Samuel Powel (October 28, 1738 – September 29, 1793) was a colonial and post-revolutionary

mayor of Philadelphia The mayor of Philadelphia is the chief executive of the government of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as stipulated by the Charter of the City of Philadelphia. The current mayor of Philadelphia is Jim Kenney. History The first mayor of Philadelphia, ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

. Since Philadelphia's mayoral office had been abolished early in the revolutionary period, Powel was the last colonial mayor of the city and the first to serve after the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

gained independence from

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...

. He was born in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, and graduated in 1759 from the

College of Philadelphia The Academy and College of Philadelphia (1749-1791) was a boys' school and men's college in Philadelphia, Colony of Pennsylvania. Founded in 1749 by a group of local notables that included Benjamin Franklin, the Academy of Philadelphia began as ...

(now the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

). He served as mayor from 1775 to 1776 and 1789 to 1790, the office having been abolished under the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776. He was a member of the

Pennsylvania State Senate The Pennsylvania State Senate is the upper house of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, the Pennsylvania state legislature. The State Senate meets in the State Capitol building in Harrisburg. Senators are elected for four year terms, staggered ev ...

from 1790 to his death in 1793. Powel was an early member of the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

and a trustee of the College of Philadelphia (now the

Personal life

Powel was the son of Samuel Powel and Mary Morris. On August 7, 1769, he married Elizabeth Willing, the daughter of Philadelphia mayor

Charles Willing Charles Willing (May 18, 1710 – November 30, 1754) was a Philadelphia merchant, trader and politician; twice he served as Mayor of Philadelphia, from 1748 until 1749 and again in 1754. Early life Charles Willing was born in Bristol, Engla ...

and Ann Shippen, and a sister of Philadelphia mayor and Continental Congressman

Thomas Willing Thomas Willing (December 19, 1731 – January 19, 1821) was an American merchant, politician and slave trader who served as mayor of Philadelphia and was a delegate from Pennsylvania to the Continental Congress. He also served as the first pre ...

, a business partner of Robert Morris. Powel died in the

yellow fever epidemic of 1793 During the 1793 yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, 5,000 or more people were listed in the official register of deaths between August 1 and November 9. The vast majority of them died of yellow fever, making the epidemic in the city of 50,000 ...

on September 29, 1793, in the bare little upper room of a tenant farmer on Powel's farm west of the city, now the site of the Powelton Village section of West Philadelphia. He is interred at

Christ Church Burial Ground Christ Church Burial Ground in Philadelphia is an important early-American cemetery. It is the final resting place of Benjamin Franklin and his wife, Deborah. Four other signers of the Declaration of Independence are buried here, Benjamin Rush, ...

Powel House

Samuel Powel's house, at 244 South 3rd Street, is a house museum run by the

Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks The Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks (aka Landmarks) founded in 1931, maintains and preserves four historic house museums in the region around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. These are: * Grumblethorpe * Hill-Physick-Keith Hous ...

. A Georgian city house built by Charles Stedman in 1765, Powel expanded and embellished it around 1770, with carved woodwork and ornate plaster ceilings. George and Martha Washington were friends of the Powels, and lived next door from November 1781 to March 1782, following the

Battle of Yorktown The Siege of Yorktown, also known as the Battle of Yorktown, the surrender at Yorktown, or the German battle (from the presence of Germans in all three armies), beginning on September 28, 1781, and ending on October 19, 1781, at Yorktown, Virgi ...

. At the close of Washington's presidency, Mrs. Powel bought some of the furniture from the President's House in Philadelphia. The house museum owns a set of china that was a gift from

Martha Washington Martha Dandridge Custis Washington (June 21, 1731 — May 22, 1802) was the wife of George Washington, the first president of the United States. Although the title was not coined until after her death, Martha Washington served as the inaugural ...

. The rear parlor was removed from the house in 1921, and is now at the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

. The ballroom was removed from the house in 1925, and is now at the

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...

. Both rooms have been replicated at the house museum.Replicated Powel House Ballroom
from Flickr.

Ancestry

Notes

References

Sources

* * * *

External links

Powel House official website
* * Th
Powel Family Papers, 1681-1938
(an
here
, including correspondence, financial records and other materials belonging to Samuel Powel, are available for research use at the

Historical Society of Pennsylvania The Historical Society of Pennsylvania is a long-established research facility, based in Philadelphia. It is a repository for millions of historic items ranging across rare books, scholarly monographs, family chronicles, maps, press reports and v ...

.
The Powell Family
{{DEFAULTSORT:Powel, Samuel 1738 births 1793 deaths Mayors of Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania alumni People of colonial Pennsylvania Members of the American Philosophical Society Deaths from yellow fever Burials at Christ Church, Philadelphia