# Thomas Willing Voted No on Independence. Then He Ran America's Money for 26 Years. He voted against the Declaration twice and never signed it. Then he ran the first bank in America and the First Bank of the United States, and died at 89, reputedly the country's richest man. Author: J.A. Watte Published: July 3, 2026 Source: https://jwatte.com/blog/thomas-willing-forgotten-founder/ --- In the first days of July 1776, with the Continental Congress sitting as a committee of the whole on the question of American independence, a Philadelphia delegate voted no. Twice. He never signed the Declaration. His name appears on none of the founding parchments this series keeps counting. By the logic that governs which founders get remembered, he should be a footnote of failed nerve, a man history politely stepped around. Instead: Thomas Willing became the president of the first bank in the United States, then the first president of the First Bank of the United States, ran the young republic's monetary core for twenty-six years across both institutions, was reputedly the richest man in America along the way, and died in 1821 at eighty-nine, in his bed, solvent, esteemed, and buried in the same Christ Church ground as Franklin. His business partner, who said yes to everything and signed all three founding documents, died on a friend's charity after debtors' prison. If this series has a thesis, Willing is its control group. ## The senior partner Willing was born in Philadelphia on December 19, 1731, and educated the way colonial merchant princes were: preparatory studies in Bath, England, then law at the Inner Temple in London. Back home by 1749, he stacked the civic ladder rung by rung: common council at twenty-three, alderman, mayor of Philadelphia in 1763, associate justice of Pennsylvania's Supreme Court in 1767, all while running one of the port's great merchant houses. In 1757 he took a talented, hungry young trader into partnership, and Willing & Morris was born. Robert Morris supplied the audacity; Willing supplied the capital, the connections, and the brake. The firm ran for decades trading wheat, sugar, and rum, and, an honest telling requires it, occasionally enslaved Africans, a line of business the partners abandoned; Philadelphia tax records show Willing himself owned enslaved people in 1769 and none by 1782. The partnership's fingerprints are all over this series: it trained Morris, employed the captains who seeded the Navy, and produced the family web we'll get to shortly. Willing was no Tory. He sat on the Committee of Correspondence in 1774 and the Committee of Safety in 1775, and Pennsylvania sent him to the Continental Congress. He was a patriot in every practical sense. He just didn't believe the break, at that moment, was wise. ## The no heard by nobody When the vote came, Willing said no, and said it again on the decisive ballot. His stated reasons, as the Coolidge Review's essay on him recounts, were that he wished "well to both countries" and that he refused to recognize the legitimacy of the rebel Pennsylvania convention then seizing his province's government. Richard Vague, his modern biographer, reads the second reason as at least somewhat disingenuous and the man as genuinely torn, standing where Philadelphia's prosperous Anglican and Quaker merchants stood, on the cautious side of a class divide, while the city's artisans and Scots-Irish farmers pushed for the break. The comparison this series can't resist: his own partner Robert Morris was against independence too, and dodged the vote by leaving the room so Pennsylvania could carry. Willing stayed in his seat and voted his actual judgment, twice, on the record, at the exact moment that judgment became career poison. You can call the vote wrong (his partner ultimately did, signing the Declaration that August). It's harder to call it cowardly. The man registered his no in the minutes and then spent the next forty years serving the country that overruled him. ## The redemption arc made of ledgers Because here's what the yes-men needed the moment the shooting was over: a banker the money trusted. When Robert Morris chartered the Bank of North America to finance the war's endgame, the institution needed a president whose signature made merchants calm. Willing took the chair on January 7, 1782 and held it until March 19, 1791. The bank that this series keeps meeting, the one Morris conceived, James Wilson defended in print, George Clymer's emergency flour bank prefigured, and William Bingham helped found and direct, ran day to day under the man who had voted against the Declaration. Then the republic scaled the experiment. When Hamilton's First Bank of the United States was chartered, Washington's administration reached for the same safe hands; Willing was appointed a commissioner in 1791 and became the First Bank's first president on October 25, 1791. The Coolidge Review essay preserves the era's description of the institution: "the great regulating wheel of all Commercial Banks." Willing turned that wheel until November 10, 1807, when a stroke suffered that August finally made him stop, at nearly seventy-six. Between the two banks, the man with no signature on the Declaration signed the republic's money into credibility for twenty-six years. Wikipedia's consolidated account adds the superlative that tends to shock people encountering him for the first time: during his tenure he became, reputedly, the richest man in America. John Adams, per the Coolidge essay, fretted that the Willing family might end up in possession of all Pennsylvania. ## The family that connects this entire series Willing had thirteen children with his