Mason, John T

John Thomson Mason was born at the Chopawamsic plantation in Stafford County, Virginia, on 15 March 1765. John was the third son of Thomson Mason and Mary King Barnes, and the younger brother of Stevens Thomson Mason. John spent his youth at Chopawamsic before studying law at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg. He was admitted to the Frederick County bar in Maryland in 1791 and practiced law throughout his life. John married Elizabeth Beltzhoover in 1797, and they had seven children together.  

In 1798, shortly after he married, John T. Mason purchased Quality Hill, a two-story home in Georgetown, for £450. However, Mason and his family only lived there for six years. In 1804, Mason inherited all of the real property of Richard Barnes, his uncle on his mother’s side, whose estate included the functioning plantation Montpelier in Washington County, Maryland. At the time, seventy-six enslaved people worked at Montpelier. Mason and his family moved to Montpelier after Barnes’s death, though they retained their property in Georgetown.  

Newspapers chronicle certain aspects of Mason’s business dealings as a slaveholder. In 1806, he advertised the hiring out of “a number of Negroes, Women, Boys and Girls,” a practice commonly used by planters who sought to generate income from a superfluous workforce. In 1808, Mason advertised the sale of ten enslaved boys and girls at public auction because he had concluded that he could “work [his] farms without them.” It is unclear whether Mason sold other enslaved people from Montpelier during this period. 

Mason was active in politics, holding a succession of offices, mostly for short periods. In 1805, President Thomas Jefferson offered him the position of U.S. attorney general, but he refused, noting that for “eighteen years engaged in professional business, and for the last twelve so entirely,…I have not been able to devote one day to my private concerns.” In July 1806, Mason was elected attorney general for the state of Maryland, though he resigned that position in September upon his election to the state senate. In November, Mason resigned his senate seat; he doubted whether he was “constitutionally eligible” due to his “questionable…residency in the state” because he continued to own property and spend time in Georgetown, which had recently become part of the District of Columbia. In 1807, Mason sold his Georgetown residence and was reappointed to the Maryland state senate to fill a vacancy. He retained his senate seat until 1808. In 1811, Mason turned down a second offer, this time from President James Madison, to become the U.S. attorney general. Mason unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate as a Federalist in 1809; he lost a close election when, in 1816, he ran again as a Democratic-Republican.  

John Thomson Mason died on 10 December 1824 at the age of fifty-nine and was buried at Montpelier. His wife, Elizabeth, was interred beside him after her death in 1836.  

by Hayley Madl