Raspberry Plain - History

History

Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron granted the title to the 322-acre (130 ha) Raspberry Plain property to blacksmith Joseph Dixon in 1731. In 1754, the "houses, buildings, orchard, ways and watercourses" of Raspberry Plain were purchased by Loudoun County's first sheriff, Aeneas Campbell. Under Campbell's ownership, the property became the site of Loudoun County's first jailhouse. Raspberry Plain was then purchased by George Mason's younger brother Thomson Mason from Campbell, in 1760. In 1771, Thomson built the mansion at Raspberry Plain. Upon Thomson's death, the Raspberry Plain estate was deeded to his eldest son Stevens Thomson Mason, U.S. senator from Virginia. The mansion at Raspberry Plain was added to throughout the 19th-century and demolished around 1910. Senator Mason's son, Armistead Thomson Mason, of Selma, was shot and killed by his cousin, John Mason McCarty, in a duel fought at the Bladensburg dueling grounds in Bladensburg, Maryland, in February 1819. McCarty lived at nearby Strawberry Plain, the home and jail of Aeneas Campbell, which had been parceled off from the Raspberry Plain property. That mansion has long since disappeared. In 1910, Raspberry Plain was rebuilt for copper millionaire John Guthrie Hopkins. Raspberry Plain, along with several neighboring estates including nearby Mason family estates Temple Hall and Locust Hill, is a contributing property in the 25,000-acre (100 km2) Catoctin Rural Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places on 31 January 1989.