Samuel Wharton

Merchant and land speculator, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. A prominent merchant by 1763, he was a central figure in three attempts to gain large land grants W of the Alleghenies: the Grand Illinois Venture (1764–72), Indiana Grant (1768–9), and Vandalia (1770–5). None of the projects were ultimately successful, as the start of the American Revolution in 1775 wrecked the Vandalia scheme. He served in the Continental Congress (1782–3) and was a justice of the court of common pleas in Southwark, PA (1790–1).

Samuel Wharton (May 3, 1732– March, 1800) was an American merchant and politician from Dover in Kent County, Delaware.

Samuel was the son of Joseph Wharton, a successful merchant in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a first cousin to Thomas Wharton, Jr., who was the revolutionary President of Pennsylvania. Though Samuel later made his home in Dover, he always maintained close business connections with the city, where he was a partner in the mercantile firm of Baynton, Wharton and Morgan.

In 1768 Wharton attended the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Fort Stanwix. To compensate for destroyed trade goods, the Iroquois granted him and the merchants he represented a tract of land making up about a fourth of modern West Virginia.

When the Revolutionary War broke out, Wharton was in London working to secure the crown's approval for the land grant.

In 1782 and 1783 Wharton was a delegate to the Continental Congress. Pennsylvania, New York, and Delaware ceded all western claims, and his tract was confirmed as part of Virginia.

Wharton served two years as a state court judge in Delaware before retiring to a country estate just outside Philadelphia, where he died in March of 1800.