Samuel Mason
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Samuel Mason was born 1739 in Norfolk, Virginia. He was raised in Charles Town, West Virginia where he lived until moving to Ohio County, West Virginia in 1773. He moved again in 1779, this time to Washington County, West Virginia, where he was elected justice of the peace and later selected as associate judge, leaving for Kentucky in 1784.
Mason moved his family to the Red Banks, Kentucky, area in the early 1790s, near what is now Henderson, Kentucky. He later settled downriver on Diamond Island and engaged in criminal activity. By 1797 he moved the base of his river piracy further downriver to Cave-in-Rock on the Illinois shore.
Mason's gang of pirates openly based themselves at Cave-in-Rock until the summer of 1799 when expelled by the Exterminators under the leadership of Capt. Young of Mercer County, Kentucky. Mason moved his operations downriver and settled his family in Spanish Louisiana (Missouri) and became a highway robber on the Natchez Trace in Mississippi.
Spanish officials arrested Mason and his men early in 1803 at the Little Prairie settlement in what is now northeastern Arkanasas. The Spanish took Mason and his family members to New Madrid, Missouri, where they held a three day hearing to determine if Mason indeed was a pirate. Although Mason claimed he was simply a farmer who had been maligned by his enemies, the presence of $7,000 in currency and 20 human scalps in his luggage convinced the Spanish he indeed was a pirate. Mason and his family were taken under guard to New Orleans, where the Spanish governor ordered them to be handed over to the American governor in Mississippi Territory as all their crimes appeared to have taken place on American territory or against American boats.
While being transported back up river Mason and gang member John Sutton overpowered their guards and escaped, with Mason being shot in the head during the escape. The American governor immediately issued a reward for their recapture, prompting John Sutton and aonther man to bring Mason's head in an attempt to claim the reward (whether they killed Mason or whether he died from his wound suffered in the escape attempt has never been established). There they were recognized as two of the pirates, resulting in their receiving a different reward than they had anticipated. Sutton and the other man were arrested, tried in federal court, found guilty of piracy, and hanged in Greeneville, Mississippi, in early 1804.[1]
Mason's life illustrates a sudden fall from respected community member to outlaw. In the 1790s he plied the Ohio River as a pirate and wound up a desperado in Mississippi.
[edit] References
- Otto A. Rothert, The Outlaws of Cave-In-Rock, Otto A. Rothert, Cleveland 1924; rpt. 1996 ISBN 0-8093-2034-7
[edit] Notes
- ^ Wagner, Mark and Mary R. McCorvie, "Going to See the Varmint: Piracy in Myth and Reality on the Ohio River, 1785-1830", In X Marks The Spot: The Archaeology of Piracy, edited by Russell K. Skowronek abd Charles R. Ewen, pp. 219-247. University of Florida Press, Gainesville.
[edit] External links
|
||||||||||||||||||||
