Where did American "Blue Blood Aristocracy" come from?

There was a lot of opportunity once they (we) arrived here. For instance, my family goes back to the navigator aboard the Mayflower. He and his immediate descendants settled in what is now lower Manhattan. What now stretches from 4th Street to 14th Street and from 5th Ave to 2nd Ave was our family farm and estate. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that, as the city grew, that land became increasingly more valuable - and next thing you know, we were keeping apace with the Vanderbilts and the Astors.

Much of the story of the Pilgrims in Massachusetts is myth. It was a commercial venture. Within a couple of years they had enslaved both Africans and Native Americans. They stole all the land they could. Then they killed as many Native Americans as they could either through disease or warfare. The result is that they seized control of land and natural resources. From that they built wealth. Scratch the surface of any American blue blood pedigree and you will find a genocidal thief ancestor who profited from slavery.

it came from the accumulation of wealth based on slavery, it's not as glamour as you gals want to hear but it is the truth... blue blood, whether american or not, is just trans-generational blood-tainted hands... and let's not mention prince andrew...

R2 Exactly. I think that some Americans have an inferiority complexe about Europeans who have real Royal ancestors, aristocrats and from the real bourgeoisie. while i am at it the word Bourgeoisie is French. Not English and certainly not American. I notice more and more Americans referring to the guillotine, as if it were their history, whereas they are not at all part of the History of France, for the vast majority of them. Many European countries were built on Greek and Roman culture and here again I read many Americans referring to it as if it were their own. It is fascinating and also sad to observe. They're litteraly inventing blue blood Aristocracy lineages that do not exist in their culture and history.

The British landed gentry and clergy. They didn't have titles or direct lines to nobility so they came to the US to create their own class system with them on top. Below them were the merchant class, then skilled workers, then scots Irish rebel types, and then the indentured servants.

First few posters are delusional because certain activist historians have been rewriting history. A lot of the first Anglo-Americans were independently wealthy and would today be described as middle class. The hereditary class system prevented them from upwards mobility in England so they left. Many of them brought over their lower class servants. These were not starving, desperate, peniless people. Poor people could not afford a transatlantic trip in the 17the century. The colonies were wealthy from the get-go.

The real truth Americans don't want to admit is that for every ancestor you had on the Mayflower, you have 10 who were indentured servants who only came to the US because your family had a debt they could not pay back.

There were also many European thugs who fled to America to escape jail in Europe. Americans are totally fantasizing about a blue blood, but this is not a surprise from the rest of the world anymore.

[quote]Indentured servitude in British America was the prominent system of labor in British American colonies until it was eventually overcome by slavery.[1] During its time, the system was so prominent that more than half of all immigrants to British colonies south of New England were white (mostly Irish) servants, and that nearly half of total white immigration to the Thirteen Colonies came under indenture.[2] By the beginning of the American Revolutionary War in 1775, only 2 to 3 percent of the colonial labor force was composed of indentured servants.[3]

[quote]The consensus view among economic historians and economists is that indentured servitude became popular in the Thirteen Colonies in the seventeenth century because of a large demand for labor there, coupled with labor surpluses in Europe and high costs of transatlantic transportation beyond the means of European workers.[4][5] Between the 1630s and the American Revolution, one-half to two-thirds of white immigrants to the Thirteen Colonies arrived under indentures.[6] Half a million Europeans, mostly young men, also went to the Caribbean under indenture to work on plantations. Most indentures were voluntary, although some people were tricked or coerced into them.[7] A debt peonage system similar to indenture was also used in southern New England and Long Island to control and assimilate Native Americans from the 1600s through the American Revolution.[8]

Many of the indentured were Irish peasants.

Only nine posts, but I'm already confused.

So basically, these were already rich people who came to the US to get richer?

No, the vast majority were not rich and they did not come from the European blue blood aristocracy. Only a minority was rich.

The first few waves from Europe, mainly England, were composed of a minority of wealthy gentry (no noble titles!) and their servants who at the end of their terms would be free. They usually became farmers or tradesmen. Some navy men were given generous land grants as well.

