Less renowned are his biographies of Benjamin Franklin and William Penn. As a biographer, Weems was much more interested in instructing and entertaining than in presenting historical truth. But so successfully did the Parson encapsulate the heroic and moral yearnings of the young American Republic in his popular biographies that he has been called the "Livy of the common people."
Born on 11 October 1759, in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, to Esther Hill Weems, his father's second wife, Mason Locke Weems was the nineteenth son of David Weems, a Scottish farmer who had accompanied his wealthy uncle to America in about 1722. Not much is known about his childhood, but young Weems got a good grammar school education in Maryland and studied medicine in London and Edinburgh from 1773 to 1776. Almost nothing is known about him during the next few years, but Weems, who was related to Dr. William Smith, founder of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, may have been influenced by Smith to forsake medicine and prepare for the ministry. He returned to England in 1781, studied theology there, and became one of the first Americans admitted into the Anglican priesthood following the Revolution.
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