I95151: NICHOLAS ARUNDELL (ABT 1400

Notes

From: http://www.history.org/almanack/people/bios/biowythe.htm
"George Wythe's signature is first among the Virginia signatures on the Declaration of Independence. Wythe was greatly respected by his fellow Virginians. Wythe was absent from that meeting and the other delegates left a space so that his signature would appear first.

"No man ever left behind him a character more venerated than George Wythe," Thomas Jefferson wrote. "His virtue was of the purest tint; his integrity inflexible, and his justice exact; of warm patriotism, and, devoted as he was to liberty, and the natural and equal rights of man, he might truly be called the Cato of his country. "

Jefferson learned the law from Wythe (pronounced "with"), and, in a manner of speaking, Wythe's signature on the Declaration was a teacher's endorsement of his pupil's finest brief.

If Wythe had accomplished nothing more than signing the Declaration and teaching Jefferson, he would have earned a place in history, but his life was crowded with achievement. He was, among other things, Virginia's foremost classical scholar, dean of its lawyers, a Williamsburg alderman and mayor, a member of the House of Burgesses, and house clerk. He was the colony's attorney general, a delegate to the Continental Congress, speaker of the state assembly, the nation's first college law professor, Virginia's chancellor, and a framer of the federal Constitution.

Among Wythe's other law pupils were John Marshall, perhaps the greatest chief justice of the United States, and St. George Tucker. When Wythe was Virginia's chancellor, Henry Clay was his assistant.

George Wythe was born in 1726 at Chesterville in what is now Hampton, Virginia, to Thomas and Margaret Walker Wythe. His father, a planter, died soon after. Wythe was reared by his mother and may have received his early education from her.

Margaret Wythe instilled in her son a love of learning that served him all his life. Even as an old man Wythe took up new subjects, teaching himself Hebrew, for example. George Wythe read law with his uncle Stephen Dewey who lived near Petersburg.

Admitted to the colony's General Court bar in 1746, Wythe practiced at first in Elizabeth City County and later with the prominent lawyer Zachary Lewis. In 1747 Wythe married Zachary's daughter Ann.

Wythe was admitted to the York County bar on January 16, 1748. Ann Wythe died on August 8 of that year. The widower was appointed clerk to the Committee of Privileges and Elections of the House of Burgesses in October.

He was elected a burgess for Williamsburg in 1754, and soon he married Elizabeth Taliaferro (pronounced Tolliver). She was the daughter of planter and builder Richard Taliaferro, who built what is now called the George Wythe House about 1755, and also made substantial repairs and additions to the Governor's Palace about 1752.

Taliaferro gave the couple life rights to the house.

When the House of Burgesses sent Attorney General Peyton Randolph to England as its agent in 1753, Wythe succeeded him, but resigned the office in Randolph's favor after Randolph returned in 1755. Wythe remained a Williamsburg burgess until 1758, when he was elected the burgess for the College of William and Mary. He represented the college until 1761, when he was elected for Elizabeth City County.

An early opponent of the Stamp Act, Wythe was appointed to the Committee of Petition and Remonstrance in 1764 and drafted the remonstrance to the House of Commons that protested against the tax. Nevertheless, Wythe, like Peyton Randolph and others, opposed freshman burgess Patrick Henry's stormy resolves against the act the next year, regarding them as redundant and ill timed.

Despite Virginia's deepening disputes with the Crown, Wythe maintained close friendships with governors Francis Fauquier and Norborne Berkeley, baron de Botetourt.

Jefferson met Wythe during Fauquier's administration. They were introduced by Professor William Small of William and Mary. Wythe in turn introduced Jefferson to Fauquier, who invited the young man to play his violin in a Palace amateur quartet. Soon Small, Wythe, Fauquier, and Jefferson often made a party of four at Palace dinners, where science, politics, morals and the like were ordinary topics of conversation.

Wythe was appointed to William and Mary's board in 1768, and on December 1 of that year he was elected Williamsburg's mayor. He became a vestryman of Bruton Parish Church in 1760 and was appointed clerk of the House of Burgesses on July 16, 1769. After the burgesses ordered that the Public Hospital be built in 1770, they named Wythe one of its trustees. He remained house clerk until 1775, when he was elected a delegate to the Second Continental Congress.

At the Congress another member of the Virginia delegation, Richard Henry Lee, rose on instructions from the Virginia Convention in Williamsburg and moved for American independence. Jefferson's declaration was approved July 4, but the document was not engrossed and ready for signing until August 2. By that time, Wythe had returned to Williamsburg; absent delegates signed afterward. Below Wythe's name appear the signatures, in order, of: Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, and Carter Braxton.

