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{{DISPLAYTITLE:''Disputes over land settlement in 18th-century western Virginia''}}
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{{DISPLAYTITLE:''An Introduction to ''Wythe's Reports}}
 
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Some of the cases on Wythe's docket involved competing claims for land. These claims often arose out of Virginia's history in trying to lay claim to its western frontier.
 
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==The land companies==
 
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Virginia's original 1609 charter granted it the land for 200 miles north and south of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Point_Comfort Old Point Comfort], located in present-day Hampton, from the eastern to western seashore. The Ohio Valley lay within this grant, but France also claimed that area, and the Virginia colonists knew they could not take on the French without help from London. In 1744, though, France signed a treaty that put it opposite Great Britain in the ongoing [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Austrian_Succession War of the Austrian Succession], and Virginia felt comfortable attempting to settle the valley.<ref>Otis K. Rice, ''The Allegheny Frontier: West Virginia Beginnings, 1730-1830'' (Lexington, KY: Univ. Press of Ky., 1970): 33-34.</ref>
 
  
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Virginia's colonial government arranged deals with land speculators to help settle this frontier because it had worked well before. The speculators would form land companies. Virginia then granted land to those companies, which sold title to the land to would-be settlers. Virginia would granted the land companies 1,000 acres of land for every family settled, so long as those families settled within four years from the original grant.<ref>Rice, 34.</ref>
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Some of the United States' Founders are better-known than others. Washington and Jefferson are always present in the popular mind. Before Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical, asking the average modern American about Alexander Hamilton would likely get a mumbled reply about the ten-dollar bill. One of the more obscure Founders is George Wythe. Today, if anyone encounters Wythe, it is usually as a supporting character in other Founders' stories: mentor, teacher, and friend to Jefferson; or committee chair calling for Virginia to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
  
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The Greenbrier Company was the first land company to get a grant. Its members were powerful and also had previous experience settling frontier lands, which likely helped it become one of the most successful land companies, and managed to successfully survey at least 50,000 acres of land in the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenbrier_%28Great_Smoky_Mountains%29 Greenbrier Valley].<ref>Rice, 34-35.</ref> Another land company, the Loyal Company, did not do as well; the Loyal Company lost at least one 50,000-acre land grant because they failed to settle any families there.<ref>Rice, 35.</ref>
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But Wythe played an important role in the United States's early days. William & Mary's -- and the United States' -- first law professor, he was a man of great integrity who greatly influenced some of the fledgling country's most important figures with jurisprudential ideas that were often ahead of their time. Why do Americans not know more about this teacher, judge, delegate to the Second Continental Congress, and signer of the Declaration of Independence? One reason may be a lack of documentation. Thomas Jefferson said he had often seen Wythe toss the documents he created while working on a case into the fire upon the case's conclusion.<ref>Kirtland, 5-6.</ref> The notes Wythe made as William & Mary's Professor of Law and Police scattered to places unknown long ago.<ref>For more information on the fate of Wythe's personal papers, see the Wythepedia article [[Wythe's Lost Papers]].</ref>
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==The French and Indian War and the Proclamation of 1763==
 
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The [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_and_Indian_War French and Indian War] complicated Virginia's expansion efforts. A poorly-executed offensive by British forces in 1755 depleted their ranks and forced them to retreat eastward. As a result, settlers in the Greenbrier Valley were practically defenseless against the French's American Indian allies. Practically all the settlers in the area abandoned their homestead that year to escape the slaughter.<ref>Rice, 40-41.</ref>
 
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==Military Land Warrants==
 
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In order to bolster its army's and navy's ranks during times of conflict, Virginia awarded land rights to people who served its military during the French and Indian War<ref>Daphne Gentry, "[http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/guides/va16_colonial.htm Colonial Wars Bounty Lands]," Library of Virginia, accessed October 24, 2014.</ref> and to those who served for at least three years in the Virginia army or navy or the Continental army.<ref>"[http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/guides/opac/bountyabout.htm About the Revolutionary War Bounty Warrants]," Library of Virginia, accessed Oct. 24, 2014.</ref> These land grants were often called "military warrants", and gave their holder the right to a certain amount of land in a designated area of Virginia's western frontier. A surveyor would later determine the land's precise boundaries.<ref>"About the Revolutionary War Bounty Warrants."</ref> Many of the veterans would never personally settle their gifted land, opting to sell their military warrants to speculators instead.<ref>"About the Revolutionary War Bounty Warrants."</ref>
 
