Mary Courtney Kennedy Hill

Rothschild Family Tree - The European Banking Dynasty from Mayer Amschel to Today

The Rothschilds are a European banking dynasty founded in Frankfurt am Main by Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812), whose five sons established banking houses in Frankfurt, Vienna, Naples, London and Paris and together built the most powerful private financial network of the nineteenth century. ## Origins Mayer Amschel Rothschild was born in 1744 in the Judengasse, the walled Jewish street of Frankfurt am Main, where the family took its name from the red shield that had marked an ancestor's house. He began as a dealer in rare coins and medals, became court factor to Crown Prince Wilhelm of Hesse-Kassel in 1769, and turned that position into a banking business handling loans, bullion and government paper. With his wife Gutle Schnapper he had ten children who reached adulthood, five sons and five daughters. ## The five houses Mayer Amschel's decisive act was to place his sons in five cities so that the family could move money and news across borders as a single firm. Amschel Mayer stayed in Frankfurt, Salomon went to Vienna, Nathan to London, Carl to Naples and James to Paris. The brothers financed the allied campaigns against Napoleon, then the governments, railways and industries of nineteenth century Europe. The Naples house closed in 1860 with Italian unification, Frankfurt in 1901 for want of an heir, and Vienna in 1938 after the Anschluss. London and Paris survived, and their successors trade today as Rothschild and Co and the Edmond de Rothschild Group. ## Notable members Nathan Mayer Rothschild founded N M Rothschild and Sons and made London the centre of international lending. His son Lionel broke the bar on Jews sitting in Parliament, taking his Commons seat in 1858, and his grandson Nathan Mayer became the first Jewish member of the House of Lords in 1885. James Mayer de Rothschild dominated French finance under three regimes and bought Chateau Lafite, while his son Edmond funded the first Jewish agricultural settlements in Palestine. The family also produced naturalists and collectors rather than only bankers: Walter, 2nd Baron Rothschild, the zoologist to whom the Balfour Declaration was addressed in 1917; his brother Charles, the flea specialist who founded British nature conservation; Charles's daughter Dame Miriam Rothschild, a Fellow of the Royal Society; and another daughter, Nica, the patron of Thelonious Monk. Jacob, 4th Baron Rothschild, built RIT Capital Partners and chaired the trustees of the National Gallery. ## Significance The Rothschilds were the first banking family to operate as a genuinely international partnership, and for much of the nineteenth century they were the principal lenders to European states. Their name is attached to railways, mines, hospitals, museums, nature reserves, Bordeaux first growths and a long tradition of Jewish philanthropy. Repeated marriages between first cousins kept capital and control inside the family, which is why the branches of this tree cross back into one another so often. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Founder | Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812) | | Matriarch | Gutle Schnapper (1753-1849) | | Origin | The Judengasse, Frankfurt am Main | | Children of the founder | Ten, five sons and five daughters | | The five houses | Frankfurt, Vienna, Naples, London, Paris | | Motto | Concordia, Integritas, Industria | | Principal firms | N M Rothschild and Sons, de Rothschild Freres, S. M. von Rothschild | | Still active today | Rothschild and Co, Edmond de Rothschild Group | | Known for | Government finance, railways, wine estates, natural history, art collections, philanthropy |

Glucksburg Family Tree - The Royal House of Denmark, Norway and Greece from Christian IX to Today

