Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. Remarks on the Autobiography.?Mr. Mason’s removal to Portsmouth.?His Marriage.?His Professional Success.?Appointed Attorney General of New Hampshire.?Friendship with Mr. Webster.?Mr. Lord’s Reminiscences. MR. MASON’S simple and characteristic autobiography, bringing the record of his life down to 1797, leaves little to be said by his biographer, either in addition or illustration. He was correct in his belief that he was descended from Major John Mason, one of the early settlers of Connecticut, distinguished for his gallantry and success in the Pequot War in 1637. His third and youngest son, Daniel, was the grandfather of Mr. Mason’s grandfather.1 The town of Lebanon, Mr. Mason’s birthplace, has changed but little since he was born. Its inhabitants were and are mostly farmers, neither rich nor poor, and owning the land which they till. It is a good specimen of the agricultural towns in New England. On this point I am able to speak from personal observation, for in my early childhood it was my fortune to pass nearly two years there, in the family, and under the charge of the Rev. Zebulon Ely, of whom Mr. Mason speaks. I well remember the brick school-house there, for I have sat many hours on its benches, attending school by day and religious meetings by night; and I heartily agree with Mr.Mason in condemning the bad taste which destroyed this substantial and serviceable structure, and supplied its place with a fabric of wood. A city of 5,000 in 1900. 1 There was a missing link in the genealogy of the Mason family, arising from the fact that Daniel Mason, son of Major John Mason, in the Indian troubles of 1676, sent his wife, for her expected confinement, to her friends in Roxbury, where her son Daniel was born in February of that year, and baptized by t…