Cholera was often fatal within 48 hours, and Richmond resi­dents stood by with bated breath, waiting to see if an epidemic threatened. As that deadline of fear came and went, Broadnax began to recover, though the trauma she experienced permanently damaged her eyesight. Meanwhile Brown and Wythe remained in critical condition, the judge all the while stubbornly rejecting the doctors’ original diagnosis. Wythe insisted fervently that he and his housemates had been poisoned by his ne’er-do-well grandnephew and namesake, 18-year-old George Wythe Sweeney.

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Sweeney, the grandson of Wythe’s sister Anne, was a frequent visitor to the Wythe home. He sometimes stayed for weeks or months and had assumed an air of entitlement, as if he were Wythe’s own son. The brash, headstrong and irresponsible young man came and went as he pleased, and Wythe tried to exert a positive influence on him without much success. Sweeney was a regular at Richmond’s notorious gambling dens, and to pay his prodigious debts, he was not above selling books stolen from Judge Wythe’s prized library or even kiting checks using his uncle’s name. The exasperated judge finally threatened to cut his profligate nephew out of his will if he didn’t change his ways.

The night before the mysterious illness descended on the Wythe household, Broadnax had come upon Sweeney in the judge’s office, reading his will. Moreover, she told the doctors and others who came to visit the ailing judge, Sweeney acted mighty peculiar the morning everyone took sick. He insisted that Broadnax, whom he called “Aunt Liddy,” fix him some toast before she made his uncle’s breakfast. While she was busy at the griddle, Sweeney poured himself a cup of coffee. She noticed him fiddle with the coffeepot’s lid and toss a small piece of paper into the stove. Then he quickly ate the toast, finished his coffee and hurried out the door.

Two days later, Sweeney cashed a $100 check with his uncle’s signature at the Bank of Richmond. Knowing the judge’s grave condition—and aware that Sweeney had passed bad checks on at least six other occasions—the bank president called for a constable. With Sweeney already under suspicion of forgery, Wythe’s doctors agreed to search the young man’s room for evidence of poison. They found a bowl of strawberries and a glass vial that contained a suspicious white powder.

On June 1, Michael Brown died. He was the last in a long line of young men that Wythe had taken under his wing and tutored over the years. Back in Williamsburg, the Wythe house was always full of students and their guests, surrogate children to George and Elizabeth. White students weren’t the only ones to benefit from this largesse. Wythe was convinced that blacks were as intelligent as whites and, given the same opportunities, would be just as successful. Moreover, he was so fond of Brown that he had planned to leave part of his considerable estate to him. Now, with Brown’s death, that share was slated to be added to Sweeney’s inheritance.

Gravely ill and overwhelmed with grief, Wythe sent for his lawyer, Edmund Randolph, and wrote his nephew completely out of his will. The next day, June 2, Sweeney was arrested on forgery charges and incarcerated in the Henrico County jail. Wythe refused Sweeney’s request to post the $1,000 bail.

George Wythe died on June 8, and Richmond prepared an elaborate funeral, the largest held in the state’s history to that time. Hundreds of somber official mourners—members of Congress, state legislators, judges and lawyers—crammed the statehouse on June 11 for the eulogy by William Munford, another Wythe protégé. Businesses in the city shut down for the day, and thousands of Virginians quietly lined Main Street as the funeral procession traveled the three miles to the gravesite at St. John’s Church, where Patrick Henry had given his famous “Give me liberty or give me death” speech. But one very important person was not in attendance: Because of slow mails, President Jefferson did not learn of his dear friend’s death until the day after the funeral.

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