56 Facts About George Wythe

George Wythe was an American academic, scholar and judge who was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.

The first of the seven signatories of the United States Declaration of Independence from Virginia, Wythe served as one of Virginia's representatives to the Continental Congress and the Philadelphia Convention and served on a committee that established the convention's rules and procedures.

George Wythe left the convention before signing the United States Constitution to tend to his dying wife.

George Wythe was elected to the Virginia Ratifying Convention and helped ensure that his home state ratified the Constitution.

George Wythe taught and was a mentor to Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, Henry Clay and other men who became American leaders.

George Wythe became a member of the House of Burgesses in 1754 and helped oversee defense expenditures during the French and Indian War.

George Wythe opposed the Stamp Act of 1765 and other British taxes imposed on the Thirteen Colonies.

George Wythe was a delegate to Virginia's 1776 constitutional convention and helped design the Seal of Virginia.

George Wythe served as a judge for much of his life, first as a justice of the peace and then on the Virginia Court of Chancery.

George Wythe remained particularly close to Jefferson and left Jefferson his substantial book collection in his will.

George Wythe became increasingly troubled by slavery and emancipated all of his slaves at the end of the American Revolution.

Wythe died in 1806, apparently from poisoning, and his grand-nephew George Sweeny was tried and acquitted for Wythe's murder.

George Wythe was born in 1726, at Chesterville, the plantation operated by three generations of the George Wythe family in what was then Elizabeth City County but is Hampton, Virginia.

George Wythe was admitted to the bar in Elizabeth City County in 1746, the same year in which his mother died.

George Wythe then moved to Spotsylvania County to begin legal practice in several Piedmont counties.

The childless and bereaved widower returned to Williamsburg; there, George Wythe made law and scholarship his life, as he began what would become a distinguished career in public service.

George Wythe continued to practice law before those committees and the General Court in Williamsburg, as was permitted at the time.

In 1750, George Wythe was first elected as one of Williamsburg's aldermen.

George Wythe inherited the family's Chesterville plantation and was appointed to his brother's place on the Elizabeth City County court.

George Wythe probably continued to live in Williamsburg, for his legislative work continued, and he married Elizabeth Taliaferro.

George Wythe served as Williamsburg's delegate through the sessions of 1754 and 1755.

George Wythe helped oversee defense expenditures related to the French and Indian War.

Meanwhile, George Wythe maintained close friendships with successive Governors Francis Fauquier and Norborne Berkeley, 4th Baron Botetourt.

In 1762, Small suggested George Wythe supervise the legal training of a star student, Thomas Jefferson, which had profound impact that went beyond their lives.

George Wythe predicted popular violence if the trial unfairly favored the aristocratic defendant.

In 1767, George Wythe introduced Jefferson to the bar of the General Court, and Jefferson was appointed clerk to the House of Burgesses.

George Wythe ordered printed journals of the House of Commons and case law books from London.

George Wythe accepted many assignments relating to military, currency and other matters.

When petitions and other attempts failed to resolve the crisis by the following summer while Dunmore's raiders harassed Virginia settlements from its waterways, George Wythe moved and then voted in favor of the resolution for independence that Jefferson had drafted upon his return.

Just weeks earlier, on New Year's Eve, George Wythe had reportedly helped scare another raiding party back to their British ship.

George Wythe served on a committee with Jefferson and Edmund Pendleton to revise and codify its laws and helped establish the new state court system.

George Wythe replaced Pendleton as speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates the following term.

In 1787, George Wythe became one of Virginia's delegates to the Constitutional Convention.

Proficient in Latin and Greek, as well as known for his devotion to books and learning, George Wythe initially taught students on a near-individual apprenticeship basis.

George Wythe developed experiential tools, including moot courts and mock legislative sessions, tools that are still used today.

George Wythe then resigned from the college and announced that he planned to move to Richmond to concentrate on his judicial duties.

In Richmond, George Wythe continued his pursuit of knowledge and even began learning Hebrew from Rabbi Seixas.

In 1777, George Wythe became one of the three judges on the newly-formed High Court of Chancery.

George Wythe was elected to serve as a federal judge on the Court of Appeals in Cases of Capture in 1780, but he declined to serve.

In 1802, the legislature created two more territorial Chancery Courts, but George Wythe remained in Richmond.

However, Chancellor George Wythe's decisions were modified or overruled many times, particularly by the appeals court that his former student Spencer Roane joined in 1794.

In 1795, George Wythe published analyses of some of his cases and subsequent appellate decisions and added a few more pamphlets later.

In Roane v Innes, Wythe upheld Revolutionary War soldiers' pension claims but was reversed.

George Wythe grew more anti-slavery as time went on, and emancipated all of his slaves at the end of the American Revolution.

George Wythe had taken an interest in Brown, taught him Greek and shared his library with him.

On January 29,1797, George Wythe freed Benjamin, another adult slave who continued to work as his servant in Richmond; George Wythe named Benjamin a beneficiary in his 1803 will, which included money for Brown's continued education.

George Wythe authored two legal opinions that attempted to steer Virginia away from the slave-based legal and economic system that entrenched in the early 19th century.

However, that decision was appealed, and in 1799, after Virginia passed a law forbidding abolitionists from serving on juries in freedom suits, George Wythe's decision was modified by the appellate court led by Pendleton and Roane.

In one of Wythe's last cases, Hudgins v Wright, Wythe "singlehandedly tried to abolish slavery by judicial interpretation," according to Paul Finkelman.

George Wythe examined the women and noted that all three generations of the family showed only Indian and white ancestry, with no evidence of African ancestry.

Wythe's former student St George Tucker affirmed Wythe's ruling only on the particular and limited nature of Indian enslavement in the state.

George Wythe revised his will in early 1806 because Thomas Jefferson had agreed to educate the young mulatto Brown, although those new provisions would have no effect if Brown died before Sweeney, as happened.

The bank retrieved several earlier checks, which George Wythe had previously denied signing.

Gravely ill but still trying to work on legal matters, George Wythe refused to post bail for Sweeney, who was jailed.

George Wythe died on June 8,1806, and Sweeney was charged with poisoning George Wythe and Brown with arsenic.

Places associated with George Wythe remain preserved today, and over the centuries other places have been named in his honor:.