Michael LeMoyne Kennedy

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

Rockefeller Family Tree - America's Oil and Philanthropy Dynasty

The Rockefeller family is an American business and philanthropic dynasty founded on the Standard Oil fortune of John D. Rockefeller, whose descendants have shaped American banking, conservation, medicine, modern art and national politics across five generations. From a modest upstate New York farmhouse the family rose to control the largest industrial enterprise of the Gilded Age, then spent the twentieth century converting that fortune into foundations, museums, parks and public office. ## Origins The line begins with William Avery Rockefeller (1810-1906), a traveling salesman from Granger, New York, and his wife Eliza Davison (1813-1889), who married in 1837 and raised six children in Richford, Moravia and Owego before the family moved to Ohio. Their eldest son, John D. Rockefeller, began as a Cleveland bookkeeper, entered oil refining in 1863 and incorporated the Standard Oil Company in 1870 together with his younger brother William Rockefeller. By the 1880s Standard Oil refined the great majority of American petroleum, until the Supreme Court ordered its dissolution in 1911. ## Notable members John D. Rockefeller and Laura Spelman Rockefeller had four children who reached adulthood, among them the Chicago arts patron Edith Rockefeller McCormick and the family's only son, John D. Rockefeller Jr. With Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, a co-founder of the Museum of Modern Art, John Jr. had six children who defined the family's public face: Abby "Babs" Rockefeller Mauze, the philanthropist John D. Rockefeller III, Nelson Rockefeller, who served four terms as Governor of New York and then as Vice President of the United States, the conservationist and venture capitalist Laurance Rockefeller, Winthrop Rockefeller, Governor of Arkansas, and the banker David Rockefeller of Chase Manhattan. Their children, known within the family as the Cousins, include Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the Asmat art collector Michael Rockefeller, Lieutenant Governor Winthrop Paul Rockefeller of Arkansas, the economist Neva Goodwin and the Synergos founder Peggy Dulany. ## Significance The family's lasting mark is institutional rather than dynastic. The Rockefeller Foundation, the University of Chicago, Rockefeller University, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Rockefeller Center, the Museum of Modern Art, Colonial Williamsburg, Lincoln Center, the Asia Society and several national parks all trace their founding or their endowment to a Rockefeller. Few American families have moved so completely from industrial fortune to organized philanthropy and elected office within three generations. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Surname | Rockefeller | | Origin | Richford, New York, United States | | Founder | John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) | | Family business | Standard Oil, later Chase Manhattan Bank | | Known for | Standard Oil, the Rockefeller Foundation, Rockefeller Center, the Museum of Modern Art | | Public offices held | Vice President of the United States, Governor of New York, Governor of Arkansas, United States Senator | | Generations covered | Five, from William Avery Rockefeller to the fourth-generation Cousins |

Plantagenet Family Tree - The House of Plantagenet from Henry II to Richard III

The House of Plantagenet was the royal dynasty that ruled England for 331 years, from the accession of Henry II in 1154 to the death of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, making it the longest-reigning royal house in English history. Fourteen Plantagenet kings held the throne in unbroken succession, and in the fifteenth century the family's two junior branches, the houses of Lancaster and York, fought each other for the crown in the civil wars later known as the Wars of the Roses. ## Origins The dynasty came from Anjou in western France. Geoffrey V, Count of Anjou, is said to have worn a sprig of broom, *planta genista*, in his cap, and from that nickname the family eventually took its name, although it was not used as an actual surname until Richard, 3rd Duke of York, adopted it in the 1440s. Geoffrey's marriage in 1128 to Empress Matilda, daughter and designated heir of Henry I of England, gave their son a claim to the English throne that he made good in 1154. With Normandy and Anjou behind him, and Aquitaine gained through his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry II ruled lands reaching from the Scottish border to the Pyrenees, the assemblage historians call the Angevin Empire. ## Notable members The early, or Angevin, kings are among the most familiar names in English history: Henry II, whose itinerant justices and sworn juries laid the foundations of the common law; Richard the Lionheart, a leading commander of the Third Crusade; and King John, who sealed Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215. Henry III rebuilt Westminster Abbey, Edward I conquered Wales and summoned the Model Parliament, and Edward III opened the Hundred Years' War and founded the Order of the Garter. Later generations produced Edward the Black Prince, the victor of Poitiers, Henry V of Agincourt, and Richard III, whose lost grave was rediscovered in Leicester in 2012. ## Lancaster and York Edward III's many sons divided the dynasty. From his third surviving son, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, came Henry IV, Henry V and Henry VI, and, through Gaunt's Beaufort children, Margaret Beaufort and her son Henry VII. From his fourth son, Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, combined with the senior Mortimer descent from his second son, Lionel of Antwerp, came Richard, 3rd Duke of York, and his sons Edward IV and Richard III. The rivalry of those branches produced thirty years of intermittent civil war, ending when Henry Tudor defeated Richard III at Bosworth and married Elizabeth of York, uniting the red and white roses. ## Significance No other family has shaped English institutions so deeply. Under the Plantagenets, Magna Carta became a settled principle, parliament grew from an occasional royal council into a body whose consent was needed for taxation, the common law took its enduring form, and English displaced French as the language of the court. Their castles, abbeys and cathedrals still define the medieval landscape of England and Wales. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Ruled | England, 1154 to 1485 | | Founder | Henry II, son of Geoffrey V of Anjou and Empress Matilda | | Place of origin | Anjou, France | | Kings | Fourteen, from Henry II to Richard III | | Branches | Angevin, Lancaster, York | | Emblems | The broom flower, the red rose of Lancaster, the white rose of York | | Last king | Richard III, killed at Bosworth in 1485 | | Legacy | Magna Carta, English common law, the growth of parliament |