Mason Locke Weems

Weems' biography of Washington was a bestseller that depicted Washington's virtues and was intended to provide morally instructive tales for the youth of the young nation.

• Name — Parson Weems • Born — 11 October 1759 • Birthplace — Anne Arundel County, Maryland, Province of Maryland, British America • Died — 23 April 1825 • Place of death — Beaufort, South Carolina, U.S. • Resting Place — Bel-Air • Other Names — Mason L. Weems • Occupation — Book agent and author • Notable Works — The Life of Washington

Mason Weems was born on October 11, 1759, in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, the youngest of nineteen children. His family traced its ancestry to Scotland. When he was ten years old, his parents sent him away to study at the Kent County Free School in Chestertown, Maryland (which later became Washington College). During the 1770s, Weems studied medicine in Edinburgh; then, in the 1780s, after a religious conversion, he studied theology in London.

• Illustration — Bel Air Plantation, where Weems and his family moved upon the death of his father-in-law, Col. Jesse Ewell, in 1805 Returning to the new United States, and with the help of John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, Weems was ordained in the Episcopal Church. In 1784, he became the rector of All Hallows Parish in his native Anne Arundel County, served as chaplain of a school for girls, and preached to local African Americans. He soon began disseminating prayer books and established a charitable society to relieve widows and orphans. However, his tendencies toward Methodism (whose ministers were itinerant) proved unpopular with his bishop, Thomas John Claggett, so by 1792, Weems resigned as rector and began a traveling ministry, which included selling books on behalf of Mathew Carey, a prominent Philadelphia publisher who had emigrated from Ireland to flee persecution based on his Catholic faith. In 1795, Weems married Frances Ewell, the daughter of prominent local patriot and planter Jesse Ewell (1734–1805), and established a household in Dumfries, Virginia. He had a small bookstore in Dumfries, which now houses the Weems–Botts Museum, but continued to travel extensively, particularly in the mid-Atlantic states and South, a market previously dominated by British booksellers, selling books and preaching. Dumfries is not far from Pohick Church, part of Truro Parish, in Lorton, Virginia, where both George Washington and his father, Augustine, worshiped in pre-Revolutionary days. Weems occasionally preached at Pohick Church but later inflated this Washington connection and promoted himself as the former "rector of Mount-Vernon parish". In fact, Washington had provided an invaluable endorsement to what would be Weems's first bestselling pamphlet, condemning partisanship shortly before the former president's death, The Philanthropist: or a Good Twenty-Five Cents Worth of Political Love Powder, for Honest Adamites and Jeffersonists. In 1792 and 1793, Weems received Washington's endorsement of his first publishing venture, a two-volume edition of sermons by Hugh Blair, and would receive other endorsements from later presidents as well as prominent local figures. Furthermore, Weems learned from his interaction with bishop Claggett. When Virginia's evangelically-oriented bishop William Meade complained about Weems selling works by confirmed atheist Thomas Paine, Weems responded that he would only sell it together with Richard Watson's reply, An Apology for the Bible. In 1800, he published A History of the Life and Death, Virtues and Exploits of General George Washington, a popular book in its time that went into many reprints. Other notable works by Weems include Life of General Francis Marion (1805); Life of Benjamin Franklin, with Essays (1817); and Life of William Penn (1819). Weems also wrote several morality pamphlets, including God's Revenge Against Gambling, Against Duelling, and The Drunkard's Looking Glass. Not long after his father-in-law died in 1805, Weems began managing the Ewell family estate and by 1808 moved his family within Prince William County to the Ewell family mansion, Bel Air. However, he had debts, so in 1808, he sold Carey the copyright to his biography of George Washington for $1000, a sale which he soon regretted. Although Weems continued to travel extensively, Bel Air became his base, where his wife and family lived. He was an accomplished violinist and took a violin with him on his trips. While traveling in Beaufort, South Carolina, Weems died on May 23, 1825, of unspecified causes. He is buried at Bel Air.

The exalted esteem in which the Founding Fathers of the United States, especially George Washington, were held by 19th-century Americans may seem absurd today, but that Washington was so regarded is undisputed. The strength of this esteem can be seen on the ceiling of the United States Capitol Building in the form of Constantino Brumidi's fresco The Apotheosis of Washington. Weems's A History of the Life and Death, Virtues and Exploits of General George Washington, was a biography written in this spirit, amplified by the florid, rollicksome style that was Weems's trademark. According to this account, his subject was "... Washington, the hero, and the Demigod..." and at a level above that "... what he really was, [was] 'the Jupiter Conservator,' the friend and benefactor of men." With this hyperbole, Weems elevated Washington to the Augustan level of the god "Jupiter Conservator [Orbis]" (that is, "Jupiter, Conservator of the Empire", later rendered "Jupiter, Savior of the World").

• Illustration — Parson Weems' Fable, a 1939 painting by Grant Wood, depicting both Weems and his "Cherry Tree" story Among the exaggerated or invented anecdotes is that of the cherry tree, attributed by Weems to "an aged lady, who was a distant relative, and, when a girl, spent much of her time in the family", who referred to young George as "cousin". It went on to be reprinted in the popular McGuffey Reader used by tens of millions of schoolchildren. As a result, the story became part of American culture and is the reason many Americans celebrated Washington's February 22 birthday with cherry dishes. In his 1889 biography of Washington, Henry Cabot Lodge concluded the cherry tree and other stories recounted by Weems were "on their face hopelessly and ridiculously false." Yet in 1923, Professor Orville Mosher argued against Lodge, and for the truth of the anecdote.

In 1911, Lawrence C. Wroth published Parson Weems: A Biographical and Critical Study. In this, he confronts the fact that Weems is best known for the story of the cherry tree (p. 6) and examines the evidence for its likelihood (pp. 65ff). Wroth held that the story was likely authentic. Grant Wood painted the scene under the title Parson Weems' Fable in 1939. It is among his gently ironic depictions of Americana and shows the parson pulling back a curtain rimmed with cherries to show the story.