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A memorial to American patriot George Mason will be dedicated next week in Washington. Mason was a native of Stafford, and his family has deep roots in the county. By LEE WOOLF Date published: 4/7/2002
When America honors George Mason with a bronze sculpture and memorial in Washington Tuesday, Stafford County residents can take particular pride. Mason is one of their own. George Mason IV, author of both the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the Virginia Constitution, is being honored by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and other dignitaries for helping shape our nation's democratic principals. He is the George Mason who was born at Dogue's Neck--now called Mason's Neck--in what was then Stafford County and is now Fairfax County. He built Gunston Hall and is the man for whom George Mason University is named. But the Mason family--and the name George Mason--was well-established in Stafford long before George Mason IV was born in 1725. George Mason I settled in the area in the early 1650s and probably had a supporting role in the name "Stafford" being attached to the newly formed county that separated from Westmoreland in 1664. Both George Mason II and his son, George Mason III, increased the family's property and social standing in Stafford, and continued a tradition of leadership and public service. That family tradition--along with the guiding hand of George Mason IV's mother, Ann Thomson Mason--helped shape the values and principles that led the most famous member of the family to a place on the National Mall. Two of those ancestors--Georges I and II--likely lie in unmarked graves on a Stafford hillside near the site of the old family home beside Accokeek Creek. Legend has it that George Mason I arrived in Norfolk in 1652 with Thomas and Gerard Fowke, who had been his neighbors in England. Mason, then about 23, was from Pershore and the Fowkes were from Staffordshire. Tom Moncure, a Mason descendent and a county historian, said it is likely Gerard Fowke suggested "Stafford" as the name for the new county, with George Mason's concurrence. Moncure said it is no accident that many of the great families of Virginia--the Washingtons, the Masons, the Lees--showed up in a relatively small area of Virginia at the same time. "You had Cromwell in England and the Royalists were bailing out during the 1650s, when Westmoreland County and the rest of the Northern Neck were being settled," Moncure said.
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