Mercer’s Bottom was part of the sixteen thousand acre tract surveyed by order of Washington for General Hugh Mercer. Nearby are the graves of Adjutant John Hereford and Ensign John Wilson, officers in the Revolutionary Army. John Hereford served as a Revolutionary War adjutant in Colonel John Alexander’s Virginia Regiment under Lafayette at Yorktown. Born in Fairfax County in 1758, he moved to Mason County in 1808, served as magistrate and sheriff, and died in 1846.