wife Anne McCall, and two daughters stitch this series together. Anne Willing married [William Bingham](/blog/william-bingham-forgotten-founder/), the richest man of the founding generation, which made Willing's granddaughter a Baring when she married into the London banking dynasty in 1798. Another daughter, Mary, married into George Clymer's family; DSDI's biography records [Clymer](/blog/george-clymer-forgotten-founder/) dying at the home of his son Henry, whose wife was a Willing. Partner to Morris, father-in-law to Bingham, in-law to Clymer, predecessor of Hamilton's bank: Thomas Willing isn't a node in the founding money network. He's the hub the network grew around. And the contrast with the partner is the cleanest natural experiment early America ran. Same firm, same city, same opportunities, same panics. Morris: signed everything, guaranteed everything personally, reached for 6 million acres on credit, died in 1806 on an annuity from a friend after three and a half years in debtors' prison. Willing: signed nothing, guaranteed institutions instead of underwriting them personally, and compounded quietly for nine decades. I've written up the full side-by-side of what actually separated the ruined from the solvent in this generation [on the W-2 Trap blog](https://thew2trap.com/blog/thomas-willing-partner-who-said-no/), because the pattern is portable. ## The verdict of the shelf History's memory has been catching up lately: a full-length biography, Richard Vague's The Banker Who Made America, finally gave Willing his own volume. The title makes the argument his tombstone never did. The Declaration needed fifty-six signers, but the signatures only became a country because somebody made the money underneath them work, dollar by boring dollar, for a quarter century. Willing died on January 19, 1821, at eighty-nine, having outlived his partner by fifteen years, his son-in-law by seventeen, and the entire heroic generation's finances by a comfortable margin. He rests in Christ Church Burial Ground with Franklin, Hillegas, and the reburied Wilson: one more Philadelphian in the founders' common room, the only one there who voted no and won anyway. ## Related reading - [Robert Morris: The Founding Father in the Capitol Dome Nobody Can Name](/blog/robert-morris-forgotten-financier/): the junior partner who took the opposite bet on everything. - [William Bingham Was the Richest Man in Early America. You've Never Heard of Him.](/blog/william-bingham-forgotten-founder/): the son-in-law. - [Michael Hillegas Was America's First Treasurer. His Reward Came 103 Years Late.](/blog/michael-hillegas-forgotten-founder/): the custodian who preceded the bankers. - [George Clymer: The Founder Who Took the Jobs Nobody Wanted](/blog/george-clymer-forgotten-founder/): the in-laws' side of the web. ## Fact-check notes and sources - **Biography (born December 19, 1731, Bath schooling and Inner Temple law, return in 1749, Willing & Morris founded 1757 and continuing to 1793, trade in wheat, sugar, rum "and occasionally enslaved Africans," council 1755, alderman 1759, mayor of Philadelphia 1763-64, Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice 1767, Committee of Correspondence 1774 and Committee of Safety 1775, Continental Congress votes against independence, Bank of North America presidency January 7, 1782 to March 19, 1791, commissioner appointment by Washington 1791, First Bank of the United States presidency October 25, 1791 to November 10, 1807, "During his tenure, he became the richest man in America," the August 1807 stroke and resignation, thirteen children including Anne (Bingham) and Mary (Clymer), enslaved people in the 1769 tax records and none by 1782, death January 19, 1821 at 89, burial at Christ Church Burial Ground)**: [Wikipedia, "Thomas Willing"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Willing), attributed as the consolidated account; the richest-man line is reputational and presented as such. - **The two no votes, his stated reasons ("well to both countries," refusal to recognize the Pennsylvania convention), the class-conflict reading, the "at least somewhat disingenuous... genuinely torn" assessment, the Adams "possession of all Pennsylvania" worry (paraphrased there), and "the great regulating wheel of all Commercial Banks"**: [The Coolidge Review, "Merchant of the Revolution"](https://www.coolidgereview.com/articles/merchant-of-revolution-willing), drawing on Richard Vague's biography [The Banker Who Made America](https://baas.ac.uk/news-and-events/2026/02/the-banker-who-made-america-thomas-willing-and-the-rise-of-the-american-financial-aristocracy-1731-1821/). - **Morris's abstention-by-absence on July 2, the firm's history, and the Clymer household detail**: [DSDI, Robert Morris](https://www.dsdi1776.com/signer/robert-morris/) and [DSDI, George Clymer](https://www.dsdi1776.com/signer/george-clymer/). - **The Bingham and Baring marriages**: [Wikipedia, "William Bingham"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bingham), attributed. - A quote circulating online that John Adams said Washington and Hamilton were "governed" by Willing could not be verified in the sources consulted and is not used; the Coolidge essay's paraphrase of Adams's worry appears instead, labeled as paraphrase. *This post is informational, not financial advice. Historical institutions and publications are mentioned as nominative fair use; no affiliation is implied.* --- Canonical HTML: https://jwatte.com/blog/thomas-willing-forgotten-founder/ RSS: https://jwatte.com/feed.xml JSON Feed: https://jwatte.com/feed.json Hero image: https://jwatte.com/images/thomas-willing-forgotten-founder.webp