William Jordan Mason was born in Virginia in 1801, according to historical records, but moved to Limestone County and became a judge and wealthy landowner as a young man.

Mason had an illustrious career that culminated in his election to a state representative seat in 1832. He died the next year and records are hard to come by with a cause.

He was buried in a small cemetery with his family and another family named Martin. Over the decades and centuries, the ground was overtaken by a thicket of trees and the surrounding homes and barns were destroyed by time. Soon Mason’s burial place was lost to memory.

Search

Fast-forward to earlier this year and into the scene comes Bob Hickman and the Athens Lodge No. 16 of the Free and Accepted Masons. Hickman had been contacted by the state Freemasons branch to ask the lodge’s help in locating a brother. It turns out that among his many other accomplishments, Mason was also a Mason.

He rose to the rank of Worshipful Master of the Athens lodge in 1827 and 1828 before being elected as the Grand Master of Alabama in 1831 — two years before his death. The Alabama Freemasons are on a quest to document as much as possible about all the previous Grand Masters and recruited the Athens lodge to search for him.

“Several of us began looking,” Hickman said.

But knowing what to look for was more difficult than television and movies make these quests out to be. Newspaper records from The Limestone Democrat around the time of Mason’s death are nonexistent.

“The records from that period are so bad,” he said.

Hickman petitioned the state archives department for a copy of Mason’s obituary from The Montgomery Advertiser (It’s likely the obituary ran in that paper, because Mason was a state representative), but the document is a long time coming in the mail, he said.

Out of primary sources, Hickman elicited the help of Limestone County Archivist Rebekah Davis, who found a third-person history of the era written by a woman with the surname Mason (it’s not known if she was related to the Mason in question). She has long-since died herself, so all Hickman and the lodge had to go on was her writings. They came across a passage mentioning the cemetery’s location near a stately home with a cedar tree-lined driveway in the Reid/Tanner community and deciphered the location to an area off Nuclear Plant Road near Nebo Community Church.

That was a start.

Discovery

When the Masons went looking for Mason, there was no such home as the historian had described. There were certainly pastures and patches of woods, but no more obvious hints about the Mason grave. Hickman said he did some old-fashioned footwork and began asking residents along the road if they remembered anything about a cemetery in the area other than the one across the street from Nebo Community Church. He searched the tree lines that bordered pastureland and was still no closer, until his group saw a small thicket of trees behind a mobile home, bordering a soybean field.

“We finally figured out that there was something out here in this clump of trees,” Hickman said.

Through some thick brush, they found a slab of concrete, roughly four-feet tall, standing tall among some other broken tombstones. On the slab was written: “In Memory of Wm. J. Mason, Died March 8, 1833, aged 31 years & 7 months.”

This was it.

“Wow,” Hickman said he recalled thinking. “We were rather excited. It was pretty amazing. We were very surprised and, or course, very pleased.”

New task

Athens Lodge No. 16 spent part of the summer clearing away the brush to make accessing the grave easier. Hickman said they are in the beginning stages of deciding how best to preserve the site, but it’s high on their list of priorities.

“We would like to make sure this area gets the recognition it needs,” he said. “Certainly we’d like for it not to deteriorate any further.”

The first task, however, is paying homage to the former Grand Master. Hickman said the Masonic burial rites were not introduced until the latter half of the 19th century. With the discovery of Mason’s grave, the lodge is organizing a memorial service in his honor.

Nothing about the Masonic burial rites is a secret so the public is invited to the Nov. 1 ceremony, Hickman said. Lodge No. 16 is especially interested in finding anyone that can trace a lineage back to the Mason family to take part in the event. The service starts at 3 p.m. with the present Alabama Grand Master John Stickling presiding. A sign will be posted on Nuclear Plant Road to direct people to the spot, but parking is limited.

For more information, email Hickman at hickma_b@bellsouth.net.