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==After the French and Indian War==
 
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Great Britain gained large amounts of French territory when the French and Indian War concluded, but London still wanted to settle its relations with the American Indian tribes on the colonies' western frontier. As a result, King George III issued the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Proclamation_of_1763 Proclamation of 1763].<ref>Reprinted in Clarence S. Brigham, ''[https://archive.org/details/royalproclamations12brigrich British royal proclamations relating to America, 1603-1783]'' (Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 1911): 212, available at .</ref> This proclamation banned any British settlements west of the Allegheny Mountains, and with a few exceptions, settlers grudgingly complied.<ref>Rice, 59.</ref> This proclamation would present a problem for settlers down the road, as it made it effectively impossible for settlers to survey and register any land they had claimed before the French and Indian War began.<ref>Kirtland, 238.</ref>  
 
  
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The Loyal Company had more success after the French and Indian War was over and gained political influence; at the same time, the Greenbrier Company continued to be a powerful force. The Loyal Company claimed over 200,000 acres of land in western Virginia by the Revolutionary War. In addition, [http://www.history.org/Almanack/people/bios/biodun.cfm Virginia Governor Dunmore] told would-be frontier settlers that they would have to purchase land rights from either the Greenbrier or Loyal Companies or from veterans holding military land warrants.<ref>Rice, 78.</ref> In 1773, Governor Dunmore also issued an order allowing the Greenbrier and Loyal Companies to survey and develop their land grants, even though independent settlers were still not permitted to survey their claims in the area.<ref>Kirtland, 238, referring to "At a Council held December 16th 1773", in Vol. 6 of ''Executive Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia,'' ed. Benjamin J. Hillman (Richmond, VA: Va. State Library, 1966): 553-554.</ref>
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We do, however, have the collection of decisions he handed while sitting on the bench of Virginia's High Court of Chancery.  Wythe compiled a book of these cases, now known as ''Wythe's Reports''.<ref>George Wythe, ''[[Wythe's Reports|Decisions of Cases in Virginia by the High Court of Chancery]]'' (Richmond: Printed by Thomas Nicolson, 1795).</ref> Several decades after Wythe died, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Blake_Minor Benjamin Blake Minor] edited a second edition of the ''Reports'' that added some more decisions Wythe intended to be published.<ref>George Wythe, ''[[Wythe's Reports|Decisions of Cases in Virginia by the High Court of Chancery with Remarks upon Decrees by the Court of Appeals, Reversing Some of Those Decisions|Decisions of Cases in Virginia by the High Court of Chancery]],'' 2nd ed., ed. B.B. Minor (Richmond: J.W. Randolph, 1852).</ref>
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==The Virginia Land Law of 1779==
 
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By the late 1770s, someone who struck out on their own to claim land in western Virginia might have found themselves contending with multiple conflicting claims for the land they had settled; a person holding a military warrant might survey out the land for their use, and the Greenbrier and Loyal Companies still had vaguely-defined claims to thousands of acres. In 1779, the Virginia Assembly passed a law that created the Virginia Land Office as well as a system for settling disputes over land claims. The Land Law of 1779<ref>Ch. 12, 10 Hening 35; Ch. 13, 10 Hening 50 (May 1779 session).</ref> validated claims to land that were surveyed by an accredited county surveyor before 1778. Coincidentally, most accredited country surveyors belonged to either the Greenbrier or Loyal Companies, so rival land companies' claims ended up invalid under this law.
 
