Elite Families and their Origins as Drug Dealers?

[Linda Minor]

Linda, Kris Millegan who is a member here has a vast background database on this, particularly as it relates to the Order of Skull & Bones. I'll contact him and ask if he would be kind enough to post on this topic.

In the UK some of the Scottish families, the Jardines for example, have a wonderful background in making their wealth from opium. I wonder who owns HSBC?

David,
As I may have mentioned to you, I am now trying to write a book that begins with Colonel House, who has been credited with being the man in the shadows behind the creation of America's Federal Reserve System. What I have recently come to appreciate is that early on in his career he became very close to a man named Thomas Jefferson Coolidge. The first T.J. Coolidge was born in 1831 and was a great-grandson of founding father Thomas Jefferson, whose daughter married Joseph Coolidge, Jr. who had gone to China in 1839 and returned wealthy in 1844, working for the firm of Augustine Heard.

(See Wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_H...nd_Company)
Augustine Heard & Co. was founded in 1840, in Canton, China by Ipswich, MA businessman, traveller, trader and former Samuel Russell & Co. partner Augustine Heard, and his partners, Joseph Coolidge and John Murray Forbes. Throughout its history, it was run in large part by Heard family members, most notably Heard's four nephews from his brother George Washington Heard: John, Augustine, Albert Farley and George Washington Jr.

In 1841, Augustine Heard, who had previously lived in China but had returned for health reasons to Ipswich, returned to China to head the firm until 1844. There, business flourished, notably because of the use of fast clipper ships and the import of steamships. Tea, one of the main commodities traded, did not provide much profit compared to opium, which enabled the firm's finances to soar, Augustine Heard & Co. becoming the third largest American firm in China in the mid-nineteenth century. The firm also introduced steamships to China, and imported them through its sister firm in the U.S. The firm also became the main trading agent for several large firms, including Liverpool firm John Swire & Sons Ltd. in 1861.[1]***

I know that Col. House's father, T.W. House, had ended up in Texas in 1838 or so, just as Texas had declared itself an independent republic. He acquired enough capital in a bakery he owned with his father-in-law to set up a private bank, and then began expanding into shipping out of Galveston, which was then the largest city in Texas and its only port. As the Mexican war began in 1845, House joined with others who ran their ships through war zones to make huge profits for themselves; they transported textiles to Boston and Liverpool and returned munitions and other commodities to Galveston.

It would have been during these years that T.W. House made contact with the whaling community of New Bedford, Massachusetts, where the Mandell family (his son's namesake) lived. His contact in Liverpool was Lemonius & Co. New Bedford was noted for supplying whale oil at great demand in the decades preceding discovery of rock oil in Pennsylvania in 1859. It was a hotbed of capitalism, always on the lookout for the newest technology in which to invest. It was where the famous woman capitalist, Hetty Green, was born.

At this point it is not known exactly how and when Colonel House became close to Coolidge, who founded the Old Colony Trust in 1890, just before departing for France as Minister from the U.S. in 1892, appointed by President Benjamin Harrison (serving with the Dulles boys' maternal grandfather, John Watson Foster, who was Secretary of State under that President).

I don't think it's as simple as I once did--that it's all about power or profit. I think it begins with a first generation who have a mission, such as to create a new, independent nation. They access whatever tools are available to them from their educational background or confidential sources of banking and family enterprise. They then passed these tools on to sons and sons-in-law (in those days women weren't privy to such things). The focus was on maintaining the status that had been achieved, using whatever methods the new generation could come up with.

While the women were shoved into the society mold, demanding more status and more successful husbands and wealthier wives for the children to marry, the men were placed on boards of institutions to raise funds and manage endowments. The pressure was always mounting, but the temptations were always rampant as well to transfer some of that wealth creation to one's own bank account. A little insider trading was part of the game.

At the time, the China Trade was couched in terms of silks and tea, and the opium sent to Chinese peasants was de-emphasized. That was a world apart from the ladies' circles at home. Our culture was always uppermost as the class defended its role and position in society. Like today's intelligence operations, it was a culture based on compartmentalization: Keep the dirty laundry hidden.

This is only the tip of the iceberg.