Talk:Religious views of George Washington

Re the deathbed conversion legend...

Anything is possible but I just plotted out the nautical distance from Mount Vernon to Port Tobacco/St. Thomas Manor and its distance of at least 42 nautical miles. It would take a modern motorboat capable of maintaining a continuous cruising speed of 15 knots at least 2 hours and 48 minutes to make the trip...I can't even imagine how long it would take even a determined group of people rowing a boat to go that distance. The WP article about Rowing states that most rowing boats of 4.3 m (14 ft) can be rowed at 3–4 knots (5.6–7.4 km/h; 3.5–4.6 mph) which agrees with other sources I consulted so maybe at 4mph and keeping a nautical mile the same (yeah I know it isn't) as a land mile...it would have taken the rowboat 10 hours to navigate to St. Thomas Manor and then 10 hours back, not even allowing for rowing against the tides and the currents in that area of the tidal Potomac... Washington awoke that morning unwell and died that evening between 10 and 11pm, maybe about 17 hours later. Not enough time for people to row from Mount Vernon to St. Thomas Manor and then back to Mount Vernon, along with allowing the four hours for Leonard Neale to spend his supposed time with the dying Washington - never mind the fact that in the morning he was not expected to die that evening. Shearonink (talk) 01:17, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

The source for the alleged conversion seems to be a story in the Paulist Information pamphlet by author Doran Hurley, it is cited over and over again - for instance, in a 2007 Catholic blog as http://proecclesia.blogspot.com/2007/02/in-honor-of-father-of-our-country-his.html which then cites 2 different Denver Register articles, one dated May 11, 1952 and one dated February 24, 1957. The problem with the February 1957 Denver Register story is that it says "Father Leonard Neale, S.J., was called to Mount Vernon from St. Mary's Mission across the Piscatawney River four hours before Washington's death" but 1)this "Piscatawney River" doesn't exist and 2)the St. Mary's Mission also doesn't exist.

As to the Doran Hurley story...a couple of things... "Information magazine" seems to have basically been a type of special-interest proselytizing pamphlet published by the Paulist Press. I can't find any copies of "Information" and, so, I also can't find this story. Luke Ritter's 2020 book Inventing America's First Immigration Crisis: Political Nativism in the Antebellum West cites it as "See Doran Hurley, "Was Washington a Catholic?" I.C.B.U. Journal 71 (1957) 2-6; and Lengel, Inventing George Washington, 86-91". This citation is personally very confusing to me - I think it seems to be referring to Griffin publishing the initial question in the ICBU (Irish Catholic Benevolent Union) Journal in March 1884 (that Journal 71 info) and then the various later responses (including a letter from historian Benson J. Lossing that dismissed the alleged Catholic conversion) and other responses going at least through May 1884 that promulgated the possibility that GW had become a Catholic upon his deathbed. In the July 1900 edition of Researches (as this WP article mentions), Griffin ended up basically dismissing the legends as improbable myths. What I personally found interesting is that the stories as related in the various 1884 publications Griffin mentions seem to start out somewhat vague in nature, for instance the priest is unnamed at first and then it somehow ends up with a named historical priest with lots of specific details - the rowboat, the number of rowers, the named priest found walking upon the beach, etc.

Also. This "Denver Register" is somewhat of a mis-named source, for the 1957 mention about George Washington the story also appears in "The National Edition" of The Denver Register a Catholic newspaper and it simply points to, again, to the Doran Hurley story in the Paulist Press's proselytizing pamphlet "Information". So, there was interest in the story in 1884, it was basically debunked in 1900, it seems to have been revived in 1957 by Hurley writing in "Information" and now it gets picked up every so often by present sources and recycled again into the cultural zeitgeist surrounding GW. Shearonink (talk) 06:33, 14 November 2022 (UTC)