Richard Mason Hancock

Richard Mason Hancock was born on November 22, 1832 in New Bern, North Carolina. His parents were free blacks . Mason attended private schools, as public schools were barred to black children. When he was thirteen he was apprenticed as a carpenter under his father, William H. Hancock[2] and under builder Uriah Sandy.[3] As an apprentice and in his early jobs he learned the cragts of pattern-making, carpentry, mathematics, and draughting.[2]

As a young adult he moved to New Haven, Connecticut where he was employed at Atwater & Treat and then Doolittle & Company, both white firms.[2] In New Haven in 1856 he was involved in opposition to the American Colonization Society.[4] He then moved to Lockport, New York where he worked in ship carpentry, on canal boats. He then took work under Birdsill Holly at Holly Manufacturing Company where he learned pattern-making.[2] His wife, Mary B. Beman, daughter of Reverend A. G. Beman of New Haven, died in Lockport on July 9, 1861.[5] He married again.[6]

In 1862 he came to Chicago[2] and took work as a pattern-maker for abolitionist P. W. Gates, president of Eagle Works Manufacturing Company.[1] He worked as journeyman for two years before being promoted to foreman of the shops. However, the white employees refused to work under Mason. After three days under these conditions, Mason went to Gates to resign. Instead, Gates hired new pattern-makers to fill the places of the strikers and Hancock continued his role as foreman. In 1873, at the beginning of the Long Depression, Eagle Works went out of business and two superintendents at the company, Thomas Chalmers and David Ross Fraser, formed a new company, Liberty Iron Works. Hancock moved with them, working as foreman. His son, George, also worked as a pattern-maker at Liberty Iron Works.[2]

Mason's work gave him considerable respect and wealth. He was an active republican[7] and vice-president of the Provident Hospital and Training School for African-Americans in Chicago[8] Mason was a freemason and a member of St. Thomas' Episcopal Church.[2] He died June 5, 1899 in Chicago of stomach cancer and his funeral was at St. Thomas' Episcopal Church.[9]