Tag: masons

(December 25, 1795 – December 28, 1899)

from The Greenwood Project

Born a slave in Virginia, young Salem Mason lost his wife and two children when their owner moved out of the state . . . and he never saw them again. Salem himself was one of 23 slaves purchased by the city of Nashville in 1830 and brought to Tennessee to lay pipe for the city’s first water system. He helped grade the Square (where the courthouse now stands) when it consisted of four frame buildings and a weed-covered field crossed by cow paths, and he headed the crew laying the cornerstone of the old state penitentiary, which opened in 1831. Salem was one of only three workers kept on by the city after the completion of the waterworks. He continued as a city employee after emancipation, barely surviving an attempt by the Board of Public Works to strip him of his $10 monthly pension. He died at age 104, four days short of having lived in three different centuries!

Illustration of stoneworker courtesy of the Florida Center for Instructional Technology

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The Greenwood Project is a series of 160-word biographies of individuals who lie at rest in Mt. Ararat and Greenwood cemeteries, two historic African American burial grounds in Nashville, Tennessee. The project, which began in September 2014 (and is still available on Facebook, at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064806156276), shares the stories of more than 300 consequential individuals, primarily African American, who changed the course of city, state, and national history through their words and deeds. (All biographies were written by Kathy Lauder unless otherwise noted.)