MASON

Norwich, Connecticut,

wikipedia - 02:17, 12 July 2007  (63 KB)        Noroton

 wikipedia

Grandfather #15 John MASON
"Residence: BET 1632 AND 1636 Dorchester (now
part of Boston), Suffolk County, Massachusetts
Residence: BET 1637 AND 1647 Windsor, Hartford
County, Connecticut
Residence: BET 1647 AND 1659 Saybrook,
Middlesex County, Connecticut
Residence: AFT 1659 Norwich, New London
County, Connecticut
Military Service: DEC 1632 Lieutenant, sent with 20
men against a pirate
Military Service: BEF 1632 Lieutenant in the English army
under Sir Thomas Fairfax
Military Service: MAY 1637 Captain, in the Pequot
war
Military Service: AFT 1660 Major General of the
forces of Connecticut
Event There is a life-size statue of Major
Mason on Mystic Hill where he defeated the Pequot
Indians
Event 4 MAR 1634/35 Freeman at
Dorchester (as Captain John Mason)
Event 1636 Moved with Rev. John Warham to
Windsor, Hartford County, Connecticut
Event 9 OCT 1669 Freeman at Norwich (as
Major John Mason)
Immigration: 1632 To Dorchester (now part of
Boston), Massachusetts
Occupation: 1642 Magistrate of the Connecticut
Colony from Windsor
Occupation: BET 1660 AND 1669 Deputy /
Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut
Event: Titled "The Conqueror of the Pequots"
Burial: AFT 30 JAN 1670/71 Post-Gager Burying
Ground, Norwich, New London County, Connecticut"

Autobiography of W S Tyler, DD,LLD , genealogy
history written by Cornelius B. Tyler, . Massachusetts, 1912:
Thursday, October 08, 2009

"MAJ. JOHN MASON of Windsor, Saybrook and
Norwich, Conn., was born in England in 1600. He
served in the Netherlands, probably as "lieutenant."
He came to Massachusetts 1630. In 1632-3, he and
Capt. Gallup were appointed by the Massachusetts
magistrates to suppress the rapine and plunder of
Bull's band of pirates on the coast. They granted him
(1633) ten pounds for this service. He is then spoken
of as lieutenant, but in November is called Captain.
He settled at Dorchester and was admitted freeman
1634-5 and represented this town at the General
Court 1635 and 1636. With the party of REV. JOHN
WARHAM (266), he became one of the first settlers of
Windsor, 1636, this being the first town in Connecticut
in which any English settlement was made. In 1637 the
Pequot Indians slaughtered some Wethersfield whites,
and planned the extermination of the colonists. The Court
resolved to adopt, for the first
time, an offensive warfare.
Capt. Mason was commissioned to chastise the
savages. Hartford, Windsor and Wethersfield together
furnished him ninety men. In addition to these there were
seventy Mohegans, led by Uncas,
and later through Mason's skill, they were joined by
two or three hundred Narragansetts, but the Indians
had a terror of the warlike Pequots, and only joined in
the fight after they saw the way in which "the big white
man" led the attack. The Pequots were located at the
mouth of the Pequot (Thames) River. Out of nearly
seven hundred Pequots, only seven escaped alive.
The result was forty years of peace.
Mason moved from Windsor to Saybrook in 1647 and
to Norwich in 1659. After the Pequot War, he was
appointed commander-in-chief of the military forces of
Connecticut Colony, a position he held until his death
at Norwich, January 30, 1672. Mason was Deputy
Governor of Connecticut 1659 to 1667, magistrate
1637, 1659, 1669, 1671; commissioner to the
Congress of the United Colonies 1647, 1654 to 1657
and 1661, and Chief Judge of the County Court 1664
to 1670. He was a patentee named in the Royal
Charter of Connecticut 1662. At the request of the
General Court he wrote a detailed account of the
"Pequot War," which was published by Increase
Mather in his "Relation of Trouble by the Indians"
(1677), and was republished in Boston 1736.

The History of Ancient Windsor, Vo. II, (1892) pg 472:
MASON, (Major) John, b. in England 1600, had a
military training, and (with Miles Standish, John
Underhill and Lyon Gardiner, all afterwards captains
and famous in the military annals of New England)
served under Sir Thomas Fairfax, with the rank of
lieutenant. He is supposed to have been a member of
the Dorchester emigration of 1630; and in 1632 the
General Court of Massachusetts sent him, with John
Gallop and twenty men, in a shallop of twenty ton
burden, to break up a gang of pirates which were
infesting the coast, and undertaking which he
prosecuted with courage and prudence, despite the
hardships of the winter season. For this he received
£10 from the Colony, and in November of that year he
was made Captain. In Sept, 1634, he was one of a
committee of military men appointed to select sites for
fortifications in Boston harbor, and personally
superintended the erection of works on Castle Island.
In 1635 he represented Dorchester in the General
Court, and, while a member of that body, June 3rd,
the second application of the Rev. John Warham and
church of D. to remove to Connecticut was received
and granted. He would seem, from the date of land
recorded to him as Windsor, to have settled among
his old friends at W. in 1637. When, soon after, the
Connecticut River settlements were threatened by
Indians, Mason led the gallant little band of settlers,
and in the famous "Swamp Fight" crushed the
Pequots. His services as the savior of the infant
Colony were properly recognized by the Gen. Court at
Hartford, which created him "the public military officer
of the Plantation of Connecticut." with a salary of £40
per annum, a position which he held until within two
years of his death, a period of about 35 years - first
with the title "Captain", after of "Major," and being the
only major in the Colony, he was frequently named in
the public acts of the Court as "the Major," no other
designation being necessary to distinguish him. He
was also drill-master of the Colony, being authorized
to "train" all the inhabitants thereof ten days in each
year. In 1647 he removed to Saybrook, it being the
post of most importance and greatest danger, and
was there empowered to have command, not only of
all soldiers, but the inhabitants of the town (similar
orderes being issued in 1652)....
So important, indeed, was Major Mason's presence to
the infant-commonwealth that his request for
permission to embark in a project for a settlement in
Delaware was met with the following reply from the
General Court: "That it is much in the desires of the
whole Court that he would not entertain the thought of
removing his abode out of the Colony, whereunto they
cannot give the least allowance or approbation." But
the Court could not wholly deny him, and so
expressed their consent "that he shall attend the
service for three months, provided, he will engage
himself to return with that time, and continue his
abode as formerly:" also, in a letter of complaint to the
Commissioner of the United Colonies they say that
the Narragansetts had fired eleven bullets into a
house, "in hopes, as they boasted, to have slain him
whom we have cause to honor, whose safety we
cannot but make ourselves bound to protect, our
Deputy Governor, Major Mason." The Major, indeed,
seems to have been less careful of his own safety
than the General Court were for him; the last of the
instructions to him, when he was sent at the head of
an expedition to Long Island (then belonging to
Connecticut) being, "we do not judge it convenient
that you should in your own person make after any
Indians in the woods, " etc.
In further testimony of their appreciation of his public
services, they made him grants of considerable tracts
of land, to two only of which can we not refer. June 5,
1641, it was ordered "that Capt. Mason shall have
500 acres of ground for him and his heirs, about
Pequot country"; and Sept. 11, 1641, he was granted
the island of Chipachauge (now Mason's Island), in
Mystic Bay, besides 100 acres of upland and ten
acres near Mystic, "when he shall make a choice."......
Besides his military offices and cares, he was, also,
from 1637 to '41, a Magistrate, from 1641 to '59, he
was Assistant, or member of the Gen'l Court; and from
1659, he was Lieut.-Governor for ten successive
