After the Civil War, a statue movement was sweeping the nation, and local citizens and organizations were erecting monuments of heroes and patriots everywhere. The prominent citizens of Mystic, Connecticut decided to create a larger than life bronze and granite monument of Major John Mason, the commander of the Colonial forces in the 1637 Pequot War, the very first declared and sustained conflict in the early colonies. In 1889, the John Mason statue, carved by sculptor James G. C. Hamilton, was placed at the intersection of Pequot Avenue and Clift Street in Mystic, near what was thought to be the location of the fortified Pequot village where the Mistick Massacre occurred.