lumbering, fishing (to include the leasing of fisheries), and “miscellaneous articles.” In December 1802, Elizabeth Mason also sold two enslaved people—Charles and Luce—that belonged to the Mason estate, ostensibly because their sale would be more profitable than passing them down to the Mason children. All told, Elizabeth Mason acted as a shrewd businesswoman during her widowhood, which protected her independence and her children’s inheritance.[1]

After nearly seven years of widowhood, Elizabeth Mason chose to remarry on July 16, 1803.[2] On July 4, 1803, Elizabeth Mason, Thomson Mason (the brother of Elizabeth’s deceased husband), and her soon-to-be husband, George Graham entered into a legal agreement because “a Marriage is Intended by the permission of God to be shortly had and solemnized.” The first part of antenuptial agreement specified that Elizabeth “doth Sell Alien, transfer make over and deliver unto the said Thomson Mason all her real and personal Estate and property whatsoever which she holds, possesses, Enjoys or Claims” for the purpose of creating a trust for all of her “Remainders, Reversions, Rights of Dower, Rents, Issues, Profits, Debts, and Appertinances.” The second part of the agreement specified that her holdings were “for her Own Separate use free from the Controul and direction [of] the said George Graham.”[3]

The antenuptial agreement between Elizabeth Mason and George Graham was consistent with the patterns of elite remarriage in the early republic. According to historian Mary Beth Norton, “marriage settlements were a device of … fairly well-to-do widows whose first marriages and subsequent independence had led them to conclude that they should prevent their property from falling entirely into their new spouses’ hands.”[4]

Elizabeth Mason’s motives appear to have been driven more by her desire to protect her independence, not because Graham was penurious or unfamiliar. At the time of their marriage, Graham was operating a law practice in Dumfries, Virginia. Furthermore, Elizabeth’s new husband was intimately acquainted with the Mason family. When the widower George Mason IV married Sarah Brent in 1780, the childless Brent brought Graham—her ten-year-old nephew—with her to Gunston Hall where he received an education alongside John and Thomas Mason. Graham was the same age as Thomas Mason, who later married Elizabeth Mason’s sister, Sarah Hooe, in 1793—adding yet another connection between Graham and Elizabeth Mason. For the remainder of his life, the Masons and outsiders alike viewed George Graham as an adopted member of the Mason family.[5]

Elizabeth Mason’s antenuptial agreement ensured that she—and not her new husband—dictated the fate of her property.[6] According to the agreement, Elizabeth was empowered to act “in her own proper Name” whenever directing the actions of her trustees. After all, in her 1799 deed with the executors of George Mason V’s estate, Elizabeth had fought to protect her widow’s “provisions” in the event of remarriage. Without an antenuptial agreement, Elizabeth would forfeit her own property and the gains from her widowhood to the whims of a new husband. Perhaps as a subtle reminder that Graham was marrying into a pre-existing family, Elizabeth Mason’s son-in-law and daughter, Alexander and Elizabeth Hooe, were the two witnesses to the antenuptial agreement. They—not Graham—would be among the eventual inheritors of Elizabeth Mason’s property.[7]

In the weeks following his wedding to Elizabeth Mason in 1803, George Graham suspended his legal practice in Dumfries and moved to his wife’s house at Lexington. Even though George Graham did not own the plantations at Lexington and Dogue Neck—all profits would go to the estate of George Mason V—he took an active role in managing the properties on behalf of his wife and stepchildren. As part of his management duties, George Graham wrote to John Mason in March 1804 to request goods and reimbursements from George Mason V’s estate. John Mason replied that he and his brother, Thomson Mason—another of George Mason V’s executors—were willing to oblige Graham’s request, but they also took the opportunity to voice their displeasure of Elizabeth Graham’s handling of the properties during her widowhood. “The Estate is so unproductive,” wrote John Mason, who had heard rumors that various individuals were “pilfering” the estate, that an enslaved person had lost a hand, and that there was a general need of “reform” at his late brother’s properties. John Mason ended his letter with a snide post-script: “Lest you or Mrs. Graham may not have a copy of the [1799] agreement between her and the Executors I herein enclose you the original which you will preserve & having taken a copy can return me when we meet.” [8]

The Grahams surely did not need a reminder of the “agreement”: without it, they could not live at Lexington or benefit from the George Mason V estate. Instead, the tone and contents of John Mason’s letter seems to indicate a simmering animosity towards Elizabeth Mason (now Graham) for her bold stance against the Mason brothers in 1799. This same independence and boldness had clearly not subsided by 1803, as her antenuptial agreement with George Graham can attest.