Then there’s the strange and sad case of Jefferson’s mentor and father-figure, George Wythe (pronounced “with”). Wythe, like Washington and Jefferson, was born of the planter class and he detested slavery as an evil system that was going to destroy the country. Unlike Jefferson he had money- he was a good manager of the cash he inherited and he earned more money through real estate and banking and his law practice he earned from the plantations and slaves he inherited from his parents and his wives. (Unlucky in love: by his late 50s he’d outlived two wives, all of his children and his only grandchild.)
After the death of his second wife he did what he’d wanted to do for some while: he freed every slave he owned. This was before the “one year to leave the state” ruling so it was easier for the slaves to make their living- some stayed on his land as tenant farmers and his domestics (including his cook Lydia Broadnax) continued living at his home in Williamsburg and worked for wages.
In his sixties Wythe took a peculiar interest in a mulatto boy named Michael. As the kid would have been born a couple of years after Wythe’s last wife died and as he is always referred to as mulatto and nothing known of his parents it’s speculated that he was Wythe’s son by a black concubine who also died. (Fawn Brodie, a historian who did a great job of establishing the circumstantial evidence for Jefferson’s paternity of the Hemings children but also made some leaps that are just flatly not justifiable, asserted as fact that Michael was the son of Wythe and Lydia Broadnax, but nowhere in the many documents is she referred to as his mother [his parents are never referenced at all] and best evidence is she would have been in her fifties when he was born.)
Whoever Michael was and whatever Wythe’s interest, the interest was real. Michael lived in Wythe’s house sleeping in a bedroom (i.e. not in servants’ quarters). Michael was educated by tutors; Wythe so loved the boy that when he was an old man he asked his protege and friend Thomas Jefferson to be the boy’s guardian in the event of his death and Jefferson agreed. This no doubt raised eyebrows, particularly those of Wythe’s grandnephew George Wythe Sweney who lived in the household as well.
Sweney was a horror. Addicted to alcohol and gambling, a total ne’er do well, he was caught stealing from his uncle and forging checks on his granduncle’s accounts and essentially told “one more time and you are disowned and outta heah”. Deeply in debt to gamblers who were threatening him, he forged checks again to pay his debts, then to stop his uncle from realizing it and to go ahead and get his inheritance he entered the kitchen where Lydia was cooking, took a packet of powder he identified vaguely as “rare spices” that were a “gift” for his uncle and put them in the cooking pot and yet didn’t eat himself that morning. (Neither did Lydia as she was feeling queasy.) The breakfast was served to Michael and Old Wythe.
Both the old man and the young boy were soon in convulsions and bedridden. George Wythe lapsed into a coma and Michael died. When the old man regained consciousness he was told what had happened and was devastated over Michael’s death. He did the only revenge he could muster: he sent for his will, completely disinherited the nephew and requested his nephew file full charges on behalf of the estate for any improprieties the nephew was suspected of, and then he died.
Open and shut case: Lydia saw the poison packet, she served the poisoned food to her former master and his ward herself, she was there when they took ill and died and there was plenty of evidence from all sides as to Sweney’s means and motives. Result: George Wythe Sweney was found guilty… of forgery. That’s all.
Lydia Broadnax, even though she was free and witnessed the entire encounter, was not allowed to testify against a white man. The appeal to intervene in this decision went all the way to the Supreme Court and to Thomas Jefferson who happened at this time to be president as well as the executor of the estate. Jefferson refused to intervene.
Perhaps it was because he felt it was an abuse of power. Perhaps it was because of the rumors of Michael’s paternity and the fact that he was knee deep in the rumors about Sally Hemings circulating at the time. Whatever the case it was a new low for free blacks. The only justice that came at all was Sweney, who everybody knew was a murderer, did at least serve time for forgery and the courts upheld the will- he got absolutely nothing. He disappears at this time but oral stories have him dying in poverty in Kentucky.
I mention this because it points to Jefferson the political animal and it also points to how even free and educated blacks were perceived. Jefferson apparently did feel some guilt and he provided for Lydia the rest of his days in spite of his meager resources by the end. Her master left her a house in Williamsburg and a pension but Jefferson’s ledger show where he paid for her doctor’s bills, eyeglasses, work to her house, etc., for the rest of his life.
I’ve always thought this would make a great play, incidentally.