Like Hay, Wirt was self-made. His father, too, was an innkeeper in the 1770’s, at Bladensburg, Maryland, a few miles north of the future site of the national capitol. At an early age William was left an orphan, but from the start he had the gift of making friends. Among other accomplishments he sang and played the violin. His schooling completed he read law, moved to Virginia, and was admitted to practice in Culpeper County. There he met and married a daughter of Dr. George Wilmer, a man of prominence in the community and a friend of Thomas Jefferson. Through his father-in-law Wirt was introduced to Jefferson and also to Madison and Monroe and was an ardent follower of what was known in the political world as “the Virginia dynasty.” These early associations, combined with his own superior talents, played an important part in the fashioning of Wirt’s career. Five years after their marriage Wirt’s young wife died and the rising young lawyer moved to Richmond. For a time he held the office of clerk of the House of Delegates, then served briefly as Chancellor of Virginia. He was a frequent visitor at Gray House, the home of Colonel Robert Gamble, a prosperous merchant. This imposing dwelling, on a hill overlooking the James River and commanding an extensive view of the river valley and the rolling country of Chesterfield County on the other side, had been built for Colonel Gamble by Benjamin Latrobe, an architect recently arrived in this country from England. In 1802 Wirt took as his second wife Colonel Gamble’s daughter Elizabeth, and through that connection became the brother-in-law of Governor William H. Cabell who married Elizabeth’s older sister Agnes. Wirt was well known to the Richmond bar where he had appeared in a number of important cases. A notable one was in defense of the nephew of Chancellor Wythe, law teacher of Jefferson and Marshall. The nephew was charged with the murder of his uncle by putting arsenic in his coffee. Wirt was reluctant to take the case and did so only under a sense of duty. He handled it so successfully that the nephew was exonerated. If that constituted a gross miscarriage of justice, as many then believed, the blame could not be put on Wirt. He was now to have an equally spectacular chance to show whether he would be as good a prosecutor as he had been a defender. At the time of the trial the Wirts were sharing the Gray House with the Gambles senior and the Cabells. It was a gay and accomplished household.