George Wythe was born in 1726 at Chesterville plantation in Elizabeth City County, Virginia, the son of Thomas Wythe III and Margaret Walker Wythe. His father died when George was very young, and his mother became the central figure in his upbringing. Margaret was well educated for a colonial woman and reportedly taught him Latin and encouraged his reading. Wythe briefly attended the College of William and Mary but did not complete a degree. He studied law first under his uncle Stephen Dewey and then through extensive independent reading. His early progress was uneven; later tradition suggests that as a young man he participated in the sociable and sometimes dissipated life of Virginia gentlemen before adopting habits of intense study and discipline. He was admitted to the bar in 1746 and developed a practice in the Tidewater and Williamsburg. Legal work brought him into contact with land, debt, commerce, slavery, and the machinery of royal government. Wythe also learned Greek and deepened his knowledge of classical history and philosophy, eventually becoming one of the most scholarly lawyers in the colonies. His first wife, Ann Lewis, died within a year of their marriage. He later married Elizabeth Taliaferro, whose family connections and Williamsburg property provided stability. They had no surviving children. Wythe increasingly devoted himself to law, public service, and teaching younger men. Before becoming a signer of the Declaration and America’s first professor of law, Wythe had been shaped by paternal loss, instruction from an educated mother, incomplete college attendance, apprenticeship, self-correction, bereavement, and unusually deep independent scholarship. His experience convinced him that character could be cultivated through disciplined study. The contradiction between Virginia slavery and classical ideals of liberty also became increasingly important to him, contributing to antislavery actions later in life.