John Mason Statue in Mystic CT
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INTRODUCTION This report represents the position and recommendation of The MASON FAMILY MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION INC. in regards to the very controversial issue over the John Mason Statue in Mystic CT. Included is an explanation of our organization [M.F.M.A.] A booklet offering a Profile of Major John Mason, A synopsis of the three time frames that this complex issue spans, The state- ments and proposals of Marcus Mason Maronn as submitted to the advisory committee, and related letters from concerned citizens; Some influential factors to consider, Rationale, a Summary, and finally our Recommendations and Options. The MASON FAMILY MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION INC. is a Private Non- Stock Corporation, registered with the Sec. of State's office. The corporation was founded on October 20, 1993, and is managed by a self perpetuating board of trustees. The purposes for which the corporation was formed and the nature of the activities to be conducted are: A To establish a genealogical association of descendants of Major John Mason; and B To provide appropriate maintenance for the graves, monuments, historical records and/or artifacts of Major John Mason and his descendants. PROFILE A PROFILE OF MAJOR JOHN MASON [1600- 1672] is provided in the form of a concise booklet, titled: Connecticut’s Own Major, written by Williams Haynes. In addition to the Pequot War campaign, it also touches briefly on his many other commands, positions and accomplishments; in his long life as a devoted and valuable public servant to Connecticut and the Colonies. Connecticut's Own Major Reprinted from THE CONNECTICUT ANTIQUARIAN December 1955 VERYONE called him "The He was one of a trio of renowned E Major;" his friends and neigh- professional soldiers who came with Published for bors, his own family. So he appears in the earliest settlers to New England: THE SOCIETY OF THE FOUNDERS OF NORWICH their letters and diaries, in court or- Standish, Gardiner, and Mason, all ders and the minutes of town meet- trained in the Low Countries in the ings. He is even thus simply desig- wars against the Spaniards. None is nated in land grants. But there was as well remembered as he deserves no mistaking the man: for thirty-five to be. Capt. Myles Standish of Ply- years - from 1637 to 1672 - he was mouth is perhaps the best known and the only Major in all the Colony of for possibly the least cause - a sug- Connecticut, Major John Mason. ary romantic poem. Lt. Lion Gardi- A big man was this Major, inclined ner, who built the fort at Saybrook, to stoutness, but never fat; a sturdy commanded that hazardous outpost frame enclosing a hardy spirit that at the mouth of the Connecticut bore hunger and thirst unflinchingly River throughout the critical Pequot and defied alike sultry summer heat troubles. Mason led the expedition and winter's biting cold. He was fair- that freed the infant colony of Conn- haired with steel-blue eyes and a jut- ecticut from the awful threat of In- ting chin - not an Apollo, but to dian torture and massacre. his contemporaries the beau ideal of However, as Lion Gardiner him- a soldier, "full of martial Bravery self wrote in 1660, "Our New-Eng- and Vigour," which in the 17th cen- land twelvepenny Chronicle is stuffed tury plainly implied plenty of com- with a catalogue of the names of mando hand-to-hand fighting. some, as if they deserved immortal Copyright 1955 3 By WILLIAMS HAYNES fame; but the names of our right his imagination as it did that of many New-England military worthies are another venturesome English lad. left out for want of room." The last important engagement in True, it is the governors and the which Mason could have been en- magistrates, the Bradfords and the gaged was the siege of Bois-Ie-due Winthrops; the bold religious rebels, during the summer of 1629. Ann Hutchinson and Roger Will- iams; and especially the Puritan Arrival in New England 1630 clergy, the Cottons, Eliot, Hooker, March 20, 1630, John Mason Fitch, and many others, who have sailed from Plymouth with the Rev. held the spotlight during the first act Mr. Wareham's company and landed of the New England historical drama. at Nantasket, May 30. After that That brave soldier, who having saved hard, 63-day passage, the newcomers Connecticut played other important roles in the colony, has been almost stepped ashore into a land-and-hous- jostled off-stage. ing shortage as difficult in its way as the cramped quarters of their tiny vessel. The Great Puritan Exodus Mason's Background was in full swing. Already there were John Mason's life in England and over 3,000 inhabitants in the Bay