Enslaved People of George Mason Memorial

So, if not from his uncle, where did George Mason learn how to be such an adept businessman? It seems likely that we need to only look to the co-executor of George Mason III's estate and co-guardian of the three Mason children, their mother, Ann Thomson Mason. Ann Thomson’s marriage to George Mason III was a significant advancement for the ambitious George Mason III. It is unclear what capital Ann brought to the marriage when she and Mason were wedded in 1721. However, it was likely significant since she was the only surviving daughter from a prominent English family. Stevens Thomson, her father, received an appointment from Queen Anne to be Virginia’s attorney general. Thomson came from an influential family. His father served as a Baron of the Exchequer and Serjeant at Law, which presided over the important Court of Common Pleas. She likely had an inheritance of some sort since he died in 1714.[1]

Women were critical to securing and managing wealth. Typically, elite women in Virginia were gifted slaves when they reached the age of majority or when they were married. Women received slaves as part of their dower and the slaves, despite being legally real estate, remained the property of the woman. It is critical to note that the laws in the region were designed to promote that inheritance remained within the family unit. Laws in Maryland and Virginia were particularly beneficial to widows by guaranteeing the rights of their dowers. Although this right was not absolute, especially in Virginia, and widows typically could not sell slaves outside the family unit, women commonly had the use of their slaves for entirety of their life. This wealth could be used for her own maintenance or for the accumulation of resources to leave as a legacy for her children. Additionally, recent scholarship has demonstrated the complicity which white women held in maintaining and profiting in slavery. Both widows and married white women actively participated within the slavery system and benefited from enslaving people. They were in the words of Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers “mistresses of the market” who were every bit a participant in the buying, selling and discipling enslavers of human beings as men. Slaveholding widows were provided with wide latitudes over their household economic condition and with the management of that domain. They became “the heads of productive households—virtual family-owned businesses—with authority over space, capital, and labor.”[2]

Ann was an effective manager of the Mason family assets. She kept meticulous accounts documenting her strategic actions designed to promote the assets of the family. The 1735 inventory of her husband’s Maryland property in Charles County counted 22 people, ten of whom were fifteen years or older.  There were also six adult indentured servants with a range of time still owed to George Mason III listed. The Prince William County inventory for the Chopawamsic Plantation of 1735 shows 10 enslaved people. Five were recorded as adults, and the remaining five as children. There were also three indentured servants listed. It is unclear if there were more slaves on any of the other properties that Mason inherited. What is clear is that Ann carefully managed the labor available as assets and assured that production would at least pay for taxes and other essential costs. It is documented that two years later she paid quitrents on 12,574 acres of land across the Northern Neck of Virginia, which indicates the vast landholdings in Virginia for the Mason family. Ann also expanded the Maryland land holdings of the family which included purchasing the Goose Bay property near Nanjemoy, Maryland.[3]

Ann moved the family to Virginia and took the Chopawamsic Plantation as her dower land.  The widow’s third typically entitled a woman the right to utilize one-third of the total property to use for her lifetime. Women typically retained the slaves that worked the land as part of their dower. The design behind this common practice was that these resources ought to be utilized for her maintenance throughout the life of the widow. Ann Mason’s dower land became a crucial part of her plan to provide a financial legacy for her two younger children who received no inheritance from their father due to his death without a will. A sample of disbursement documents filed in Prince William County exist in which Ann meticulously records the expenditures for the various properties and the yearly profits earned making sure to divide the earnings from George Mason’s patrimony from that generated from her dower lands. This is how she strategically purchased that land for her younger children, and it is also how she had resources to actively purchase new land, and likely more slaves while she served as guardian to her three children. Ann Mason also rented pieces of the Mason land to tenants who significantly added to George Mason’s inheritance. In 1735 the Mason’s had nineteen tenants on his Virginia lands and they paid 11,390 pounds of tobacco. These rents would vary over the years recorded but were as high as 23,188 pounds of tobacco in 1739. Although it was common for elites to rent portions of their lands it seems this practice remained important to George Mason. In Fairfax county alone in 1760 George rented to at least 35 people and there is evidence that at least 32 had leases filed on record in court. In fact, Mason had the second number of leases of all landowners in Fairfax county. These leases were typically between 100 and 200 acres and generated 530-630 pounds of tobacco annually in rent. The leases were called three lives leases in that remained in force for the lifetime of any of the three names which were on the agreement. This provided security for the tenant and the landowner. Also, having a lease agreement filed in court offered the tenant the opportunity to vote in that county. There were also many people who worked as sharecroppers on land without contract. Little is known about these arrangements. What we can see is that Ann Mason embedded a stable money-making use for their land which was more effective than purchasing more slaves and rented over 600 acres of her land in small farms to many migrants from Pennsylvania and German families. As new white immigrants flooded into the country it seemed like a viable addition to an increasingly diversified portfolio of assets in the enterprise of the elite and Ann continued this practice until 1756 when she deeded property to both Mary and Thomson.[4]