  
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Surveys of claims under 400 acres made before 1763 were also deemed valid, as were claims made under military warrants from the French and Indian War. Settlers on land who had arrived before 1778 could buy 400 acres for a small fee, and had preemption rights (the right to buy land provided no one had previously established title to it<ref>Bryan A. Garner, ed., "preemption", ''Black's Law Dictionary'' (St. Paul, MN: Thomson Reuters, 10th ed., 2014): 1369.</ref>) to buy 1,000 adjacent acres at a cost of £40 per 100 acres. The Greenbrier and Loyal companies scored a big win, though, when the law confirmed thousands of acres-worth of their land claims that they had surveyed out.<ref>Rice, 129.</ref>
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The ''Reports'' contain cases that Wythe heard as Virginia's High Chancellor, the judge who sat on the commonwealth's High Court of Chancery, a court of equity. In the Anglo-American legal system, equity developed as an alternative set of remedies to the common law system; equity was supposed to provide a soultion when the common law outcome would not provide proper justice. In the early days of the United States, many states had separate courts to hear equity cases. Equity cases usually involved property, contract, and inheritance disputes, so those are the cases the reader will find in ''Wythe's Reports''. Wythepedia has created pages for each of the decisions in the ''Reports'' summarizing the case and its background and explaining references to sources Wythe cited. We can think of ''Wythe's Reports'' as his version of a casebook, the textbooks that modern law students are familiar with. Wythe excerpts and summarizes the court's decisions, sometimes including subsequent appeals to other courts, then comments on them. Wythe hopes that by reading his commentaries on the courts' decisions, future lawyers and students of law will reach a better understanding of the law as it was in Virginia and how he thought it ''should'' be.  
  
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The law created divided the area in Virginia around the Ohio Valley into four districts. The Governor of Virginia appointed a four-person commission to each of those districts to rule on any outstanding disputes over land claims.<ref>Rice, 129.</ref> Under the law, someone could appeal the commissions' decisions to the General Court of Virginia, whose word would be final.<ref>Kirtland, 239, citing Ch. 13, Hening, 10: 48.</ref> The Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, however, would weigh in on one of these disputes in [[Maze v. Hamiltons]], a case in which both Wythe and his nemesis Edmund Pendleton sat on the court.  
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Wythe's ''Reports'' demands a lot from its readers. Wythe frequently cited or alluded to Ancient Greek and Latin works (often in their original language, with no English translation), as well as more recent classic authors such as Cervantes, Dante, and Shakespeare. He frequently used shorthand references and terms of art that lawyers of his era would understand, but which 21st-century readers may find baffling. Wythe frequently left out information such as how the case arrived before him or facts that Wythe found irrelevant to the point he was trying to make. Often, if a Wythe decision was appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, that higher court's opinion would be a better source for the facts of the case.
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Properly understanding Wythe's decisions also means knowing their historical context. Many of the cases Wythe decided were influenced by events that were familiar to educated people in his day, but are esoteric history to modern Americans. Wythe also believed that Roman law principles were sometimes superior to English legal precedent, and cautioned against blindly following England's caselaw. Wythe believed, as did many of his contemporaries, that as a new country, the United States might wish to follow European-style civil law principles rather than Anglo common law.<ref>Timothy G. Kearley, "From Rome to the Restatement", ''Law Library Journal'' 108(1) (Winter 2016): 60.</ref>
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Another important piece of subtext lurking within ''Wythe's Reports'' is its author's long rivalry with [[Edmund Pendleton]], President of the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. Wythe had arguably the most brilliant jurisprudential mind of his generation, and he was rarely defeated when he argued a case. The gregarious Pendleton, however, was a master litigator and one of the few people capable of defeating Wythe in court. As President of the Supreme Court, Pendleton reversed a substantial number of Wythe's decisions.
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Wythepedia articles on the cases in ''Wythe's Reports'' summarize the case, and include notes and links to useful articles that can better explain the conflict and reasoning in the case. Wythepedia also includes articles that fill in the background behind a number of these decisions. ''Wythe's Reports'' can be a treatise on Virginia law and equity, a snapshot of life in Virginia during the late 18th century, and a profile of one of this nation's most underappreciated Founders. We hope you find our case summaries useful.
 
==References==
 
==References==
 
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[[Category:Cases]]
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==References==
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<references/>

Latest revision as of 15:31, 26 May 2017


Some of the United States' Founders are better-known than others. Washington and Jefferson are always present in the popular mind. Before Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical, asking the average modern American about Alexander Hamilton would likely get a mumbled reply about the ten-dollar bill. One of the more obscure Founders is George Wythe. Today, if anyone encounters Wythe, it is usually as a supporting character in other Founders' stories: mentor, teacher, and friend to Jefferson; or committee chair calling for Virginia to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

