Early Life and Education
Mason was born on April 4, 1766 at Mattawoman plantation, the estate of his maternal grandparents William Eilbeck and Sarah Edgar Eilbeck. He was eighth child and fifth-eldest son of George Mason IV and his wife Ann Eilbeck. Like his brothers, Mason was tutored at his father's estate, Gunston Hall, in Fairfax County, Virginia. His tutors were Scotsmen Mr. Davidson and Mr. Constable. After the American Revolutionary War, Mason, his brother Thomas, and a cousin, studied with Reverend Buchnan, rector of Aquia and Pohick churches, who resided on Passapatanzy Creek.
Mason completed his formal education in mathematics with another Scotsman, Mr. Hunter, in Calvert County, Maryland. He was then apprenticed to a Quaker merchant William Hartshorne of the firm of Harper & Hartshorne in Alexandria, Virginia. Mason accompanied his father George Mason to the Philadelphia Convention, but returned to continue his apprenticeship with Hartshorne before the Convention ended. Mason remained with Hartshorne until Spring 1788 when he then entered into a partnership with merchants James and Joseph Fenwick of Maryland.
Read more about this topic: John Mason (planter)
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or education:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Yet, haply, in some lull of life,
Some Truce of God which breaks its strife,
The worldling’s eyes shall gather dew,
Dreaming in throngful city ways
Of winter joys his boyhood knew;
And dear and early friends—the few”
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)
“We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Man is endogenous, and education is his unfolding. The aid we have from others is mechanical, compared with the discoveries of nature in us. What is thus learned is delightful in the doing, and the effect remains.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)