The Rich: Back to the Quid Sod

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Northern Ireland can and does take considerable pride in its emigrant sons. Davy Crockett's parents came from Ulster. So did the ancestors of Sam Houston, Horace Greeley and ten U.S. Presidents.* Even so, last week was a special occasion. For a sentimental reunion on the ould sod, some 50 members of what is probably America's richest family gathered at the old family homestead —a clay-floored, thatch-roofed cottage near Omagh in County Tyrone.

It was 150 years ago that the parents of Thomas Mellon, then five years old, sailed from Londonderry for the U.S. To celebrate the anniversary, the family gave $250,000 to the Scotch-Irish Trust of Ulster to buy the old dwelling from its latter-day owner (who had thriftily converted it to a farm building for hay storage and pigs). Then they invited 400 guests, including Northern Ireland's Prime Minister Terence O'Neill, to a gala housewarming. The natives were delighted. Long envious of the outpouring of American sentimentality for the boozy, poetic republic to the south and of the stir created whenever a Kennedy came to call at Wexford, the citizens of Ulster could at last display a superfamily of their own.

Joint Account. As superfamilies go, the Mellons are remarkably unknown to the public. Thomas Mellon, the paterfamilias, worked his way to a law degree at the Western University of Pennsylvania (now the University of Pittsburgh) by doing odd jobs and tutoring less apt students. Soon after hanging out his shingle, he concluded that there was more money to be made in investment than in litigation. In 1870, he opened his own bank, T. Mellon & Sons. Tall, thin and austere as a Grant Wood painting, he wore high starched collars when lesser men had long since moved to sack suits and button-down collars, read Greek philosophers for pleasure, but calculatingly lunched at the Duquesne Club to discuss the mortgage market.

It was his sons, Richard B. and, most conspicuously, Andrew W., who really built the Mellon fortune (which by conservative estimate now totals at least $3 billion and perhaps a good deal more). "Andrew Mellon was possibly the most brilliant businessman whom our society has produced," wrote FORTUNE'S Charles J. V. Murphy recently. "He was a banker who understood corporations and an investor who understood men." The two brothers were so close that they ran a joint bank account for as long as they were both alive. The brothers' philosophy: Bet on a man with an idea, taking a share in the business while making the loan; leave him alone unless he gets into difficulty; when he prospers, let him pay back the loan (retaining, of course, the share of his business) and turn the money over to another man with an idea.

In from Bombay. Despite their pervasive presence in U.S. business, the family so shunned the limelight that President-elect Warren G. Harding had to ask, "Who is Mellon?" when Andrew W. was recommended to him for the job of Secretary of the Treasury. "Uncle Andy" served from 1921 to 1932, but he will probably be better remembered as the collector who gave the nation a $50 million art collection and a building (now the National Gallery of Art) to house it.