William Bingham (1752–1804) was a wealthy and influential Philadelphia banker, a financier during the Revolutionary War, a United States senator, and an owner of large tracts of land in Maine that once totaled two million acres. He was also associated with the establishment of the country’s first bank in 1781.
In 1786, Bingham secured what became known as the Bingham Purchase from Massachusetts. It consisted of two tracts, each comprising about one million acres. The first, known as the Bingham Penobscot Purchase, lay in areas now within Washington and Hancock counties.
The second tract, the Kennebec Purchase, covered land in the region of Somerset County. It included the present-day town of Bingham, which bears his name.
Bingham survived the financial panic of 1797 and remained a powerful financial and political figure. Nearly a decade after his death, John Adams wrote critically of Bingham’s influence and family connections, reflecting the scale of his prominence in the early republic.
