Parson Weems's claim to a small place in American literary history has often seemed to rest on his having retailed the fabulous story of George Washington and the cherry tree. He is more justly regarded as a writer whose The Life of George Washington (1808) transcends its subgenre. Although this edifying biography's starchy simplicity has drawn the derision of generations, critics who have looked beneath its didactic idiom have found revealing testimony to the needs of a society in transition.

Very little is known of Weems's youth. He was born 11 October 1759 at Marshes Seat, Herring Bay, in Maryland's Anne Arundel County, the son of a Scottish farmer who had fathered eighteen earlier children, eleven of them by his second wife, the former Esther Hill. After receiving his early schooling in Maryland, Weems studied medicine in London and possibly in Edinburgh between 1773 and 1776. By one report he was a surgeon...