Mason, Emily Rutger

Emily Rutger Mason McCarty, daughter of Stevens Thomson Mason and Mary Elizabeth Armistead, was born in 1793 at Raspberry Plain, the Mason family plantation in Loudoun County. She was the fifth of six children. On 24 October 1816, at the age of twenty-three, Emily married her distant cousin William Mason McCarty at Raspberry Plain. McCarty, whose family was also part of the Virginia elite, was a successful lawyer and politician. After they were married, the couple moved to the McCarty family plantation, Cedar Grove, in Fairfax County. William and Emily McCarty had two sons before her death in 1837 at the age of forty-four.

Emily Mason’s life exemplifies how elite women in Virginia navigated society and conformed to expected gender roles. The Mason family manuscript account book shows that her parents hired a tutor, John NonReison, for her, and that music was a major part of her education. Mason played the piano and owned a guitar, both of which were considered women’s instruments during this period. In the nineteenth century, music lessons (especially piano lessons) were a typical part of a wealthy young lady’s upbringing, and many believed that young women had to learn the piano to attract a desirable husband. Mason took music lessons from 1813 to 1816, the year she married McCarty.

Once she moved from Raspberry Plain to Cedar Grove, Emily McCarty would have been expected to take on wifely duties at the plantation. Since she grew up on a plantation, she would have known how life in a slaveholding family worked. The 1830 United States census shows that the McCartys owned seven enslaved people at Cedar Grove. Scholars have documented the complexities of being a plantation mistress, noting that while they were privileged members of the ruling class, these women were also subject to patriarchal norms and were often subservient to their husbands.

Plantation wives also had duties related to managing the home itself. In addition to owning enslaved laborers to work the fields, many elite southern slaveholding families also had enslaved people working as house servants. In her 1815 will, Emily Mason’s mother left her a “waiting maid” named Rachel Diggs, who was likely born the daughter of a free man of color named Cornelius Diggs in 1806. Slaveholding women often oversaw the children of the house—both their own, and also the enslaved children.

From 1826 to 1830, William McCarty served in Florida’s territorial government. There is no evidence suggesting that Emily and the children came with him. Emily likely took on the management of their plantation while William was gone.

By Jayme Kurland