George Wythe was born in 1726 in Chesterville, a plantation in Virginia in Elizabeth City County, now Hampton, Virginia. The plantation was owned and operated by three generations of George’s family before his birth, so he was already part of a deep Virginia legacy in the American colonies of Great Britain.
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George’s father passed away when George was still young, and he was raised primarily by his mother, Margaret Walker, a woman who was raised as a Quaker and who was well-educated. She instilled a love of learning into young George. She also influenced his religious beliefs. George became known for his outdated Quaker clothing in his later years, as well as for his gentle and unassuming manner, which one contemporary said could cause a surly dog to “unbend and wag his tail.”
After George lost his father, he likely attended grammar school in Williamsburg, Virginia. After leaving grammar school, George went to train for a career in law in the office of his uncle, Stephen Dewey, in Prince George County, Virginia.
George was admitted to the bar in Elizabeth County, Virginia, in 1746. This was the same year his mother passed away. After this, George moved to Spotsylvania County, Virginia, and opened a legal practice that operated in several of the local Piedmont counties. George married Ann Lewis in 1747. She was the daughter of George’s mentor, Zachary Lewis. Sadly, George and Ann were not married long, as Ann passed away. in 1748. Widowed and without children, George moved back to Williamsburg, Virginia, devoting himself to law and scholarship. George also embarked on a distinguished career in public service at that time. His personal motto after moving to Williamsburg was “Secundis Dubiisque Rectus,” which is Latin for “Upright in Prosperity and Perils,” a motto that suited George’s personality quite well.
George practiced law and secured his first government job in 1748, thanks to family connections. This job was as a clerk to two well-respected Virginia House of Burgesses members. George parlayed this job into many public service positions over the years, becoming a well-known and respected public leader in Virginia and the colonies as a whole.
George’s elder brother Thomas passed away in 1755 without heirs, which made George the heir to the family plantation, Chesterville. He was also appointed to the Elizabeth City County court position that Thomas and their father had both held before him. He continued to live in Williamsburg, doing his legislative work, and remarried to Elizabeth Taliaferro. Her father was Richard Taliaferro, who built George and Elizabeth a house in Williamsburg called Wythe House, even though George was only given a life estate on the property after Elizabeth passed away before him.
George was known for being quiet, modest, and dignified (one reverend referred to George as “the only honest lawyer I ever knew”), but did gain a reputation as a political radical when he vocally and openly opposed the British Stamp Act in 1765. He also opposed any efforts of the British to control the American colonies after the Stamp Act. This, along with a lengthy list of public service offices he’d occupied since his second marriage, put him on the public radar enough to lead him to the Continental Congress.
George spent the next several years tutoring and mentoring a local star law student, Thomas Jefferson. Their association with each other and mutual respect and affection for each other lasted all their lives, with one of Thomas’s grandsons even being named after George, with the middle name Wythe.
When war with Great Britain seemed clearly likely to happen, George was elected as a delegate from Virginia to the Second Continental Congress in 1775 to replace George Washington, who was taking command of the Continental Army. George and Elizabeth moved to Philadelphia, were both inoculated against smallpox, and George began his work as a Founding Father of the United States. It was in this position that he signed the Declaration of Independence when it was approved by and presented to the Continental Congress.
George continued in public service after leaving the Continental Congress, including being a judge in Virginia, a teacher, and a member of the Constitutional Convention that wrote and created the new governing document of the newborn United States of America. His wife Elizabeth passed away in 1787. Two days after she passed away, he freed his long-time cook, Lydia Broadnax, and she and a young, free, mixed-race man named Michael Brown eventually owned their own home near George, where they took in boarders.
George took an interest in Michael’s education and taught him Greek, the law, and many other higher education points. He even made Michael a beneficiary in his will, but Michael passed away before George.
In 1805, George’s great-nephew George Wythe Sweeney, a grandson of his sister, had come to live with him. That spring, George realized the youngster had stolen some of his books, most likely to repay gambling debts and to support his disreputable lifestyle. In 1806, George, Lydia, and Michael all became violently ill, with George’s personal physician and friends at first suspecting cholera. George, however, claimed his great-nephew had poisoned him and the other two people, and testimony to authorities from Lydia, who saw the great-nephew with suspicious white powder and papers that could be rat poison, seemed to confirm this. However, as Lydia was African-American, Virginia law did not allow her to testify in court at the time.
The great-nephew tried to cash a check on George’s bank account while he was ill, which made the bank look at previous checks that were cashed, as it was well known in town at that point that George was ill. George denied signing the past few checks. The great-nephew was jailed, and George refused to post bail for him. After receiving word that Michael Brown had passed away, George revised his will to disinherit the great-nephew in favor of his other great-nieces and nephews, Charles, Jane, and Ann Sweeney. George also asked his doctors to be sure and do an autopsy on him if he passed away.
Lydia recovered from the illness that was suspected to be poison, while Michael and George passed away, with George going home in June of 1806. While the great-nephew was charged with poisoning George (but not Lydia or Michael, due to their ethnicity), he was acquitted at trial. He was convicted on a separate check forgery charge, which was overturned on appeal. He moved to Tennessee, where he was arrested and jailed for stealing a horse, and then disappeared into history.
