Weary voyagers on the Chesapeake, if evening was near, must have looked for the lights of Captain Fleet's dwelling on the point. Probably because of its location Fleet's Point became a stopping place for "persons passing from Maryland to Virginia."
Captain Fleet no doubt welcomed these guests, but he would stand for no misconduct at Fleet's Point, as is shown by a deposition that has been preserved:
"One Henry Carline, of Kent County, Maryland, in 1655, stopped at his house with a woman, and that he provided lodgings also for another woman, and a man. Fleet becoming indignant at Carline's loose behavior, turned him, and the woman who came with him, out of his house, and had them arraigned before the Rappahannock Court. Carline was fined for keeping the servant woman from her employer, and disowning his wife, and the woman was ordered to receive 30 lashes."
All records concerning Captain Fleet seem to end here. Did he ever return to England? Or was he killed by the Indians?
Perhaps he spent the rest of his life at Fleet's Point and was buried there.
GEORGE MASON
George Mason was another early settler in the upper wilderness of the Northern Neck.
The first George Mason came to Virginia during the Cavalier emigration. He "went up the Potomac River and settled at Accohick, near Pasbytanzy."
Apparently the first mention of this founder of the Mason family in Virginia occurs in the patent of land obtained by him in March, 1655: "Said land being due the said George Mason by and for the transportation of eighteen persons in to the colony." Mason was married but it is not known if his wife or family were among these persons transported as "head-rights."
The next mention of George Mason in the records is in 1658 when he sold five hundred acres of land to Mr. John Lease for "five cows with calves and two thousand five hundred pounds of tobacco." Westmoreland County at this time included land on the Virginia side of the Potomac from the northern boundary of Northumberland to the present site of Georgetown in the District of Columbia. With the land sold to Mr. Lease, Mason included "all privileges of hawking, fishing and fowling."