Many serious academic works about Gershom Mendes Seixas repeat as fact that he officially “participated in the ceremonies” at the inauguration of George Washington. He did so as one of “fourteen clergy” so invited.According Jacob Rader Marcus, the source of this is the opinion of an important personality at Shearith Israel, N. Taylor Phillips. Based on the references in the footnote pictured here, it seems that the earliest time he claimed this was in 1896 (PAJHS #4). There he cites absolutely no evidence, and contemporary accounts of the actual ceremony show that the only “official” clergy involved was Samuel Provoost, who was the minister of the church where both Houses of Congress prayed as the official conclusion of the ceremony.My current hypothesis as to how Phillips got this idea is from the Griswold source in the pictured footnote. The earliest edition I could find was from 1855, over six decades after the inauguration. It describes the festivities leading up to the inauguration, including something that is actually validated in the contemporary press from 1789 (such as the New York Daily Advertiser), which is that all clergy in New York City had agreed to lead their congregations in prayer at 9:00 am before the noon ceremony, and that they actually carried out this intent. Griswold comments there that New York had 14 clergymen at the time, and he lists Seixas as one of them. However he makes no indication that he has confirmed their attendance; rather he is hypothesizing what the maximum attendance of clergy could have been in theory. And I’m not so clear whether this 9 am service counts as an “official” ceremony or in what sense Seixas might have been “invited” to hold such a service at Shearith Israel. But I am hypothesizing that this footnote is where it might have started with Phillips.The procession to the inauguration passed within half a block of Shearith Israel, so it *could be that Seixas was there after leading such a service. But that’s a very long way from “14 clergy including Seixas were invited to help with the official ceremonies of the inauguration.” Like, Hirschfeld’s “George Washington and the Jews” repeats this claim uncritically in 2005, well over a century after Phillips first started with it, and under the banner of the University of Delaware Press to boot!Got any better theories? Lay ‘em on me!