Mason Family Papers: The Digital Edition

George Mason I and Old Friends in a New World

George Mason I emigrated to Virginia in 1651.[1]  It is believed he was a Royalist who fought in the military and fled England after the Royalist’s defeat.[2]  In America, Mason quickly gained important roles in the new colony, serving as sheriff, Justice of the Peace, and using his military expertise as an officer in the militia, eventually achieving the rank of colonel.  Mason moved nearby other English settlers who he associated with in England.  This group of people were not of the social caliber of elites like Governor Berkely, Lord Culpepper, and Lord Fairfax, but had enough wealth to purchase land and slaves, and sponsor indentured servants.  They increased their standing in the colony through public service, acquisition of land, and use of slave labor.  These neighbors from England often married each other in British America, combining land and connections.  The goals of these families were to increase prestige and wealth in the new colonies.  They did this by their activity in public servant roles, which included membership and leadership in the militia.  Many of these militia activities focused on violent acts against Native people who were trying to defend their lands and ways of life.  Mason I and Mason II found themselves in a number of events with Native people that had significant repercussions for all involved.  These men often created lies about Native people and acted rashly, and violently, when resolving conflicts.  The Masons had friends to help climb their way to the top, most notably the Brent family.

The Brent Family and Native Relations

One family Mason I connected with in America was the Brent family, Catholics from England who originally settled in Maryland, later obtaining land in Virginia.  Mason I also obtained land near the Brents.[3] Giles Brent (Sr.) came to America in 1637 and married a Piscataway woman named Mary Kittamaquund.[4]  As a Native woman from Maryland, Mary had rights to her Native lands that she would inherit from her father Chitamachon, a man who converted to Catholicism but then killed his non-converted brother to become the Tayac, or head, or the tribe.[5]  Mary received a western education from Margaret Brent, a formidable, powerful woman who owned land and conducted business at a time very few women did.[6] 

Giles Brent most likely married Mary as a way to gain access to her lands, and she may have married him as a way to gain advantages with the English newcomers.  Mary died early in their marriage, but Lord Baltimore refused to grant Brent any land Mary was entitled to as a Piscataway woman.[7]  The Brents did have a son together in 1651 named Giles Brent (Jr.).[8]  Brent could have learned the Piscataway language from his mother, and we do not know any ties he kept with his Piscataway family, but we do know that he took advantage of Native people and their land, yet often found himself in their company, either.  He certainly could speak some Doeg, as will be shown on the exhibit page about Mason I.

Brent Sr.’s land in Maryland was in the vicinity of Doeg land.  On August 26, 1651, the Maryland Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly recorded a statement by Cecilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore, for colonists to acquire land next to Doeg land.  The letter points to the very thing that the Doeg struggled with, colonist encroachment and dispossession of their land.  The colony drew maps of the area, passed acts, and gave proclamations for “Every Person of British or Irish descent” to acquire land, a statement that clearly defines who the colony views as appropriate land owners, White men of British descent.[9]  This leaves out any Native people of the region to own land as an individual, even if Native people tended to occupy land as a community.  Even though there were some protections for Native land on reservations, these reservations were defined by the colonial governments.  Further, Native women had rights to land, as was the case when Giles Brent Sr. tried to inherit Mary Kittamaquund’s land after her death. 

The statement also defines the geographical space which also “runneth by the Piscattoway.”[10]  This encroachment also affected the Piscataway.  As for the Doeg, the Proceedings read “for the better Encouragement of English to make Choice of their dividents of Land and to seat themselves in the places aforesaid…to any Adventurer or Planter that shall make Choice of his dividend and Seat a Plantation of English either on the said Eastern Shoar or on that Tract of Land wherein the Doages is included…to him and his heirs forever.”[11]  In 1651, the Doeg faced loss of land in Maryland.  They left Doeg’s Neck in Virginia around 1654 most likely to escape encroaching English settlers.  They faced the same predicament on both sides of the Potomac.  On both sides of the Potomac, the Doeg found themselves in conflicts with the Brents and Mason I, of which both lived on or near Doeg land.

The Washington Family and Doeg Land

Another prominent family of colonial Virginia took part in militia activities against Native people.[12]  John Washington is found in colonial records in activities against Native people, and like Mason, served in important political roles in the Virginia House of Burgesses and the militia.  John Washington obtained some of his land from Lord Culpepper.[13]  Washington’s campaigns against Native people cleared the way for land grants he hoped to obtain.[14]  These land grants, made possible by dispossession of Native people, formed a land and wealth base for future generations of Washingtons, that used enslaved labor.  Washington passed his land on Mattox Creek and Little Hunting Creek to his son Lawrence, who passed the land to his son Augustine, who passed the land to his son, George Washington, future first president of the United States.[15]  Mount Vernon borders Doeg’s Creek.

Land Entitlement

These English men arrived in British America with a sense of entitlement to the land, whether they wished to wrap their exploits as religious benevolence, government rights, or marriage rights.[16]  Men like Brent Jr., who was half Piscataway, had a choice as to how to live within the context of his intercultural background.  Brent Jr. chose to take advantage of his knowledge of Native people and languages, and could have felt a particular sense of entitlement to the land, one as a child of prominent English settler families and second as a child of a Native woman who had access to Piscataway land.[17]  For the Brent family, these feelings extended across the family as another Brent in 1697, Giles, Jr.’s cousin Captain George Brent, found himself associated with a murder trial after ten Natives were accused of murdering local White people after visiting George Brent’s house.  George Mason II was in charge of investigating this trial.  Cpt. George Brent was the great-grandfather of Sarah Brent, the wife of George Mason IV.

These families took full advantage of the predicament that Native people found themselves in.  Native people and English settlers very much cohabitated these lands and interacted in both times of peace, times of war, in economic situations, and in marriage.  And while they did abide by laws, their thirst for land and control of Native people often ended in tragedy, and worse- wide spread war by direct actions of Mason I and Giles Brent Jr.  Scholar James Rice said that Mason I was an anti-Indian militia officer, and we can add to that list men like William Byrd, Bacon, and Giles Brent, Jr., some of them Indian slave owners and slavers.[18]