Washington Winter Show 2016

41 This page is sponsored by Anne S. Hansen and Nancy Sidamon-Eristoff in honor of The Founders Board St. John's Community Services his wealth, and he added to it by expanding his tobacco plantations and speculating on more land. Mason also took his turn in local, state, and church government and was regarded as a steady, dependable man who, though largely self-taught, was remarkably well educated. His neighbors admired his intellect and valued his opinion. The Revolution catapulted Mason into greater prominence. Elected to the Fifth Virginia Convention in 1776, he rose to meet the demands of the Revolutionary crisis by writing the Virginia Declaration of Rights and by contributing enormously to the drafting of the Virginia Constitution. Mason helped supply the Revolutionary army and worked diligently with other patriots to ensure the success of the new country. Circumstances would prove Mason a man of his time, with striking political vision and courage. Mason was born in 1725 as the fourth of his name to live in colonial Virginia. His father perished in a boating accident on the Potomac River when Mason was ten years old, leaving three children to be raised by their mother on the Chappawamsick plantation near today’s Marine Corps Base Quantico. Young George’s guardianship during his formative years was shared by his mother and an uncle, John Mercer. Mercer was a prominent local lawyer whose vast library and professional example enabled Mason to become “one of the most erudite students of government in his time.” 3 Upon reaching adulthood, Mason aimed to live as a gentleman planter, managing his tobacco enterprise along the Potomac River, on land today known as Mason Neck. In 1750, he married sixteen-year-old Ann Eilbeck of Charles County, Maryland, whom he later described in a family Bible as: something taller than the middle-size & elegantly shaped. Her eyes were black, tender & lively; her Features regular & delicate; her Complexion remarkably fair & fresh – Lilies and Roses (almost without a Metaphor) were blended there – and a certain inexpressible Air of Cheerfulness, Health, Innocence & Sensibility diffused over her Countenance. 4 The new couple (Figures 1, 2) began planning construction of a plantation house on the Mason property to be named “Gunston Hall” in remembrance of an ancestral home in Staffordshire, England. 5 Figure 3: Gunston Hall, riverside entrance. Completed by 1759 under George Mason’s direction, with interiors designed by William Buckland. The mansion’s gracious lines and remarkable interior design and carvings make it one of the most important mid-18th-century American dwellings still in existence.