Edward Francis Hutton was born September 7, 1875, in Manhattan, New York, the son of James Laws Hutton and Frances Eloise Hulse Hutton. His father died when he was still a child, leaving the family in reduced financial circumstances and requiring him at an early age to begin supporting himself. The discipline and determination formed during those years became defining traits throughout his later career. As a teenager, Hutton entered the financial world at the lowest level, wo

Franklyn Laws Hutton Yale Graduation Photo Franklyn Laws Hutton was born on December 1, 1876, in Manhattan, New York, the youngest son of James Laws Hutton and Frances Eloise Hulse Hutton. He and his older brother, Edward Francis Hutton, were born into a New York family whose home stood at 10 East Forty-second Street, at a time when that area was still residential. Their father, James Laws Hutton, had come to New York from Ohio as a young man, leaving the farm at the age of s

Barbara Woolworth Hutton was born on November 14, 1912, in New York City, New York, the only child of Franklyn Laws Hutton and Edna Woolworth Hutton. She was born into two of the most powerful financial dynasties in the United States. Her maternal grandfather was Frank Winfield Woolworth, founder of the F. W. Woolworth Company, whose five-and-dime stores became one of the great retail empires of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her father was a co-founder of

Photo Courtesy of The Ringling John Ringling was born Johann Nicholas Rüngeling on May 31, 1866, in McGregor, Iowa, into a family that understood work long before it understood wealth. John Ringling His father, August, was a harness maker, and the family later settled in Baraboo, Wisconsin, where the Ringling children grew up in a household shaped by labor, necessity, and persistence. There was no indication in those early years that one of them would one day control the larg

Alexander Turney Stewart October 12, 1803 – April 10, 1876 Alexander Turney Stewart was born on October 12, 1803, in Lisburn, Ireland, to Scottish Protestant parents. His father died only weeks after his birth, and soon after, his mother left for America with her new husband. Stewart remained behind, raised by his grandfather, who intended for him to enter the ministry. His early education was strict and deliberate, but his path changed after his grandfather’s death. He was t

Margaret Wright Bedford, known to her friends simply as "Peggy," lived a life that could have been scripted for the society pages. Born in 1932 to Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Henry Bedford, Jr., she was heir to the Standard Oil fortune through her father, who served as a director of the powerful company. Her childhood alternated between the Bedford estate in Greens Farms, Connecticut, and the family's apartment in New York's Pierre Hotel, an existence that was hardly "ordinary," t