20 Family Fortunes Destroyed By Bitter, Brutal Feuds

Caroline Astor was the queen of Gilded Age New York high society, and for years she was the only woman who could claim the title “Mrs. Astor” for herself. When her nephew, William Waldorf Astor, wanted to give that title to his wife instead, she refused. So in 1893 he tore down his Fifth Avenue home next to hers and built the Waldorf Hotel in its place, blocking her sunlight. Four years later, Caroline’s son, John Jacob Astor IV, demolished the old house to build an even taller hotel alongside it. The cousins would never again share a stake in their immense fortune.

For years, Ford founder Henry Ford waged a war against his own son, Edsel Ford, president of Ford Motor Company since 1919. Edsel wanted more modern accounting practices and safety features. Henry saw this as weak and would overrule his son time after time. The stress got to Edsel, who died of stomach cancer in 1943. Henry was elderly and unstable, yet remained in control. Ford lost money month after month until Edsel’s widow and son staged a family coup and removed Henry from his position two years later.

Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt amassed a fortune of some $100 million from his steamship and railroad holdings, and upon his death in 1877, he bequeathed the bulk of that fortune to his oldest son, William Henry Vanderbilt. He believed only William had the skill to manage the business, disinheriting son Cornelius Jeremiah and his sisters. They sued, alleging that William had manipulated their senile father. Though William retained control of the family’s railroads, the legal battle lasted two years, and he paid out several million dollars in private settlements in order to hush up the scandalous case.

Alexander Turney Stewart, New York’s “Merchant Prince of Broadway,” left his $50 million retail empire to his widow, Cornelia Stewart, at his death in 1876, naming Judge Henry Hilton as executor to run it. When thieves stole Stewart’s corpse and demanded money for its return, Hilton said no. Cornelia paid for her husband’s remains on her own. From that point, the two could not work together. Hilton drove away customers and suppliers with his blustery behavior, and he sold off the empire for pennies on the dollar a decade later.

As siblings, Cleopatra and her younger brother Ptolemy XIII were intended to co-rule Egypt as their predecessors had done. However, in 48 BC, with Cleopatra aged 18, Ptolemy’s advisors managed to oust her from the throne and take over its treasury. Cleopatra raised an army, starting what became known as the Alexandrian Civil War. Both sides invested heavily in mercenaries and ravaged the harbors and palaces of Alexandria. When Julius Caesar reached Egypt, there was little money left in the treasury. He would put an end to Egyptian financial independence once and for all.

Reclusive siblings Ella Wendel and John G. Wendel II, who shared a Manhattan real estate fortune worth tens of millions of dollars, were forbidden by family rule from ever marrying. After she died childless in 1931 and bequeathed all her property to charity, 2,303 impostors and other distant relatives came forward with claims against her estate. All of the claims failed, but two years of legal turmoil and the payment of federal estate taxes led to the sale of 150 historic Fifth Avenue properties.

William Jennens, a miserly English financier nicknamed the Miser of Acton who amassed a fortune of £2 million, sat down to sign his will, realized he had left his glasses somewhere else, and died. His land went promptly to his legitimate heirs. The rest of his estate languished in court for more than a hundred years as far-flung relations were organized by promoters into Jennens Clubs. They filed lawsuit after speculative lawsuit, and the novelist Charles Dickens used the story as background for Bleak House.

Isaac Merritt Singer, who started the Singer Sewing Machine Company, had about 24 children from five different women. In his will, written in 1875, he disinherited many of those kids who had backed his first wife against him in the past. He gave his oldest son William just $500 from his estate worth $13 million. Singer left no time for peace after his death: deserted wives and disowned children clogged the court system trying to invalidate his will. The bickering effectively pushed the Singer family out of the business they’d created, passing ownership over to his business partner.

Alfred and Pierre S. du Pont shared ownership of the family gunpowder and chemicals business. When their cousin T. Coleman du Pont became sick, Pierre secretly organized a banking syndicate that acquired most of Coleman’s shares, leaving Alfred out of the loop. Alfred sued, and the ensuing three-year court battle fractured the family into bitter opposing factions. It ended up costing him his leadership position in the company and forcing him into financial exile in Florida. The du Pont company itself survived the feud intact, even as the family’s unified control of it was gone for good.

A competing Florentine banking family led by Jacopo and Francesco de’ Pazzi had been resentful of the political clout wielded by Lorenzo de’ Medici (“the Magnificent”) and his brother Giuliano. Eager to take over the profitable papal banking business enjoyed by the Medici, they attempted to assassinate the two brothers in Florence Cathedral on April 26, 1478. Giuliano was killed, but Lorenzo escaped. The people of Florence rose up on behalf of the surviving Medici brother. The Pazzi conspirators were executed, their relatives exiled, and their wealth confiscated.

