COLONEL MASON AND THE COUNCIL.

27

May it please your Excellency:

STAFFORD, C. H., July 10, 1700.

Your Excellency's commands from Colonel Fitzhugh have received, and shall be carefully observed. The Rangers continue their duty according to your Excellency's commands, and I have upon the request of the frontiers placed six men and Ensign Giles Vandecastiall officer to range upon the heads of the river; that is I have raised them from Giles Vandicasteall's house up to the uppermost plantation. They [the ?] neighbors having fitted out their sons and other young men well acquaint, so their ranging is as low as my Plantation at Pohick, so round all the necks, up to the uppermost Inhabitants, so down upon the back plantations; and Cornet Burr Harrison, from Occoquan down to Potomack Creek with two officers and men doth give good content. They range each party four days a week, which is as hard duty as can be performed; with said officers is the best to content in our upper parts. If your Excellency think fit so they may act, as they are cornet and ensign of the militia, but leave it to your Excellency's consideration.

The Inhabitants still continue from their houses, but abundance better satisfied since part of the Rangers is constantly ranging among them. Sir, I find it will be of great disservice to our county business to have Captain Hooe out of the commission; most humbly beg leave to conclude, Sir, your Excellency's most humble servant,

G. MASON.'

An order was issued from Jamestown, July 10, 1700, to "Lieut.-Coll. George Mason, made commander-in-chief of the militia," requiring him to raise twelve men, with two officers over them, to range in the county for its further security. And we find the council again in the fall of this same year sending a fresh order to Colonel Mason. This time it is dated from the new capital, Williamsburg, and authorizes the County Lieutenant to continue the same rangers as heretofore, until the next session of the General

1 Ibid., p. 71.

3

Assembly.' Colonel Mason patented seventy-nine acres of land in 1704, part of it being the tract on which the present village of Occoquan now stands.' He held at this time 1703-4, divers tracts in the county, amounting in all to 8,000 acres, and his "home seat" was "Dogue's Island." He bought of Joseph Waugh 1,085 acres of land in Overwharton parish at a little later period; and on the 11th of June, 1707, he patented seventy-nine acres on the Occoquan River, which last, however, he soon sold. The feoffees of the incipient town of Marlborough at this time were George Mason and William Fitzhugh. Col. George Mason, whose unmistakable autograph identifies him with the writer of the letters of 16991700, sent a communication to Governor Spotswood, in 1713, asking that his son, who had been nominated for that office by the justices of Stafford, might be made sheriff. The last purchase of land made by Colonel Mason was on the 4th of January, 1714. He obtained, in partnership with James Hereford, 2,244 acres in Stafford County, a rude plat of which tract is found on the deed. It is described as situated between the main run of Accotink and Dogue Run, being commonly called "Hereford Manor." It seems to be part of the neck of land on which "Belvoir," the Fairfax estate, was afterward situated. In the plat, "Mrs. West's land" is seen on the left of Accotink Run, and to the left of Dogue Run is situated the "Chaple land," with a building on it representing the "Chaple." This was doubtless one of the Rev. Mr. Waugh's churches. The "county main road" runs south of Hereford Manor. In the will of Colonel Mason he bequeathed this property to two of his daughters, and the same tract is mentioned in the will of George Mason of Gunston. On the 5th of January, the day after this purchase, "Mr. George Mason, jun.," is seen to have patented 1,930 acres of land in Stafford."

1 Ibid., p. 72.

2 Virginia Land Registry Office, Richmond. 'Records of Stafford Court-House.

Journal of the Virginia Assembly, October, 1748. 'Virginia Calendar Papers," vol. i., p. 166.

▲ Ibid.

8 Ibid.

FAMILY OF THE SECOND COLONEL MASON.

