As a plantation (18th century) Lexington was originally part of the
Gunston Hall plantation land tract, held by various members of the Mason family (one of the
First Families of Virginia) for generations, and previously by members of the
Doeg band of Native Americans.
George Mason IV, an active patriot and mentor of his neighbor General (then President)
George Washington subdivided his property when his firstborn son
George Mason V (1753-1796) reached legal age in 1774 (a year after his mother's death). The house was actually built beginning circa 1784, a year after that somewhat sickly son returned from a European trip taken for health and business reasons, and shortly before the son's marriage to Elizabeth Barnes Hooe, whose father operated the Barnesfield plantation in nearby
King George County. Lexington's construction of wood rather than brick or stone like Gunston Hall, may indicate the economic constraints imposed by the American Revolutionary War upon the patriot family. Although they had six children (and documents confirm at least three were born at this plantation house), George Mason V would only acquire title to the plantation upon his father's death in 1792 (when the Fairfax County Circuit Court accepted and transcribed his father's lengthy and codicil-free will written in 1773 and named him the estate's executor) and only survived his father by four years. The name commemorates the
Battle of Lexington in
Massachusetts. The following year, the widowed mother remarried, to
George Graham, who had been educated alongside George Mason's two youngest sons before attending Columbia University in New York and returning to become a Virginia lawyer as well as operate his family's properties after his father died in 1796. Elizabeth Barnes Mason Graham died in May 1814, shortly before her husband's possibly most important military services assisting in the evacuation of Washington D.C. Their son
George Mason Graham, born at Lexington, would like his half-brother fight in the Mexican–American War, as well as become rich operating his family's cotton plantation in Louisiana, before helping to found the educational institution which later became
Louisiana State University. Meanwhile, after his wife's death and the war's end, George Graham accepted a job with the War Department in Washington D.C., and would later remarry as well as serve as Commissioner of the General Land Office. William Stuart Mason, eldest son of George Mason IV's son William Mason acquired Lexington plantation circa 1824 and actually lived at Lexington until his death in 1857, but he also experienced financial troubles, so not only did much fall into disrepair, in 1851 a court required land to be sold to his younger brother (yet another) George Mason of Hollin Hall. George Mason of Hollin Hall tried to sell the plantation, but did not do so before his death, so in 1870 it became the property of his son, also named George Mason, on whose watch the wooden structure burned down.
Later existence (1888 – 1968) When that George Mason (who never had children) died of typhoid fever in Portland, Oregon in 1888, the property, which was becoming overgrown, was inherited by his sister Kora Chase, who sold it in 1903 to
James D. Yeomans, a local real estate speculator as well as member of the Interstate Commerce Commission. It then changed hands among various real estate investors and companies until 1967, when Wills & Van Metre, Inc. sold it to the
Nature Conservancy, which was interested in the property because of two bald eagle nests discovered in 1965. It consolidated various parcels and in 1968 sold them to the Commonwealth of Virginia to become
Mason Neck State Park, which opened in 1985.
As a park (1985 – present) Archeologists investigated the Lexington site beginning around 2006. It was added to the
National Register of Historic Places in 2013, in part because of its landscape design unearthed during those excavations, which resembles that of Gunston Hall, as well as Marlborough, a now defunct
Stafford County plantation once the home of
John Mercer, George Mason's relative, guardian during his minority and mentor, and who died in 1768. == References ==