Holding onto a fortune can be a lot harder than amassing one. It’s an old saying, uttered long before I became New To Seattle. But I’m going to offer you some hard proof of this proposition and make it extremely local.
Thanks to Forbes, we have the names of the half-dozen richest Seattleites today. That’s because of the famous Forbes 400 list, published annually each fall since 1982. In Seattle the fattest cats are Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Steve Ballmer, Paul Allen, Craig McCaw and Howard Schultz. You all know that. There’s nothing like a billion-dollar-plus net worth to make you a household name within the 1%, at least among your neighbors in the other 99%.

Arthur Denny, about 1890, two years before he was declared the “richest man” in Seattle and Washington State (via Wikipedia)
But I also can give you a list of the locally fattest cats a long time ago. How long ago? How about 1892? That’s barely 40 years after the first gringos arrived from Illinois and just three years after Washington became the country’s 42nd State.
That roster numbers a dozen. But here’s the really interesting part. As near as I can figure, no descendants of that 12 today sit on the Forbes list or anywhere near it. Indeed, you’ll know some of their names only because they adorn Seattle streets, buildings, bike paths and in one case an entire suburb–but not because their heirs possess fabulous world-class wealth anymore. Continue reading
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