George Wythe

George Wythe was born in 1726 in Elizabeth City County at his family’s home of Chesterville. As a second son in a family of moderate means, he chose law as his profession and qualified to practice in 1746. From that modest beginning, Wythe launched a successful career augmented by a variety of public service positions, including a brief stint as Virginia’s youngest Attorney General. When revolution erupted, Wythe participated as a delegate to the Continental Congress, signed the Declaration of Independence, and briefly represented the Commonwealth at the Constitutional Convention. In addition to his contributions on the national stage, Wythe’s fellow Virginians selected him to help rewrite Virginia’s code of laws, to preside over Virginia’s Constitutional ratifying Convention, and, in 1778, to serve on the newly created High Court of Chancery.

Wythe originally began his teaching career in the traditional 18th century manner of instructing apprentices to his legal practice. Historians believe Wythe started instructing apprentices in his Williamsburg home before 1762 when Thomas Jefferson began to read law, but no records verify or identify earlier students. Subsequent Wythe apprentices included James Madison (president of William & Mary College) and St. George Tucker (Wythe’s successor as professor of law and police).

In 1779, William & Mary’s Board of Visitors reorganized the college and created the chair of Professor of Law and Police -- the first of its kind in America and only the second in the English-speaking world. The Board appointed George Wythe to fill the new chair, making Wythe both William & Mary’s first law professor and the first law professor in the country.

Wythe lectured twice a week and assigned readings from major legal treatises such as William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England and Matthew Bacon’s New Abridgment of the Law. He also introduced the use of mock trials and mock legislatures to American legal education in an effort to prepare his students for roles as “citizen lawyers”. Wythe’s students included John Marshall and Bushrod Washington as well as three future Virginia Supreme Court Justices and numerous future Congressmen and Senators. In 1789, the Virginia High Court of Chancery, on which Wythe had served since its inception in 1778, relocated to Richmond. This change and Wythe’s growing unhappiness with the direction of academic life at the College caused Wythe to resign his position as professor. He moved to Richmond where he continued his judicial career until his death in 1806.

Further Reading

• Blackburn, Joyce. George Wythe of Williamsburg. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.

• Brown, Imogene E. American Aristides: A Biography of George Wythe. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, c1981.

• Clarkin, William. Serene Patriot: A Life of George Wythe. Albany, New York: Alan Publications, 1970.

• Dill, Alonzo Thomas. George Wythe: Teacher of Liberty. Williamsburg, Va.: Virginia Independence Bicentennial Commission, 1979.

• Hemphill, William Edwin. "George Wythe, the Colonial Briton: A Biographical Study of the Pre-Revolutionary Era in Virginia." PhD diss., University of Virginia, 1937.

• Hemphill, William Edwin. "George Wythe: America’s First Law Professor and the Teacher of Jefferson, Marshall and Clay." Masters thesis, Emory University, 1933.

• Holt, Wythe. "George Wythe: Early Modern Judge," 58 Alabama Law Review (2007), 1009-1039.

• Kirtland, Robert Bevier. George Wythe: Lawyer, Revolutionary, Judge. PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1983.

• Loker, Aleck. George Wythe: Venerable Statesman, Jurist and Educator. Williamsburg, Va.: Solitude Press, 2007.

• Shewmake, Oscar L. The Honourable George Wythe: Teacher, Lawyer, Jurist, Statesman: An Address Delivered Before the Wythe Law Club of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, Dec. 18, 1921. Richmond, Va., 1950.