Major John Mason was born in 1600 in England and immigrated to New England in 1630. He was a founder of Windsor, Old Saybrook, and Norwich, served as magistrate and chief military officer of the Connecticut Colony, was deputy governor and acting governor, and was a patentee of the colonial charter. He died in 1672 in Norwich. In 1996, the monument erected at Mystic in 1889 by the State of Connecticut was relocated to respect a sacred site of the 1637 Pequot War.