The House of Glücksburg is the reigning royal house of Denmark and Norway and the former royal house of Greece, a branch of the ancient House of Oldenburg whose modern members all descend from King Christian IX of Denmark (1818 to 1906) and his wife Louise of Hesse-Kassel. Through the marriages of their six children, a minor ducal family from the Danish-German borderland became the common ancestor of monarchs in Copenhagen, Oslo and Athens, of a British queen consort, of a Russian empress, and of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. ## Origins The house takes its name from Glücksburg, a small castle town in Schleswig, and belongs to the Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg line of the House of Oldenburg, which had held the Danish throne since 1448. Christian IX was a prince of that cadet branch with no expectation of ruling until the childless Frederik VII made the Danish succession an open European question. Christian succeeded him in 1863, and within months his second son was elected King of the Hellenes as George I, planting the family in Greece for 110 years. In 1905 his grandson Prince Carl of Denmark accepted the Norwegian throne as Haakon VII, giving Norway its own dynasty after centuries of union with Denmark and then Sweden. ## Notable members Christian IX was nicknamed the father-in-law of Europe: his daughter Alexandra married Edward VII of the United Kingdom, and his daughter Dagmar became Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia, mother of Nicholas II. The Danish line runs through Christian X, Frederik IX and Queen Margrethe II, a trained archaeologist and illustrator who reigned from 1972 until her abdication in 2024, to her son King Frederik X and Queen Mary. The Norwegian line runs from Haakon VII and Queen Maud through Olav V, an Olympic sailing champion, to King Harald V and Crown Prince Haakon. The Greek line produced Constantine I, Paul, Constantine II and Queen Anne-Marie, Queen Sofía of Spain, and Prince Andrew's son Philip, consort to Elizabeth II for 73 years. ## Significance No other western dynasty connects as many surviving monarchies in a single documented lineage. Two of Europe's ten reigning royal families, Denmark and Norway, are Glücksburg in the male line, and the house also sits in the ancestry of the British and Spanish royal families. Its history traces the transformation of European monarchy itself: from the dynastic matchmaking of the 1860s, through the loss of the Russian and Greek thrones, to the constitutional, publicly accountable monarchies of modern Scandinavia. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | House name | Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, a branch of the House of Oldenburg | | Founding figure of the modern house | Christian IX of Denmark (1818 to 1906) | | Ancestral seat | Glücksburg Castle, Schleswig | | Thrones held | Denmark (1863 to present), Greece (1863 to 1973), Norway (1905 to present) | | Current heads of state | Frederik X of Denmark, Harald V of Norway | | Best-known member abroad | Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921 to 2021) | | Nickname of its founder | The father-in-law of Europe |

Vanderbilt Family Tree - America's Gilded Age Dynasty

The Vanderbilts are an American family who rose from Dutch farming stock on Staten Island to hold the largest private fortune in the United States, built by Cornelius Vanderbilt, known as the Commodore, out of nineteenth century shipping and railroads, and known today for the Gilded Age houses their descendants built and for figures from Consuelo, Duchess of Marlborough, to the journalist Anderson Cooper. ## Origins on Staten Island The family descends from Jan Aertsen van der Bilt, a Dutch settler who reached New Netherland in the seventeenth century and whose descendants farmed on Staten Island for generations. Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877) was born there, the son of a boatman, and began work as a teenager carrying freight across New York Harbour in a single sailing barge. He married his first cousin Sophia Johnson in 1813. ## The railroad fortune Vanderbilt moved from sail to steam, dominated the Hudson River and coastal trade, and after the Civil War turned to railroads, consolidating the New York Central system and building Grand Central Depot. He left almost the whole fortune to one son, William Henry Vanderbilt, who nearly doubled it in eight years before dividing it evenly among his own eight children. They built the family's great houses: The Breakers and Marble House at Newport, Biltmore House in North Carolina, Hyde Park on the Hudson, Florham in New Jersey and Shelburne Farms in Vermont. ## Notable members The third and fourth generations produced Consuelo Vanderbilt, who married the 9th Duke of Marlborough and became a social reformer in England; the sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art; Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, who died in the sinking of the Lusitania; and Harold Stirling Vanderbilt, who won the America's Cup three times and invented contract bridge. The modern line runs through Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt to the designer Gloria Vanderbilt and her son, the CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. ## Significance No American family is more closely identified with the Gilded Age. The Vanderbilts set the pattern for how new industrial wealth was spent, and then for how quickly such a fortune disperses across many heirs. What endures is institutional: Vanderbilt University, the Whitney Museum, and the houses at Newport, Hyde Park, Shelburne and Asheville that are now museums and public estates. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Founder | Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877), the Commodore | | Origin | Staten Island, New York, of Dutch descent | | Source of wealth | Steamboat shipping, then the New York Central railroads | | Famous houses | The Breakers, Marble House, Biltmore House, Hyde Park | | Best known members | Consuelo Vanderbilt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Gloria Vanderbilt, Anderson Cooper | | Generations covered | Five, from the Commodore to Anderson Cooper |

The Jackson Family Tree - Michael Jackson