The Rev. Lee Massey, who was rector at Pohick (Truro) Church before the
Revolution, is quoted by Bishop Meade as saying that


"I never knew so constant an attendant in church as Washington. And his
behavior in the house of God was ever so deeply reverential that it
produced the happiest effect on my congregation, and greatly assisted me
in my pulpit labors. No company ever withheld him from church. I have
often been at Mount Vernon on Sabbath morning, when his breakfast table
was filled with guests; but to him they furnished no pretext for
neglecting his God and losing the satisfaction of setting a good example.
For instead of staying at home, out of false complaisance to them, he used
constantly to invite them to accompany him."


This seems to have been written more with an eye to its influence on
others than to its strict accuracy. During the time Washington attended at
Pohick Church he was by no means a regular church-goer. His daily "where
and how my time is spent" enables us to know exactly how often he attended
church, and in the year 1760 he went just sixteen times, and in 1768 he
went fourteen, these years being fairly typical of the period 1760-1773.
During the Presidency a sense of duty made him attend St Paul's and Christ
churches while in New York and Philadelphia, but at Mount Vernon, when the
public eye was not upon him, he was no more regular than he had always
been, and in the last year of his life he wrote, "Six days do I labor, or,
in other words, take exercise and devote my time to various occupations in
Husbandry, and about my mansion. On the seventh, now called the first day,
for want of a place of Worship (within less than nine miles) such letters
as do not require immediate acknowledgment I give answers to.... But it
hath so happened, that on the two last Sundays--call them the first or the