Washington’s Other Woman

Elizabeth Willing Powel was an 18th-century Philadelphia socialite, a fixture in her hometown’s most influential circles, and a proto-feminist who delighted in her intellect, broad range of interests, and social rank. Powel came from a Quaker background that traced to great-grandfather Edward Shippen’s first marriage, to a woman who belonged to the Society of Friends. A portrait shows a buxom woman round of face, high of forehead, and receding of chin, solemn to the point of sadness but also resolute. Eliza Powel had a first-class mind, and, unusual among women of her class and era, a serious interest in and engagement with the details and nuances of politics and statecraft.

Eliza Powel and George Washington met in Philadelphia amid historic events in 1774. She was 31. He was 42 and, like her father, Charles Willing, a delegate to the First Continental Congress convening that autumn, bringing delegates from the restive colonies. Washington, who had left the British army to grow tobacco and wheat, was participating as one of