Mason was best known for leading a group of Puritan settlers and Indian allies on a combined attack on a Pequot Fort in an event known as the Mystic Massacre.

[4] By 1629 he was a lieutenant in the Brabant Campaign and participated in the Siege of s'-Hertogenbosch, literally "The Duke's Forrest" in English, and known historically in French as Bois-le-Duc.

[5] He served with Lord Thomas Fairfax under General Sir Horace Vere in the army of Frederik Hendrik, The Prince of Orange.

In 1632, he joined the great Puritan exodus and sailed from England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, settling in Dorchester where he was promptly appointed as the captain of the local militia.

In 1634, he was elected to represent Dorchester in the Massachusetts General Court, where permission was granted for him to remove to the fertile Connecticut River valley.

Only 20 soldiers breached the palisade's gate and were quickly overwhelmed, to the point that they utilized fire to create chaos and facilitate their escape from within.

[6] The ensuing conflagration trapped the majority of the Pequots and caused their death; those who managed to exit were slain by the sword or musket from the others who surrounded the fort.

Only a handful of approximately 500 men, women, and children survived what became known as the Battle of Mistick Fort.As the soldiers made the exhausted withdrawal march to their boats, they faced several attacks by frantic warriors from the other village of Weinshauks, but again the Pequots suffered very heavy losses versus relatively few by the Colonists.

[7] The most prominent episode in Mason's lifelong career of public service was his overall command as captain of the Colonial forces in the Pequot War in 1637.

The colonists also had the guidance and support of numerous Indian allies who were tributaries to the Pequots, especially Mohegan Sachem Uncas, who formed a unique and lasting bond with Mason and also Wequash Cooke.

It is debated whether or not this event is considered a battle or massacre, given it may have involved deliberate arson of an indigenous village, with deaths of women and children estimated in the hundreds.

The battle at Mistick Fort was featured in the History Channel series 10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America, and is central to scholarly arguments regarding genocide studies in the colonial era.

With Windsor and Wethersfield's consent, the three southerly settlements commissioned John Mason to travel to Springfield with "money in one hand and a sword in the other.

As this local controversy was heating up, the Massachusetts Bay Colony decided to reassert its jurisdiction over the land bordering the Connecticut River, realizing that it was valuable for farming.

In 1645, Sir Thomas Fairfax was made commander in chief, and he addressed a letter to Major Mason in Connecticut urging him to return to England, join his standard, and accept a Major-General's commission in the Parliamentary Army to serve in the English Civil War.

In 1647, Mason assumed command of Saybrook Fort which controlled the main trade and supply route to the upper river valley.

His leadership abilities were unrivaled, which prompted the New Haven Colony to offer him a very lucrative position as manager of their enterprise in relocating to the Delaware River area.

The land "nine miles square" was purchased from Mohegan Sachem Uncas, who also signed all the territory in his tribe's domain over to Mason as a protector and administrator.

Several of the Major's Mason's descendants in the role of the Tribal overseers, went bankrupt and even died in England in the process of defending the Mohegan land rights.

In the summer of 1670, Mason acted as an intermediary between Roger Williams and the Connecticut government regarding a boundary dispute between Rhode Island and Connecticut.In 1669, pleading old age and infirmities, he retired to a revered advisory position, but he suffered painfully in the last years of his life from cancer, which was then referred to as the "strangury".

[15] Peck was a talented and influential clergyman and Puritan who had fled his Hingham, Norfolk, England church after the crackdown by Archbishop Laud.

After the Civil War, a statue movement was sweeping the nation, and local citizens and organizations were erecting monuments of heroes and patriots everywhere.

Studying the sensitivity and appropriateness of the statue's location on a cultural "sacred site", a committee chartered by the Town of Groton, Connecticut, recommended that it be relocated.

This essentially re-birthed the statue to now represent John Mason in a more balanced and comprehensive manner for a lifetime of public service, including many prominent accomplishments as the principal founder of the Connecticut Colony.

It is also ordered and provided with the consent of Major Mason, that Uncus & Wawequa and their Indians and successors shall be supplied with sufficient planting ground at all times as the Court sees cause out of that land.