George Washington’s first biographer leaves behind contested anecdotes
As the old fable goes, a young George Washington chopped down a cherry tree and his honesty about the incident (“You know I can’t tell a lie. I did cut it with my hatchet,”) earned him kudos with his father.
That’s according to Mason Locke Weems, the author who wrote the first biography about Washington, and the man who has been accused of passing his fictionalized stories as historical facts.
Weems was born on this day in 1759 in Maryland and worked as a minister before becoming a bookseller and writer.