dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

>>8070994

'Powel, one of Philadelphia's wealthiest, met Voltaire, the pope, and the Duke of York. George and Martha were frequent visitors.

Samuel Powel was the last colonial mayor of Philadelphia before the Revolution. He was the first mayor after the Revolution.

Powel was a third-generation Philadelphian. His grandfather, Samuel Powell, an orphan, and his grandfather's aunt came to the colonies in 1685. Through an advantageous marriage and an extraordinary gift for carpentry and bridge-building, the elder Powell became the wealthy owner of dozens of Philadelphia homes and properties. The elder Powell's son, Samuel Powell Jr., was a merchant. He dropped the second "l" in Powell to become Powel. The elder Powel passed on in 1756, having outlived his son by nine years, and so the bulk of the elder's estate skipped a generation and was passed on to the future-mayor when the youngster turned 18.

As the scion of one of Philadelphia's wealthiest families, Samuel Powel did what many of the well-educated, well-to-do did: he traveled Europe. Whereas most stayed on the continent for one or two years, young Powell stayed for seven years. Among those he met on his travels were the Duke of York, the pope and Voltaire, who urged him to hate "priests." Powel did not heed Voltaire, for while in England he converted from Quakerism to the Anglican Church.

Upon returning to Philadelphia, Powel married Elizabeth Willing, the daughter of Charles Willing and Ann Shippen. Young Samuel, no doubt influenced by his European travels, declined to move into one of the 90 houses he now owned and instead purchased the present house on 3rd Street from Charles Stedman. Stedman was the part-owner of a forge and a substantial landowner, who eventually fell upon hard times and wound up in debtors' prison in 1774.

The Powels became known as great entertainers. George and Martha Washington became good friends of Samuel and Elizabeth, often eating at the 3rd Street residence. The Washingtons returned the favor by having the Powels to Mount Vernon a half dozen times.

Powel sided with the Colonies during the Revolution, thus earning himself the sobriquet, "the Patriotic Mayor." He died, among too many others, in the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1793.'

https://www.ushistory.org/tour/powel-house.htm

>>8070994

>>8071021

https://www.philalandmarks.org/powel-house

Anonymous ID: efa90b Feb. 7, 2020, 11:10 p.m. No.8071053 🗄️.is 🔗kun >>1089

>>8071021

>>8070994

>>8071027

'The Powel House'

https://youtu.be/wghD62Vjp24

Anonymous ID: efa90b Feb. 7, 2020, 11:16 p.m. No.8071089 🗄️.is 🔗kun >>1121

'At a great dinner for Congress in the banqueting hall at the State House, on September 16, 1774, a total of thirty-one toasts had been raised before the affair ended. There were further elegant receptions and dinners at the homes of the Mifflins, the Shippens, the Powels, Cadwalladers, and Dickinsons, extended gatherings presided over and attended by many of the most beautiful, fashionably dressed women of Philadelphia. "I shall be killed with kindness in this place," he told Abigail. "We go to Congress at nine and there we stay, most earnestly engaged until three in the afternoon, then we adjourn and go to dinner with some of the nobles of Pennsylvania at four o'clock and feast on ten thousand delicacies, and sit drinking Madeira, claret and burgundy 'til six or seven." Even plain Quakers, he reported, served ducks, hams, chickens, beef, creams, and custards. "A most sinful feast again," he recorded after another occasion, this in the splendor of a great fourstory mansion on Third Street, the home of Mayor Samuel Powel, whose wealth and taste could be measured in richly carved paneling, magnificent paintings, a tea service in solid silver that would have fetched considerably more than the entire contents of the Adams household at Braintree.'

https://epdf.pub/john-adams8442b3dc762bfa3bc9a003f1b6ec48b781114.html

>>8071089

'Privately, Adams knew what a bad start he had made, and to be the butt of jokes, after all he had been through, was hurtful. But as any adverse or critical comment on Washington, any ridicule at all, would have been considered unacceptable at this stage, Adams served as a convenient target for mockery and humor, and would again, just as he would be subject to the easiest, most damaging of smear words: monarchist. He was the first, but by no means the last, Vice President to take abuse in the President's place, though much of it, to be sure, he brought on himself. Most serious perhaps was the damage he had done to his standing with Washington, who was privately advised that the fuss over titles had made Adams not just unpopular in Virginia but "odious." Washington was thereafter to maintain an appreciable distance from Adams, thus diminishing still more the importance of the vice presidency and Adams's part in the scheme of things. Yet through it all, true to his promise, Adams had shown no anger or acted discourteously to anyone. At one point he also conceded from the chair that perhaps he had been out of the country too long and failed to know the temper of the people.'