Wirt, William, 1772-1834

William Wirt was born on November 8, 1772, in Bladensburg, to Jacob Wirt and Henrietta Shaw. He attended Rev. James Hunt’s Academy and read law with William P. Hunt and Thomas Swann. He was admitted to the bar of Virginia in 1792 and the Baltimore bar in 1818. He married Mildred Gilmer on May 28, 1795 and together they had one child. After her death in 1799, he married Elizabeth Washington Gamble in 1802 and together they had twelve children, of which six daughters and three sons lived to adulthood. He was the prosecuting attorney in the trial of Aaron Burr in 1807. Wirt was appointed as the 9th U.S. Attorney General by President James Madison, serving in the position from 1817 to 1829, where he argued four major cases: Gibbons v. Ogden, McCulloch v. Maryland, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, and Worcester v. Georgia. Wirt was also a prolific writer and published several books to include: “Letters of the British Spy,” “The Old Bachelor,” “The Rainbow,” and many others. He delivered a lecture on the lives of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in Congress in 1826. He died on February 18, 1834, and was buried in Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D. C. In the 1980s, his grave was robbed and his skull taken, but it was returned in 2005.