George Ezekiel Mason (abt. 1811 - 1876)

Born about 4 Feb 1811 in Essex, England

Husband of Agnes Theresa Frederica (Litchfield) Mason — married 3 Feb 1851 in St Johns Church, Halifax Street, Adelaide, South Australia

Descendants

Died 22 Jul 1876 at about age 65 in Wellington, South Australia, Australia

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Biography

On Thursday 27 July 1876 the "Country Intelligence" article in the newspaper The Southern Argus  included a report from Wellington, bearing the date July 25, in which the following words appear.^[1]

Death has removed the oldest settler in the district from our midst, the late Mr George Mason. The deceased was, I believe, the son of a yeoman in Essex, who, intending him to follow commercial pursuits, gave him a liberal education; but after spending some time in the house of a London firm, he relinquished the pen for the sword, joined tbe British army, and served in India and New South Wales. He was one of the party of soldiers who were sent to Port Essington. After being discharged in New South Wales, the deceased came to South Australia shortly after the commencement of the colony; joining the mounted police, he was stationed at Wellington—then, as now, considered an important pass on the overland route to Victoria; it was indeed, then the only land route by which parties, who for "private reasons" wanted to make their exit from this colony, could go. Early settlers will doubtless recollect the quality of the men, mostly Van Diemonians or Sydney adventurers, who tried the strength and skill of the South Australian police in those days. Mr Mason "knew tbe handling of the kind," and could generally give a good account of those who came his way. Being also Sub-Protector of the Aborigines, by whom he was almost worshipped, his time was fully occupied, yet, as he was possessed of very considerable mechanical ingenuity, he planned and superintended the making of the first Wellington ferry. Mr Mason was a man of fine appearance and soldierly bearing, of good address, courteous in manner, and obliging by nature. Being well up in official forms and correspondence, his advice was often sought and readily obtained by his neighbour. His disposition was kind and genial, and he was liked and respected by everybody. I never heard of his quarrelling with any one, there is nothing to remember against him, and it will be long before he is forgotten. Mr Mason did not attain a very great age, being only 65. There is doubt but that the hardships and privations of his early life at Wellington told upon his once powerful frame and strong constitution. He has often had to live on kangaroo, and such roots and herbs as the natives procure, with salt pork to give a relish to the mess and make it at all palatable. After quitting the Government service, Mr Mason turned his attention to sheep farming, and spent the evening of his days in that quiet and peaceful occupation. Last Sunday a large number of people collected at the East Wellington cemetery, where the deceased gentleman was interred, anxious to pay a last tribute of respect to him. Mr Mason was an Episcopalian, and the service of that Church was read over him by Mr Hughes, S.M., in the absence of a clergyman of that persuasion. Amongst the mourners were several aborigines, whose countenances indicated the grief they felt for the one who had been to them always a kind friend.

No doubt the the information about George Mason's life was supplied by the family, so that the original source of the information would have been George himself.

The article fixes the date of George's burial as Sunday 23 July 1876. If his age was correctly reported then he was born between July 1810 and July 1811.

The index of South Australian death registrations compiled by the South Australian Genealogy and Heraldry Society has his name as George E. Masen, rather than Mason, surely the result of a transcription error. They give the date of his death as 22 July 1876, his place of residence and the place of his death as Wellington East, and his age at death as 65. The information was supplied by C. W. Mason, his son.‍^[2]‍^[3]

Only some of the death registration information is freely available online from the SAGHS (Genealogy SA) website.‍^[4]‍^[5] The same information can also be obtained through Ancestry and FindMyPast.

There is also a George Ezekiel Mason memorial on Find a Grave.^[6]

George Ezekiel Mason married Agnes Theresa Litchfield on 3 February 1851 in St Johns Church, Halifax Street, Adelaide, South Australia.‍^[7]‍^[8] The following marriage notice was published in The South Australian Register  on 7 February 1851.^[9]

At St. John's Church, on the 3rd instant, by the Rev. T. P. Wilson, Mr George E. Mason, Sub-Protector of Aborigines, to Agnes Theresa, eldest daughter of the late Captain Litchfield.

Note that George Ezekiel Mason's age on 3 February 1851 was recorded as 39, consistent with his age at death, but suggesting that he was born after 3 February 1811. So it seems most likely that he was born in 1811.

