WASHINGTON, GEORGE, President. Autograph check signed ("G: Washington"), Mount Vernon, [Virginia], 5 February 1799. 1 page, oblong, 65 x 155 mm. (2½ x 6 1/8 in.), cut cancellations not affecting signature, evenly browned, folds reinforced on verso.

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Price realised USD 2,820

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WASHINGTON, GEORGE, President. Autograph check signed ("G: Washington"), Mount Vernon, [Virginia], 5 February 1799. 1 page, oblong, 65 x 155 mm. (2½ x 6 1/8 in.), cut cancellations not affecting signature, evenly browned, folds reinforced on verso.

"The Cashier of the Office of Discount & Deposit, Baltimore, will please pay the Hon.^lG. Wythe or bearer the sum of one hundred and twenty five dollars and chg the same to my account....".

THE FIRST PRESIDENT TO THE FIRST AMERICAN PROFESSOR OF LAW Less than a year before his death, Washington wrote out this check to George Wythe, signer of the Declaration of Independence, a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and the first professor of law in the United States. Wythe was immensely influential and respected in Virginia law and politics; it was most probably he who designed the state seal. Together with his law students, Thomas Jefferson and Edmund Pendleton, Wythe undertook the immense task of revising Virginia laws. The establishment in 1779 of the "Professorship of Law and Police" at the College of William and Mary (a board decision led by Jefferson) placed Wythe as the first chair of law in an American university. Wythe filled the position admirably, his erudition and logic laying the foundation for American jurisprudence. In addition to Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall and Henry Clay were among his students.

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