William Edwin Mason

The Masons came from Maine to Philadelphia a few years after Edwin was born. (Marriage and census documents show his first name as Edwin since that is how he was best known.) He had an older sister who died before he was born and a brother who was five years older. His father was a cabinet maker and Edwin joined him in that craft as a young man. 

He married a girl his age in 1888 but she caught tuberculosis and died less than a year later. She was buried with her family in Mount Peace Cemetery near Fairmount Park. Edwin continued to live with his parents and continued working with wood until just before the turn of the century when he became a firefighter.

His father died in 1902 and was buried at Mount Moriah. Two years later, Edwin’s company responded to a fire at the Henry T. Coates Publishing Company and Longhead & Company. He climbed the fire escape to the fourth floor and tried to open a heavy metal door when he was overcome by smoke.

His mother died of stomach cancer two years after that, so all three were remembered on this gravestone in Section 16.