This version of Young George and the Colt is attributed to Horace E. Scudder.

There is a story told of George Washington's boyhood—unfortunately there are not many stories—which is to the point. His father had taken a great deal of pride in his blooded horses, and his mother afterward took pains to keep the stock pure. She had several young horses that had not yet been broken, and one of them in particular, a sorrel, was extremely spirited. No one had been able to do anything with it, and it was pronounced thoroughly vicious as people are apt to pronounce horses which they have not learned to master.

George was determined to ride this colt, and told his companions that if they would help him catch it, he would ride and tame it. Early in the morning they set out for the pasture, where the boys managed to surround the sorrel, and then to put a bit into its mouth. Washington sprang upon its back, the boys dropped the bridle, and away flew the angry animal.

Its rider at once began to command. The horse resisted, backing about the field, rearing and plunging. The boys became thoroughly alarmed, but Washington kept his seat, never once losing his self-control or his mastery of the colt. The struggle was a sharp one; when suddenly, as if determined to rid itself of its rider, the creature leaped into the air with a tremendous bound. It was its last. The violence burst a blood-vessel, and the noble horse fell dead.

Before the boys could sufficiently recover to consider how they should extricate themselves from the scrape, they were called to breakfast; and the mistress of the house, knowing that they had been in the fields, began to ask after her stock. "Pray, young gentlemen,'' said she, "have you seen my blooded colts in your rambles? I hope they are well taken care of. My favorite, I am told, is as large as his sire.''

The boys looked at one another, and no one liked to speak. Of course the mother repeated her question. "The sorrel is dead, madam,'' said her son, "I killed him.'' And then he told the whole story. They say that his mother flushed with anger, as her son often used to, and then, like him, controlled herself, and presently said, quietly: "It is well; but while I regret the loss of my favorite, I rejoice in my son who always speaks the truth.''

Historians have not put much credence in the sorrel colt story. Washington's biographer Marcus Cunliffe identified the story as having appeared in print for the first time in an article written by Washington's step-grandson (the grandson of Martha Washington), George Washington Parke Custis, that was published in the United States Gazette on May 13, 1826, some twenty years after the cherry tree anecdote had first been included in the fifth edition of Rev. Mason L. Weems's The Life of Washington. Custis's article subsequently was reprinted in additional publications of the time, including the January 1827 issue of Casket (available online in the ProQuest subscription database "American Publications Series"), where it was entitled "The Mother of Washington" and identified as taken from the "'Recollections of Washington,' a new work by George W. P. Custis." That work, however, would not be published in book form until 1860, three years after Custis's death.

Custis, Cunliffe surmised, "did more than anyone to propagate the cult of the Mother of Washington. . . . [but] he does not carry conviction as a historian." Although the story was repeated in numerous accounts of Washington's life—a version sans didactic ending was reproduced as fact in a biography published as late as 1997—a few authors even in the 19th century expressed reservations about the story's veracity. Caroline M. Kirkland, in her Memoirs of Washington, published in 1857, cautioned, "The story of his having ridden to death a fiery colt of his mother's . . . sounds a little too much like a modernized version of Alexander's taming Bucephalus; so we shall not repeat it here." In his 1889 two-volume biography, Henry Cabot Lodge discounted the tale, commenting, "How Mr. Custis, usually so accurate, came to be so far infected with the Weems myth as to tell the colt story after the Weems manner, cannot now be determined."

Horace E. Scudder (1838–1902), a biographer, author of children's books, compiler of stories, and also the editor of Atlantic Monthly, was one of the many 19th- and early 20th-century authors who related the story, especially in books intended to educate children. David Ramsay dedicated his 1807 book on Washington to the "Youth of the United States," while John Corry offered his 1809 biography to "the Youth of America." James K. Paulding included the colt story, while omitting that of the cherry tree, in his 1835 biography of Washington dedicated to "the pious, retired, domestic MOTHERS OF THE UNITED STATES. . . . for the use of their children."

Historian Barbara Welter has noted that according to the dominant domestic ideology of the time, "mothers must do the inculcating of virtue [in children] since the fathers, alas, were too busy chasing the dollar." During the Revolutionary era, mothers especially were urged to instill virtue in their sons. In his biography of Washington that was published as part of the "Riverside School Library," Scudder asserted that Washington "owed two strong traits to his mother—a governing spirit and a spirit of order and method." The mother of the father of our country, Scudder related, "taught him many lessons and gave him many rules; but, after all, it was her character shaping his which was most powerful. She taught him to be truthful, but her lessons were not half so forcible as her own truthfulness." While Washington himself honored "my revered Mother; by whose Maternal hand (early deprived of a Father) I was led from Childhood," historians have found no evidence with which to validate the truth of the sorrel colt story.