There’s no such thing as American blue blood aristocracy. Jesus. lol

R1, I’d keep that one under your hat. Those people were evil.

[quote] There’s no such thing as American blue blood aristocracy. Jesus. lol

Clearly, you've never visited an East Coast Prep School, or the numerous Estates and Compounds throughout the Northeastern United States.

We certainly do have an aristocracy, with such names as mentioned in R1, along with the Pierce family, the Bush family, the Kennedys, and many others who I probably have never heard of because I don't move in those circles.

R15 We are talking about blue blood aristocracy. There is no blue blood aristocracy in America.

R15 Blue bloods are a thing of the past. Influence has shifted to DC and West Coast. Tech billionaires and their scions are the new "upper class".

If in 300+ years, your family couldn’t make money in the biggest booming economy the world has ever known - they were just lazy or stupid. Of course, many made it and lost it - but like the Edies, they are still considered “blue bloods”. I think they have largely become irrelevant in the 21st century thanks to the tech fortunes that have supplanted them in the pecking order.

Part of my family goes back to Jamestown. It is a mix of 1 landed gentry type woman who was also from a religious nut family, a handful of indentured servants who came over as teenagers, and some later-arriving guys who managed to get one parcel of land each after the colony was already established. They sold and traded their land and the human beings they enslaved.

I helped with some archival research on Jamestown many years before the 1619 Project and it was clear how brutal and intentional the establishment of chattel slavery was in the US. For the first few decades after enslaved people arrived, there were all kinds of social experiments, including intermarriage between colonists and Africans, Africans and Native Americans, Native Americans (the descendants of this are known today as the Melungeons), and children of enslaved people being born into freedom. There was a deliberate choice made in the law to move enslaved people into the category of property and only property, wall them off from other humans, and damn their children to a life of enslavement. People still are so unwilling to look closely at this and see it for what it was.

Blue bloods? Yes. Aristocracy? No. Also the Kennedys are Irish, not old stock American.

[quote] Blue bloods are a thing of the past. Influence has shifted to DC and West Coast. Tech billionaires and their scions are the new "upper class".

I have never thought of tech billionaires as "blue bloods." Nouveau Riche, yes. But they lack good breeding.

Our American blue bloods have more than just money. They have history. They have culture. They have refinement. They have a secret society that only they belong to.

These tech trash billionaires will never have that, and never BE that.

Blue blood has a definition. It is non-existent in America. Between some people fantasies and reality there's a whole world. Blue blood in the aristocracy still exists today in Europe. Idiots above don't even know what they are talking about. They are confusing the elite with the blue blood aristocracy.

People here are confusing Preppy Handbook WASPs with Blue Bloods, and lace curtain Irish with WASPs.

There is no blue blood in America. There is no American blue blood. To have blue blood you have to be from the monarchy! Unbelievable the bullshit you can read on here

You have reminded us of this at least 100 times, R22.

But we have our OWN BRAND of aristocracy and blue bloods in the United States. It's based on history.

Oh, and incidentally we also have MANY Americans of British Royal Lineage (Courtney Cox from "Friends" is one I can think of off the top of my head), who I would never consider a "blue blood," even though they very well might be.

Our aristocracy is something very different from Euro aristocracy. So DROP IT already.

The whole point of America is we tell blue bloods they can go fuck themselves. Read any book about generational “aristocracy” in the US and it’s old timers bitching about new money upstarts. Then, the offspring of the new money upstarts (who are quickly running through the funds) bitch in turn about the next generation. Families like the Bushes are the exception because they haven’t run through the money yet and managed to make it to POTUS. Tad Friend’s book on the decline of the current WASP “aristocracy” is very good.

"But we have our OWN BRAND of aristocracy and blue bloods in the United States. It's based on history."

No wonder you don't know the definition of words. These words existed long before European stole the land from the Natives. They existed in Europe. So there is no "We have our OWN BRAND of aristocracy and blue blood".

Blue blood exists only in the monarchy. Deal with it!

