Mason, A.B. T.

Abraham Barnes Thomson Mason (listed as A.B.T. Mason in the Mason family manuscript account book) was born on 24 August 1763 to Mary King Barnes and Thomson Mason. A.B.T. Mason married Sarah Ann Hugh in November 1787 at the Fairfax Monthly Meeting, a Quaker congregation in northern Virginia. They had eleven children and lived in Loudoun County. 

A landowner, speculator, and planter, Mason owned close to one thousand acres in Virginia, Maryland, and Kentucky in his lifetime. He bought and sold timber produced by the tenants who leased and cleared his land. Though the number of enslaved people Mason owned fluctuated through the years, he owned twenty-six enslaved people as of his last appearance in the U.S. census in 1810. Two years later in his will, he listed more than twenty enslaved people by name, including Sambo, Indy, Moses, Hester, Polly, Grace, Nancy, and Lydia. 

Although he was not as politically active or as prominent as many of his Mason relatives, fragmentary evidence suggests that A.B.T. Mason was trusted among his peers. He witnessed many deeds and also served as an executor of the estate of his father, Thomson Mason.  

A.B.T. Mason died on 12 January 1813 at the age of forty-nine. Clues in his will lead to the conclusion that he was worried about the debts he accumulated in his life being passed to his children. He did not emancipate his enslaved people, but instead bequeathed most of them to his eldest son, Thomson Mason. When he died, A.B.T. Mason divided his land holdings among his children. 

by Brant P. Morin