ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the relationship between Proper Philadelphia families and the economic, political, and intellectual history of the city. Proper Philadelphia's Golden Age spanned the last twenty-five years of the eighteenth century. This was also the city's most prolific First Family founding era. Many of the inner circle of Proper Philadelphians in the middle of the twentieth century, men who dominate the Philadelphia Club, the First City Troop, and the ancient Assembly Balls, as well as the banks, had prominent ancestors during the Revolutionary period. The First Bank of the United States was chartered by Congress in 1791, and Thomas Willing, who had been head of the Bank of North America during the trying period of the Articles of Confederation, was chosen president. A few far-sighted Philadelphians had been concerned with this defeat for some time, but the majority were still preoccupied with running factories, building canals, and opening up coal mines.