But Wythe played an important role in the United States's early days. William & Mary's -- and the United States' -- first law professor, he was a man of great integrity who greatly influenced some of the fledgling country's most important figures with jurisprudential ideas that were often ahead of their time. Why do Americans not know more about this teacher, judge, delegate to the Second Continental Congress, and signer of the Declaration of Independence? One reason may be a lack of documentation. Thomas Jefferson said he had often seen Wythe toss the documents he created while working on a case into the fire upon the case's conclusion.[1] The notes Wythe made as William & Mary's Professor of Law and Police scattered to places unknown long ago.[2]

We do, however, have the collection of decisions he handed while sitting on the bench of Virginia's High Court of Chancery. Wythe compiled a book of these cases, now known as Wythe's Reports.[3] Several decades after Wythe died, Benjamin Blake Minor edited a second edition of the Reports that added some more decisions Wythe intended to be published.[4]

The Reports contain cases that Wythe heard as Virginia's High Chancellor, the judge who sat on the commonwealth's High Court of Chancery, a court of equity. In the Anglo-American legal system, equity developed as an alternative set of remedies to the common law system; equity was supposed to provide a soultion when the common law outcome would not provide proper justice. In the early days of the United States, many states had separate courts to hear equity cases. Equity cases usually involved property, contract, and inheritance disputes, so those are the cases the reader will find in Wythe's Reports. Wythepedia has created pages for each of the decisions in the Reports summarizing the case and its background and explaining references to sources Wythe cited. We can think of Wythe's Reports as his version of a casebook, the textbooks that modern law students are familiar with. Wythe excerpts and summarizes the court's decisions, sometimes including subsequent appeals to other courts, then comments on them. Wythe hopes that by reading his commentaries on the courts' decisions, future lawyers and students of law will reach a better understanding of the law as it was in Virginia and how he thought it should be.

Wythe's Reports demands a lot from its readers. Wythe frequently cited or alluded to Ancient Greek and Latin works (often in their original language, with no English translation), as well as more recent classic authors such as Cervantes, Dante, and Shakespeare. He frequently used shorthand references and terms of art that lawyers of his era would understand, but which 21st-century readers may find baffling. Wythe frequently left out information such as how the case arrived before him or facts that Wythe found irrelevant to the point he was trying to make. Often, if a Wythe decision was appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, that higher court's opinion would be a better source for the facts of the case.

Properly understanding Wythe's decisions also means knowing their historical context. Many of the cases Wythe decided were influenced by events that were familiar to educated people in his day, but are esoteric history to modern Americans. Wythe also believed that Roman law principles were sometimes superior to English legal precedent, and cautioned against blindly following England's caselaw. Wythe believed, as did many of his contemporaries, that as a new country, the United States might wish to follow European-style civil law principles rather than Anglo common law.[5]

Another important piece of subtext lurking within Wythe's Reports is its author's long rivalry with Edmund Pendleton, President of the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. Wythe had arguably the most brilliant jurisprudential mind of his generation, and he was rarely defeated when he argued a case. The gregarious Pendleton, however, was a master litigator and one of the few people capable of defeating Wythe in court. As President of the Supreme Court, Pendleton reversed a substantial number of Wythe's decisions.

Wythepedia articles on the cases in Wythe's Reports summarize the case, and include notes and links to useful articles that can better explain the conflict and reasoning in the case. Wythepedia also includes articles that fill in the background behind a number of these decisions. Wythe's Reports can be a treatise on Virginia law and equity, a snapshot of life in Virginia during the late 18th century, and a profile of one of this nation's most underappreciated Founders. We hope you find our case summaries useful.

References

  1. ↑ Kirtland, 5-6.
  2. ↑ For more information on the fate of Wythe's personal papers, see the Wythepedia article Wythe's Lost Papers.
  3. ↑ George Wythe, Decisions of Cases in Virginia by the High Court of Chancery (Richmond: Printed by Thomas Nicolson, 1795).
  4. ↑ George Wythe, Decisions of Cases in Virginia by the High Court of Chancery with Remarks upon Decrees by the Court of Appeals, Reversing Some of Those Decisions|Decisions of Cases in Virginia by the High Court of Chancery, 2nd ed., ed. B.B. Minor (Richmond: J.W. Randolph, 1852).
  5. ↑ Timothy G. Kearley, "From Rome to the Restatement", Law Library Journal 108(1) (Winter 2016): 60.

References

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