George Mason

George Mason, writer of the Virginia Bill of Rights and avid patriot, also looked into experimenting with the possibility of growing various crops. George Mason, like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, was interested in this because of the “depression of the 1760s, that followed the inflated tobacco economy of the fifties,” which devastated the market for George Mason’s major source of income, tobacco (Copeland 106). Close friends with George Washington, the two consistently exchanged various crops that they hypothesized could grow well in Virginia’s soil. An example of this is in 1760 when “Washington received several kinds of cherries and plums, a dozen Spanish pears, and a dozen butter pears from Gunston Hall” (Copeland 102). Mason later on was encouraged by various experiments done by “Huguenots settled for [the purpose of making wine] by the British government in South Carolina” to try to grow his own grapes for wine (Copeland 102). George Mason invested in various men who were trying to grow wine in Virginia, but the biggest project he took a part in was becoming a shareholder in Philip Mazzei’s Agricultural Company. George Mason and the other shareholders received slips from Philip Mazzei for their own gardens. As there is little detail about George Mason’s grapes it seems that after the failure of the Philip Mazzei Agriculture Company, George Mason didn’t pursue experimenting with grapes, at least to the extent he had before. George Mason mainly replaced his tobacco with wheat and it became “an important part of his farm income” (Copeland 102).