, George

George was an enslaved African American man. Folio 135 in the Mason family manuscript account book records the purchase of George from the estate of Hugh Douglas by Thomson Mason. On 9 January 1816, Mason paid $250 cash to his first cousin Armistead T. Mason, one of the executors of Douglas’s estate, “in pt payment” for George.

Douglas’s estate inventory, completed in April 1816, lists one enslaved George, described as a “boy” and assigned a value of $450. This may be either the same George sold to Thomson Mason, or a different George.

After purchasing George, Mason likely took him to “Siberia,” his home near Leesburg. George may not have stayed at Siberia long, however, before attempting to escape from slavery. In an advertisement in the 22 May 1816 Alexandria Herald, Thomson Mason offered a reward for the capture of a mixed-race enslaved man named George, around twenty-one years old, who escaped from Mason’s household on 18 May. Mason described George as a “slender delicate person,” five feet eight inches tall, with “an intelligent countenance.” To aid his escape, George stole a horse (he “rides remarkably well”) and acquired clothes including “a pair of new Cossac boots.” Mason explained that he had “strong reasons to believe” that George “obtained a pass with the county seal annexed to it,” a detail that suggests George may have been literate. He may have also wielded some sort of authority on the plantation. No record of George exists to say whether he successfully escaped, although two further account entries detail Mason’s payment of the balance due for George in late 1816 and 1817. This may suggest that Mason recaptured George, or it may simply indicate that Thomson Mason was a man who paid his debts.

Two other Georges, likely both enslaved, appear in the Mason family manuscript account book. The George mentioned in folio 101 belonged to Stevens Thomson Mason Jr., who bequeathed George to his brother Armistead T. Mason in his 1815 will. This may be the same George who appears in the 1803 estate inventory of Stevens Thomson Mason Sr. Another George appears in folio 103, where Armistead T. Mason records that he sent cash to his overseer John Huff “pr George.” Two Georges, one sixty years old and one twenty-seven years old, appear in Armistead T. Mason’s 1819 estate inventory, along with a one-year-old boy named William listed as the son of George. 

As this multiplicity of Georges shows, George was a common name given to enslaved males. Perhaps enslaved families wishing to honor a grandparent or other kinsman bestowed the name. Slaveholders may have also named their enslaved people after powerful white leaders such as King George III or George Washington, either out of admiration, familiarity, or to mock the enslaved by comparison. All these enslaved Georges may have also received—and preferred—private names, perhaps traditional African names, from their mothers. White record keepers usually failed to document these names.

By Tom Seabrook