The family web: Multigenerational class persistence in elite populations

Abstract

Abstract This article introduces the first-ever full kinship network of an upper-class population in a US city (n = 12 273). Multigenerational class transmission models tend to conceptualize families as father–son chains, especially for the upper class, but I systematically include women, finding that nearly 70% of Dallas high society from 1895 to 1945 was related in a single web encompassing most of the city’s wealthy, powerful, and high-status people. Because elites did not always have sons, nearly three times more families persisted over the 50-year period than patrilineal measures would suggest. Almost all persistent families connected to the web, and they connected more deeply than non-persistent families. Three case studies demonstrate that women and kin ties beyond the patrilineage frequently drove elite family persistence. Upper-class populations are best understood not as collections of distinct dynasties that live or die with the success of sons, but as complex, durable family webs.