History of Swansea, Massachusetts, 1667-1917; - citizen hylbom blog

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History of Swansea
seven; Ezekiel Brown, with six, and Joseph Mason, Jr., with
five.
Several of its citizens have been honored with a seat in
the State Senate.
Hon. John Mason, a life-long resident of Swansea village,
was colleague in the Constitutional Convention of 1820 with
Daniel Haile, who had then had a dozen terms in the House.
That year Mr. Haile was defeated by Dr. John Winslow, who
was a Federalist in politics. In 1821, John Mason was brought
forward by the Democrats as the only man who could defeat
Dr. Winslow. The two men were next door neighbors, and
with their families were on most intimate terms. Mr. Mason
won by six votes. In the following year he was elected to the
House, in which he served two terms, after which he was four
in the Senate and four in the council of Gov. Levi Lincoln.
Later he was four years a county commissioner, and was town
clerk fifty of the years between 1808 and 1865, and postmaster
forty-six of the years between 1814 and 1864.
At the November election in 1850, three senators were
elected for Bristol County, one of them being Hon. Geo. Austin
of Swansea. Soon after the General Court convened in 1851,
Mr. Taber of New Bedford, resigned his seat and the two
branches of the Legislature, as then required by the constitution,
met in convention to choose a person to fill the vacancy
from the two defeated candidates who received the highest
number of votes at the autumnal election. The choice fell upon
Hon. John Earle of this town, and thus Swansea had two
senators, Messrs. Austin and Earle, for the remainder of the
session, an unprecedented honor. Mr. Austin was a member
of the Constitutional Convention of 1852.
The Hon. Frank Shaw Stevens, whose name appears upon
the tablet on the outer walls of this building, was senator from
this district in 1884. He modestly declined a reelection, which
would have been triumphantly accorded him.
Physicians
As the Masons have been prominent among those who
have ministered to the souls of Swansea people, so the Winslows
were ministers to their bodily health for three quarters
of a century, from 1765, when Dr. Ebenezer Winslow located
here. He became one of the most widely known physicians in
Southern Massachusetts. He died in 1830, in his ninetieth
year. His son. Dr. John Winslow, rivalled even his eminent
father in the successful practice of medicine, to which he