Though 50 years old, Wythe proposed to fight in the Revolution, but his service was in government. He worked on the drafting of the first Virginia constitution, written mostly by George Mason, and served with Jefferson, Mason, Thomas Ludwell Lee, and Edmund Pendleton on the committee that revised the state's laws. He also was one of two members who designed the state seal. It shows Virtue, sword in hand, with her foot on the prostrate form of Tyranny, whose crown lays nearby. The motto, "Sic Semper Tyrannis," may be translated, "Thus Ever to Tyrants."

In 1777 Wythe was elected speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates. Two years later he accepted appointment as professor of law and police in now-Governor Jefferson's reorganization of the College of William and Mary. It was the first such professorship in the nation. After the government moved to Richmond in 1780, Wythe taught classes, presided over moot courts, and conducted mock legislatures in the old Capitol.

Elizabeth Wythe died in 1787. Long a foe of slavery, George Wythe freed several slaves, including Lydia Broadnax; others he conveyed to Taliaferro relatives. Lydia chose to remain in Wythe's service.

Wythe accepted law students as boarders in his home and treated them as if they were the sons he had not had. His kindness was returned by admiring pupils like Jefferson, who called him "my faithful and beloved Mentor in youth, and my most affectionate friend through life."

Late in the1780s, student William Munford preserved a glimpse of Wythe's domestic establishment. "Old as he is," Munford wrote, "his habit is, every morning, winter and summer, to rise before the sun, go to the well in the yard, draw several buckets of water, and fill the reservoir for his shower bath, and then, drawing the cord, let the water fall over him in a glorious shower. Many a time have I heard him catching his breath and almost shouting with the shock. When he entered the breakfast room his face would be in a glow, and all his nerves were fully braced."

Wythe quit the college in 1789 in a dispute with the administration and accepted appointment as judge of Virginia's Court of Chancery in Richmond. He moved there in 1791, turning his house over to Taliaferro's heir, who died in 1792. William and Mary's president, the Reverend James Madison, bought the home in 1792.

Chancellor Wythe took the opportunity of one of his cases to try to cripple the institution of slavery. He ruled that Virginia's Declaration of Rights--written by Mason and adopted in 1776--included African-Americans among the "all men" born free and equally independent. They should, Wythe said, be considered free until proven otherwise. His ruling did not survive appeals.

Nearing the end of his life, Wythe wrote his will in favor of a grandnephew, George Wythe Sweeney, but with generous bequests to his former slaves Mathew Brown and Lydia Broadnax. A ne'er-do-well, Sweeney forged checks against Wythe's accounts to cover pressing debts. Hoping to avoid detection and to inherit under the will, he resorted to murder by poison. Strawberries or coffee seem to have been the vehicle. Brown died within days, but Wythe endured two weeks of agony. As he lay dying, Sweeney's forgeries were discovered and Wythe revised his will.

A grand jury indicted Sweeney for murder. Sweeney went free. All evidence was circumstantial. No witness was able to testify that he saw Sweeney poison the food. African-American Lydia Broadnax may have been in the kitchen when the food was poisoned, but she was not allowed to testify against a white person in court.

Wythe is buried at St. John's Church in Richmond, the church in which Patrick Henry made his "Liberty or Death" speech."
George Wythe House: http://www.history.org/Almanack/places/hb/hbwythe.htm

From http://www.earlyrepublic.net/BIOG-W.htm Wythe, George 1726 - 1806: After an active career in the Revolution, he took the first chair of law in an American college, namely William and Mary. After 1790, he resigned this position to conduct his own law school. Among his students were Henry Clay, John Marshall, and William Branch Giles.

Clerk of the Virginia House of Burgesses
Delegate to the First Continental Congress
Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates
First Professor of Law
Delegate to the Second Continental Congress
Chancellor of Virginia
Member of the Constitutional Convention
Signer of the Declaration of Independence

My Southern Family

NICHOLAS ARUNDELL

ABT 1400 - ____

ID Number: I95151

Sources

John BRYANT

ABT 1740 - ____

ID Number: I24397

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Richard CAUTHORNE I

1594 - ____

ID Number: I91830

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Henderson GRAVES

____ - ____

ID Number: I39935

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Sarah "Sallie" Kennedy HACKLEY

2 Feb 1867 - 16 Mar 1942

ID Number: I72376

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Alfred Harvey HARRISON

6 Oct 1895 - ____

ID Number: I47172

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JAMES LINDSAY

ABT 1431 - ____

ID Number: I100929

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Elzaphan RUCKER

1748 - ____

ID Number: I81659

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Thurzy A. WHITTINGTON

2 Oct 1820 - ____

ID Number: I43851

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Hon. George WYTHE of Virginia

1726 - 1806

ID Number: I56455

Notes

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Sarah YERBURY

ABT 1730 - 20 Dec 1788

ID Number: I87914

Notes

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