Pell was born in New York in September 1779. He was the son of shipping merchant Benjamin Pell and Marianna Pell, who married in 1778. Among his siblings were Alfred Sands Pell ; Gilbert Titus Pell, and representative in the Illinois Legislature, who was appointed United States envoy to Mexico in the 1850s; and Maria Pell. His paternal grandparents were Joshua Pell and Phoebe Pell. His great-great grandfather, Sir John Pell was the nephew of the 1st Lord, Thomas Pell, who acquired Pelham Manor from the Siwanoy Indians in 1645. His maternal grandparents were John Ferris and Marianna Ferris. Pell studied botany at Columbia College under Dr. David Hosack, a well-known botanist and horticulturalist who founded Elgin Botanic Garden in 1801.
Career
Pell worked in the family business Pell & Co., which imported mahogany and marble before becoming an auction house that later went into financing.
During a steamboat trip to Burlington, Vermont, Pell spotted the ruins of Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain. In 1816, he began leasing the property from Columbia and Union colleges, and in 1820, he purchased the entire 546-acre grounds for $6,008. Pell preserved the remaining stonework of the Fort and built a home known as Beaumont, which burnt down in 1825. The following year in 1826, he built a Palladian-stylecountry estate which he named Pavilion. The home was later converted into a hotel to serve the tourist trade. The Pell family later hired English architect Alfred Bossom to restore the fort, which was formally opened to the public in 1909 as an historic site.
Personal life
On November 11, 1802, Pell was married to Mary Shipley, the daughter of Morris Shipley of London. Together, they were the parents of:
Archibald Morris Pell, who married Catherine Elizabeth Rutgers, a daughter of Nicholas Gouverneur Rutgers and Cornelia Rutgers. He was accidentally killed in 1839 when firing a cannon saluting the elder Pell's arrival at Pavilion.
Alfred Shipley Pell, who married Elizabeth Cruger. After her death, he married Eliza Wood.
Through his son Morris, he was a grandfather of John Howland Pell, father of, among others, Stephen Hyatt Pell, and William Howland Pell. Through his youngest son Clarence, he was a grandfather of Herbert Claiborne Pell, who married Katherine Lorillard Kernochan. They were the parents of Clarence Cecil Pell and Herbert Claiborne Pell Jr., a U.S. Representative and U.S. Ambassador to Hungary and Portugal, himself the father of Claiborne Pell, the U.S. Senator from Rhode Island.