John Hanson, who held the office that was known officially as "President of the United States in Congress Assembled" from November 5, 1781 to November 4, 1782, died in November 1783 long before the invention of photography. The African-American man in the photograph that you saw on a website could not have been this John Hanson.

The possibility remains that the John Hanson in question had one or more African ancestors, either known or not known to his colleagues or even to himself. J. Bruce Kremer, one of Hanson's biographers, states that Hanson's grandfather and his three brothers emigrated in 1642 from Sweden to the recently formed New Sweden settlement on the Delaware River with newly appointed Governor Johan Printz. Kremer points out that one of the Hanson brothers, Andrew, had the same name as "Andrew Hanson, freeman, who once worked as a farmhand" for New Sweden landowner and military leader Lieutenant Måns Kling, the owner of a tobacco plantation on the Schuylkill.

Whether this Andrew was the same man as John Hanson's great-uncle, "must be a matter of conjecture," Kremer concludes.

One could conjecture, therefore, that John Hanson had an African ancestor as he may have been related to a man described as a freeman, that is, a freed black slave. Yet, the term freeman, in the context of the 17th-century New Sweden colony, did not indicate a freed black slave, as one might assume. According to Gregory B. Keen of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, who has researched and written about the New Sweden colony, "The 'freemen' (frimännen)— so called because they had settled in the colony entirely of their own will, and might leave it at their option—held land granted them in fee, temporarily not taxed, which they cultivated for themselves, being aided also by the [Swedish West India] Company with occasional gifts of money, food, and raiment." Such "freemen" were distinguished from criminals forced to leave Sweden who had to work for a few years in New Sweden before they were classified as frimännen.

Those who believe that John Hanson was black might argue that his signing of the Proclamation of the Freemen of Maryland lends credence to the claim of African heritage. The Freemen of Maryland, however, was not an association of freed black slaves but of men advocating resistance to what they perceived as British tyranny in the period that led to the colonists' break with England. On July 26, 1775, the Freemen of Maryland resolved that the American colonies "be put into a state of defense" and approved armed resistance to British troops.

The Internet provides proponents of conspiracy theories with a way to reach a vast audience. Googling the phrase "John Hanson first black president" retrieves more than 350,000 hits. One website argues that because Hanson's signature is not to be found on the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, and that a black man appears in the engraving on the back of the two-dollar bill of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, therefore a conspiracy to keep knowledge of Hanson's African-American identity from the public must have occurred. Yet Hanson was not a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1776, the year in which all but one of the signers signed the Declaration. Hanson died before the Constitution was created. Hanson, however, as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention beginning in June 1780 did sign and ratify the Articles of Confederation on March 1, 1781. In addition, while the skin color of one figure on the back of the two-dollar bill is ambiguous, the engraving was based on the painting in the U.S. Capitol by John Trumbull of the signing of the Declaration. In the painting, none of the figures have black or brown skin.

Historians cannot claim to prove "beyond doubt" that occurrences in the past did or did not happen. In a recent book on historical epistemology, Allan Megill acknowledges that historians cannot provide proofs of absolute certainty to support knowledge claims about the past. "Some persons of hypercritical bent demand that all knowledge be certain knowledge," he writes. "Following established philosophical tradition, they take all certain knowledge to fall into one of two categories. These are, on the one hand, the immediately certain knowledge of one's experience and, on the other, the logical certainty that is accorded to valid deductive reasoning. Neither of these forms of certainty is attainable to historical knowledge, however." Even a seemingly indisputable factual proposition such as "Napoleon Bonaparte existed," Megill argues, cannot be proven with absolute certainty since the past cannot be experienced in the present and Napoleon's past existence cannot be proven using logical deductive reasoning.

Rather than look for proof "beyond doubt" of beliefs about the past, historians instead should try to determine how well beliefs in question help, in Megill's words, "make sense of the totality of the historical record." In cases in which two or more accounts are credible, he advises that "the responsible historian will clearly indicate that the matter is not beyond dispute."

Historians then will examine evidence that supports rival claims and judge which is the best explanation on the basis of such evidence, an operation he terms "inference to the best explanation." In cases in which one account "is far better at accounting for the totality of the data than the alternatives," he insists that "the historian has every right to claim that such-and-such was the case."

With regard to John Hanson, historians thus have the right to claim that he was not black, with one caveat. As with all European Americans, Hanson may have had African ancestors in the far distant past if the arguments of scientists who claim that all humans have roots in African hominids are to be accepted, as opposed to the views of scientists who offer claims that humans developed independently in multiple regions.