1. William Bingham was an American statesman from Philadelphia.
23 Facts About William Bingham
1. 2.
William Bingham was a delegate for Pennsylvania to the Continental Congress from 1786 to 1788 and served in the United States Senate from 1795 to 1801.
3.
William Bingham graduated from the College of Philadelphia in 1768.
4.
William Bingham first travelled to Europe in 1773 and, upon, returning to America joined the Philadelphia Society.
5.
Toward the end of the American Revolution, William Bingham was regarded as the richest man in the United States.
6.
William Bingham had made his fortune through joint ownership of privateers and trading.
7.
William Bingham became a major land developer, purchasing lands in upstate New York and 2 million acres in Maine.
8.
William Bingham helped broker the Louisiana Purchase with Francis Baring and Henry Hope.
9.
William Bingham was the founder and the first president of the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike.
10.
William Bingham maintained shipping ventures after the Revolutionary war, through his mercantile house Bingham, Inglis, and Gilmore.
11.
William Bingham was a leading member of the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and Useful Arts and donated a Philadelphia property to be converted into a textile factory.
12.
William Bingham was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1787.
13.
William Bingham saw the national debt as beneficial in that it attracted interest into the affairs of the government.
14.
William Bingham oversaw development of the land during a fledgling period of America as a member of the Society of Roads and Inland Navigation, where he worked closely with Albert Gallatin of western Pennsylvania.
15.
William Bingham built roads and a bridge from Philadelphia to Lancaster, Pennsylvania called the Lancaster Pike.
16.
William Bingham was an active supporter of John Adams and when Adams was elected president, Bingham served as the Senate's President pro tempore in the Fourth Congress.
17.
William Bingham was criticized by Jeffersonian politicians for "extravagance, ostentation and dissipation".
18.
The several William Bingham estates were renowned for hosting many prominent aristocrats from Europe as well as Federalist meetings.
19.
William Bingham was a land surveyor, and looked to develop areas currently a part of Southern New York, and Northern Pennsylvania.
20.
William Bingham married Anne Willing, daughter of Thomas Willing, President of the First Bank of the United States, and they had two daughters and a son.
21.
William Bingham died on February 7,1804, in Bath, England and is interred in Bath Abbey.
22.
William Bingham's estate remained in the family until the death of William Alexander Baring Bingham but it was not settled until 1964.
23.
William Bingham commissioned artist Gilbert Stuart to paint the Lansdowne portrait, a 1796 full-length portrait of President George Washington that became a gift to Lord Lansdowne.