Benjamin Mason was born around 1820 in North Carolina. He eventually settled in Tallapoosa County, Alabama, and he married Nancy Pullen there on March 1, 1849. They had at least six children: Rhona, born around 1850; Mary, born around 1852; Charles, born around 1857; and William, born around 1858; Sarah, born around 1861; and Benjamin, born around 1866. Mason worked as a farmer, and by 1860, he owned $800 of real estate and $265 of personal property. He enlisted in the Confederate army on March 12, 1862, and mustered in as a private in the 1^st Battalion of Hilliard’s Alabama Legion.

 

According to his service records, he was 5 feet, 11 inches tall, with light brown hair and blue eyes. The unit took part in the Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863, and Mason received wounds to his face and thigh. The Confederate army dissolved the legion that November and reorganized it as a the 60^th Alabama Infantry. The regiment took part in the Knoxville Campaign before being transferred to the Eastern Theater in April 1864. The men helped defend Petersburg, and they took part in the Appomattox Campaign in the spring of 1865. Mason was captured at Amelia Court House on April 5, 1865, and he spent the next few months in a Union prison camp. He was finally released on June 15, 1865.

 

Mason settled in Tallassee, Alabama, after the war, and resumed his work as a farmer. By 1870, the family owned $1,200 of real estate and $800 of personal property. He applied for a Confederate pension from the state of Alabama in 1899, insisting that he was “unable to make a living by manuel [sic] labor on account of wounds received + old age.” By 1910, he was living in his son Benjamin’s household in Howard, Alabama. He died in Elmore County, Alabama, on June 5, 1914.

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