Mark Hopkins was one of the “Big Four” railroad tycoons in California. When he died without a will, his widow, Mary Hopkins, inherited $20 million. Mary subsequently married Edward Searles, an interior decorator considerably younger than she, and rewrote her will to benefit him and disinherit her adopted son, Timothy Hopkins. After her death, Timothy and a group of relatives sued, alleging that Searles had employed séances to unduly influence Mary, and the trial forced Searles to pay out large settlements.

Jay Gould, a Gilded Age railroad tycoon, had left a $72 million trust for his six children with his eldest son, George Jay Gould, as trustee. But George used the trust money to live his own lavish lifestyle, prompting his five siblings to sue for mismanagement of the assets and get him fired. A few years later, George died, and courts ruled that his estate should pay out more than $50 million. The judgment ended the family’s unified control of the Gould railroads.

In 1480, Ludovico Sforza took over Milan from his own nephew, the young duke Gian Galeazzo Sforza. The young man was held captive at Pavia while Ludovico, known as Il Moro, ruled on his behalf. Afraid the boy duke’s family in Naples would attack him, Ludovico persuaded France’s Charles VIII to lead an invasion of Italy in 1494, sparking the Italian Wars. When French troops invaded again five years later, they arrested Ludovico and transported him to France, where he eventually died.

Though Duke Vincenzo II Gonzaga ruled the northern Italian city of Mantua, he was more burdened by court debt than wealth. In 1627, he agreed to sell the renowned family art collection to England’s King Charles I, just to clear his bills. When he died in 1627 without a male heir, two competing claimants from distant branches of the family, supported by competing foreign rulers, fought over the right to rule Mantua, sparking the War of the Mantuan Succession. Imperial troops occupied and sacked Mantua in 1630, bringing the end of the Gonzagas’ reign.

Gian Galeazzo Visconti jointly ruled Milan with his uncle, Bernabò Visconti, who is said to have had roughly 30 children of his own. When Gian Galeazzo feared his uncle would take all the power, he staged an elaborate ambush outside the city in 1385, capturing Bernabò and then having him poisoned several months later. Gian Galeazzo seized control of the family’s largest stash of gold, though he also unleashed a series of bitter family feuds that would divide up their empire for decades after his own death.

Calvagh O’Donnell and Shane O’Neill, known to contemporaries as “Shane the Proud,” were rival Gaelic chieftains in Ulster, Ireland. Each claimed to be the rightful ruler of the territory. In 1561, Shane kidnapped Calvagh and kept him prisoner for several years until Calvagh’s allies promised to pay a ransom of land and cattle in exchange for his freedom. Then, after Calvagh’s death, his successor, Hugh O’Donnell, struck back, routing Shane’s forces at the Battle of Farsetmore in 1567 and killing around 600 of his men. Decades of raiding drained both clans’ wealth just as Tudor England moved in on Ulster.

In 1407, Louis, Duke of Orléans, was the brother of the king of France, Charles VI. Louis and his first cousin, John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, both sought the French royal purse and its associated powers. While Charles was intermittently insane, John arranged for Louis to be assassinated in Paris. The resulting civil war between the Burgundians and the Orléans faction, later known as the Armagnacs, drained the fortunes of both houses. Both sides paid mercenaries until the power of France was exhausted, and England invaded at Agincourt. It would be decades before peace was established.

The 5th Earl of Berkeley, Frederick Augustus Berkeley, had cohabited with Mary Cole for many years before marrying her in public. This meant that his eldest son William was born before the marriage and his younger son Thomas was born afterwards. In order for William to be eligible to inherit the earldom, the Earl forged a document backdating their marriage. When he died, the House of Lords found that this was a forgery and bestowed the title on Thomas, but William retained possession of Berkeley Castle and its revenue. The earldom and estate were thus separated for 50 years.

Sir George Downing had left instructions that his estate should be used to endow a Cambridge college if his line became extinct. When his cousin Sir Jacob Downing died without an heir in 1764, Sir Jacob’s widow, Lady Margaret Downing, refused to convey the rents of the estate to the college trustees. She preferred the money go to her second husband, who was also her nephew. She waged a 36-year legal battle that involved allowing the farmland to go into disrepair and destroying the mansion house in 1776. The college was finally established in 1800.

Two of Pope Alexander VI’s sons fought over the spoils: Giovanni Borgia, Duke of Gandia, commander of the papal armies, and Cesare Borgia, who coveted his position. Giovanni was killed and his corpse dumped in the Tiber. Though no one was ever tried or convicted, contemporaries and later historians blame his brother Cesare. Once he gave up the cardinal’s hat he had held and took the field, he drained his family’s coffers in the name of new conquests. Then, when their father passed away, the ensuing blood feud alienated everyone around Cesare, who lost his territories only a few years later.

This content was created with the help of AI.