Thomson Mason

Thomson Mason (14 August 173326 February 1785) was an American lawyer, planter and jurist. A younger brother of George Mason IV, United States patriot, statesman, and delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention, Thomson Mason would father Stevens Thomson Mason (who after service in the American Revolutionary War followed his father's career into law and politics and eventually become a U.S. Senator from Virginia), and was the great-grandfather of Stevens T. Mason, first Governor of Michigan. Early life Mason was born at Chopawamsic in Stafford County, Virginia on 14 August 1733. Born to the First Families of Virginia, he was the third and youngest child of George Mason III and his wife Ann Stevens Thomson. Their father died in a ferry accident when his sons were boys, but their mother supervised operations of the family's plantations (farmed using enslaved labor) as well as acquired land in what became Prince William, Fairfax and Loudoun Counties for her younger sons (since primogeniture meant their eldest brother George would receive the lands his father inherited). Thomson Mason like his brothers received a private education suitable to his class, then traveled to Williamsburg, for studies at the College of William & Mary. He completed his education in England, at the Middle Temple in London. Career Upon returning to Virginia, Mason was admitted to the Virginia bar and developed a private legal practice. After marrying Mary King Barnes (d. 1771), the daughter of Col. Barnes of Leonardtown, Maryland across the Potomac River and a major local slave trader, Thomson Mason represented his father-in-law's interests in America during his frequent trips to England. In 1758 he also became Barnes' partner in some of the voyages in which Virginia or Maryland tobacco was shipped to Europe and slaves imported from Africa on the return journey.