George Wythe - Move To Richmond and Manumissions

Move To Richmond and Manumissions

After the death of his wife Elizabeth in 1787, the widower Wythe left Williamsburg in 1791 and moved to Richmond. He took with him his housemaid and cook Lydia Broadnax (1740-after 1806), whom he had freed on 15 September 1787, a month after the death of his second wife. She was about 45 at the time. In addition, a young mixed-race youth Michael Brown, born free in 1790, lived with her for a time in Wythe's household. By 1797 Broadnax owned her own home, where she and Brown lived, and took in boarders. Wythe continued to take an interest in Brown's education and Broadnax worked for him as a cook.

Wythe freed Benjamin, another adult slave who worked as his servant in Richmond, on 29 January 1797, as well as others after that. Benjamin was named in Wythe's will.

By 1805, Wythe's grandnephew George Wythe Sweeney had come to live with him. The judge found that even at age 17, Sweeney had trouble with alcohol and gambling. He stole some of his uncle's books to sell and tried to cash a forged check to get funds.

A planter and slaveholder, Wythe became an abolitionist after the Revolutionary War. In addition to freeing his slaves, he provided them with support for their transitions to freedom. During the first two decades after the war, so many Virginians freed slaves that the percentage of free blacks in the state rose from less than 1 percent to nearly 10 percent by 1810.

Wythe also provided a settlement in his will for Broadnax and Michael Brown, by then 16 years old, including money for his continued education. Broadnax had worked for decades as his cook. He had taken an interest in Michael, taught him Greek and shared his library with him.

Fawn M. Brodie suggested that Broadnax was Wythe's concubine and Brown was their son. Philip D. Morgan notes that there had been no documented gossip about Wythe and Broadnax at the time, unlike the case of Jefferson and Hemings, covered by newspapers and in individuals' letters and diaries.s Wythe fathered only one child during two marriages, and both he and Broadnax appeared to be too old to have been parents to Brown.