Re: Question's about George Wythe's (1726-1806) family.
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In reply to:
Re: Question's about George Wythe's (1726-1806) family.
Darin Wythe 6/15/07
A good deal of the information posted in this thread is not correct.George Wythe was the youngest of three children of Thomas Wythe III (w.d. 1728, w.p. 1729) and (m. 1719) Margaret Walker (d. 1746), one of the several children of George Walker and Ann Keith, in turn one of the daughters of the famous Quaker anti-slavery advocate George Keith.His older sister Anne Wythe married Charles Sweney (variously spelled) of Norfolk VA in 1744 and they had numerous (seven or eight) children (see more below); her will, probated in Norfolk, was dated 1790.His older brother Thomas Wythe IV married, though the name of the spouse is unknown, and had a will dated 1754 and probated 1755; he died childless.George Wythe, born in 1726 or 1727, was married twice, to Anne Lewis (d. 1748, probably in stillborn childbirth) and then to Elizabeth Taliaferro (d. 1789), but his only child (of the latter marriage) died an infant.All evidence of Wythe's murder in 1806 by arsenic poisoning (in a supper of strawberries and milk) points to his ward and great-nephew George Wythe Sweney, about 16 or 17 years old, a profligate rake and gambler who previously had stolen from Wythe to pay gambling debts and who was arrested two days after the poisoning for forging six checks on Wythe's account.Strawberries laced with arsenic were found in his room, and he had recently purchased the arsenic.Sweney was tried but acquitted, despite overwhelming circumstantial evidence, because Wythe as a judge had opposed slavery from the bench, and was rearing another ward, a young black man, by educating him in calculus, philosophy, literature, science, and the ancient languages to prove Jefferson wrong (who stated in print that negroes could not learn mathematics or philosophy) (the young black ward was also simultaneously murdered by arsenic), and no white jury in 1806 was going to convict a white man for murdering either a black man or the only respectable overt opponent of slavery at the time.Racism caused the subsequent false rumors of Wythe's sexual liaison with his black cook, but she was in her late 60s at the time, was also poisoned (though she lived), and proferred testimony against the great-nephew.The great-nephew and murderer was probably the son of George Wythe Sweney I and Jane Moore Sweney, and the grandson of Charles Sweney and Anne Wythe Sweney, but I have not yet been able to prove it.
More Replies:
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Re: Question's about George Wythe's (1726-1806) family.
Bill Davidson 2/24/10
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Re: Question's about George Wythe's (1726-1806) family.
Wythe Holt 2/24/10
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Re: Question's about George Wythe's (1726-1806) family.
Ben Phillips 11/23/12
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Re: Question's about George Wythe's (1726-1806) family.
Wythe Holt 11/24/12
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Re: Question's about George Wythe's (1726-1806) family.
Ben Phillips 11/24/12
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Re: Question's about George Wythe's (1726-1806) family.
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Re: Question's about George Wythe's (1726-1806) family.
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Re: Question's about George Wythe's (1726-1806) family.
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Re: Question's about George Wythe's (1726-1806) family.