Extracts from a Diary Kept by the Hon. Jonathan Mason of a Journey from Boston to Savannah in the Year 1804..
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Jonathan Mason was the United States senator from Massachusetts, .
Background
Jonathan Mason was born on September 12, 1756 at Boston, Massachussets. He was the son of Jonathan and Miriam (Clark) Mason. His father was a prominent merchant, a Son of Liberty, a deacon of the Old South Church, a selectman of the town of Boston (1769 - 71), and one of the witnesses of the Boston Massacre.
Education
Mason attended the South Grammar or Latin School, but unlike most of his schoolmates he went to the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) instead of to Harvard for his higher education. He received the degree of A. B. in 1774 and then read law with John Adams and in the office of Josiah Quincy.
Career
On December 3, 1779, he was admitted to the bar of Suffolk County, and in 1780 he delivered the annual oration to commemorate the Boston Massacre. From 1786 to 1796 he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives; in 1797 and 1798, a member of the Executive Council; and in 1799 and 1800, state senator. When Benjamin Goodhue, United States senator from Massachusetts, resigned from office in 1800, Mason was chosen to fill his place and served in that capacity from November 14, 1800, until March 1803. Though not a member of the Essex Junto, he was a strong Federalist; his career as senator was notable chiefly because of the part he took in the debates on the repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801. Returning to Boston in 1803 he resumed the practice of the law, was elected to the state Senate for the year 1803-04 and to the Massachusetts House of Representatives 1805-08.
At a special town meeting at Boston, August 9, 1808, he moved that President Jefferson be requested to remove the Embargo, and the motion was carried. After this time he "refused every office of every kind" and rarely even talked politics. Nevertheless he was elected to the Fifteenth and Sixteenth congresses, serving from March 1817 until his resignation in May 1820. Like all orthodox Federalists of his time he took a very gloomy view of the political situation, and in the letter cited above he predicted: "We shall not be destroyed today or tomorrow, but it will come, and the end of these measures will be disunion and disgrace". Besides his law practice, Mason was interested to a considerable extent in Boston real estate. Mason died on November 1, 1831 at Boston.
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Membership
Member of the U. S. House of Representatives
from Massachusetts's 1st district; Member of the Massachusetts Senate; Member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives
Personality
A portrait of him painted by Gilbert Stuart in 1805 shows a face of striking intelligence and good breeding.
Connections
In 1779 he married Susannah, daughter of William Powell of Boston. They had two sons and four daughters, one of whom married the elder John Collins Warren.