George Mason

George Mason was a Virginia planter and statesman who is remembered as the primary author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776 and a principal drafter of the Virginia Constitution. His notes served as the first version of the Declaration, which was debated and revised at the Virginia Convention and went on to shape the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the constitutions of other states. He was born into a prominent Chesapeake family with land in Maryland and Virginia, built the estate of Gunston Hall near the Potomac, and took part in the constitutional convention and the ratification debates that followed.