years, when he declined a re-election and for two
years, during Gov. Winthrop's absence in England
upon the Charter business, he was acting Governor;
also, in the years 1647, '54, '55, '56, '57, and '61, he
was one of the Commissioners of the United (Conn.,
Massachusetts, and R.I.) Colonies. In the company
which removed from Saybrook and founded the town
of Norwich, Conn., Capt. Mason was by far the most
prominent person, the deed which was executed June
6, 1759, by Uncas, Owaneco, and Attawanhood,
being made in his presence and that of Thomas
Tracy. This was the third town in Conn. of which he
had been a founder -Windsor, Saybrook, and
Norwich - we may, indeed, add Dorchester (now part
of Boston), Suffolk County, Massachusetts
He was a man eminently formed for heavy
responsibilities and great deeds. He possessed
remarkable firmness and promptitude, a courage
which was absolutely fearless, united with a prudence
and moderation the most consideration and reflecting.
Strong with the sword, he yet preferred the ways of
peace, and by his cautious, firm, and yet reflective
tact, he frequently prevented or checked in the outset
every tendency to disorder or violence. These
qualities made him not only a great soldier, but an
admirable legislator; and, with the evident sincerity
and nobleness of his purposes, caused him to be
selected as a leader in all the important measures
undertaken by the colony for a long series of years.
Never in his whole career do we find recorded a single
manifestation or an intolerant or persecuting spirt.
Envy, hatred, and malice seemed to find no place in
his heart. He as virtuous in his life and habits, and
universally beloved and respected. In person he was
"tall and portly, but nevertheless full of martial bravery
and vigor" -(Rev. Thomas Prince's Introduction to
Mason's Hist. Of the Pequot War.) There was
certainly nothing feeble or effeminate in his
composition; and whatever excess of sternness, or
harshness, or impetuosity, here may be been in his
character, there was never anything bordering on
tyranny or injustice; and the rougher features were
moderated and tempered by the sincere faith and the
humble life of the Christian. He suffered during the
last year of his life with one of the most painful of
diseases, and died on the 30th day of January, 1672,
in his 72nd year.
The last paragraph of the last letter he wrote to the
General Court of the colony, is in the spirt, as it is in
the language of an apostle; entreating their
remembrance at the Throne of Grace, he adds:
"Beseeching the God of Peace, who brought again
from the dead the Lord Jesus, the great Shepherd of
His sheep, to make us perfect in every good word and
work to do His will, into whose hands I commend you
and your mighty affairs, whom am your afflicted, yet
true servant."
The exact location of his grave has been lost, but, at
the Norwich Centennial of 1850, a monument was
erected to his memory on the bank of the Yantic, and
about a mile and a half from the site of his house and
farm.
Major Mason wrote a History of the Pequot War,
which was published at Boston, 1736, with an
introduction by Rev. Thomas Prince."

For further information see "The Life and Times of
Major John Mason of Conecticut: 1600-1672" by
Louis B. Mason, New York, 1935, and the account in
the Dictionary of American Biography.
Thursday, October 08, 2009

"John Mason (c. 1600–1672) was an English Army Major
who immigrated to New England in 1632. Within five
years he had joined those moving west from the
Massachusetts Bay Colony to the nascent settlements
along the Connecticut River that would become the
Connecticut Colony. Tensions there rose between the
settlers and the dominant Indian tribe in the area, the
Pequots, ultimately leading to bloodshed. After some
English settlers were found dead, the Connecticut
Colony appointed Mason to lead an expedition against
the Pequot stronghold in Mystic, Connecticut. The result
is known as the Mystic Massacre, and it was the major
engagement of the Pequot War, which virtually destroyed
the Pequot tribe.

After the war, Mason became Deputy Governor of
Connecticut. He and a number of others were
instrumental in the founding of Norwich, Connecticut,
where he died in 1672"

John Mason (c.1600–1672) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mason_(c.1600%E2%80%
931672)
Wednesday, December 09, 2009