29

Colonel Mason, as appears in his will, bought land of a number of private individuals, and apparently was a large property holder at the time of his death, which occurred in 1716.' He had been married three times, and a large family had gathered around him. The first wife of Colonel Mason, to whom he had been married some time previous to 1694, was Mary, daughter of Gerard Fowke, the second of the name in Virginia. This Gerard Fowke, removing from Pasbytanzy, near the early Mason homestead, settled in Charles County, Maryland, where he built a substantial mansion, which he called "Gunston Hall," and which is still owned by some of his descendants. The children of this marriage, named in Colonel Mason's will are George, French, Nicholson, Elizabeth, and Simpha Rosa. The second wife of Colonel Mason was Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. John Waugh, and she had one child named Catherine. The Christian name of the third Mrs. Mason was Sarah, as appears by her will, but her surname is not known. Her children were Francis, Thomas, aud Sarah. There appears to have been a son Gerard, not living at the time of his father's will, and two married daughters, whom he does not name in this instrument. These were Anne and Mary, the first of whom was married three times and the second twice, and their first husbands are mentioned in Colonel Mason's will as his sons-in-law. Anne's second and Mary's first husband were sons of William Fitzhugh, the founder of the Fitzhugh family of Virginia, and the writer of the letters above quoted. Simpha Rosa Enfield was married twice also, first to John Dinwiddie, a brother of Governor Dinwiddie, and secondly to Colonel Jeremiah Bronaugh, of King George County, and her descendants by both husbands are numerous.' Catherine Mason married John Mercer of Marlboro', who came into possession of the whole "town" of that name on Potomac Neck, or Marlboro' Neck, as it was afterwards called. And it is to John Mercer that we owe the preservation of

1 Appendix I.

3 Bronaugh Family Bible, etc., etc.

2 Fowke Family MS.

4 Mercer Family Bible.

his father-in-law's will.' Elizabeth Mason married William Roy. Of the sons of Colonel Mason only two, George and French, married and left descendants.

George Mason, the third of the name and line in Virginia, the father of George Mason of Gunston, like his predecessors, was prominent in the affairs of the colony. He was a justice of the peace in 1713, and probably sheriff of Stafford soon after. When next we hear of him it is in the gallant expedition of the "Knights of the Golden Horse-shoe," as we may reasonably infer.

In 1716, Governor Spotswood made his famous passage over the Blue Ridge Mountains, instituting his knightly order of the Golden Horse-shoe-an incident in Virginia's early eighteenth-century history over which there has always rested a glamour of romance, and which has captivated the imagination of both poet and novelist. In the small party of gay and gallant gentlemen who formed the governor's escort there was one by the name of Mason, and there seems every probability that this was George Mason of Stafford County. One of the gentlemen of the company, Robert Brooke, afterwards surveyor of the colony, was living on the Rappahannock, in very much the same part of the Northern Neck as George Mason, and in his family the gold horse-shoe "set with garnets and worn as a brooch," given to him by Governor Spotswood, was long preserved as an interesting relic." Beverley, the historian of Virginia, was also of the party. In the brief account of this expedition by the Rev. Hugh Jones, chaplain to the General Assembly, written a few years after it had taken place, we are told that the golden horseshoes were "studded with valuable stones resembling the heads of nails, with this inscription on the one side: Sic juvat transcendere montes." They were given to his companions by the governor, in commemoration of their success,

1 Mercer Land Book. (A copy of it is owned by the Va. Hist. Society.)

2 "Narrative of My Life," p. 6, by Judge Francis T. Brooke.

KNIGHTS OF THE GOLDEN HORSE-SHOE.

31

and the horse-shoe was selected as a symbol because of its being an unusual requirement in the lower part of the country, whereas for this mountain exploration a large quantity were needed. One of the party, John Fontaine, a Huguenot refugee, several of whose brothers settled in Virginia later and left descendants, wrote a journal of the expedition, from which the fuller details are gathered, and it is a lively and picturesque narrative.' The party numbered about fifty persons in all, including pioneers, Indian servants, and rangers. The several camps or stopping-places along the route were named after the gentlemen of the governor's staff, and one of them was called "Mason's Camp." On the return, when they reached Germanna on the Rappahannock, the journalist says: "Mr. Mason left us here." He took his

way, doubtless, across the Neck to his home on the Potomac, carrying with him pleasant memories of the novel expedition and its harmless adventures.

But in the paternal household there was sickness and death about this time, Colonel Mason, his wife, and his son Nicholson all dying within a few weeks of each other apparently, leading to the inference that they were carried off by some epidemic. And on November 14, 1716, George Mason appeared at the Stafford Court as the sole executor of the wills of his father and step-mother. In 1717 George Mason and his brother French both patent some land in Stafford. George Mason gets his, a tract of 534 acres, in partnership with "Colonel Robinson, of Richmond." This was one of the gentlemen who went over the Blue Ridge Mountains with Governor Spotswood the year previously.

In 1718, George Mason made his first appearance in the Assembly, he and his brother-in-law, George Fitzhugh representing Stafford County. A seat in the House of Burgesses was always an object of ambition to the colonial gentry, and this mark of popular favor continued to be held in great esteem after the Revolution, only declining in importance "Memoirs of a Huguenot Family," New York, 1853, p. 281. 'Virginia Land Registry Office.