Mason Locke Weems and George Washington

E-153

Mason Locke Weems (1759-1825), minister, bookseller, and writer, owned a half-acre lot here from 1798 until 1802. Weems published the first edition of his most influential work, later known as The Life of Washington, in 1800. Widely distributed across the United States, Weems's book shaped the heroic image of George Washington in the mind of the American public. The book’s best-known scene, in which a young Washington cuts his father’s prized cherry tree with a hatchet, appeared in the fifth edition (1806). In this mythical story, Washington admits fault when confronted and says, “I can’t tell a lie,” reflecting the virtue that, according to Weems, was the foundation of his greatness.

Department of Historic Resources, 2018

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Emily Ellsworth Ford Skeel, ed., Mason Locke Weems, His Works and Ways (New York, 1929), 3 vols. Prince William County Deed Book 2:102, 288. Lewis Leary, The Book-Peddling Parson (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984). Philip Levy, Where the Cherry Tree Grew: The Story of Ferry Farm, George Washington’s Boyhood Home (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2013). https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/parson-weems/ https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/cherry-tree-myth/ Christopher Harris, “Mason Locke Weems’s Life of Washington: The Making of a Bestseller,” Southern Literary Journal, vol. 19, no. 2 (spring 1987): 92-101. Edward G. Lengel, Inventing George Washington: America’s Founder, in Myth and Memory (New York: HarperCollins, 2011). Jack Thomas Masterson, “Cherries from the Tree: National Identity and the Hero Construction of George Washington, 1799-1829,” (MA Thesis, College of William and Mary, 2016). Jill Acree, “The Sorrows of Parson Weems: His Life and Legacy,” (Ph.D. diss., Claremont Graduate University, 2007). Weems-Botts House, National Register of Historic Places nomination (1975).