George Wythe's home rises on the Palace Green here in Colonial Williamsburg. This handsome, rectangular two-story house was built in the 1750s, constructed between 1752 and 1754, and was conceived as a whole with no additions to its original plan. It once belonged to George Wythe’s father-in-law, Richard Taliaferro, and it became the home of George Wythe — a signer of the Declaration of Independence and called the father of American jurisprudence — when he married Taliaferro’s daughter Elizabeth in 1755.
The couple received the house as a wedding present and later a life tenancy upon Taliaferro’s death in 1779; Elizabeth lived here until her death in 1787. George Wythe moved to Richmond in 1791 to serve as a judge. Stand here and imagine the summer of 1781, when the house served as headquarters for General George Washington from September 14 to 17 and again from September 22 to 28, just before the Siege of Yorktown.
The property’s long national significance was recognized when it was declared a National Historic Landmark on April 15, 1970. Notice the façade, then the Palace Green stretching toward the Governor's Palace nearby.