Samuel Welles (1725-1799)

He graduated from Harvard (1744) and became a successful merchant at Boston working at his father's trade, exporting victuals to the Caribbean. He was the first President of the Boston City Council. In 1772, after his father died, he married Isabella, daughter of Chief Justice Benjamin Pratt, of New York, who had been one of his father's political foes. They lived on Orange Street in Boston in the house that Samuel's father had built in 1726, on the harbor side of Boston Common. His wife inherited property in Milton and in the 1760s Welles purchased further land at Natick where he became the largest taxpayer and was elected to local government. It was to Natick where he removed for the duration of the Revolution, becoming the, “town financier (with) quite a colony of farmers and artisans settled upon his lands". He purchased the Richardson Tavern at the corner of Pond Road and Washington Street which became his summer home. He and Isabella had 6-children, including the eminent banker Samuel Welles, who founded the notable firm of Welles & Co. in Paris.