This short manuscript starts with Robert Mason, immigrant ancestor and founder of this branch of the Mason family in America, was born in England about 1590. In 1630 he came to America with Governor John Winthrop’s company, probably, as so many of the early Puritans came, in quest of religious freedom. Here he settled in Roxbury, Massachusetts, where his wife, her name unknown, later died in 1637. After that, he removed with his sons, Thomas, John and Robert, to Dedham, Massachusetts, where he was one of the original landholders in 1642. He died there October 15, 1667.
It then with quick succession the author descends the generations to the father of protagonist, Lemuel Saunders Mason, owner of grist and lumber mills, who was born in Belchertown, Massachusetts, in 1800, and died there February 22, 1846. On April 9, 1828, he married Margaret Dwight Gates, daughter of Horace and Electa (Barbour) Gates. She was born in Belchertown February 12, 1808, and died in Southbridge Massachusetts, February 11, 1845.
Their offspring included Lyman Gates Mason I, the protagonist, who was born in Belchertown June 22, 1829. He attended the district schools there until, at the age of eleven, he entered first an academy in Belchertown, and two years later one in Southbridge, Massachusetts, where he remained one year. Then, when he was fourteen years of age, he removed to Worcester, Massachusetts, and there obtained employment as a clerk in a book store.
From there the author provides a much greater narrative and genealogical details into each successive generation down to the 1960s.
Notes About the Book
- Includes index
- Copyright not renewed as per Stanford database.
- No table of contents.
- Photocopied book.
Surnames
Abbott, Allen, Apple, Barbour, Belcher, Bennett, Billings, Blair, Boden, Bragg, Burnett, Champion, Church, Conklin, Conners, Coots, Daniel, Darmont, Eaton, Ellsworth, Englet, Fairbanks, Farnum, Fry, Fulton, Gates, Glover, Hall, Halsey, Heller, Hendershott, Hirsch, Hungerford, Johnson, Killingsworth, Lehfeldt, Linn, Lyon, Mason, Maxwell, May, McCabe, McComb, McCracken, Morse, Mossman, O’Shea, Oakley, Ober, Park, Potter, Russell, Schoenfeldt, Sindorf, Springer, Staker, Streeter, Swigert, Tapperall, Taylor, Thom, Tranberg, Underwood, Ward, Warner, Weld, and Wheat.
Source
Mason, George Abbott, The Mason family 1590-1942: A brief history of the ancestors and descendants of Lyman Gates Mason I : (1829-1898) and Ella Louise Mason (1851-1932); Los Angeles, California : George Abbott Mason, 1949.