Quick Facts
- Byname:
- Parson Weems
- Born:
- Oct. 11, 1759, Anne Arundel county, Md. [U.S.]
- Died:
- May 23, 1825, Beaufort, S.C. (aged 65)
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Grant Wood: Parson Weems' Fable
Parson Weems' Fable, oil on canvas by Grant Wood, 1939; in the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas.
Mason Locke Weems
United States minister and writer
Also known as: Parson Weems
Mason Locke Weems (born Oct. 11, 1759, Anne Arundel county, Md. [U.S.]—died May 23, 1825, Beaufort, S.C.) was an American clergyman, itinerant book agent, and fabricator of the story of George Washington’s chopping down the cherry tree. This fiction was inserted into the fifth edition (1806) of Weems’s book The Life and Memorable Actions of George Washington (1800).
Weems was ordained in the Anglican church in 1784 and served as a pastor in Maryland until 1792. From 1794 he hawked books throughout the country as an agent for the publisher Mathew Carey. Weems also wrote a biography (1809) of General Francis Marion that, like that of Washington, was more noted for its apocryphal anecdotes and readability than its accuracy.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Mindy Johnston.
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