As well as the church record of the marriage of George and Theresa, there is a civil registration record.‍^[4]‍^[10]

The children of George and Theresa were George Litchfield Mason (born 3 November 1851), Margaret Sarah Mason (born 1853), Amy Agnes Mason (born 13 January 1856), Ellen Anne Mason (born 18 June 1858), Charles William Mason (born 15 August 1860) and Frederick Gordon Mason (born 29 September 1865). Margaret Sarah Mason married John Duckett Lovegrove, and Ellen Annie Mason married (first) Alexander Haggett Colbey and (second) Frederick James Pritchard. Amy Agnes Mason died in 1869.

In August 1934 a granddaughter of George Ezekiel Mason and Agnes Theresa Litchfield wrote a letter to "Vox", whose regular column "Out among the People" was published in The Advertiser. The letter said, in part, that "Enquiries have been made for relatives of a George Ezekiel Mason concerning a large sum of money left him by his mother, Jessie Mason".^[11] It is also remembered in the Mason family that George and Agnes fostered an aboriginal girl whom they called Jessie. It has been suggested that this offers support to the theory that George Ezekiel Mason's mother's name was Jessie.

Note that the mother of George Ezekiel Mason of Wellington must surely have died at least 40 years before Mrs Sneath wrote her letter to Vox; so it is open to doubt whether or not George Ezekiel Mason son of Jessie was the same person.

It is presumably a coincidence that in 1929 a Jessie Mason and several of her siblings had claimed that they were the rightful heirs to a fortune left by one Maria L'Epine who died insane in 1793, the fortune having passed to the Crown in the belief that there were no legal heirs. The judge dismissed the petition on the ground that it was barred by the Statute of Limitations.^[12]

Attempts to find a birth or baptism record for George Ezekiel Mason have not been successful. There is a record of a George Ezekiel Mason, son of Thomas and Sarah, who was baptized at St Olave Hart Street, London, on 31 December 1826.^[13] An image of the baptism register page can be viewed on Ancestry.com;^[14] it gives that family's address as Shadwell (London) and says that the father was a Yeoman. For most of the other baptisms on the same page of the register the date of birth was also recorded, but in this case it was not recorded. It is of course conceivable that the person baptized was 15 years of age, but such baptisms were extremely rare. It is plausible that the George Ezekiel Mason baptized in 1826 was some kind of relative of the man who died at Wellington.

It is said that George Ezekiel Mason of Wellington had a relationship with an aboriginal woman name Louisa Karpany and that this union produced two children, George Karpany (born in about 1864) and Pinkie (Karpany) Mack (born in about 1869). This information is apparently given in records held by the South Australian Museum, based on statements made by Point McLeay aborigines.

An obituary of George was published in The South Australian Register on 14 August 1876, in a letter to the editor written by a person who used the nom de plume  "De Facto".^[15] We quote the bulk of it.

Mr. Mason was wisely appointed Protector of the Blacks on the Murray in consequence of his well-known influence with the natives; and by the great tact and kindness with firmness displayed by him in his intercourse with them he had acquired such an extraordinary amount of influence over them that, although at that time they laboured under a very bad reputation, I do not know of one instance in which a white man was killed by a black, or a black by a white, at or near Wellington; and the saving of human life was wholly and solely attributable to the presence and example of the late Mr. Geo. Mason. To the fact of a chief of one of the tribes named Mulea, when Mr. Mason first went amongst them, superstitiously imagining and insisting that Mr. Mason was a near relative of his, and well-known to his tribe, who had died and jumped up a white man, may perhaps be traced the great influence Mr. Mason possessed amongst them, as the black chief considered it his especial duty to protect and assist him at all times as far as he was able; and to render the friendship more secure and valuable according to their tradition, names were exchanged, Mr. Mason became ever after among the blacks Mulea, and Mulea was always called by the natives, Mason.

 There are many other little incidents that could be related, but space will not permit it now. The deceased for some years resided undisturbed with his wife and family upon the aboriginal reserves on the river at Wellington, and they have by dint of great exertion succeeded in getting some small quantity of cattle and sheep together. For years past (the last 10) Mr. Mason had been quite unable to do anything to assist his family, having been a constant invalid and subject to epileptic fits up to the time of his decease. Having been left by so many different Governments undisturbed upon the aboriginal reserves (in recognition no doubt of his many useful services as a public servant in his younger days), I am rather surprised to see by the Government Gazette—so very soon after Mr. Mason's death too—that the present Crown Lands Commissioner is advertising the leases of these aboriginal reserves for sale on September 7 next. By this the widow and children may be ruined, by forcing them to sell their stock at a month's notice, and that immediately before shearing. Now at a time that sheep are sacrificed in all directions by the season's want of feed and the Government resumption, surely the good and kindly feeling of the Commissioner will not, when he knows these circumstances, allow such a harsh and hasty act to be carried out in his administration, but will at any rate postpone the sale, and allow Mrs. Mason a sufficient and proper time to make her arrangements for the future; considering when he does this the moral claim (to say the least) that her husband had upon the country, and the greater reason therefore that the Commissioner's kindness should now be extended to the widow and her children.

