Thomas Willing

Thomas Willing (December 19, 1731 – January 19, 1821) was an American merchant, banker, and politician. He served as mayor of Philadelphia and as a delegate from Pennsylvania to the Continental Congress. He was also the first president of the Bank of North America and later of the First Bank of the United States. During his career, Willing amassed considerable wealth as a transatlantic merchant trading in "wheat, sugar, rum, and occasionally enslaved Africans". One account credits him with bankrolling the American Revolution. Another describes him as the richest man in America around 1800.

Early life Thomas Willing was born in Quaker Philadelphia, to an Anglican family, the son of Charles Willing (1710–1754), who twice served as mayor of Philadelphia, and Anne Shippen (1710-1791), granddaughter of Edward Shippen, who was the second mayor of Philadelphia. His brother, James Willing, was a Philadelphia merchant, who later served as a representative of the Continental Congress and led a 1778 military expedition to raid holdings of British loyalists in Natchez, Mississippi.

Thomas completed preparatory studies in Bath, England, then studied law in London at the Inner Temple.

Career In 1749, after studying in England, he returned to Philadelphia, where he engaged in mercantile pursuits in partnership with Robert Morris. They established the firm Willing, Morris and Company in 1757, which exported flour, lumber and tobacco to Europe while importing sugar, rum, molasses, and slaves from the West Indies and Africa. Their partnership continued until 1793. According to Pennsylvania tax records, Willing owned three enslaved people in 1769, but none as of 1782.

Political career A member of the common council in 1755, he became an alderman in 1759, associate justice of the city court on October 2, 1759, and then justice of the court of common pleas February 28, 1761. Willing then became Mayor of Philadelphia in 1763. In 1767, the Pennsylvania Assembly, with Governor Thomas Penn's assent, had authorized a Supreme Court justice (always a lawyer) to sit with local justices of the peace (judges of county courts, but laymen) in a system of Nisi Prius courts. Governor Penn appointed two new Supreme Court justices, John Lawrence and Thomas Willing. Willing served until 1767, the last under the colonial government. but later subscribed £5,000 to supply the revolutionary cause. In August 1807, Willing suffered a slight stroke, and within a few months, he resigned his position with the bank for health reasons.

Personal life

In 1763, Willing married Anne McCall (1745–1781), daughter of Samuel McCall (1721–1762) and Anne Searle (1724–1757). Together, they had thirteen children, including: Thomas Mayne Willing (1767–1822), who married Jane Nixon (1775–1823)

Descendants Willing was the great-uncle of John Brown Francis (1791–1864), who was a governor and United States Senator from Rhode Island.

Willing was also the grandfather of Ann Louisa Bingham (b. 1782), who married Alexander Baring, 1st Baron Ashburton (1774–1848), in 1798, and Maria Matilda Bingham (1783–1849), who was briefly married to Jacques Alexandre, Comte de Tilly, a French aristocrat and later married her sister's brother-in-law, Henry Baring (1777–1848), until their divorce in 1824. Maria later married the Marquis de Blaisel in 1826. Their brother, and Willing's grandson, William Bingham (1800–1852) married Marie-Charlotte Chartier de Lotbiniere (1805–1866), the second of the three daughters and heiresses of Michel-Eustache-Gaspard-Alain Chartier de Lotbinière by his second wife Mary, daughter of Captain John Munro, in 1822.