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Colross
Colross (also historically known as Belle Air and Grasshopper Hall) is a Georgian style mansion built around 1800 as the center of a large plantation in what is now the Old Town neighborhood of Alexandria, Virginia, and moved circa 1930 to Princeton, New Jersey, where it is currently the administration building of Princeton Day School. The Colross property originally occupied the entire 1100 block of Oronoco Street; Alexandria merchant John Potts developed it as a plantation and began building the mansion in 17991800. In 1803, Jonathan Swift—also an Alexandria merchant and a city councilman—purchased the property and during his ownership continued constructing the mansion. After Swift died in 1824, Colross was purchased by Thomson Francis Mason (1785–1838), son of Thomson Mason (1759–1820) and grandson of Founding Father George Mason (1725–1792) of Gunston Hall. Mason served as a judge of the Criminal Court of the District of Columbia and as mayor of Alexandria. Mas ...
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Colross Alexandria VA 1916 05
Colross (also historically known as Belle Air and Grasshopper Hall) is a Georgian style mansion built around 1800 as the center of a large plantation in what is now the Old Town neighborhood of Alexandria, Virginia, and moved circa 1930 to Princeton, New Jersey, where it is currently the administration building of Princeton Day School. The Colross property originally occupied the entire 1100 block of Oronoco Street; Alexandria merchant John Potts developed it as a plantation and began building the mansion in 17991800. In 1803, Jonathan Swift—also an Alexandria merchant and a city councilman—purchased the property and during his ownership continued constructing the mansion. After Swift died in 1824, Colross was purchased by Thomson Francis Mason (1785–1838), son of Thomson Mason (1759–1820) and grandson of Founding Father George Mason (1725–1792) of Gunston Hall. Mason served as a judge of the Criminal Court of the District of Columbia and as mayor of Alexandria. Mas ...
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Colross Alexandria VA 1916 06
Colross (also historically known as Belle Air and Grasshopper Hall) is a Georgian style mansion built around 1800 as the center of a large plantation in what is now the Old Town neighborhood of Alexandria, Virginia, and moved circa 1930 to Princeton, New Jersey, where it is currently the administration building of Princeton Day School. The Colross property originally occupied the entire 1100 block of Oronoco Street; Alexandria merchant John Potts developed it as a plantation and began building the mansion in 17991800. In 1803, Jonathan Swift—also an Alexandria merchant and a city councilman—purchased the property and during his ownership continued constructing the mansion. After Swift died in 1824, Colross was purchased by Thomson Francis Mason (1785–1838), son of Thomson Mason (1759–1820) and grandson of Founding Father George Mason (1725–1792) of Gunston Hall. Mason served as a judge of the Criminal Court of the District of Columbia and as mayor of Alexandria. Mas ...
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Thomson Francis Mason
Thomson Francis Mason (1785 – 21 December 1838) was an American lawyer, planter and politician who served as the mayor of Alexandria (then in the District of Columbia, but now Virginia) between 1827 and 1830, and as a justice of the peace for many years and briefly in the months before his death as a judge of the Washington D.C. criminal court. Early life and education Mason was born in 1785 at his grandfather George Mason's Gunston Hall plantation in Fairfax County, Virginia. He was the second eldest child and eldest son of General Thomson Mason (1759–1820) and his wife Sarah McCarty Chichester. Mason and his brother Richard Chichester Mason were primarily raised at Hollin Hall, their father's plantation house finished by Christmas 1788. On 24 October 1805, Mason entered the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) as a member of the junior class. That same year, he joined the American Whig-Cliosophic Society. Mason graduated from Princeton with honors and subseque ...
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Princeton Day School
Princeton Day School is a private coeducational day school located in Princeton, in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States, serving students in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade. The largest division is the Upper School (grades 9–12), with an enrollment of about 400. The school has been accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Elementary and Secondary Schools since 1989.Princeton Day School
Commission on Elementary and Secondary Schools. Accessed April 3, 2022.
As of the 2019–20 school year, the schoo ...
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Arthur Pendleton Mason
Arthur "Pen" Pendleton Mason (11 December 1835–22 April 1893) was an American military officer, merchant, planter and lawyer who served as a lieutenant colonel in the Confederate States Army serving during the American Civil War. Mason was a scion of the prominent Mason political family of Virginia. Early life and education Mason was born on 11 December 1835 near Alexandria, Virginia in Fairfax County. He was the ninth and youngest child of Thomson Francis Mason (1785–21 December 1838) and his wife Elizabeth "Betsey" Clapham Price (1802–21 December 1873). Mason earned his law degree from the University of Virginia. Following law school, Mason was a planter and practiced law in Alexandria and Richmond. Mason's father died on 21 December 1838 in Alexandria at the age of 53. Mason inherited his father's Colross estate in Alexandria. His mother transferred ownership of Huntley on 7 November 1859 to Mason and his brother Dr. John "Frank" Francis Mason. American C ...
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Mansion
A mansion is a large dwelling house. The word itself derives through Old French from the Latin word ''mansio'' "dwelling", an abstract noun derived from the verb ''manere'' "to dwell". The English word '' manse'' originally defined a property large enough for the parish priest to maintain himself, but a mansion is no longer self-sustaining in this way (compare a Roman or medieval villa). '' Manor'' comes from the same root—territorial holdings granted to a lord who would "remain" there. Following the fall of Rome, the practice of building unfortified villas ceased. Today, the oldest inhabited mansions around the world usually began their existence as fortified houses in the Middle Ages. As social conditions slowly changed and stabilised fortifications were able to be reduced, and over the centuries gave way to comfort. It became fashionable and possible for homes to be beautiful rather than grim and forbidding allowing for the development of the modern mansion. In British Engl ...
