with a business in Richmond. By that date, John Mason had also relocated to Richmond, where he was a partner in Fenwick and Mason, which traded with merchants in Bordeaux, France, then in turmoil due to the French Revolution. Their father George Mason instructed John to mentor his younger brother, and Thomas may have worked as the family debt collector or as a merchant in his own right by his father's death in late 1792. He and John presented their father's 1773 will (written shortly after his first wife's death) and at least one authenticating witness (subscribers having been Gustavus Scott, Elizabeth Bronaugh, Ann Cockburn, John West Jr., Robert Graham and John Davidson) to the Fairfax County Court. By then no guardians for the children were necessary and their eldest brother George (one named executor) died in 1796 and the other named executor Martin Cockburn having declined executor's duties, John and Thomas Mason became the executors of their father's estate, and wealthy. By September 25, 1797, Thomas Mason relocated back to Prince William county and operated a store. He may have been the wealthiest man in Prince William county by the time of his (early) death in 1800, although he also had significant debts. In 1800, Thomas Mason owned four land parcels totaling 1,003 acres and paid the most of any county resident in personal property tax, including on one tithed white servant, 21 adult enslaved blacks, four black slaves between 13 and 16 years old, and 33 enslaved blacks either considered children or elderly. Thomas Mason also began his short political career, as Prince William County voters elected him as one of their delegates to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1799, and re-elected him the following year, although he died before the next session. Thomas Mason inherited his father's properties on the southern side of the Occoquan River across from Colchester as well as the right to operate the Occoquan ferry. Mason named his plantation Woodbridge after the wooden toll bridge he built in 1795 to replace the ferry. Sources differ as to which renowned inventor and engineer designed the bridge, Theodore Burr of Connecticut (not definitively known to have worked south of Port Deposit, Maryland), or Timothy Palmer of Massachusetts, who was constructing the Little Falls Bridge across the Potomac River in 1795 and a preeminent bridgebuilder of the era, perhaps best known for a bridge in