Wythepedia Marks 10th Birthday at Law School
George Wythe’s 300th birthday may be a couple of years away, but he’s on everyone’s mind these days with another milestone.
On May 1, 2024 (Law Day), Wythepedia: The George Wythe Encyclopedia marks its 10th birthday at William & Mary Law School.
Wythepedia is a public resource for George Wythe information and as a companion for the Wolf Law Library's George Wythe Collection. Launched privately on February 15, 2023, it has been viewed more than 21 million times since its public launch on May 1, 2014.
“Despite his pivotal roles as a professor, revolutionary and jurist, Wythe has always been a somewhat forgotten Founding Father,” said Linda K. Tesar, Head of Technical Services and Special Collections, and the project’s Managing Editor. “We designed Wythepedia to bring attention to Wythe’s contributions, particularly as a teacher to the likes of Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and Henry Clay.”
When Tesar arrived in 2009, the George Wythe Collection consisted of 27 titles (34 volumes). Research uncovered a new source for Wythe titles in 2010 and the collection has grown to 367 titles in 729 volumes.
“We originally conceived of it as a repository for all the research we had collected on George Wythe’s library,” Tesar said. “We expanded it to include his judicial decisions, his letters and papers and articles about aspects of his life.”
Although many of Wythe's papers disappeared soon after his death, the librarians found that many of his letters, case reports, and other manuscripts in Wythe’s handwriting survived, dating from the Continental Congress and the early days of Virginia's statehood. Now with the assistance of librarians, staff, and students, Wythepedia includes more than 5,300 pages and 3,200 files.
"Wythepedia is a great resource," said Professor Thomas McSweeney, whose research focuses on the early history of the common law. "I use it as my starting point when I need to find a digitized version of a legal text. If a legal treatise was written before 1800, there’s a very good chance Wythe had a copy in his library, and if he did, there’s a Wythepedia page. So if I need to look something up in Burn’s Ecclesiastical Law (4th ed. 1781) or Hening’s New Virginia Justice (1795), I can go to the Wythepedia page for that title, and there’s a link to a digitized version."
For several years now, William & Mary Law School’s Wolf Law Library has been proudly displaying its George Wythe Room, a recreation of the contents of Wythe’s eighteenth-century library. On the evening of Friday, December 1, members of the law community and George Wythe himself in the form of a Colonial Williamsburg reenactor gathered to officially dedicate the room as the George Wythe Boswell-Caracci Room. The event honored the generosity of two donors who make it possible to continue building the collection, James Boswell B.A. ’86 and Chris Caracci HON ’23.
Wythepedia/Wythe Collection Updates
The newest book in the Wythe collection is Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury’s Characteristicks, of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times &c. (1714-15).
The single most valuable book is William Stith’s “The History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia: Being an Essay Towards a General History of This Colony” (1747).
The volume the librarians were most excited to purchase was Volume 8 of “Plutarch's Lives” (1727) - the only one of George Wythe's actual books that the Law School owns.
The newest in-depth page of Wythepedia is “Wythe the Lawyer.”
The library is also working on adding letters found in the papers of Imogene Brown (one of Wythe's biographers).