George Mason III

George Mason III (1690March 5, 1735) was an American planter, military officer, legislator and government official. Although he repeatedly won election to represent Stafford County in the then-one-house Virginia General Assembly, he may today be best known as the father of George Mason IV, a Founding Father of the United States. Early life Mason was born in 1690 at Chopawamsic plantation in Stafford County, Virginia. He was the eldest son of George Mason II and his first wife Mary Fowke. Planter and politician At the time of his father's death in 1716, Mason was 27 and already a man of prominence in Stafford County. Like his father, Mason increased the family's property and social standing in Stafford County and across the Potomac River in Maryland by strategic marriage as well as continuing the family's traditions of leadership and public service. Like his father, Mason served as a colonel in the Stafford County militia and represented Stafford County as one of its two delegates in the House of Burgesses continually between 1715 and 1726. During his tenure as a burgess in Williamsburg, Mason met and married his wife Ann Stevens Thomson, whose family owned plantations in Maryland. Like his father and grandfather, this George Mason became Stafford's County Lieutenant of Stafford (in 1719), and also served as the county's sheriff.