John Landis Mason was a native of Philadelphia, a tinsmith

Tinsmith

A tinsmith, or tinner or tinker or tinplate worker, is a person who makes and repairs things made of light-coloured metal, particularly tinware...

 and the patentee of the metal

Metal

A metal , is an element, compound, or alloy that is a good conductor of both electricity and heat. Metals are usually malleable and shiny, that is they reflect most of incident light...

 screw-on lid for fruit jars that have come to be known as Mason jars. Many such jars were printed with the line "Mason's Patent Nov 30th 1858". He also invented the first screw top salt shaker in 1858.

Some assert that John Mason was at least partially of Native American ancestry.

United States patent

United States Patent and Trademark Office

The United States Patent and Trademark Office is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that issues patents to inventors and businesses for their inventions, and trademark registration for product and intellectual property identification.The USPTO is based in Alexandria, Virginia,...

22,186, dated November 30, 1858, is primarily on the use of exterior threads in the jar and a corresponding metal cap. Later patents such as 102,913 improved upon this in various ways such as the addition of rubber rings.