Mason Locke Weems


Mason Locke Weems, usually referred to as Parson Weems, was an American book agent and author who wrote the first biography of George Washington immediately after his death. He was the source of some of the apocryphal stories about Washington. The tale of the cherry tree is included in the fifth edition of The Life of Washington, a bestseller that depicted Washington's virtues and was intended to provide a morally instructive tale for the youth of the young nation.

Biography

Mason Weems was born on October 11, 1759, in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. He studied theology in London and was ordained in the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1784. He worked as a minister in Maryland in various capacities from 1784 to 1792. Financial hardship forced Weems to seek additional employment, and he began working as a traveling book agent. Weems married Frances Ewell in 1795 and established a household in Dumfries, Virginia. He had a small bookstore in Dumfries that now houses the Weems–Botts Museum, but he continued to travel extensively, 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 had worshiped in pre-Revolutionary days. Weems would later inflate this Washington connection and promote himself as the former "rector of Mount-Vernon parish".
Other notable works by Weems include Life of General Francis Marion ; Life of Benjamin Franklin, with Essays ; and Life of William Penn. He was an accomplished violinist.
After the death of his father-in-law, Colonel Jessie Ewell, Weems assumed the Ewell family estate, Bel Air, located in Prince William County, Virginia, to partially satisfy debts owed to Weems. In 1808, Weems and his family moved into Bel Air, where he lived until his death. While on travel in Beaufort, South Carolina, Weems died on May 23, 1825 of unspecified causes. He is buried at Bel Air.

Influence and historical reliability

The New York Times has described Weems as one of the "early hagiographers" of American literature "who elevated the Swamp Fox, Francis Marion, into the American pantheon and helped secure a place there for George Washington".
Weems' name would probably be forgotten today were it not for the tension between the liveliness of his narratives and what Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography called "this charge of a want of veracity is brought against all Weems's writings," adding that "it is probable he would have accounted it excusable to tell any good story to the credit of his heroes." The cherry-tree anecdote illustrates this point. Another dubious anecdote found in the Weems biography is that of Washington's prayer during the winter at Valley Forge.
According to the historian James M. McPherson, Weems' biography of George Washington was likely Abraham Lincoln's only exposure to the study of history as a boy. In a lecture given on Lincoln's birthday in 2010 at Washington and Lee University, McPherson explains how Lincoln, as president-elect, had spoken to the Legislature at Trenton, New Jersey near where, on the day after Christmas 1776, the American Revolution had been saved from collapse by Washington's ragged troops. According to McPherson, Lincoln said: "I remember all the accounts in Weems' books of the battlefields and struggles for the liberty of the country and none fixed themselves upon my imagination so deeply as the struggle here at Trenton: the crossing of the river, the contest with the Hessians, the great hardships endured at that time-- all fixed themselves on my memory more than any single revolutionary event. I recollect thinking then, boy even though I was, that there must have been something more than common that those men struggled for."

The exaltation of Washington

The exalted esteem in which the founding fathers, and especially George Washington, were held by 19th-century Americans may seem quaintly exaggerated to their 21st-century counterparts, but that Washington was so regarded is undisputed. The acme of this esteem can be seen on the ceiling of the United States Capitol Building in the form of Brumidi's fresco The Apotheosis of Washington.
Weems' 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 which was Weems' trademark. According to this account, his subject was "... Washington, the hero, and the Demigod ..." and at a level above that "... what he really 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 ".

Cherry-tree anecdote

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 schoolchildren, making it part of the culture, causing Washington's February 22 birthday to be celebrated with cherry dishes, with the cherry often claimed to be a favorite of his.
As early as 1889, in Henry Cabot Lodge's biography of Washington, historians have acknowledged that while there was "nothing intrinsically impossible" about the story, it and other stories recounted by Weems were "on their face hopelessly and ridiculously false."

Cultural references

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 and examines the evidence for its likelihood.
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.
Parson Weems appear referenced as Mason Weems in Assassin's Creed III, who is incarcerated at Bridewell Prison and plans to escape with Connor Kenway.