William Bingham falls in love on a summer day... (& a merchant of Philadelphia on a different scale!)

Samuel Meeker was a banker/merchant. William Bingham was also a banker/merchant, but on a different scale than Meeker, thus this portrait (above) which is somewhat more embellished than Meeker’s. William became the richest man in America before age 40, directing his fleet of ships at sea and owning some 4,000,000 acres in Pennsylvania, New York and Maine. Within his banking activities, he wrote the by-laws and was the dominant director of the nation’s first bank, and at Alexander Hamilton’s request outlined the government’s first fiscal program. He married into England’s most powerful family of merchant-bankers, Ms Anne Willing (scroll down to the entry below for more of her story).

“How, or when, or where it happened is not known; but on one of those summer days, between drilling with the militia, and tending to his affairs as a merchant, and helping to found the bank, and settling his account with Congress, and defending himself in the Pilgrim lawsuit, William Bingham discovered Anne Willing. She had been twelve—not yet twelve— when he sailed for Martinique; now she was, or would shortly be, sixteen, and she was the most beautiful young woman in Philadelphia.” From the book “Golden Voyage, Life and Times of William Bingham 1752-1804” by Robert Alberts.

Anne Willing Bingham at 21, sketch by Gilbert Stuart

SCROLL DOWN, FOR THE STUART PORTRAIT OF ANNE WILLING BINGHAM