William Bingham Was the Richest Man in Early America. Y...

This series keeps burying its subjects in debtors' prison, so let's end the run with the exception. In 1798, while Robert Morris sat in Prune Street prison and James Wilson died in a colleague's house one step ahead of the process servers, a third Philadelphia money man from the same revolutionary circle was serving in the United States Senate, holding what the University of Pennsylvania's archives describe as, by reputation, the wealthiest fortune in America.

His name was William Bingham. He worked with the same Secret Committee network as Morris, founded the same bank, married into the same family, and speculated in even more land than Wilson. Same era, same games, opposite ending. Which makes him the most useful founder in this series, because the differences between his file and theirs are a checklist you can still use.

The 24-year-old with a license to skim the Atlantic

Bingham was born in Philadelphia in 1752 and graduated from the College of Philadelphia (the future University of Pennsylvania) in 1768, at sixteen, with honors. By 1770 he held a British consular post at St. Pierre, Martinique, which gave him something priceless when the war came: he already knew the French Caribbean.

In June 1776, the Continental Congress sent him back to Martinique as its agent. The Dickinson College archives describe the job plainly: he secretly dispensed American propaganda, gathered intelligence, arranged smuggled weapons shipments to the Continental Army, and recruited privateers to prey on British shipping. The compensation structure is the detail to remember: Bingham was entitled to a portion of every British cargo taken. For four years, a percentage of an ocean's worth of captured cloth, rum, sugar, and gunpowder compounded in his accounts. He returned to Philadelphia in 1780, aged twenty-eight, and per Dickinson's archives was already one of the richest men in the nation.

Note the sequence, because it's the whole story: Bingham got liquid first. The fortune preceded the speculation. Every other ruined man in this series ran that order backwards, reaching for the fortune with borrowed money.

There's an honest asterisk too, recorded by Penn's archivists: the privateering wealth kept him in litigation for most of his life. Money seized at sea comes with lawyers attached, apparently for decades.

Marrying the counting house

In 1780 Bingham married Anne Willing, daughter of Thomas Willing, Robert Morris's longtime business partner and later, per the standard accounts, president of the First Bank of the United States. If you've been following this series, you know the Willing name: Willing, Morris & Co. was the firm where Robert Morris made his fortune. Bingham didn't just join Philadelphia's financial aristocracy; he married the exact center of it.

The next year he helped build its headquarters. When Robert Morris chartered the Bank of North America in 1781, the first true bank in the United States, Bingham was a key founder and director; the Penn archives credit him with that role, and popular accounts add that he drafted early bylaws. The bank Hamilton studied, the bank George Clymer's emergency flour operation prefigured, the bank James Wilson defended in print: Bingham helped capitalize it. He was twenty-nine.

The public career followed the money: delegate to the Continental Congress in the Confederation years, speaker of the Pennsylvania House, then United States senator from 1795 to 1801. In 1797 he served a stint as the Senate's president pro tempore, which put the richest man in America two heartbeats from the presidency for a season, a fact that produced approximately zero anxiety at the time and zero memory since.

Two million acres, zero debtors' prisons

Now the part that should have ruined him, because it ruined everyone else. Bingham became one of the largest land speculators in American history. He bought heavily in upstate New York, where his agent, Judge Joshua Whitney Jr., named the settlement at the junction of the Susquehanna and Chenango rivers Binghamton in his honor; the city still carries it. In Pennsylvania he held, per Penn's archives, large tracts including oil lands.

And then there's Maine. Starting with Massachusetts's 1786 land lottery (Maine was still Massachusetts territory), Bingham accumulated roughly a million acres in the east, then took over a second million-acre tract in the west that Henry Knox had contracted for but couldn't develop once his duties as Secretary of War intervened. The deeds landed in 1793. Two million acres, spanning tracts from Penobscot Bay toward Passamaquoddy Bay and up the Kennebec: the Bingham Purchase, one of the largest private land acquisitions in early American history. It's still a name on Maine maps; there's a town called Bingham on the Kennebec.