 The circumstance of one of our former Ministers (Mr. Thomas Reynolds), and his wife's sad death by the Gothenburg, now deprives Mrs. Mason, daughter of the late Captain Lichfield, of the support and assistance she so much needed of her uncle and aunt, which being now followed up by the loss of her husband renders the case still worse, and should be a matter of no little consideration with the members of the present Government, seeing also that no previous Government has attempted to interfere with the residence of the Mason family on these reserves. Surely under these circumstances the odium of anything like sudden and harsh treatment shall not be laid to the charge of the present Government, as I believe that the members of the present Government are possessed of as much heart and feeling as any previous Government, and all that is required is for these facts to be known to them and the public. Therefore I hope you will assist me in my effort by giving the above a corner in your papers.

De Facto's letter produced a response from "Plain Fact" who wrote that "the reserves in question were only left so long unleased on account of the various opinions about the best site for the Murray Bridge", and added that "the Mason family are grown up and are not in straitened circumstances" and therefore there was no reason why one of the sections should not be devoted to the use of travelling stock, and the other three let for the purposes of cultivation, for which they were as suitable as the land so successfully worked by Mr Hughes in the same neighbourhood.^[16]

Plain Fact's statements in turn drew a response from De Facto: "The late Mr George Mason's family consists of one grown-up son, who married young and without any capital, and consequently is unable to render any assistance to his mother and the young children. There are two girls and the remaining two are boys aged respectfully 15 and 13 years. It requires this family's whole time to look after their few sheep, cattle, and horses that they have to depend upon."^[17] The newspaper then called a halt, saying that anything further on the subject could only appear in their advertising columns.

Misinformation

Unfortunately some relatively high profile sources have published incorrect information about George Ezekiel Mason. An online biography of Pinkie Mack says "According to his obituary, in 1876, Mason was believed to be the son of an Essex Yeoman who served in the British Army, whose records show the only George Mason enlisted before 1839, was in a Scottish Highlander regiment from 1815 to about 1829, serving overseas in the Napoleonic Wars, before he resigned his commission to work in a London counting house."^[18] The George Mason who was in the army in 1815 could not have been George Ezekiel Mason, who was born in about 1811. Furthermore, to resign his commission he must have been an officer (and gentleman), whereas George Ezekiel Mason of Wellington was only ever a corporal in the South Australian Police.

Note also that the Pinkie Mack biography suggests that Pinkie was born in the late 1850s, which is scarcely compatible with the information that her youngest child was born in 1813, and contradicts a document from the Aboriginal Friends Association, held in the State Library of South Australia, which says that she was 8 years old in 1879.^[19] Similarly, the Adelaide Hospital Admissions register says that she was 33 in 1902,^[20] and in a review of the book "A World That Was" (Berndt, Berndt & Stanton) L. A. Hercus refers to her as "the famous Pinkie Mack (b. 1869)".^[21]

An article in the Outskirts online journal (University of Western Australia)^[22] states that George Ezekiel Mason was Scottish born and goes on to say this.

... during the 1840s Mason formed a substantial relationship with the accomplished Ngarrindjeri woman Louisa Karpany, of similar age to him, while both remained married to others (Bell 1998:80). Karpany was a woman of immense knowledge and respect who had successfully negotiated the juncture between disparate worlds with the coming of invaders to her country. Karpany and Mason had two children, George Karpany and Margaret Mack, (better known as Pinkie because of her fair skin), ...

