Surname Saturday – Mason

I have four people with the surname Mason in my family tree at the moment.  None of them appear to be related to each other.

Esther Mason is my 3x great grandmother and she Married John Dinsdale at Kirkby Malham, Yorkshire in 1806.  Henrietta Mason is another 3x great grandmother and she married Thomas Buckley at Keighley, West Yorkshire in 1820.

The surname is the 96th most common in Great Britain.  According to surnamedb Mason is a status and occupational surname which originally described a skilled stone mason.  The derivation is from the pre 8th century Old French word “masson”, probably introduced into England by the Norman-French after the conquest of 1066.  Indeed before that time few places in Britain were built in stone, so the French largely introduced both the word and the skill.

The surname is said to be one of the earliest recorded and in a surprising number of different spellings.

Early examples of the name include – John Macun in the building accounts of King Henry 1st of England in the year 1130, and Ace le Mazun, in the Pipe Rolls of Lincolnshire in 1193.

Some other interesting Masons include James Mason (1779–1827) who was a supporter of Charles James Fox in the campaign to abolish slavery and liberate Catholics from the penal laws, and Sir John Mason (1503–1566), who attended Oxford university and worked his way up to become a royal ambassador and Chancellor of Oxford University – which was not bad considering his father was a cowherd from Abingdon!

Spellings of the surname both in Britain and France include Macon, Mason, Massen, Masson, Machen, Machent, Machin, and Machon.

Some examples from surviving church registers are those of Elizabeth Masson christened at St. Margaret’s Westminster, on July 21st 1540, and Awdry Mason who married William Elyat at that same church on June 10th 1548.

Among the many prominent figures with this surname was George Mason (1725 – 1792), the American statesman who framed the Virginia Bill of Rights.  This was later was used as a model by Thomas Jefferson when he drafted the Declaration of Independence in 1776.  The first recorded spelling of the family name is possibly that of Richard Machun,  dated about the year 1120, in charters of the Danelaw, for the county of Lincolnshire.

More recently other noteworthy Mason’s include:-

• Roy Mason (b. 1924) – British Labour politician and former Cabinet minister

• Benedict Mason (b. 1954) – British composer

• Nicholas Berkeley “Nick” Mason (b. 1944) – English drummer for Pink Floyd

The name has also been used in my family as a first name.  Two descendants of Thomas Buckley and Henrietta Mason bear the name Mason Buckley.