User:Coffeeandcrumbs/Samuel Powel

Samuel Powel (October 28, 1738 – September 29, 1793) was a colonial and post-revolutionary mayor of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and graduated in 1759 from the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania). He served as mayor from 1775–1776 and 1789–1790, the office having been abolished under the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776. He was a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate from 1790 to 1793.

Powel was an early member of the American Philosophical Society and a trustee of the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania).

Early life and education
Samuel Powel was born on October 28, 1738, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was the only son of Samuel and Mary (Morris) Powel, who also had two daughters, Abigail (born 1735) and Sarah (born 1747).

Marriage and children
On August 7, 1769, he married Elizabeth Willing, the daughter of Philadelphia mayor Charles Willing and Ann Shippen, and a sister of Philadelphia mayor and Continental Congressman Thomas Willing, a business partner of Robert Morris.

American Revolution and first mayorship
Like his father and grandfather before him, Powel was elected the city's Common Council in 1770. The Council elected him to be mayor of Philadelphia on October 3, 1775. The Council had not met for the six months prior and, after electing Powel, did not meet again until February 17, 1776. This was the last meeting of the city government before its charter was effectively dissolved when the Declaration of Independence was signed on on July 4, 1776; Powel was the last colonial mayor of Philadelphia.

Illness and death
Powel died in the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 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.

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. 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. 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.

The rear parlor was removed from the house in 1921, and is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The ballroom was removed from the house in 1925, and is now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Both rooms have been replicated at the house museum.