George Mason Biography
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George Mason (December 11, 1725 – October
7, 1792) was a United States patriot, statesman, and delegate from
Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention. He has been called the
"Father of the Bill of Rights".
Mason wrote the Virginia Declaration of
Rights, which detailed specific rights of citizens. He was later a
leader of those who pressed for the addition of explicitly stated
individual rights as part of the U.S. Constitution, and did not sign the
document mainly because it did not contain such a statement. His efforts
eventually succeeded in convincing the Federalists to modify the
Constitution and add the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments of the
Constitution). The Bill of Rights is based on Mason's earlier Virginia
Declaration of Rights. The French Revolution's Declaration of the Rights
of Man and of the Citizen was also based on George Mason's work.
Although a slave owner, Mason favored the
abolition of slave trade. He once referred to slavery as "that slow
poison, which is daily contaminating the minds and morals of our
people." However, he spoke out against including any mention of slavery
in the Constitution--whether from an abolitionist or anti-abolitionist
standpoint.
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Family
George Mason was born on December 11, 1725,
at the Mason family plantation in Fairfax County, Virginia. His father
died in 1735 in a boating accident. On April 4, 1750, he married
sixteen-year-old Ann Eilbeck, from a plantation in Charles County,
Maryland. They lived in a house on George's property in Dogue's Neck,
Virginia. Mason completed construction of Gunston Hall, a plantation
house on the Potomac River, in 1759. He and his wife had twelve
children, nine of whom survived to adulthood.
Mason's first child, George Mason V of
Lexington, was born on April 30, 1753. He married Elizabeth Mary Ann
Barnes Hooe (Betsy) on April 22, 1784, and after having six children,
died on December 5, 1796. The next Mason offspring was Ann Eilbeck
Mason, fondly known as Nancy. Born on January 13, 1755, she married
Rinaldo Johnson on February 4, 1789 and had three children before dying
in 1814. The third child was named William Mason, but he did not live
over a year and died in 1757. The fourth child, born on October 22,
1757, was also named William Mason, and he married Ann Stewart on July
11, 1793. They had five children together, and he died in 1818. The
fifth child was a son they named Thomson Mason. He was born on March 4,
1759 and died on March 11, 1820. Thomson married Sarah McCarty
Chichester of Newington in 1784. They had eight children together.
George Mason's sixth child, christened
Sarah Eilbeck Mason but fondly known as Sally, was born on December 11,
1760 and married in 1778. She had ten children with her husband Daniel
McCarty, Jr. before dying on September 11, 1823. The seventh of the
Mason children was another girl, Mary Thomson Mason. She was born on
January 24, 1764, and married John Travers Cooke on November 18, 1784,
with whom she had ten children before dying in 1806. John Mason was
Mason's eighth child, being born on April 4, 1766. He married Anna Marie
Murray on February 14, 1796, had ten children, and died on March 19,
1849. The ninth child was a daughter named Elizabeth Mason. She was born
on April 19, 1768 and died sometime between 1792 and June of 1797. She
married William Thornton in 1789 and they had two children. The tenth
child, Thomas Mason, was born on May 1, 1770 and died on September 18,
1800. He married Sarah Barnes Hooe on April 22, 1793 and the two had
four children together.
George Mason's last two children were James
and Richard Mason; twins who were born in December, 1772 but died six
weeks later. Their mother died three months later on March 9, 1773 due
to complications. George Mason remarried on April 11, 1780 but did not
have any children with his new wife, Sarah Brent.
Politics
Mason served at the Virginia Convention in
Williamsburg in 1776. During this time he created drafts of the first
declaration of rights and state constitution in the Colonies. Both were
adopted after committee alterations; the Virginia Declaration of Rights
was adopted June 12, 1776, and the Virginia Constitution was adopted
June 29, 1776.
Mason was appointed in 1786 to represent
Virginia as a delegate to a Federal Convention, to meet in Philadelphia
for the purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation. He served at
the Federal Convention in Philadelphia from May to September 1787 and
contributed significantly to the formation of the Constitution. However,
he would not sign the Constitution for a number of reasons; the very
first of his objections was that the original Constitution failed to
contain a "declaration of rights". Mason continued to agitate for the
addition of a bill of rights to the Constitution after the convention.
This agitation cost Mason his long friendship with George Washington,
and is probably a leading reason why George Mason became less well-known
than other U.S. founding fathers in later years. On December 15, 1791,
the U.S. Bill of Rights, based primarily on George Mason's Virginia
Declaration of Rights, was ratified in response to the agitation of
Mason and others.
Mason died at his home, Gunston Hall, on
October 7, 1792. Gunston Hall, located in Mason Neck, Virginia, is now a
tourist attraction. The George Mason Memorial is located in East Potomac
Park, Washington, D.C., near the Thomas Jefferson Memorial; it was
dedicated on April 9, 2002. A major bridge connecting Washington, DC, to
Virginia is officially named the George Mason Memorial Bridge (it is
part of the 14th Street bridge complex). George Mason University located
in Fairfax, Virginia, is named in his honor, as are Mason County,
Kentucky, Mason County, West Virginia and Mason County, Illinois.
****
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URL of Original Article:
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Date Article Copied:
April 24, 2006
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