Robert Morris optioned six million acres in the same decade and died a pauper. Wilson bought warrants he couldn't carry and died a fugitive. Bingham bought two million acres and in 1800 was assessed, per Penn's archives, the highest tax of anyone in Philadelphia, seven years after the Maine deeds. What was different? Nothing subtle: he paid with money he had. Lottery tickets and distressed contracts bought at source prices, funded by a fortune banked thirteen years earlier, held by a man whose other assets (bank shares, turnpike company presidency, trade) kept throwing off cash. The land never got the chance to demand money he didn't have. In this series' terms: Morris and Wilson were owned by their land, and Bingham owned his.

The quiet exit

The Binghams' Philadelphia establishment, their entertaining, and Anne's celebrated salon made their house the republic's social capital in the 1790s, but the ending came softly and abroad. Anne died in 1801. Bingham moved to England, and died at Bath in February 1804, at fifty-one. He's buried in Bath Abbey, about as far from a Pennsylvania debtors' prison as an American body can rest.

One more thread, because this series cares about money's plumbing: his daughter Ann Louisa had married Alexander Baring of the London banking dynasty in 1798, and the standard accounts note Bingham's role alongside Francis Baring and Henry Hope in the financing network that later brokered the Louisiana Purchase. The man who smuggled gunpowder through Martinique in 1776 ended his arc wired into the syndicate that would double his country's size. His grandchildren were Barings. Fortunes that survive don't just persist; they marry infrastructure.

Why he's the missing founder

Bingham never signed a famous document, never held a famous office longer than a season, never went gloriously broke, and never got a fresco. American memory keeps two kinds of founders: the ones on the money and the ones destroyed by it. The man who simply understood it, made it young, structured it well, and passed it on intact falls through the crack in the middle.

That's precisely why he's worth studying. I've put the side-by-side of all four Revolution money men, three ruins and one estate, in a companion piece on the W-2 Trap blog, and the Maine story specifically, the only founder-scale land bet that didn't end in prison, gets the full treatment on the Condo Trap blog, because its rules translate one-for-one to property buying today.

Fact-check notes and sources

Martinique agency and privateering (June 1776 Continental Congress service, propaganda, intelligence, smuggled weapons, recruiting privateers, entitlement to a portion of every British cargo taken, return in 1780 with a fortune at twenty-eight, "one of the richest men in the nation," Bank of North America founder and director, Dickinson trusteeship, Pennsylvania Assembly and U.S. Senate 1795-1801, death at Bath in February 1804): Dickinson College Archives & Special Collections, "William Bingham (1752-1804)".
Wealth and offices (College of Philadelphia A.B. 1768, "by reputation the wealthiest man in America," highest tax assessment of anyone in Philadelphia in 1800, marriage to Anne Willing daughter of his former business partner, key founder and director of the Bank of North America in 1781 "the first bank in the country," speaker of the Pennsylvania House, founder of Binghamton, large Pennsylvania tracts including oil lands, privateering litigation for most of his life, Penn trusteeship 1789-1804): University of Pennsylvania Archives, "William Bingham".
The Bingham Purchase (the 1786 Massachusetts lottery, roughly one million eastern acres, assumption of Henry Knox's contracted million-acre western tract when his duties as Secretary of War intervened, two million acres total between Penobscot Bay, Passamaquoddy Bay, and the Kennebec, deeds in 1793): Maine State Archives digital collection, "Bingham Purchase" and Wikipedia, "Bingham Purchase".
Family and later details (Thomas Willing identified as Anne's father and First Bank president, Ann Louisa's 1798 marriage to Alexander Baring, the Louisiana Purchase brokerage role with Francis Baring and Henry Hope, Senate president pro tempore February 16 to July 6, 1797, Binghamton named by his agent Judge Joshua Whitney Jr., death February 7, 1804, burial in Bath Abbey): Wikipedia, "William Bingham", presented here with attribution as the consolidated account of details the institutional sources omit. Dickinson's archives give the death date as February 6, 1804; this article says February 1804.

This post is informational, not financial advice. Historical institutions are mentioned as nominative fair use; no affiliation is implied.

William Bingham Was the Richest Man in Early America. You've Never Heard of Him.