his military career on the Continent Colony, and their number would are almost a blank. We deduce the double in the next five years. Over- year of his birth from the fact that crowded Boston had spawned half a he died in 1672, aged 72 years. But we dozen surrounding towns and as do not know his parents or whether many little settlements were strung he was born in London or Oxford or along the coast as far as Cape Ann. Piddleton cum Piddleford. Because The Wareham party took up the he christened the town he founded best vacant land they could find and in Connecticut "Norwich," some thus settled Dorchester. They elected have guessed that his birthplace was Lt. Mason Captain of their Train Norwich in Norfolk, but the records Band, the militia company every of the English city do not confirm town was compelled to organize and this surmise. in which every able-bodied male be- Mason's excellent prose style sug- tween eighteen and sixty must drill gests that he was well educated, pos- regularly and, if the need arose, must sibly at one of the Universities, for go on active service. Their Captain's he quotes Virgil aptly and correctly. reputation must have been more He must have been of good family: than local, for in December 1632, he held the rank of lieutenant in His the Governor called him to a unique Majesty's forces at a time when "an duty. officer and a gentleman" were syn- onymous and when, furthermore, the First Naval Task Force generic noun "gentleman" had very precise meanings. Down on the Maine coast, an He saw active service in the Neth- English sea captain, Dixy Bull, had erlands under Sir Horace de Vere. turned pirate and was preying upon Likely he joined up in 1625 amid the Massachusetts shipping and fishing. wave of religious patriotism that Accordingly, the Magistrates hired raised the English army for the dis- Capt. John Gallup, a well-known astrous expedition to relieve the siege coastwise skipper, and his shallop; of Breda. Coming from a Puritan manned it with twenty volunteers home, the opportunity to fight the under command of Mason; and sent papist Spaniards in aid of the protes- off the first American naval task tant Hollanders must have gripped force. 4 They made two sallies and scored shirts and woolen blankets, to say but a left-handed success. The De- nothing of firearms, meant to them cember expedition ran into head- fabulous comfort and security. But winds, blizzards, and ice, and so got these River Indians had also an ul- nowhere. The next spring they terior motive. They were all the un- cruised the ragged Down East coast willing subjects of a cruel, arrogant and never did find their quarry. tribe, the Pequots, who three genera- However, they scared Bull away, for tions before had come from the Hud- shortly he turned up in Virginia and son River, overran Connecticut, and later in London, where, to quote appropriated the coast from what is Clapp, "God destroyed this wicked man" - the pirate's proper fate, upon the gallows. The General Court voted Mason £10 "pay and expendi- tures" for these expeditions and as- signed him new duties in constructing forts to defend Boston Harbor. Next year, 1634, Mason was elected to represent his town on the General Court, and during this ses- sion, after much wrangling, permis- sion was granted the Dorchester people to remove to Connecticut. The year previous, John Oldham, a trader in furs and corn with the In- dians, had brought back enthusiastic accounts and tangible proof of ani- mal, vegetable, and mineral re- sources: beaver skins, wild hemp, and black lead, and this rosy report clinched the decision to abandon Dorchester. This idea, if bold, was not original. Many sharp, covetous eyes were fixed on the Connecticut Valley. Major John Mason Monument in Mystic The Dutch from New Amsterdam on the site of the Pequot Fort. were already in possession. They had a fort at the mouth of -the river and now Lyme to Stonington as their upstream on the site of Hartford, a trading post with a tiny blockhouse headquarters. The native Connecti- that mounted two fat, little cannon. cut tribes hoped that English settle- Their claim to this promised land ments in their midst would temper was based on the discoveries of Capt. Pequot tyranny. Adrian Block who in 1614 had been To further complicate matters, a the first to explore Long Island dozen wealthy, influential Puritans Sound. had received a grant to the land from Both the Plymouth and the Massa- Narragansett Bay west to the Con- chusetts colonists considered that necticut River and were planning a they had a perfect right to settle here refuge here should the religious per- because they had been cordially in- secutions in England become intol- vited to do so by the Connecticut erable.