06/03/2025
THE JOHN MASON STATUE – ALWAYS A LIGHTNING ROD
✍️ By Marilyn Comrie
It was 30 years ago, on May 10, 1995, that the State of Connecticut dismantled the statue of Major John Mason at the top of Pequot Hill and hauled it away on a flatbed truck.
The statue had stood on the hill for 106 years. It was controversial from its unveiling, but never more so than when its removal was proposed in 1992.
The statue’s origins stem from 1885, when Col. Amos A. Fish wrote a letter to the Mystic Press suggesting the state mark the 250th anniversary of the 1637 Pequot Massacre by erecting a tribute to Mason at the site of the battle. Mason had led the attack against the Pequot fort in May 1637 which killed between 400 and 700 Pequots, including many women and children, and ended Pequot tribal dominance in the region. Fish owned the property where he said some charred remains of the fort were still visible.
The New London County Historical Society took up the project and lobbied the state legislature to appropriate money for the statue. In May 1887, $4,000 was approved. On Oct. 19, 1887, a committee was selected to choose a site. The top of Pequot Hill was chosen because it was thought to be the site of the massacre or close to the site. Brothers Horace and Edmund Clift donated the land for the statue.
On Sept. 22, 1888, a state commission chose the model for the statue – it was to be a Puritan figure, not a likeness of Mason, made of bronze, of heroic size (9 feet tall) and placed on a 45-ton boulder monument. The sculptor was James G.C. Hamilton, who created it while under contract to the Smith Granite Co. of Westerly, R.I.
June 26, 1889, was chosen for the unveiling of the statue and dozens of dignitaries, including Gov. Morgan C. Bulkeley, arrived in Mystic by special trains on a foggy morning for the 11:30 a.m. ceremonies.
A parade, including a band, the New London militia battalion and the Governor’s Foot Guard, assembled on Broadway near the train station for the march to Pequot Hill. They went up East Main to West Main, down Water Street, up New London Road, up Elm Street, up Burrows and then up Pequot Avenue, which was a heavily wooded area outside downtown at the time.
Mason was celebrated as a hero and described as a “brilliant, daring Indian fighter.” The New London County Historical Society owned Mason’s sword and lent it for the festivities.
In presenting the statue to the governor and the state, Commission Chairman Charles E. Dyer said, “Here it was that the decisive blow was struck by which the salvation of the infant colony was secured, and the settlements were preserved from annihilation.”
Historian and newspaperman Isaac H. Bromley, a Norwich native, was the guest orator. He likened the 1637 massacre to the Battle of Waterloo. Bromley noted, “Pequot Hill does not appear in the list of historic battlefields nor John Mason’s name among the world’s greatest captains. The decisive battles of the world have been those on which the fate of races or the destiny of nations hinge, the turning points of history.”
And so, the Mason statue entered the annals of Mystic history and became a familiar sight on Pequot Avenue. At the turn of the 20th century houses began springing up along the road and by the 1950s, the statue was no longer in the woods outside of Mystic. It was part of a residential neighborhood and stood at what was then the main entrance to the Pequot Woods.
The monument had its supporters and detractors. It became an annual Halloween tradition to plaster the statue with toilet paper. On June 26, 1964, the 75th anniversary of its unveiling, the statue was defaced with yellow splotches of paint and red graffiti was sprayed on the granite base.
In 1992, Eastern Pequot Lone Wolf Jackson brought a petition signed by 800 people to the Groton Town Council asking for the statue to be removed. Controversy was swirling that year as the 500th anniversary of Columbus discovering the New World was being commemorated and his treatment of indigenous people was front and center. The Mashantuckets had also opened Foxwoods casino that year and its sudden wealth brought political clout. But the Mashantuckets never directly entered the fray over the statue.
Nevertheless, sides were quickly drawn for what would become a very heated debate. People who lived on Pequot Hill wanted the statue to stay because it was part of the fabric of the neighborhood. Others suggested the statue should be burned, just as Mason had burned the fort. The Mystic River Historical Society argued to keep the statue where it was, noting that without it, the site of the massacre would long ago have been lost to history.
But three factions of the Pequot tribe – the Mashantuckets, Paucatucks and Eastern Pequots – argued that having the statue on the site of the massacre was an affront to them because “it glorified what to most Pequots was the darkest period in their history.” They wanted it gone.
In October 1992, the Groton Town Council established a seven-member John Mason Statue Advisory Committee to recommend a new site for the statue. That got an immediate response from the State of Connecticut. It informed Groton that the state Department of Environmental Protection owned the statue and it would have the final say on its fate.
