Mason Locke Weems (October 11, 1759 – May 23, 1825), generally known as Parson Weems, was an American book agent and author. He was the source of some of the apocryphal stories about George Washington. The tale of the cherry tree ("I cannot tell a lie, I did it with my little hatchet") is included in The Life of Washington (1800), a bestseller that depicted Washington's virtues and was intended to provide a morally instructive tale for the youth of the young nation.