You can't rewrite history just because you are suffering from inferiority complexe.

On that Discovery Channel show "Who do you think you are?" Courtney Cox had her lineage traced all the way back to William the Conqueror.

She is most definitely a BLUE BLOOD.

So yes, we DO have them in America, too.

The Bushes and Kennedys are wealthy families and that are part of American history. They are the American elite, yes, but they don't have blue blood. Whether the dumbass above likes it or not. Because this person dreams of having a blue-blooded elite, she/he comes to you to explain that America has its own definition of blue blood. aristocracy For your information, blue blood is already recognized in many countries in the world, where it still exists and is still in power. Misusing words to masturbate your brain is a sign of mental illness. I'll let you fantasize, but you'll be the only one in the world to talk about blue blood concerning the American elite.

Coutney Cox like many Americans has a lot of fantasies. William the Conqueror is always praised in France and strangely Courtney is not recognized as one of his descendant! Jesus!

^Courtney

Meghan Markles and Harry's children have blue blood. The rest is pure fantasy.

Grace Kelly children have blue blood too

The Sedgwick family was most certainly blue blooded. Blue blooded simply means high social status sustained over a prolonged time. The Kennedys were a 20th century phenomenon and they don't matter anymore. The progenitor of the family was a major appointed by Cromwell.

Every person of European ancestry has Charlemagne in their family tree. Technically everyone has royal blood when you go back far enough.

"Blue blooded simply means high social status sustained over a prolonged time"

NOPE. blue blood means that you have royal blood.

"Every person of European ancestry has Charlemagne in their family tree"

No, only the heirs of Charlemagne. I think you need to see a psychiatrist. Quickly.

Oh hey R1 with your family farm from 4th Street to 14th street and 5th Ave to 2nd Ave. Can I get to know you and have some land?

The Vanderbilts and Rockefellers were once new money. Old money is 3 generations of inherited wealth.

Since there's no such thing as blue blood of course, , and aristocracy only means that at some point in the distant past, a king of some nation, intent on plundering another, rewarded someone's ancestor with a knighthood, or a barony in exchange for being willing to march with him, this is sort of a weird topic. Lots of lesser nobility from England came to the colonies, because England had a system wherein only the oldest male child inherited the title and the land and other male children MIGHT receive some money, if there was any not tied to the rents from the inherited land, (but seldom enough to live extravagantly). Lots of younger brothers of barons, lords and earls joined the military to try to make their fortunes, either the cavalry or as naval men. But again, there was nothing special about these people, because aristocracy is a construct, unrelated to a person's native talent or ability. America, to the Europeans, was a land of farmers and merchants. But having land for the taking (once the natives were dispersed) was a great aid in increasing monetary wealth.

Sad to say, when certain families, over the course of a century or so, built up enough wealth to build mansions and extravagant estates, they felt embarrassed by their merchant backgrounds, and either made up ancestors who didn't exist, or invented some virtue residing in their blood lines to make their success seem aristocratic rather than a product of savvy business skills and luck. They aped the social niceties they observed in Europe, and made their children learn to dance, and to take lessons in speaking French, having nice manners and fine elocution. They were "repaid" when lots of European noble families, whose fortunes were humbled by wars or bad decisions, would "sell" their titles by marrying into these American families in order to get infusions of cash. It is their descendants who still claim this blue blood aristocracy, and they continue to be educated at Eastern boarding schools and at Ivy League colleges as "legacy" admittees.

In a healthy society, there's a constant bubbling, where people of intelligence, energy and talent rise to become leaders and well-respected businessmen, medical people, lawyers, educators, etc. However, over time, wealthy people find ways of gaming the system so that their children will get the better educations, will be first in line for the better jobs, and the tax system will be changed to preserve the wealth of the rich at the expense of everyone else. This is not a healthy thing.

Why are British monarchists so threatened by American aristocracy?

It's actually Courteney, R31.

So Meghan Markle's kids would be American Blue Bloods? No wonder DL hates the woman. She made it.