George Mason was born on December 11, 1725, in Fairfax County, Virginia, the son of George Mason III and Ann Thomson Mason. He descended from a family that had acquired substantial land along the Potomac. His father died in a boating accident in 1735, when George was ten, leaving him heir to property and enslaved people. His mother and maternal relatives then played central roles in his upbringing. Mason received no college education. He studied with tutors and made extensive use of the library of his uncle and guardian, John Mercer, one of Virginia’s leading lawyers. Mercer’s collection exposed him to history, political theory, law, agriculture, and classical literature. Mason’s later writings demonstrate the depth of this largely self-directed education. As a young heir, Mason learned estate management early. He supervised land, tenants, crops, accounts, and the enslaved labor force upon which his wealth depended. He also became deeply involved in western land companies and the commercial development of the Potomac region. These responsibilities encouraged independence and attention to property rights. In 1750 Mason married Ann Eilbeck of Maryland. Their marriage produced a large family, and Mason devoted much of his life to domestic and plantation affairs at Gunston Hall. He preferred private study and local responsibility to the sociability and office-seeking common among ambitious gentlemen. The death of his wife in 1773 was a profound personal loss. Before drafting Virginia’s Declaration of Rights or influencing the Bill of Rights, Mason had been shaped by paternal loss, guardianship, private reading, early inheritance, marriage, fatherhood, plantation administration, and speculative land interests. His commitment to liberty developed within a life of substantial personal autonomy, yet it coexisted with slaveholding. That contradiction is essential to understanding his formation: the independence he prized for property-owning citizens was supported materially by the unfreedom of others on his estates.