Three years earlier, Quakers had bought Woodlawn Plantation from relatives of Nellie Custis, whom George Washington had adopted a child, and were subdividing it.
[2] As the American Civil War started, Fairfax County voters seceded, but some Unionists established a Restored Government of Virginia.
Ebon Mason, already a local magistrate and member of the Unionist Accotink Home Guard, was one of two delegates elected to represent Fairfax County at the Wheeling Convention, alongside Quaker (and neighbor) John Hawxhurst.
Vernon district, Ebon and Elizabeth lived with their 8-year-old daughter Nellie (who had been born in Maryland), as well as elderly domestic servant Betsie Dove (white, aged 63) and farmhand Henny Gaskings (black aged 19), both of whom were Virginia born.
His parents continued to live and farm at Woodlawn, and by 1880 John's 85-year-old sister Sarah had joined them from New Hampshire.
In the 1880 census, Betty Dove (aged 72) continued to live with Ebon and Elizabeth Mason as a household servant, but Nellie vanished (married or dead).
Expansion of Fort Belvoir and Route 1 in the area while preserving those historic sites is a current controversy.