Part I
EARLY LIFE OF LOWELL MASON
ADDRESS OF WILLIAM S. TILDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE MEDFIELD HISTORICAL SOCIETY, AT CHENERY HALL, MEDFIELD, FRIDAY, JANUARY 8, 1892, THE CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF DR. LOWELL MASON
Fellow-Citizens: Most that has been hitherto said and written has been rather concerning the public and professional career of Dr. Mason; and we shall doubtless have presented many interesting mementos to-day, in letter and address, relating to those things in which he is most generally known. What I have to present in this paper will refer particularly to his birth, parentage, and early surroundings, of which comparatively little has been said.
Lowell Mason was of English descent, being in the sixth generation from Thomas Mason and Margery Partridge. Thomas, born in England, was the son of Robert, who settled in Dedham, from whence he, with his brother Robert, came to Medfield in the second year of its settlement. The marriage of Thomas Mason and Margery Partridge, April 23, 1653, is the first recorded marriage in this old town. He received his house-lot by original grant from the town. It was upon North street, where Amos E. Mason now lives, the homestead having never been out of the possession of the Mason family. Thomas Mason and two of his sons were killed by the Indians on that fateful morning in February, 1676, when the town was burned. His eldest son was killed the following year, while fighting the Indians at the "Eastward" (now Maine), leaving one boy, Ebenezer, who was seven years of age only when his father was killed, and who, therefore, became the progenitor of the line from which Lowell Mason sprang. The son of this Ebenezer, Thomas Mason, left the homestead on North street, and settled in the extreme northeast corner of the town, at what is now known as the Charles Newell place. He married the daughter-in-law of Samuel Sady, who kept a tavern on North street, where the Pfaff mansion now stands; and his son Barachias, grandfather of Lowell, inherited, through his mother, that place, and settled upon it, where he lived with his son Johnson, father of Lowell. There the man whose nativity we celebrate to-day was born. The building has been preserved, and is, no doubt, the "farm-house," so called, on Adams Avenue.
LOWELL MASON
FROM A DAGUERREOTYPE
The first twenty years of his life were spent in his native town of Medfield; and very little has ever been written about this portion of his life, and much of that somewhat incorrectly. His biographers seem to have endeavored to add to his fame by magnifying his want of opportunities for education and culture in his youth. In a discourse upon Mr. Mason's life and labors, the Rev. George B. Bacon, his pastor, says: "Mr. Mason had no advantages of education. He was the son of a mechanic in a small New England town. He began almost in his cradle that fight for a living which left small opportunity for study or culture." Another writer says: "He spent twenty years of his life doing nothing but playing upon all sorts of musical instruments, and there was no one to teach him their use." We feel inclined to believe that these statements were half-truths only, and are not a complete statement, by any means, of the conditions and pursuits of his youth.
We think it can be shown that while Medfield is proud of having such a son, he was fortunate in having such a birthplace. We believe in the influence of heredity in genius, but also in the influence of environments. He was especially favored in both these respects, descending for generations from an honored ancestry and surrounded in his youth by educated people of high moral and religious character. His parents were in fairly comfortable circumstances, and he was, as is usual in such cases, permitted considerable freedom in following the promptings of his natural genius, which, springing as he did from a musical family, early showed tendency toward that branch of art.