Samuel Mason was born in about 1750 in Virginia and is believed to have been a member of the distinguished Mason family. By one chronicler he is said to have "grown up bad. " He served with distinction, however, as a captain in the Ohio County (Va. ) militia during the Revolutionary War.
Letters and receipts written by him show that he had obtained some schooling.
After the war he moved with his family to Washington County, in eastern Tennessee, but was soon driven out for petty thieving. He next appeared in Russellville and later in Henderson, Kentucky, where several acts of outlawry compelled another exodus. During most of the year 1797 he made his home in the once famous Cave-in-Rock, on the Illinois side of the Ohio, and with his two older sons and several other outlaws preyed upon passing boatmen. About the end of the year he disappeared. He and his band are next heard of as robbers of travelers along the Natchez Trace and of boatmen on the lower Mississippi. Daring and shrewd, he was almost uniformly successful. The fame of his depredations spread throughout the western country, and many efforts were made to capture him. In January 1803, near New Madrid in the present Missouri, Mason, his four sons, a man variously known as Setton, Taylor, or Wells, and the wife and three children of one of the sons were arrested by the Spanish authorities. Examined at length before the local commandant, they were sent under guard to the governor general at New Orleans. Convinced that none of the crimes was committed west of the Mississippi, that official ordered the outlaws turned over to the American officials at Natchez. On the way, March 26, Mason shot the commander of the boat and with the remainder of the party made his escape. In July he was waylaid and killed by Setton and a companion, James May. Bringing in his head in expectation of a reward, they at once came under suspicion. May was identified as a former member of the band and Setton as the notorious Wiley (Little) Harpe, former accomplice and reputed brother of Micajah (Big) Harpe, perhaps the bloodiest ruffian in frontier annals, who in August 1799, after a series of murders in Kentucky and Tennessee, had been killed and decapitated. The hanging of these two outlaws, February 8, 1804, at Old Greenville, Miss. , marked the end of Mason's band.
Mason was a large man, described as "fine looking. " His manner was agreeable, and his favorite pose was that of an injured innocent diligently seeking the men guilty of the crimes falsely attributed to himself. Unlike Harpe, he was primarily a robber; and he killed only when killing was thought to be essential for safety.
He seems to have married at an early age.
