2 Hours of American History Mysteries Explained

On June 8, 1806, an 80-year-old man lay dying in his Richmond home, his body ravaged by two weeks of unrelenting agony.

But this wasn't an ordinary old man.

He was one of the Founding Fathers.

He'd signed the Declaration of Independence, and he'd personally mentored many great men, including Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and Henry Clay.

And now, with his final reserves of strength, George Wythe delivered a self-diagnosis that none of his attending physicians were willing to accept.

He looked at the men gathered around his bed and told the men that he had been poisoned.

To understand why Wythe's death sent shockwaves across the nation, you have to understand who he was.

Born in 1726 in Elizabeth City County, Virginia, Wythe rose from a modest planter family to become one of the most consequential legal minds of the 18th century.

He studied law under his uncle and was admitted to practice before the Virginia General Court at the remarkably young age of 20.

He went on to serve multiple terms in the House of Burgesses, acting as its clerk for nearly a full decade.

He represented Virginia at the Second Continental Congress and became the first of seven Virginians to sign the Declaration of Independence.

But Wythe's legacy wasn't built on politics alone.

In 1779, he was appointed professor of law at the College of William and Mary, the first such position at any American institution.

His students shaped the country and Jefferson himself credited Wythe as the man who made him an honest and powerful advocate, both for his clients and for his country as a whole.

John Marshall went on to become arguably the most influential Chief Justice in American history, while Henry Clay became one of the most powerful senators the country ever produced.

By 1805, Wythe's household in Richmond consisted of four people.

There was Wythe himself, still serving as a judge at 80.

There was Lydia Broadnax, a freedwoman who'd been his housekeeper and cook for over 20 years.

There was also Michael Brown, a freed teenager Wythe was personally educating.

And then there was George Wythe Sweeney, Wythe's grandnephew, sent to live with the old judge in the hopes that some of his character might rub off.

Sweeney was 17 or 18, and he was a disaster to say the least.

He drank, gambled, and ran up debts at the taverns and gambling dens clustered around Richmond's seediest areas.

When his money ran out, he started stealing, pilfering rare books from Wythe's library and selling them at public auction.

Then he graduated to forging Wythe's signature on bank checks, at least six by the spring of 1806.

Wythe, ever the optimist about human nature, forgave the thefts and even revised his will to ensure Sweeney would still inherit despite his personal crimes against him.