The Murder of George Wythe

Lloyd Dobyns: Hi! Welcome to Colonial Williamsburg: Past & Present on history.org. This is “Behind the Scenes” where you meet the people who work here. That’s my job. I’m Lloyd Dobyns, and mostly I ask questions. This time, I'm asking Jim McDonald, and at Colonial Williamsburg, he's supervisor of the Wetherburn and Raleigh taverns, but he used to be the lead interpreter of the Wythe House, which is what we want to talk about. One of the great stories from Williamsburg in the early days, actually it wasn't Williamsburg, was the murder of George Wythe. You know all about that.

Jim McDonald: A little bit, a little bit, Lloyd.

Lloyd: That'll do. That's a little bit more than I know. Now, at the time he was killed, he had left Williamsburg to go to Richmond, right?

Jim: Yes.

Lloyd: Who killed him?

Jim:  Well, first, we need to go back to the original question, and rephrase it slightly. He was allegedly murdered. There was a trial, as he would have been very proud of, taking place. And, the culmination of that trial was the individual in question was released.

Lloyd: Only because?

Jim: Only because of several extenuating circumstances which would have made George Wythe slightly happy, and slightly sad, at the same time. The murder, or alleged murder, took place up in Richmond. His grandnephew, George Wythe Swenney, was the one accused of this. The accused not only was accused of murdering George Wythe, but also of murdering a young boy by the name of Michael Brown, who was currently living with George Wythe at the time.

When we take a look at the court trial as it transpired, what we're looking at is testimony that was being given in the trial by way of African Americans living in Richmond at the time. One in particular, Lydia Broadnax, who was his cook here in Williamsburg, was disallowed, because the testimony of blacks against whites at that period of time was not admitted into court as official evidence. 

Lloyd: I got off to a bad start because I know, and I'm interested in it, but the audience may not know: who was George Wythe?

Jim: George Wythe is one of our founding fathers here in Virginia, he is a signer of the Declaration of American Independence. He served briefly at the Constitutional Convention up in Philadelphia, prior to his wife's death. I know him, more notably, as the first professor of law at the College of William and Mary, which was the first law school here in North America. Also serving as, I would say legal advisor, but law teacher to Thomas Jefferson.

Lloyd: In his day, he was very well known.

Jim: Yes he was, yes he was. He was very well known as a lawyer, as a great statesman, and, here within the city of Williamsburg, as a great friend to many individuals in the political world.

Lloyd: He is less known now, and I've always been curious why he sort of faded. Do you have any guess?

Jim: Well, I believe, as many of our past and current members of the political world will tell you, that the work that they do should be, I don't want to say transparent, but should be behind the scenes. He was an individual who worked throughout his entire life to assist people. And when the capitol moved from Williamsburg to Richmond, he eventually moves up there, giving up his post at the College of William and Mary. He served briefly at the Constitutional Convention, but once the Constitution takes place and sets this framework for the United States as we know it today, he comes back to Richmond, and there he just takes on his life serving as a public servant for the Commonwealth of Virginia. He does not go on to the higher levels of government as we would find James Madison and Thomas Jefferson doing later on. 

Lloyd: In Williamsburg, if I have got this correct, he was one of three men who rewrote the laws of the Commonwealth?

Jim: He, along with Thomas Jefferson and Edmund Pendleton, were appointed to serve as a committee to visit the laws, and to recommend to the General Assembly up in Richmond what they felt would be a good direction for the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia to move into. George Wythe, I believe, worked on the section of laws from 1688, so, the British Commonwealth period, beginning of that, to, I believe, the American Revolution. So, that period of time right there.

Lloyd: Back to his grandnephew, and I've always loved him, because he was named Swenney, and I can't help but think of Sweeney Todd.

Jim: Well actually, his name was spelled two ways. It was S-w-e-n-n-e-y, and S-w-i-n-n-e-y.

Lloyd: So it's either "Swenney," or "Swinney."

Jim: Thomas Jefferson learns of the murder of George Wythe through a Major Duval, who is living up in Richmond at the time. Duval is writing letters, and he spells Swenney's name with an "i." Some of the court records actually have it with an "e." So it’s spelled both ways.

Lloyd:  Murder – the alleged murder, to satisfy your requirement – how?

Jim: How. George Wythe Swenney, at the time, we need to keep in mind, is between 16 and 17 years of age. He's living up in Richmond with George Wythe, his granduncle. While he is up there, he appears to have gotten in with the wrong crowd. He's drinking, he's gambling an awful lot, and he needs money. While he's living with his granduncle, he begins to take books out of his library and sell them. He eventually goes ahead and forges his uncle's name to bank drafts, which is another part of the case that comes out a little bit later.

One morning, he is spied by Lydia Broadnax, George Wythe's cook, as going into his uncle's office and opening up his uncle's desk, and inside there, taking out a piece of parchment that's wrapped up with a ribbon that Lydia later informs the court that she was told by Master Wythe was his last will. And he's reading through that will, and in the will, he supposedly reads that he is going to come into a large inheritance. But Michael Brown, this young mulatto boy who is living with George Wythe, is also going to get something out of the estate. However, if Michael should die, Swenney would get everything.

