Due to an extended political quarrel between Mason and Charles Fenton Mercer, Armistead Mason fought a duel with his second cousin and brother-in-law Colonel John “Jack” Mason McCarty, at the Bladensburg dueling grounds on February 6, 1819.

He was also elected as the youngest Senator to the United States Senate. It was Armistead Mason who built the original home at the base of the Catoctin Mountain, and he who gave the mansion and plantation its name: Selma, meaning “Beautiful Castle” or “Highest Place”, derived from the titular Gaelic poem by Sir John McPherson.Īrmistead Mason was a decorated war hero for his command of Virginia’s 57th Regiment in the Battle of Craney Island and the Battle of Baltimore during the War of 1812 and received the rank of Brigadier General in the Virginia Militia. In 1808, Stevens Mason’s second eldest son, Armistead Thomson Mason inherited the land we know today as Selma. Stevens Mason was a close personal friend of Thomas Jefferson and was involved with a number of political controversies between Jefferson and his Democratic-Republicans and the Federalists. In 1794, he was elected to the United States Senate filling the vacancy left by James Monroe and serving for two terms until his death. Stevens Mason served in the Continental Army as an aide to General George Washington at the Battle of Yorktown and was a brigadier general in the Virginia Militia, a member of the Virginia State House of Delegates, a member of the Virginia State Senate, and a delegate to the Virginia Ratification Convention. Upon Thomson’s death, the entire Raspberry Plain estate inclusive of Strawberry Plain, was deeded to his eldest son Stevens Thomson Mason. Thomson Mason was a prominent attorney and Jurist and was named Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia. Thomson resided in the Campbell house until completion of the new Raspberry Plain mansion in 1771 at which time the Campbell parcel was renamed Strawberry Plain. In 1760, Thomson Mason purchased the neighboring 322-acre Raspberry Plain farm, that included a smaller mansion and jailhouse, from Aeneas Campbell, Loudoun County’s first sheriff.

The northern part of the property, which includes part of the present-day Selma lands, was inherited by the younger son, Thomson Mason. The southern portion of the property was bequeathed to her elder son, George Mason IV (the “Father of the Bill of Rights”) and became Gunston Hall.

In 1741, the widowed Ann Stevens Thomas Mason purchased land in northern Virginia with the intention of passing it on as inheritance for her children. The Mason Family were the founders of Selma and owned the property longer than any family who has lived there in the years since.

Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell