George Wythe: VA Signer of the Declaration of Independence
George Wythe was born in 1726 to Thomas III and Margaret (Walker) Wythe at Chesterville Plantation in Elizabeth City County, Virginia. His family ancestry can be traced back to England on his paternal side, from when his great-grandfather, Thomas Wythe, came to Virginia around 1680, from Norfolk, England. Wythe’s mother was a Quaker, the daughter of George Walk and Ann Keith. Her Grandfather, George Keith, was a well-known scholar of his day. Three years after he was born, his father passed away and left his mother in moderate circumstances. Wythe’s older brother inherited the estate because of the primogeniture laws in place. The family estate no longer exists, as it was burned to the ground in 1911, and Elizabeth City County is now known as Hampton County. The remains of the house appear to be a large pile of bricks, located in a grove, near the intersection of Virginia State Routes 27 and 172. The family’s lands are now part of the Langley Research Center.
Wythe’s education begins at home when his mother teaches him Latin, Greek, grammar, logic, and rhetoric before she dies. His brother then becomes his guardian, and by 1740, he is attending William and Mary’s Grammar School. In 1742, he decided he wanted a career in law and studied under his uncle, Stephen Dewey, in Charles City before returning to Chesterville in 1744 and studying the law on his own.
He was admitted to the bar in Spotsylvania County in 1746 and opened a practice with John Lewis. He rode to Williamsburg, presented himself for examination, and received his law license on June 18, 1746. Initially, he lives with Zachary Lewis, whom he helps, and takes an interest in Lewis’s daughter, Ann. Ann and Wythe married on December 26, 1747, but she would die eight months after the wedding. There are no children from this union. Following her death, Wythe was in deep mourning and would later write that he drowned his sorrows in the local area inns.
By 1748, Wythe had moved to Williamsburg and joined his late wife’s uncle, Benjamin Waller, in practice. He was also the Clerk of the Privileges and Elections Committee, as well as the Propositions and Grievances Committee in the House of Burgesses. He was not a member of the House, though. Then, in 1754, he was appointed the King’s Attorney after the Royal Governor had a falling out with Peyton Randolph. He was not in this position long, as he became a Member of the House of Burgesses from Williamsburg when Armistead Burwell passed away. However, he does not stay in the House long, as he would not win re-election.
1755 would prove to be a sad yet happy year for Wythe, as his brother passed away and he inherited his father’s estate. Then he marries Elizabeth Taliaferro, the daughter of Richard Taliaferro. As a wedding gift, her father built the couple a house in Williamsburg, now known as the Wythe House, located in what is now Colonial Williamsburg, and through this foundation, the home can be toured. Wythe would live there for more than thirty years, with his bride. They would have one son, who died in infancy. There were no other children. Elizabeth passed away in 1787.
The College of William and Mary chose Wythe as its representative to the House of Burgesses in 1758. He then strikes up a friendship with the new Royal Governor Francis Fauquier. They would meet, along with another professor, for small, informal dinner gatherings where they would talk about a variety of subjects, including morals, science, and politics. In 1760, they would be joined by Thomas Jefferson, who was studying law under Wythe. Jefferson began studying law under Wythe around 1759 and would continue his studies for the next five years before embarking on his own legal career. It would be a lifelong and close friendship between the two men. Jefferson would later refer to Wythe as “my second father.”[1]
The Stamp Act rears its ugly head in 1765, and. Wythe writes a letter to Parliament stating that Parliament cannot tax the colonists because they have no representation in that body. He would oppose Patrick Henry’s resolutions, deeming them too radical. They had not yet received a response from Parliament, and proceeding with the resolutions would be premature. Then, in 1768, he was elected the mayor of Williamsburg and promptly clashed with Royal Governor Lord Dunmore. From 1765 until 1775, his loyalties gradually shifted from loyalist to firm supporter of the patriots’ cause.
In August of 1775, he was chosen as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress and took his seat that same month. During the spring of 1776, he attends the Virginia Convention, where he argues in favor of Jefferson’s plan of state government. Wythe and Jefferson would rewrite much of the Virginia Statute Codes beginning in late 1776, and it would be finished by 1779. He does not vote on July 2 but does sign the Declaration on August 2, 1776. His last act in Congress was to have Jefferson, Franklin, and Dean appointed as agents in France. He left Congress in 1777 and returned to Williamsburg, where he would remain for the duration of the war.
Upon his return to Williamsburg in 1777, he was elected Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, then appointed Justice of the Chancery Court, and would serve in this position until 1788. In 1779, Jefferson and the Reverend James Madison created the Chair of Law and Police at the College of William and Mary. Wythe was appointed the first professor of this department. Here, Wythe would use mock legislative sessions and moot court to tutor his students. Some of his students went on to do remarkable things for this country, such as Henry Clay, James Monroe, and John Marshal. Chief Justice Marshall spent only six weeks with Wythe, and this was the only legal training he received. Wythe would resign from this position in 1789 and then receive an honorary degree from the school in 1790.
He was appointed a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 but had to leave on June 2 to be with his ill wife. He officially resigned his position on June 18, 1787. His wife passed away on August 18, and after her death, he freed some of his slaves. He does not return to Philadelphia, nor does he sign the Constitution. However, he was a delegate to the Virginia Ratifying Convention and served as Chairman of the Committee of the Whole. He offers a resolution for ratification and then votes to formally ratify the Constitution.
