When George Mason met his accidental death he left no will. Under the Colonial law of primogeniture, his extensive holdings of land therefore went to his eldest son. According to the family historian, his younger children were left penniless. His widow thereupon bent all her energies to create an estate for each of them. Saving what she could, through every available economy and acting under the advice of her late husband's friends, she acquired "ten thousand acres of what was then called 'wild lands' in Loudoun County, for which she paid only a few shillings per acre." She, during her lifetime, divided these lands between her two younger children "for the reason assigned by her that she did not wish her children to grow up with any sense of inequality among them in regard to fortune. The investment turned out a most fortunate one, and she thereby unwittingly made her younger children wealthier than their elder brother."[52]
It is thus so many of the beautiful modern estates between Leesburg and the Limestone Branch trace their title back to the Mason family. Mrs. Ann Thomson Mason died on the 13th November, 1762, "leaving a reputation among her connections and neighbours for great prudence and business capacity, united to the charms of an amiable, womanly, character." Her Rector, friend and relative, the Rev. John Moncure, described her as "a good woman, a great woman, and a lovely woman."[53]
Though she planted the Mason line in Loudoun, she herself does not appear ever to have lived in that rough and for those days remote frontier country. The actual seating of her line on her large purchase was left to her son Thomson who, after going to England to acquire his training in law and being admitted to the Middle Temple on the 14th August, 1751, as its records show, returned to Virginia, practiced law at Dumfries, became, perhaps, the most eminent lawyer of his time at the Virginia Bar and vigourously aided the American Revolution. He either had improved and extended the first Raspberry Plain home or, as Lancaster says, built a new one for he deeded the existing structure with the supporting land to his son Stevens Thomson Mason, confirming the grant in his will, together with the plate and furniture then in the dwelling; which indicates a more impressive home than the first building.
Thomson Mason died at Raspberry Plain on the 26th February, 1785, and was there buried; but the first mansion and burial place were not where the imposing modern house of the same name now stands but rather much to the north, near the fine spring and branch for a long time included in the present Selma lands, for the latter estate was, of course, at that time and long afterward but another part of the extensive Mason holdings. It is of interest to note that this original Raspberry Plain holding was never acquired by Francis Aubrey nor was it part of Mrs. Ann Thomson Mason's purchase. On the contrary, it comprised a small grant, stated to be 322 acres, made by the Proprietor to one Joseph Dixon, a blacksmith, by patent dated the 2nd July, 1731.[54] Dixon, in turn, sold it to Aeneas Campbell by deed dated the 15th July, 1754, for a consideration nominally stated as "five shillings"—the old-time equivalent of our "One Dollar and other good and valuable considerations"—and Campbell was living there when commissioned the first sheriff of Loudoun in 1757. In the deed to him the plantation is described as being "On the branches of Limestone run called and known by the name of raspberry plain" and the grant goes on to give the exact location by metes and bounds. It apparently had been more carefully surveyed and found to have more area than first believed, for it is further described as containing "393 acres as appears by a survey thereof" and the grant specifically includes "all houses, buildings, orchards, ways, waters, water-courses," etc. Therefore Dixon may be credited with having built the first Raspberry Plain house, a matter long in doubt locally.[55] The estate was subsequently sold by Campbell and Lydia his wife to Thomson Mason, by deed dated the 15th day of May, 1760, for 500 pounds current money of Virginia.
Around 1750 there came from Scotland to this same country, north of the present Leesburg, that William Douglass who is to be so frequently mentioned by Nicholas Cresswell in his journal at the time of the Revolution. Colonel Douglass, as he afterward became, was the son of Hugh Douglass of Garalland in Ayshire who, in turn, was sixth in descent from the Earl of Douglas and also a descendant of the Campbell Barons of Loudoun, thus making the Douglass family of Loudoun County kinsfolk to the Earl of Loudoun for whom the county was to be named. Our William Douglass owned the estates of Garalland and Montressor in Loudoun, served as one of her justices (1770) and as sheriff in 1782. He died in the latter year, leaving a will which was probated on the 24th September 1782.[56]
In the meanwhile the settlement of the Quakers was increasing rapidly in population. As early as 1736, it is said, Hannah Janney, the wife of Jacob Janney, held the services of her sect twice a week on a tree-stump in the forest "and on that spot a log house was built in 1751 and a meeting established" which was and still is known as the Goose Creek meeting. This log hut in 1765 was superseded by a stone building and as the congregation grew and the latter building was found too small, it was replaced, in 1817, by a brick meeting-house; but the old stone building of 1765 still stands and is owned by the Friends. Remodelled as a dwelling house it is now occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Taylor.
A monument today marks the place, now in the village of Lincoln, where the good Hannah Janney worshipped. It stands in a grove of trees and reads:
"Here on a log in the unbroken forest Hannah Janney, wife of Jacob Janney, worshipped twice weekly in 1736. In 1738 Friends meetings were held in a private house once a month. Then a log meeting house. Then the old stone house in 1765 and the brick house in 1817."
By 1743 or 1744 the Friends had erected a church, known as the Fairfax Meeting, at Waterford, where as we have seen in a prior chapter (V), they soon had become very numerous and through their energy and thrift had really established that little settlement's early character and prosperity. This first meeting house of the Friends followed the fate which appeared to hover over so many of Virginia's early structures; it duly disappeared in flames and in its place in 1868 there was constructed the present substantial and commodious edifice, now only too seldom used because of the dwindling of the Quaker population there.
Concurrently another religious organization had been growing rapidly in the colonies. The Baptists had experienced the well-proved truth that religious persecution is a most fertile soil for religious growth. "Magistrates and mobs, priests and Sheriffs, courts and parsons all vainly combined to divert them from their object," writes one of their historians. The Baptists in Virginia are said to have originated from three sources—emigrants in 1714, directly from England, settling in the southeasterly part of the Colony, others from Maryland about 1743 going to the northwesterly part, and still another group leaving New England about 1754 and going to what is now Berkely County in West Virginia. Between 1750 and 1755 John Gerrard, a Baptist preacher of Maryland, is said to have gone to Berkely County and thence journeyed over the Blue Ridge into the present Loudoun "where he found the people ready to listen to the proclamation of the gospel." The first Baptist church in Loudoun (and perhaps in Virginia as well) was built at Ketocton in 1756 or 1757, according to tradition, to be followed by a stone building in 1815 and then, in 1856, by the present brick edifice.