Samuel Ross Mason, was an American Revolutionary War veteran, Virginia militia captain, justice of the peace, frontier leader, and later, a figure associated with river piracy and highway robbery. He
"Springdale", in Frederick County, Virginia, was built in 1753 and was the home of Colonel John L. Hite. A teenage Samuel Mason stole the horses of Colonel Hite and was later pursued, wounded, and captured, but because of his young age, he was not punished any further.
Fort Henry, formerly in Pennsylvania, now West Virginia, in 1777, at the time, Captain Samuel Mason was wounded and survived an ambush by Native Americans. Most of the men in Captain Samuel Mason's Company perished during the attack.
Colonel Daniel Brodhead, in a portrait, who led an expedition in 1779 in which Captain Samuel Mason while at Fort Henry joined along with 8th Pennsylvania Regiment of the Continental Army combined with militia troops from Fort Pitt to destroy the pro-British Seneca tribal villages in northeastern Pennsylvania.
Fort Pitt, Pennsylvania, where in 1779 Captain Samuel Mason joined the expedition of Colonel Daniel Brodhead against the pro-British Seneca tribe.
Cave-In-Rock State Park is an Illinois state park, on 204 acres, in the town of Cave-in-Rock, Hardin County, Illinois, in the United States. The state park contains the historic Cave-In-Rock, a landma
Samuel Mason
…notorious group active along the lower Ohio River and Mississippi Rivers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Mason is most famously linked to the Cave-in-Rock area, a notorious river pirate stronghold along the Ohio River. Born in Virginia, Mason served in the Revolutionary War, notably on the western frontier…
River pirates were some of the earliest settlers around Cave-in-Rock who preyed on the Ohio River flatboats, keelboats, and rafts, as profitable targets of goods, attacking the crews and pioneers who were easily overwhelmed and killed.
Cave-in-rock, view on the Ohio (circa 1832): aquatint by Karl Bodmer from the book "Maximilian, Prince of Wied's Travels in the Interior of North America, during the years 1832–1834"
Cave-in-Rock in a 1936 photograph by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Division of Forestry, looking similar to how it looked in the 18th and 19th centuries. Original photo caption: Cave at Cave-In-Rock, used by river pirates in the 1790s