After the Ratifying Convention, Wythe moved to Richmond with his student William Munford to be closer to the Chancery Court. He would live in Richmond for the remainder of his life. Munford described Wythe this way:
“Old as he is his habit is, every morning, winter, and summer, to rise before the sun, go to the well in the yard, draw several buckets of water, and fill the reservoir for his shower bath, and then drawing the cord, let the water fall over him in a glorious shower. Many a time I have heard him catching his breath and almost shouting with shock. When he entered the breakfast room his face would be in a glow and all his nerves were fully braced.”[2]
The following years would see additional law students as well as written and political work.
In 1795, Wythe published Decisions of Case in Virginia by the High Court of Chancery; with Remarks Upon Decrees of the Court of Appeals Reversing Some of Those Decisions. He would cover a variety of cases in this publication, but he does attack Edmund Randolph, who had a habit of reversing Wythe’s decisions. Then in 1800 and 1804, he would serve as a Presidential Elector, casting votes for his former student Thomas Jefferson. President Jefferson would write:
“No man ever left behind him a character more venerated than George Wythe. His virtue was of the purest tin; his integrity inflexible, and his justice exact; of warm patriotism, and devoted as he was to liberty, and the natural and equal rights of man, he might truly be called the Cato of his country… my faithful and beloved Mentor in my youth, and my most affectionate friend through life.”[3]
One final act, both personal and political, was his freeing of his slaves at Chesterville.
On May 25, 1806, Wythe was given arsenic by his grandnephew, George Wythe Sweeney, who had found out about some changes Wythe had made in his will. Wythe had learned that his grandnephew was stealing from him, and in April of 1803, he changed his will to leave the majority of his estate to his grandnephew, who was the principal heir. Still, he left half of his estate to Michael Brown, a black law student who studied under Wythe. Michael had been one of the slaves Wythe had freed and was his last student. Wythe believed, “blacks were intelligent as whites and, given the same opportunities, would be just as successful.”[4] If Michael died, then Sweeney, as the principle heir, would inherit the legacy left to Michael.
George Wythe, Michael, and Lydia[5] sat down for breakfast together and drank some coffee that Sweeney had laced with arsenic.[6] Lydia would later tell the investigators that Sweeney had been acting funny just before they ate breakfast. All became sick instantly, with Michael Brown dying within a week and Wythe following in death on June 6. Lydia, the housekeeper, was the only person to survive. Wythe was convinced that his grandnephew had murdered him and told the doctors, but they thought he had cholera. He called for his lawyer, Edmund Randolph, on June 2, and wrote Sweeney out of his will. Ironically, Randolph would represent the grandnephew at trial.
In the meantime, Sweeney was trying to cash checks he had forged with Wythe’s name on them. But by the time he did, word had spread that Wythe was ill, and the bank President called the authorities to report Sweeney for forgery. He was arrested, and bail was set, with Wythe refusing to post bail. After his arrest, the doctors finally decided to search his room in Wythe’s home and, there, they found strawberries and ratsbane, a form of arsenic, in a vial.
Sweeney was put on trial in what appeared to be an open-and-shut case. Three doctors were assigned to perform the autopsy on Wythe, but they mishandled the procedure. They were the same three doctors who had initially misdiagnosed him, as well, and would not testify that he had been poisoned with arsenic. Furthermore, the doctors failed to perform the necessary tests to determine if it was arsenic poisoning, such as testing the lungs or heart for inflammation, or checking for external signs of poisoning. Lydia, the housekeeper, was an unimpeachable witness, but her testimony was thrown out because she was black. She was not allowed to testify before the jury and no white person, she told the events to could testify either, because the information came from a black person. Ironically, these were the same laws that Jefferson and Wythe had wanted to remove when they revised the Virginia Code in the late 1700s. They decided, at the time, that the public was not ready to accept that type of proposition.
Edmond Randolph, Wythe’s attorney, and William Wirt represented Sweeney for their own selfish reasons. Randolph wanted to restart his career after his reputation had been damaged as United States Attorney General for mishandling money, and Wirt wanted to jumpstart his legal career. In fact, Wirt believed there was no doubt Sweeney had committed the crime. Through their successful defense, Sweeney was cleared of murder charges, as well as forgery charges, the day after his murder trial ended, because there were no laws on the books regarding commercial banks; therefore, the law of forgery only applied to a person and not an institution. Within months, the Virginia legislature changed the forgery laws. Still, it would not change the law regarding blacks testifying against whites, even though it was obvious that Sweeney had murdered Wythe and that Lydia’s testimony would have convicted him. These laws would finally be changed in 1867, but it was too late for justice in the Wythe and Brown cases.
George Wythe died on June 6, 1806, and was buried in St. John’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia. His funeral was the largest the state had seen at that time and was attended by many dignitaries. Thomas Jefferson was not there because he did not learn of Wythe’s death until the day after the funeral, due to the slowness of the mail. Wythe, in his will, left Jefferson his entire library and philosophical items.
Tidbits Related to George and Martha Washington through marriage. He was of medium height and well-proportioned with blue eyes. He ate a mostly vegetarian diet and had a rigid schedule of work and studies. Unostentatious in his appearance and habits, he was described as being polite and courteous. He insisted that his clients tell him the truth, and if they failed to do so, he would drop them as a client and return their money. Like other signers, the revolution was hard on his finances due to his public service as well as the mismanagement of his estate by an estate superintendent. His salary as a chancery court judge would help him through his financial problems, and he emerged from debt soon after. |
[1] Kiernan, Denise, and Joseph D’Agnese. Signing their lives away: the fame and misfortune of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence (Philadelphia: Quirk Books, c2009) 191
[4] Chadwick, Bruce. “The Mysterious Death of Judge George Wythe” American History 43, (Feb. 2009): 39
[5] Lydia was one of the slaves Wythe had freed in 1786, and she remained his housekeeper.
[6] One account of the incident notes that Wythe had his breakfast taken up to him.
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