Author: Weems, Mason Locke
Biography:
WEEMS, Mason Locke (1759-1825: ANBO)
Little is known about the early life of this colourful character. He was born in Anne Arundel County MD to Esther (Hill) and David Weems. When he was about 14 he was sent to study medicine in London and Edinburgh; he may have worked afterwards as a surgeon on a British ship. During the Revolution he returned to Maryland and may have been involved along with his brother in providing supplies for the American forces. He returned to Britain after the war to study for the Anglican ministry. After some delay over his refusal to take an oath of allegiance to the monarch, he was ordained in 1784. Back in Maryland he served as minister in two parishes between 1784 and 1792 but then gave up regular parish duties. He married Frances Ewell (1775-1843) of Virginia in 1795 and had ten children with her, only four of whom survived their father. To support the family, Weems became an itinerant book agent on the eastern seaboard for a Philadelphia publisher, often making local arrangements for the reprinting of bibles and other books--including his own--in the towns he travelled to. Far and away his best known work was his popular life of George Washington, which first appeared in the same year as Hymen's Recruiting-Serjeant and which includes the fabricated story of the cherry tree. He also produced more or less fictionalized lives of General Marion, Benjamin Franklin, and William Penn, besides monitory pamphlets against drunkenness, domestic abuse, gambling, and duelling. He died in Beaufort SC on a bookselling tour and was buried at his home on the Bel Air plantation in Virginia. (ANBO 15 Jan. 2021; ancestry.com 15 Jan. 2021; findagrave.com 15 Jan 2021) HJ