It is certainly plausible, perhaps likely, that George Mason may have had a substantial relationship with an aboriginal woman in the 1840s, but this was before his marriage, and the claim that the mother of Pinkie Mack was about the same age as George Mason is not compatible with the fact that Pinkie was born in about 1870. Note that the Microsoft Word document "Ngarrindjeri Genealogies (c. 1840–1912)", compiled in 1996 by Maria Rigney and Joe Lane (based largely on information given in A World That Was ), gives Pinkie's father as Old Karpeny and her mother as Louisa (Mason? MacHughes?) 1840 – 1921, also called Louisa Ngewatainindjeri.^[23]

Sources

1. ↑ Country Intelligence: The Southern Argus  (Port Elliot SA 1866–1954), 27 July 1876, page 3. (National Library of Australia, Digitised Australian Newspapers, retrieved 11 January 2021.)
2. ↑ South Australian deaths, index of registrations 1842 to 1915, A.L. Cobiac (editor and project co-ordinator), South Australian Genealogy and Heraldry Society (Adelaide South Australia, 2000).
3. ↑ Catalogue information for South Australian deaths, index of registrations 1842 to 1915,  at the State Library of South Australia.
4. ↑ ^{4.0 4.1} Online Database Search, provided by Genealogy SA.
5. ↑ Online information for George E Masen: death registered in the Wellington district, page 492 volume 74.
6. ↑ Find a Grave memorial for George Ezekiel Mason, maintained by OzGenie51 (Find a Grave contributor 48287745). Wellington East Cemetery (Coorong District Council, South Australia), Find a Grave database and images (accessed 13 January 2021).
7. ↑ Marriage of George Ezekiel Mason and Agnes Theresa Litchfield: Image of St John's marriage register page. (FamilySearch film # 008139432, image 234 of 937, last entry in this image.)
8. ↑ Marriages South Australia 1836 to 1857, database provided by FamilyHistorySA.
9. ↑ Marriage af George E. Mason and Agnes Theresa Litchfield: The South Australian Register  (Adelaide SA 1839–1900), 7 February 1851, page 2. (National Library of Australia, Digitised Australian Newspapers, retrieved 11 January 2021.)
10. ↑ South Australian marriages, index of registrations 1842-1916: A. L. Cobiac (editor and project co-ordinator), South Australian Genealogy & Heraldry Society (Adelaide SA), 2001.
11. ↑ Out among the People: The Advertiser  (Adelaide SA 1931–1954), 22 August 1934, page 21. (National Library of Australia, Digitised Australian Newspapers, retrieved 13 January 2021.)
12. ↑ Claim to fortune lost: The Leader  (Orange NSW 1899–1945), 20 September 1929, page 2. (National Library of Australia, Digitised Australian Newspapers, retrieved 13 January 2021.)
13. ↑ George Ezekiel Mason, 1826: "England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975" database (FamilySearch, 21 September 2020).
14. ↑ George Ezekiel Mason, 1826: Ancestry sharing link.
15. ↑ The Late Mr George Mason and his Family: The South Australian Register  (Adelaide SA 1839–1900), 14 August 1876, page 6. (National Library of Australia, Digitised Australian Newspapers, retrieved 13 January 2021.)
16. ↑ The late Mr George Mason's family: The Evening Journal  (Adelaide SA 1869–1912), 19 August  1876, page 2. (National Library of Australia, Digitised Australian Newspapers, retrieved 13 January 2021.)
17. ↑ The late Mr George Mason's family: The Evening Journal  (Adelaide SA 1869–1912), 29 August 1876 (2nd ed.), page 2. (National Library of Australia, Digitised Australian Newspapers, retrieved 13 January 2021.)
18. ↑ Mack, Pinkie: People Australia, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, peopleaustralia.anu.edu.au/biography/mack-pinkie-29656/text36625, accessed 13 January 2021.
19. ↑ Pinkie Karpani, Indigenous Collections Indexing Project: Pinkie Karpani [sic] (8 y.o.) attended school at Point McLeay Mission Station in 1879.
20. ↑ Royal Adelaide Hospital Admissions 1840–1904 (M to R): State Records of South Australia GRG 78/49 Royal Adelaide Hospital Admission registers, index 1840–1904 (surnames M to R).
21. ↑ Review of A World that was, the Yaraldi of the Murray River and the Lakes, South Australia, L. A. Hercus, Aboriginal History  18:2 (1994).
22. ↑ Article about Ruth Heathcock: Outskirts online journal, Volume 28, Karen Hughes.
23. ↑ Ngarrindjeri Genealogies (c. 1840 –1912): Compiled January 1996 by Maria Rigney and Joe Lane from the Raukkan Registers of Births, Deaths and Marriages, and from R.M. and C.H. Berndt, A World That Was, 1993. (Retrieved 15 January 2021.)