[5] The elder Mason preferred Scottish tutors for his sons, and David Constable, a graduate of the College of Aberdeen, arrived at Gunston Hall in 1774 and (despite refusing to take the Oath of Allegiance to Virginia) remained until 1781, when he left for property owned by his family on St. Christopher Island in the British West Indies.
[1][2] Sarah was a sister of his elder brother George Mason V's wife, Elizabeth "Betsey" Mary Ann Barnes Hooe.
[15] Richard Brent filled the remainder of his term in the Virginia House of Delegates representing Prince William County.
[2] His widow Sarah B. Wilson filed no will, and pursuant to Virginia law was able to live the final 15 years of her life in their family home, Woodbridge with their eldest son Gerard, before also dying intestate.
[16] On October 8, 1800, the Prince William County Court accepted an inventory of Thomas's estate, including enslaved persons, performed by future delegate George Graham and others.
He frequently advertised for runaway slaves with visible signs of physical injury, but had been acquitted in 1846 of murdering an enslaved woman named Katy whom he had stomped to death and buried months after beating her so severely that she could not walk.
[18] A neighbor found Gerard's (also sometimes spelled Jared's) corpse with head smashed by an axe in his own ferry house.
[20] Despite neighbors' petitions to the governor to commute her execution (to sale and transportation out of the state), on the grounds that Agnes had also been repeatedly abused, she was hanged.