Nevertheless, the advisory committee — made up of tribal member Lone Wolf Jackson, two Mystic River Historical Society members – Carol Kimball and Bill Everett – two ad hoc Mystic residents and two members of the Southeastern Connecticut Coalition for Peace and Justice – began its work.
The seven members had differing opinions about the statue. Jackson wrote an op ed piece for The Day:
“It is an obvious understatement to say that the Mason statue is an inappropriate way to commemorate the slaughter that took place that fateful morning in May 1637. The statue is a direct insult to the Pequot descendants of the survivors of the massacre. It is an affront to Native Americans who understand the long-lasting destruction and debilitating effects that these historical acts of genocide continue to have on the indigenous culture. It is also intolerable to many non-natives whose sense of justice and fairness is trampled by the statue’s existence.”
Committee member Melinda Plourdes-Cole, of the Coalition for Peace and Justice, said her group supported the Pequots’ wish to remove the statue, but she also felt it was an appropriate commemoration of the massacre of 300–700 men, women and children. “To remove the statue from the site of the Mystic Fort Massacre differs from destroying the statue,” she said.
Emotions ran high as the committee conducted its meetings. Committee members were harassed by the public. Several said they repeatedly received threatening phone calls or hang-ups at their homes. Plourdes-Cole reported to police that someone had slashed the tires on her vehicle as it sat in her driveway.
Eventually, the committee came up with 35 possible sites in southeastern Connecticut for the statue, then narrowed the list to 14. The top three contenders were Mason’s Island, the Groton Public Library and the proposed Mashantucket Pequot Museum, which hadn’t been constructed yet. Neither Mason’s Island nor the library wanted it, so on April 26, 1994, the Groton Town Council voted to loan the statue to the Mashantucket Museum.
The vote didn’t matter because the state DEP had the final say and the Mashantucket Museum wasn’t on its list of possible sites. The DEP was considering the State Capitol in Hartford, the John Mason School in Norwich, the Palisado Green in Windsor, the Town Green in Lebanon and simply leaving the statue where it was in Mystic. Kevin McBride, a spokesman for the Mashantuckets, made an unsuccessful plea to the DEP to consider the proposed museum.
The town of Windsor was chosen. On May 10, 1995, DEP workers removed the statue from Mystic. People in Southeastern Connecticut – Indians and non-Indians alike – were outraged. They could live with the statue being moved off Pequot Hill, but it was an affront to both sides to have it given to a town 50 miles away with no connection to the statue’s history.
A few days after the DEP removed the statue, in the middle of the night someone shot BB pellets into the living room and bedroom windows of Committee chairman Lon Thompson’s house on Pequot Avenue, a short walk from the statue site.
“It’s pretty unnerving,” Thompson told a reporter. “My wife heard someone shouting outside about the statue and then sat bolt upright when she heard the shots. That got our attention. What I think happened was, someone was really angry that (the statue) was gone, and they needed some way to express it. People really feel strongly about this, but now I hope we can move on.”
The state took the disassembled statue to Old Saybrook where it was refurbished and erected a year later on the Palisado Green in Windsor. The plaque that had been on the monument in Mystic was given to the Mystic River Historical Society. When the statue was unveiled in Windsor on June 26, 1996, Mashantucket tribal members were there to protest because the new plaque made no mention of the statue’s origins.
History has repeated itself in Windsor, although it didn’t take 106 years. In 2020, 24 years after the statue was moved to Windsor, protestors pushed to have it removed from the green. The statue was defaced with paint and “BLM” was painted across the granite base.
The Windsor Historical Society offered to take the statue, but as of today it is still sitting on the green.
Back in Mystic, there is a Monkey puzzle tree where the statue once stood. The Mystic River Historical Society was right. Without the statue or some other marker, a stranger passing the site today would have no idea of the historical significance of Pequot Hill.
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Please join us for a related upcoming talk:
“The Pequot War and Connecticut’s Captain Mason”
📍 Mystic Congregational Church Parish House
🕖 Wednesday, June 4 – Doors open at 7:00 p.m., lecture begins at 7:30 p.m.
Presented by Dr. David Naumec
Free for members | $5 for non-members
Dr. Naumec is a historian, archaeologist, and museum consultant, and a Revolution 250 Research Scholar with Historic New England. He will explore the context of the Pequot War and Mason’s role in Connecticut’s colonial history.
Refreshments will be served before the talk.
Event info: https://www.facebook.com/share/19AhSzx9EY/