Ann strategically deployed her assets to help establish a legacy for her daughter Mary and younger son Thomson. It seems extremely likely that Ann Mason purchased slaves from the proceeds of the assets in her charge. This is clear since Ann was able to provide her daughter Mary Mason Seldon a deed of gift to her daughter for twenty slaves in 1756. It is unclear how many slaves she gave Thompson but it was likely several because Ann seemed to give Thompson and Mary similar amounts of property at around the same time. That same year, in 1756, when Thomson reached the age of majority, she deeded 4,650 acres to him. At this same time Ann also deeded about the same amount of land to Mary Thomson (Mason) Selden to her and her husband Samuel Selden. Ownership of ten of these twenty people was transferred to her grandson Samuel Seldon when Mary Mason Seldon died in 1758. Ann also gave George Mason seven slaves but she also changed her mind on how she would dispose her property. For example she initially gave her son George IV two slaves, Letty and her son Jammy, but in a 1762 codicil to her will she directed that they both be given to her grandson Samuel Seldon, in trust with George Mason, in exchange for a transferred property in Goose Bay, Maryland as compensation “in lieu of all debts I might owe him at the time of my death.” By the time of her death in 1763 two inventories of her properties filed in Fairfax and Stafford counties show that Ann Thomson Mason’s enslaved population included 41 slaves.[5]

From these documents and other testimonies, it is clear George Mason learned how to effectively manage a plantation from his mother Ann Mason. She was remembered by the Rev. John Moncure as living an austere and moderate life in which “Providence was accordingly pleased to reward her Virtues in this way, by gratifying her in the Accomplishment of the first and dearest Wish of her Heart (the Happiness of her Children) and after preparing her by a long and painful Illness, which she bore with exemplary Resignation; …to exchange the transitory Pleasure of the World for those never failing Joys which Goodness like hers may reasonably be assured of meeting with in the next.” Ann used strict oversight over her resources and managed the enslaved population and other unfree labor effectively. She paid taxes with funds gathered from renters. Ann diversified the crops grown and maintained multiple income streams from nonagricultural sources such as their ordinary and ferry interests. Finally, she leveraged her assets, including renting out unfree labor to help secure resources to purchase new land and slaves with money not credit. Ultimately, Ann Mason bought 10,000 acres of what was called the “wild lands in Loudoun County for which she paid only shillings per acre” which she immediately divided between Mary and Thomson which “made her two younger children wealthier than their elder brother.” John Mercer too taught Mason lessons. On the one hand, he was remembered “as a Gentleman of great natural abilities” who held “extensive knowledge, not only in his profession, but in several other branches of polite literature.” On the other hand, Mercer’s estate was sold off in pieces while his sons inherited his legacy of debt.[6]

George Mason IV knew the importance of marrying well in order to have a strategically minded partner to help manage his plantation enterprise but also due to the wealth that women brought to a marriage. Ann Eilbeck Mason, his wife, exemplified what a plantation mistress in the later colonial period brought to the family relationship. She was the only child of a wealthy and well-connected family. The Eilbecks were a merchant and plantation owning family from Maryland. William Eilbeck was among the wealthiest men in Charles County, Maryland. His Maryland plantation neighbored George Mason III. After Mason drowned, Eilbeck was named a creditor of the estate and conducted an inventory of Mason’s property in Charles County. It is unclear what dowery he provided to Ann. It was likely significant. After Eilbeck died in 1765, he bequeathed Ann “the profits and use of two tracts of land” in Prince George’s county containing four hundred acres.” Also, he gave one slave to each of his six grandchildren in his will. He directed that his wife, Sarah would have the use of all his lands and property including “her choice of Twenty of my Negroes, them and their Increase” along with all the goods and profits from his Charles County plantation “during her natural life.” There were at least forty enslaved people named in the 1765 inventory taken after William’s death. Ann’s husband, George Mason, was named “sole Executor” and paid “fifty pounds” to assure that all Eilbeck’s credits and debts were managed and the balance to be “dispersed of” and “equally divided among the rest of my Grandchildren.” As for the bulk of the property, after Sarah Eilbeck died, Ann stood to inherit all of William’s property which was not already designated to the grandchildren. Significantly, George Mason controlled this property both during the life of Ann and while he oversaw the property as a guardian for the children and thus could make any investments in land or other properties that he saw fit to assure the preservation and growth of “the said Legacies.”[7]

George Mason IV’s wife Ann (1734-1773) died on 9 March 1773. He was 25 years old when marrying the 16-year-old Ann Eilbeck Mason. After their 23 years of marriage Mason was devastated and was left with nine surviving children. John Mason, the seventh child who was nearly seven years old later recalled “the whole family went into deep mourning” and that “the house was in a state of desolation for a good while.” George Mason V, their eldest son, was a year away from reaching the age of majority. This fact must have made George Mason worry for his children’s legacy especially based on his own experience having lost his father at an early age. George wrote his only known will eleven days after the death of Ann.[8]