You Can't Take It With You: The Life and Afterlife of America's Greatest Fortunes

In 1918, Forbes Magazine published a list of the 30 richest Americans.  At the top was oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, Sr, whose wealth was estimated at a whopping $1.2 billion — more than 5 times as much as his closest rival for the title of richest American, Henry Frick.   But by that time, Senior had already started giving much of his vast fortune  to charity; by the time he died in 1937, he had given away a total of precisely $530,853,632.

He also had passed along $470 million to his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr --  forty times what he gave to either of his surviving daughters --  because he trusted  his son to give most of that away, too, which  Junior proceeded to do, giving away around $500 million before he died in 1960, while still passing on around $160 million to his own six children.  

The will of Wellington Burt, a Michigan timber baron who died in 1919, created a trust for his $13 million estate that called for less than 1% of it to be distributed annually until 20 years after his last grandchild had died.  Although his family would fight the will in court for the next 40 years, in 2011 a  dozen  lucky descendants of Burt’s ranging from 19 to 94 split a $100 million jackpot when the trust was finally dissolved.

On Oct 15, 1906, a legal battle over the estate of the drug industry pioneer William Weightman, which was worth $40-100 million dollars, came to a sudden, screeching halt when a mysterious note was introduced as evidence.  Asked about its contents, the husband of Weightman’s granddaughter said that "I would rather have my tongue cut out than reveal what was in that paper." The contents of the note were never revealed.  In this episode, I play history detective and offer a theory about what that note said and why it ended the case so quickly.

Charles Tiffany was so brilliant at marketing luxury to the newly minted millionaires of the gilded age that he left $12 million to his four children when he died in 1902.  Not trusting his younger son Burnett to manage his money wisely, he created a $1.5 million trust for him overseen by his older son Louis.  Indeed, Burney went bankrupt less than two years later... but only because Louis refused to pay off a $25,000  debt for furniture Burney had bought for his new wife.

Isaac Singer made a fortune as the co-founder of the Singer Manufacturing Company, whose sewing machines relieved millions of women from the interminable drudgery of hand-sewing clothes, and allowed many of them to start their own small businesses of sewing for hire.  But the women in his personal life  didn't fare so well: in his will he left nothing to four of the five mothers of his twenty-two children, and he stiffed three of the children as well.

Stephen Girard and Daniel Ludwig lived strangely parallel lives almost exactly a century and a half apart:   both started   careers as sailors at very young ages, both made their first fortunes in shipping and then multiplied them via successful investments to become the richest American of their times, and both had wives who gave birth to a daughter that in one case most likely wasn’t his and in the other case definitely wasn’t.   And both ended up leaving their entire fortunes to charity despite repeated attempts by their family members who thought they deserved to get them more.

When he died in 1850, John McDonogh left a real estate empire worth $2 million to the cities of New Orleans and Baltimore for the education of poor children.  But despite writing a 69 page will,  his plans began to fall apart immediately after his death. 

Railroad baron Mark Hopkins left behind an estate of $24 million when he died in 1878 but left no will to say who should get his vast fortune.  Fifty years later, most of his fortune was in the hands of the cousins of the (male) secretary to the second husband of Mark's widow but there were almost a thousand other people claiming to be his rightful heirs.