10 RICHEST AMERICANS EVER

Today you hear all about the millennial tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz, but long before 20-somethings ruled the U.S. economy there were the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts and other old-money families. They were the American version of royalty and their wealth makes Zuckerberg look poor. In fact Bill Gates, considered the world’s wealthiest man, doesn’t even make the list of top 10 richest Americans anymore (although just five years ago he did, but he’s been giving away a lot of his fortune). With net worth adjusted to today’s, , here are the 10 richest Americans ever.
10. Jay Gould
If railroad executive, financier and speculator Jay Gould were alive today his adjusted wealth would be about $78.3 billion. By comparison, Mark Zuckerberg is worth an estimated $9.4 billion. Gould is considered one of U.S.’s most unscrupulous businessmen ever, accused of stealing land, issuing false stocks and bribing regulators in the mid-19th century. He had very few friends and was largely shunned by New York society for his actions, CNN Money reports. But By died very wealthy.

9. Frederick Weyerhauser
With an adjusted wealth totaling $91.2 billion, Frederick Weyerhauser made his fortune in lumber, wood and paper. Born in 1834, Weyerhauser died in 1914 and during his lifetime it was rumored that his family controlled an area of land the size of Wisconsin.

8. Alexander Turney Stewart
Born in Ireland, the textile merchant Alexander Turney Stewart would be worth $100 billion today. He lived between 1803 and 1876 and during that time built up the largest wholesale and retail dry goods businesses in the U.S. He also supplied uniforms to the Union Army during the Civil War.

7. Stephan Van Rensselaer
The last of a line of Dutch aristocrats granted vast amounts of land in New York State under Dutch colonial rule, Stephan Van Rensselaer at one time controlled more than a million acres in New York. He lived between 1764 and 1839 and is the only person on this list to inherit his entire fortune. His adjusted wealth was worth $101 billion.

6. Andrew Carnegie
Tied with Stephan Van Rennselaer, Andrew Carnegie was also worth an adjusted $101 billion when he died in 1919. He was the founder of the Carnegie Steel Company but is most famous for giving his fortune away. He established a number of philanthropic and nonprofit organizations including the Carnegie Corporation, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and nearly 3,000 public libraries.

5. Richard B. Mellon
Coming in at No. 5 with an adjusted wealth of $103 billion is the other half of the endowment that made Carnegie Mellon University possible. Richard is the richer half of a brother banking team (Andrew Mellon is the 15th richest person in America) that also dabbled in oil, steel, coal and railroads during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

4. Stephan Girard
With an adjusted wealth of $120 billion by today’s standards, the French-born Stephan Girard got his start working as a cabin boy on the Caribbean-Europe trade route in the last quarter of the 18th century. He went on to purchase a fleet of trading ships and eventually became a financier, wealthy enough to buy banks and lend money to the U.S. government during the war of 1812. When he died he left almost his entire fortune to charity. He was the fourth-richest American ever.


3.John Jacob Astor
 He started as a penniless German immigrant in the late 1700s, but soon began earning income as a fur trader. He married well, and was able to invest his wife’s fortune in Manhattan real estate, which is where he made his real fortune, estimated at $138 billion today.

2. Cornelius Vanderbilt
Coming in at No. 2 on the list, Cornelius Vanderbilt accumulated a fortune worth $205 billion by today’s standards, first by sailing barges across New York Harbor and then expanding into steamships and railroads. He was born in 1794 and died in 1877.

1. John D. Rockefeller
Adjusted for inflation, John D. Rockefeller’s wealth totaled $253 billion, making him the richest American ever. He lived from 1839 to 1937 and made his fortune revolutionizing the oil industry.