George Wythe was the man who made Jefferson a lawyer. He was Virginia's first delegate to the Continental Congress. He signed the Declaration. He became the first law professor in the United States. He freed the people he had enslaved and provided for them in his will. He was poisoned in his own home at age 80. His correspondence with Jefferson spans 36 years.
Thomas Jefferson began reading law under George Wythe in 1762, at age 19. He studied with Wythe for five years — longer than was standard for the period. Jefferson later described Wythe as "my faithful and beloved mentor in youth, and my most affectionate friend through life." Wythe's earliest surviving letter to Jefferson is at Founders Online, dated March 9, 1770 — sending nectarine grafts and apricot vines with advice on surviving a difficult period after Jefferson's house at Shadwell burned.
You bear your misfortune so becomingly, that, as I am convinced you will surmount the difficulties it has plunged you into, so I foresee you will hereafter reap advantages from it several ways.
Jefferson wrote of Wythe throughout his correspondence. In a 1786 letter from Paris, Jefferson described him to a correspondent as someone whose "example, if it is known, would be worth more than all the lectures in the world."
Wythe was Virginia's first delegate to the Continental Congress. He signed the Declaration of Independence on August 2, 1776 — the first of the seven Virginia signatories. Three weeks earlier, on July 27, he had written Jefferson a letter about the pressing work of establishing Virginia's new government, referencing the Declaration that had just been adopted.
I fear the Congress will have but few who are capable of forming a good Constitution. You must therefore return. Send your excuse to the house; for god's sake return.
Wythe was urging Jefferson to leave Congress and return to Virginia to help draft the state's new constitution. Jefferson did return — after signing. The Declaration is at Yale Avalon.
In 1779, Thomas Jefferson — by then Governor of Virginia — reorganized the College of William and Mary. The professorship of moral philosophy was replaced with a chair of Law and Police. George Wythe was appointed to it. He became the first professor of law in the United States. He held the position until 1791. Among those who studied law under him at William and Mary:
Jefferson, writing from Paris in 1786, sent Wythe a letter on the importance of public education to the survival of republican government. The letter is at Founders Online. It is one of the most complete statements Jefferson made on the relationship between an educated citizenry and self-government.
I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom and happiness. If anybody thinks that kings, nobles, or priests are good conservators of the public happiness, send them here. It is the best school in the universe to cure them of that folly.
George Wythe died on June 8, 1806, in Richmond, Virginia. He was 80 years old. The cause of death was arsenic poisoning. His grand-nephew, George Sweeney, was indicted for murder. Before he died, Wythe changed his will to exclude Sweeney. He also provided in his will for the freedom and support of Lydia Broadnax, a woman he had freed years earlier, and Michael Brown, a young man of mixed race whom Wythe was educating and had named as a beneficiary of his estate — Brown had also been poisoned and died two weeks before Wythe.
Sweeney was tried in Richmond. He was acquitted. Under Virginia law at the time, Black witnesses could not testify against white defendants. Lydia Broadnax, the only witness to the poisoning, could not take the stand. The trial record and the Richmond Enquirer's June 1806 coverage are documented at Wythepedia, the George Wythe Encyclopedia at William and Mary Law School.