The 1993 Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans also carries a section on “Great Family Fortunes.” Unlike a similar list of the European great family fortunes, which would be top heavy with royalty and titled nobility, the American experience shows the true strength of a “bottoms up” society where, in the first instance, wealth was earned rather than bestowed.
Put succinctly, the story of America can be found among these Forbes pages listing the family fortunes. There was no right of the nobility to rule and prosper in this country. Instead, many family fortunes evolved, not from some notion of superiority in breeding, but rather from the sweat and toil of emigrant ancestors who arrived with little more than the clothes on their back.
The descendants of Irish emigrants figure prominently on this list. No race, with the possible exception of African Americans, came to the United States with less. Famine tossed and fevered, as the poet wrote, they fled a forlorn country:
“All over Ireland why this chill
Why the foul mist
Why the crying birds
Why do the heavens mutter such wrathful words.”
On the list, for instance, is the Campbell family, descended from one James Campbell, whose life reads like a Hollywood tall tale. He was a 13-year-old Irish stowaway who arrived in New York City in 1839. The intrepid Campbell sailed for Hawaii, and “survived shipwreck, and cannibal attack” on his voyage there in 1850.
Once there, the Irish migrant bought vast tracts of lands previously believed worthless, pioneered artesian wells and built rich sugar plantations. He was dubbed “Kino Ona Millona” by the native islanders (James the millionaire). When he died in 1900 his estate covered 75,000 Hawaiian acres. His descendants now share a fortune worth over $700 million, according to Forbes. Not bad for a poor stowaway lad!
Then there is the tale of Thomas O’Connor, an Irish emigrant who landed penniless in Texas in the early 1830s, and who fought in the Lone Star State’s War of Independence.
From land given to him after that war, he built up a 400,000 acre ranch empire. His sons discovered the Tom O’Connor Field, probably the largest oil producing tract in the U.S. The family fortune Tom left behind is now estimated at $700 million.
On the West Coast, Richard O’Neill left Ireland penniless just after the Famine, and made his way to California where he built up a 52,000 acre land bounty which his descendants have now turned into a $500 million fortune.
Also in the Golden State, journalist James McClatchy, an Irish emigrant, heeded the advice of his employer Horace Greeley to “Go West Young Man.” He did so, and founded the Sacramento Bee newspaper, flagship of the McClatchy publishing chain, which he edited until he died in 1883. The publishing fortune he left to his family is estimated to be now worth $450 million.
Andrew Mellon arrived from Northern Ireland in 1818 and snapped up land in the Pittsburgh area. His grandsons turned the Mellon holdings into one of the three great American dynastic fortunes, in the same league as the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts.
In Northern Ireland today the Mellon achievement is well remembered at the Ulster Folk Museum and Heritage Park.
The closest thing to American royalty, the Kennedy family, is really the story of how Joseph Kennedy, the grandson of a penniless Irish emigrant, rose from his South Boston origins to command an empire that is now worth $350 million to his heirs.
The list could go on, but suffice it to point out that even in this year’s list of the Business 100 and the Forbes 400 there are men such as Tom Monaghan of Domino’s Pizza, raised mainly in an orphanage, who defied all the odds to make his fortune.
It is not a peculiarly Irish trait, but an American one, to pull yourself and your family up by the bootstraps. Yet many of the qualities we associate with the best of the Irish fit business success well — hard work, dedication to an ideal, loyalty to a concept or a company. In honoring the Business 100 in this issue, we also honor those unsung emigrants who never made millions but who first made it possible, by their intrepid voyage, for their heirs to continue on to greater successes.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the November December 1993 issue of Irish America. ♦
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