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Charles II Of England
Charles II (29 May 1630 – 6 February 1685) was King of Scotland from 1649 until 1651, and King of England, Scotland and Ireland from the 1660 Restoration of the monarchy until his death in 1685. Charles II was the eldest surviving child of Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland and Henrietta Maria of France. After Charles I's execution at Whitehall on 30 January 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War, the Parliament of Scotland proclaimed Charles II king on 5 February 1649. But England entered the period known as the English Interregnum or the English Commonwealth, and the country was a de facto republic led by Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell defeated Charles II at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651, and Charles fled to mainland Europe. Cromwell became virtual dictator of England, Scotland and Ireland. Charles spent the next nine years in exile in France, the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Netherlands. The political crisis that followed Cromwell's death in 1 ...
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Mason Family
The Mason family of Virginia is a historically significant American political family of English origin, whose prominent members are known for their accomplishments in politics, business, and the military. The progenitor of the Mason family, George Mason I (1629–1686), arrived at Norfolk, Virginia on the ship ''Assurance'' in 1652. Mason was a Cavalier member of the Parliament of England during the reign of Charles I of England. George Mason I's great-grandson was George Mason IV (1725–1792), an American patriot, statesman, and delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention. Along with James Madison, George Mason IV is known as the "Father of the Bill of Rights." For these reasons, Mason is considered one of the "Founding Fathers" of the United States and raised the Mason family to national political prominence. George Mason II (1660–1716) and his son George Mason III (1690–1735) both served as a member of the House of Burgesses, Stafford County sheriff, Staf ...
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Northern Neck Proprietary
The Northern Neck Proprietary – also called the Northern Neck land grant, Fairfax Proprietary, or Fairfax Grant – was a land grant first contrived by the exiled English King Charles II in 1649 and encompassing all the lands bounded by the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers in colonial Virginia. This constituted up to of Virginia's Northern Neck and a vast area northwest of it. The grant became actual in 1660 when Charles was restored to the English throne. By 1719, these lands had been inherited by Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron (1693-1781). By that time the question of the boundaries of the designated lands had also become highly contentious. It was decided in 1746 that a line between the sources of the North Branch of the Potomac and the Rappahannock River (the "Fairfax Line") would constitute the western limit of Lord Fairfax's lands. The unsettled portions of his domain were finally confiscated during the American Revolution by the Virginia Act of 1779 and ...
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Thomas Colepeper, 2nd Baron Colepeper
Thomas Colepeper, 2nd Baron Colepeper, (21 March 1635 – 27 January 1689) was an English peer and colonial administrator who served as the governor of Virginia from 1677 to 1683. Biography Born in 1635, Colepeper (often referred to by the alternate, Culpeper) was the son of Judith and John Colepeper. As a royalist, his father left England at the end of the English Civil War following the execution of Charles I. Thomas Culpeper lived with his father in the Netherlands and there on 3 August 1659 married the Dutch heiress Margaret van Hesse. He returned to England after Charles II's restoration, where his wife was naturalised as English by Act of Parliament. Culpeper was made Governor of the Isle of Wight from 1661 to 1667 which involved little administration but added to his wealth. He was elected as a Bailiff to the board of the Bedford Level Corporation for 1665 and 1667. He became governor of Virginia in July 1677 but did not leave England until 1679, when he was ordered t ...
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Interregnum (England)
The Interregnum was the period between the execution of Charles I on 30 January 1649 and the arrival of his son Charles II in London on 29 May 1660 which marked the start of the Restoration. During the Interregnum, England was under various forms of republican government (see Commonwealth of England; this article describes other facets of the Interregnum). Politics The politics of the period were dominated by the wishes of the ''Grandees'' (Senior Officers) of the New Model Army and their civilian supporters. They encouraged (or at least tolerated) several republican regimes. From 1649 until 1653 executive powers lay with the Council of State, while legislative functions were carried out by the Rump Parliament. In 1653 the Grandees, with Oliver Cromwell in the lead, dismissed the Rump, and replaced it with a Nominated Assembly (nicknamed the Parliament of Saints or Barebone's Parliament) made up of 140 nominees, 129 from England and Wales, five from Scotland and six from Irelan ...
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Restoration (England)
The Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland took place in 1660 when King Charles II returned from exile in continental Europe. The preceding period of the Protectorate and the civil wars came to be known as the Interregnum (1649–1660). The term ''Restoration'' is also used to describe the period of several years after, in which a new political settlement was established. It is very often used to cover the whole reign of King Charles II (1660–1685) and often the brief reign of his younger brother King James II (1685–1688). In certain contexts it may be used to cover the whole period of the later Stuart monarchs as far as the death of Queen Anne and the accession of the Hanoverian King George I in 1714. For example, Restoration comedy typically encompasses works written as late as 1710. The Protectorate After Richard Cromwell, Lord Protector from 1658 to 1659, ceded power to the Rump Parliament, Charles Fleetwood and John ...
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