William Ferris Pell

William Ferris Pell (September 1779 – October 28, 1840) was an American horticulturist.

Early life Pell was born in New York in September 1779. He was the son of shipping merchant Benjamin Pell (–1828) and Marianna (née Ferris) Pell (1757–1795), who married in 1778. Among his siblings were Alfred Sands Pell (husband of Adelia Duane, a daughter of James Duane, and father of Robert Livingston Pell); Gilbert Titus Pell (husband of Elizabeth Birkbeck, a daughter of Morris Birkbeck, and father of Morris Birkbeck Pell), and representative in the Illinois Legislature, who was appointed United States envoy to Mexico in the 1850s; and Maria Pell (wife of Jacob T. Walden). Pell preserved the remaining stonework of the Fort and built a home known as Beaumont, which burnt down in 1825. In 1826, he built a Palladian-style country estate which he named Pavilion. The home was later converted into a hotel to serve the tourist trade. The Pell family later hired English architect Alfred Bossom to restore the fort, which was formally opened to the public in 1909 as an historic site.

Personal life On November 11, 1802, Pell was married to Mary Shipley (d. 1848), the daughter of Morris Shipley of London. Together, they were the parents of:

Archibald Morris Pell (1803–1839), who married Catherine Elizabeth Rutgers, a daughter of Nicholas Gouverneur Rutgers and Cornelia (née Livingston) Rutgers (and an aunt to Louisa Barnewall Van Rensselaer). He was accidentally killed in 1839 when firing a cannon saluting the elder Pell's arrival at Pavilion. who died unmarried. who married Annie Claiborne (1813–).

In 1838, Daniel Huntington painted a portrait of Pell, which is in the collection of the Fort Ticonderoga Museum today.

Pell died on October 28, 1840, and was buried at Saint Paul's Church Cemetery in Mount Vernon, New York. His widow died on October 3, 1848. They were the parents of Clarence Cecil Pell (1885–1964) and Herbert Claiborne Pell Jr., a U.S. Representative and U.S. Ambassador to Hungary and Portugal, himself the father of Claiborne Pell, the U.S. Senator from Rhode Island.