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Willing Letters and Papers, Edited with a Biographical Essay of Thomas Willing of Philadelphia

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Willing Letters and Papers, Edited with a Biographical Essay of Thomas Willing of Philadelphia Dear Reader, This book was referenced in one of the 185 issues of 'The Builder' Magazine which was published between January 1915 and May 1930. To celebrate the centennial of this publication, the Pictoumasons website presents a complete set of indexed issues of the magazine. As far as the editor was able to, books which were suggested to the reader have been searched for on the internet and included in 'The Builder' library.' This is a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by one of several organizations as part of a project to make the world's books discoverable online. Wherever possible, the source and original scanner identification has been retained. Only blank pages have been removed and this header- page added. The original book has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. 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Please do not assume that a book's appearance in 'The Builder' library means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe. The Webmaster WILLING LETTERS AND PAPERS EDITED WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY OF THOMAS WILLING OF PHILADELPHIA (1731-1821) BY THOMAS WILLING BALCH L. H. D. Trinity (Hartford) Member of The American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia) The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Boston) The American Antiquarian Society (Worcester) Philadelphia ALLEN, LANE AND SCOTT 1922 Copyright By THOMAS WILLING BALCH 1922 been Seventy-two copies of this work have distributed. printed. The type has been This is number 3 4Pfi-4?3 C)CU7040^0 'Y. ft I TO ELISE WILLING BALCH 1853-1913 PREFACE. Philadelphia has had among her sons three finan- ciers, each of whom in his day and generation took a leading part in upholding and maintaining the credit of America—Thomas Willing, Stephen Girard and Jay Cooke. "Old Square Toes," as Thomas Willing was often affectionately called by his relatives, descendants, and intimate friends—a nickname given him be- cause of the broad toed shoes that he wore, and a cognomen that in the public mind symbolized the sound and sure basis of his financial opera- tions—has not yet received a fair recognition of the important services he rendered to the develop- ment first of the Province of Pennsylvania and then of the United States. Beginning with the meeting of the Albany Congress, for a period of al- most sixty years, he played a potent though not spectacular role in American affairs. That so little attention has as yet been given to his public services, is no doubt due to the fact that during the Revolution his junior partner was for more than two years Financier General, or as we would say today, Secretary of the Treasury of the United States. The name "Financier," appealed easily to ( vii ) viii PREFACE. the popular imagination. As a result the more spectacular doings of the junior partner of the firm of Willing and Morris have been pushed into the limelight, while it has been entirely forgotten that Robert Morris for his financial operations for the government had at his back the credit and prestige of his firm—the leading firm in all the colonies—of which Thomas WiUing was the head and directing mind. Robert Morris was indeed the partner of Thomas Willing. There is only one thing in the career of Thomas Willing of which, as one of his descendants, I am not proud. That is that his firm sold slaves. Of course it was in accord with the custom of the times; everyone did it in the colonial period. With this exception, however, the descendants of Thomas Willing can look upon his whole career with great pride. In this connection I take a personal pleas- ure in the fact that my paternal grandfather manumitted his slaves in Frederick County, Mary- land, in the late twenties and the early thirties of the nineteenth century. This volume of Thomas Willing's letters and writings, and other Willing papers, together with a biographical essay giving some idea of his career, is printed in a limited edition. The best collection PREFACE. IX of Willing papers is the one I have presented to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. They are all printed in the present volume, together with letters that are elsewhere. But undoubtedly there are nu- merous other of Thomas Willing's letters in various receptacles, and it is hoped that the present publica- tion will bring some of them to light. There is all the more reason to publish his letters so that the man's fine character can be revealed in them to all who may wish to study and write American history. In collecting the facts and information upon which this essay is based, I have received aid of one kind or another from many sources: among others I may mention my mother (the late Mrs. Thomas Balch), John Thompson Spencer, Esq., the present Thomas Francis Bayard, Esq., Charles Willing, Esq., (son of the late Richard Lloyd Willing, Esq.), Mrs. George Peirce (who was Miss Lucy Spotswood), Miss Constance R. Beale, Mrs. Howard Gardiner, Hampton Lawrence Carson, Esq., the Hon. Simon Gratz, Dr. Thomas Lynch Mont- gomery, and Messrs. Ernest Spofiford, and Albert Cooke Myers. To these gracious women and curtious men as well as others, my best thanks are due. T. W. B. Philadelphia, the 10th of November, 1922. THOMAS WILLING OF PHILADELPHIA (1731-1821) When, by the peace of Paris in 1763, France ceded Canada and all her North American con- tinental possessions as far west as the Mississippi River to Great Britain, all fear of future French attacks was removed from the thoughts of the English colonists along the Atlantic shore of North America. The fear of that aggression had been a real one for many a decade, and had caused the colonists to look to and rely upon the mother land for protection against the repeated attacks of the French and their Indian allies under Frontenac and Montcalm. But with the signing of peace and the removal of the French menace to the future peace and happiness of the English colonies, the chief factor that cemented the colonies and the mother land into a close unison of mutual concern vanished. And soon a divergence of interests between them began to appear. For as the mother land had been put to great expense II THOMAS WILLING to carry on both in America and Europe the repeated wars with France, the British King and his advisers decided that it was proper that the colonists should bear a proportion of the burdens of taxation. But the Americans thought they should not be taxed by the British Parliament in which they were not represented. Accordingly where concord had obtained between the colonies and the mother land before the peace of 1763, antagonism and discord began to appear after that date. And so was started a rivalry that eventually broke out into strife upon the field of battle and resulted under the lead of Washington in the separation of the colonies from Great Britain and the establishment of thirteen new independent and sovereign members of the family of Nations. These thirteen States eventually came to be welded and forged into the one present Nation, the United States of America. During all the years from 1760 until the beginning of the second decade of the nineteenth century, a period of half a century, one of the potent but not spectacular figures in the develop- ment of the colonies and the United States, was Thomas Willing of Philadelphia, in his time the leading merchant of the British North American OF PHILADELPHIA. Ill colonies and the first great banker of the young United States. Thomas WilHng's great-grandfather, Joseph WilHng of Gloucestershire, England, married on the 1st of July, 1672, first Elizabeth Plaver, who died on the 14th of October, 1675, by whom he had issue two sons: George, born on the r2th of September, 1673, and Joseph, born on the 22nd of September, 1675. The next year, he took unto himself a second wife, Ava Lowle of Glouchester, whom he married on the 24th of May, 1676. She was an heiress of Saxon family and good estate. She died the 31st of December, ^7^7- Joseph Willing upon his marriage to Ava Lowle, assumed her arms: "Sable, a hand couped at the wrist, grasping three darts, one in pale and two in sallure argent." By this lady he had issue six children.
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