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George Wythe (1726–1806)

Role

In the 1780s George Wythe and Bushrod Washington exchanged letters regarding the tobacco business.

Description

George Wythe, the preeminent legal mind in eighteenth-century America, was born on 3 December 1726 at Chesterville, the family plantation in Elizabeth City County (present-day Hampton, Virginia). Educated by his mother, he studied law and gained admission to the bar. Thus began a distinguished legal and political career that included a lucrative practice in Williamsburg and service in the House of Burgesses, the Continental Congress, and the Virginia High Court of Chancery.

Citations

“George Wythe.” Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936. Gale In Context: U.S. History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/BT2310000130/UHIC?u=viva_uva&sid=bookmark-UHIC&xid=85f5ba5a. Accessed 15 Jan. 2023.

Julian P. Boyd, “The Murder of George Wythe,” The William and Mary Quarterly, Volume 12, Number 4 (October 1955), 51342.

Linda K. Tesar, “The Library Reveals the Man: George Wythe, Legal and Classical Scholar,” in Warren M. Billings and Brent Tarter, eds., "Esteemed Bookes of Lawe" and the Legal Culture of Early Virginia (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2017), 11336.

Wythe W. Holt, "George Wythe (1726 or 17271806)," Encyclopedia Virginia.

George Wythe at House History.

George Wythe at Find a Grave.

George Wythe at FamilySearch.