evidence: In July 2022, readers asked us to look into the veracity of quotes that appeared in a meme titled, "Damn Those Pesky Facts." The meme had been shared on Facebook and displayed several quotes about Christianity and religion that purportedly came from four men, three who were Founding Fathers. The names shown above the remarks included former U.S. Presidents Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison, as well as author Thomas Paine. [...] The second Adams' quote in the "Damn Those Pesky Facts" meme read, "The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or Mohammedan nation." We found that this quote has also been attributed to former U.S. President George Washington, not Adams. This felt a bit like a red flag to us that perhaps the quote did not really come from Adams, or maybe either of the men at all. [...] We reached out to the team with Washington's estate at MountVernon.org to see if they had resources that could help establish if Washington truly said or wrote these words, as it appeared it did not come from Adams. In response, one of its staff told us that it appeared to be a "poorly paraphrased and modified text" from the same Treaty of Peace and Friendship from 1796 that was mentioned in the previous quote. (Separately, they pointed us to a different quote from 1790 that is believed to perhaps be Washington's most important remarks regarding freedom of religion and "religious tolerance.")