Mason, John T Jr.

John Thomson Mason Jr. was born to Stevens Thomson Mason and Mary Elizabeth Armistead on 8 January 1787 at the family property “Raspberry Plain” in Loudoun County. Mason married twice, first to Elizabeth Baker Moir in 1809 in Virginia and later to Frances Magruder in 1845 in Maryland. Through his first marriage Mason had a total of eleven children, only five of whom reached adulthood. Mason died on 17 April 1850.  

Mason was educated at the Charlotte Hall Academy and the College of William & Mary, where he also studied law. By the time his first son was born, Mason already held large amounts of land inherited from his family. The family moved to Kentucky in 1812.  

During his life, Mason moved around the young nation extensively, living in Virginia, Kentucky, the Michigan Territory, Washington, D.C., and Texas. Mason was well-connected politically, holding multiple offices from 1830 until his death in 1850. His positions included serving as a director of the Lexington, Kentucky, branch of the Bank of the United States; as a U.S. marshal in Kentucky in 1817; and as Secretary of State of the Michigan Territory from 1830 to 1831. 

Mason also acted as a land agent in Texas during the last twenty years of his life, though he primarily resided in New York and the District of Columbia. Mason’s positions as a U.S. marshal and as Secretary of State of the Michigan Territory led to his continued presence in D.C., while his connections to land companies drew him to New York City for business purposes. 

Mason’s position as a land agent with the Galveston Bay and Texas Land Company also led him to go into Mexico City in the early 1830s multiple times with a free African American named Benjamin Harrison. During the war for Texas independence, which began in 1835, Harrison fought on the side of Mexico (which offered freedom to enslaved soldiers and would later abolish slavery), while Mason supported white Texans (who sought to preserve and expand slavery). Mason aided the Texas navy with $1,000 for the ship Liberty and $500 for the ship Brutus. He also purchased land in Texas and wholly supported United States expansion into this territory, which had recently been part of Mexico. 

Mason died from cholera at the Tremont House hotel in Galveston, Texas, in 1850 at the age of sixty-three. He likely contracted the fatal disease during the 1849 epidemic that raged through Texas. His final resting place is unknown. Mason was survived by three of his children and possibly by his second wife, Frances Magruder Mason. His eldest son, Stevens Thomson Mason, served as the first governor of the state of Michigan. Stevens T. Mason, appointed governor at the age of twenty-three, still holds the record as the youngest state governor in United States history.  

By Odessa Lamborn