What eventually happens and transpires then, is that on a morning, Lydia and Michael are having breakfast -- there are some strawberries, there is some coffee, and the like. George Wythe normally took his breakfast in his room, that Lydia would bring up to him. But on this day, he decided to come downstairs and have his breakfast, which was coffee, and I believe, some strawberries. A day or two later, the entire household became ill. Michael became sick, Lydia became sick, George Wythe became sick. Eventually, Michael Brown will die, George Wythe will linger on. During this period of lingering on, he begins to hear, from his friends who come to visit him, events that are transpiring that lead him to believe that George Wythe Swenney is the individual who is behind all of this.

Lloyd: In modern terms, in today's terms, George Wythe Swenney would certainly be referred to as a teenage loser.

Jim: Could be, could be.

Lloyd: Let's see, he's stolen from his uncle, he's poisoned some poor little boy who, all he's going to do is just share, and he really wants it all. I've always been delighted that George Wythe lasted long enough.

Jim: To get him out of the will? Well, there were several codicils to the will, because this took several days to go through. Eventually, at the end, Swenney is taken out of it entirely. So, many of the men who called George Wythe their friend saw this as a way of pointing to the person who murdered him. Because his last words supposedly were, "I am murdered." Then he passed on. But, when we take a look at what happens in court, it's remarkable. William Wirt and Edmund Randolph, who are two of George Wythe's closest friends and colleagues, represented Swenney at the trial, and were the individuals who were instrumental in gaining for him his acquittal.

Lloyd: Oh well, I guess the law requires you to do what you have to do, whether you like it or not, but that seems a little farfetched.

Jim: That's exactly what George Wythe would tell you. George Wythe would tell you that the law comes first, and the law, at that time, said a black or Negro could not give testimony against a white individual in court. And that is exactly what they used in order to get the testimony of Lydia, and several others, out of the proceedings.

Lloyd: Do we know what the poison was?

Jim: George Wythe Swenney supposedly went and tried to find ratsbane, he went to find some other chemicals to mix up. He had gained the advice of a fellow by the name of Greenhow that told him that ratsbane was illegal in Virginia, but somehow he got his hands on either ratsbane or arsenic. The doctors, when they opened up Michael Brown to examine him in an autopsy, found evidence that suggested poison. That's also one of the reasons why George Wythe Swenney is acquitted, because the doctors in question could not affirm 100 percent that it was poison.

Lloyd: He certainly wasn't shot in the head.

Jim: No he wasn't, he wasn't.

Lloyd: Lydia got sick, too, right?

Jim: Lydia becomes ill, but fortunately for Lydia Broadnax, she survives. Maybe her constitution was a bit stronger.

Lloyd: At that point, she had already been freed by Wythe, right? She was a free black.

Jim: She was manumitted, yes. When his second wife, Elizabeth Taliaferro Wythe, passed away here in Williamsburg, he goes through the process of manumitting, or setting free, several of his slaves. Lydia is one of them, and Lydia maintains her residence here with George Wythe, staying on as his cook in Williamsburg. When she moves to Richmond, that's where her name, Lydia Broadnax, comes into play. Here in Williamsburg, she's always referred to as Lydia. The first reference we have to her as being Lydia Broadnax is in Richmond. So she moves up there, and it appears that either she's acquired some money, or Mr. Wythe has set her up with some money, and she's purchased a boarding house. She's running a boarding house there. She comes to Wythe every day, and she performs the duties that she did here in Williamsburg, and that is as a housekeeper and a cook.

Lloyd: One that I have no idea, so it's all new to me: what happens to George Wythe Swenney?

Jim: George Wythe Swenney. Well first, he's accused of murdering his uncle, he's accused of murdering Michael Brown. They acquit him on both instances, because of what we spoke of earlier, the testimony. He's also charged with forging his uncle's name on bank drafts, and this is where William Wirt really does his work. Forgery, at the time that the attorney general for Virginia was trying to use in court with George Wythe Swenney, was a law that was put together in the 18th century to protect private individuals from someone forging their name on drafts, such as real estate transactions, and bills of exchange, and things like that. William Wirt's argument in court was that the Bank of Virginia is a public institution, and not a private institution. So, the law that they currently had on the books had no effect on this. So although George Wythe Swenney did forge his uncle's name, and the bank teller said yes, he did, they had all the evidence, the law wasn't there to support it. And so he was let off on a technicality again.

Lloyd: There are trials today where I sometimes have to bite my tongue, because the lawyers seem, to me, to be getting around the law by coming up with legal and clever arguments. Which also seems to me to be the case there.

Jim: One little addition to this though, is that six or seven months after George Wythe dies, the General Assembly of Virginia gets together and passes a law, making what has just happened illegal. So they revised the earlier law to include public banks, and public obligations and things of that nature.

Lloyd:  George Wythe changed the laws of the Commonwealth one more time.

Jim: By his death he did, yes.

Lloyd: Do we know what happened to Swenney in the end? He beat the rap, as we say, but do we know where he went, what he did?

Jim: Initially, he is found guilty of forgery, and he is sentenced to be in prison and taken out once a month for an hour to stand in the pillory. But that, by another court, is excused. The punishment is excused. From that point, Edmund Randolph, William Wirt, and Major Duval who I mentioned, all mention that he leaves Richmond, and he travels out west. Once he goes out west, he is not heard of ever again.

Lloyd: Let us hope he became Billy the Kid.

Jim: Possibly, or maybe he met a quicker death than Billy the Kid did.

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