Built in 1786 by the wealthy Madeira wine importer Henry Hill, the Hill-Physick House is the only free-standing Federal townhouse remaining in Society Hill. Henry Hill, with the help of his sister Mary Lamar, built the house and lived here until he died of yellow fever in 1798. In 1815 real estate mogul Abigail Physick purchased the house and deeded it to her famous brother Dr. Philip Syng Physick, who relocated to this house with his children after scandalously separating from his wife. Despite his unusual home life, he invented multiple medical tools and procedures and educated an entire generation of new surgeons as Pennsylvania Hospital’s first Chief of Surgery and Surgery Chair and Anatomy Chair at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, giving him the moniker of the “Father of American Surgery.”