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Catherine Murat, Princess Murat (née Catherine Daingerfield Willis). This is a non-exhaustive list of some American socialites, so called American dollar princesses, from before the Gilded Age to the end of the 20th century, who married into the European titled nobility, peerage, or royalty.
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During the Gilded Age, marrying British aristocrats was seen as a way for American heiresses to raise their social status.
When Jennie Jerome and Lord Randolph Churchill announced their engagement in 1874, his parents were horrified. The couple had only known one another for three days, and Jerome—the tattooed daughter of a philandering financier and a social climber—was an American socialite, not a British noblewoman. Appalled, the Churchills tried to block the match…until they did the math.
Jerome’s family might have humble origins, but they were outrageously wealthy. Lord Randolph’s parents were not, and Jerome’s father was willing to pay a dowry that equaled the equivalent of over $4.3 million dollars today. The marriage went forward with the grudging approval of Lord Randolph’s parents.
They could have no way of knowing that Jerome, who became Lady Randolph Churchill when she married in 1874, would be the mother of a future prime minister, Winston—or that by allowing their aristocratic son to barter his title for much-needed wealth, they had helped spark a trend.
Between the late 19th century and World War II, a flood of “dollar princesses” flocked to England looking for love. In return for a coveted title, they offered their much-needed wealth to an aristocracy desperate for cash. And along the way, they helped change British royalty forever—including the lives of the modern-day heirs to Britain’s throne.
Jerome was just one of hundreds of heiresses thought to have injected the equivalent of a billion pounds into the British economy. The exchange was worth it in their eyes; they knew that marriages to people with titles like Lord, Viscount and Duke would improve their family’s fortunes back in the United States and solidify their position on the American social circuit.
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Apr 14, 2008 · This derives partly from the delightful memoirs she published in the 1950s, and partly by the fact that she was one of the wealthiest heiresses of her time, with a dowry of approximately $2.5 million ($75 million in 2008 dollars), and wed, in 1895, one of England’s premiere dukes. In her memoirs, she recounts the vigorous training and tutoring enforced by her mother Alva, and the secret ...
Dec 18, 2023 · Dollar princesses: the American heiresses who changed the face of British aristocracy. Discover the history of the so-called ‘dollar princesses’ – the eligible heiresses from self-made American families who married into the British aristocracy – and brought billions of pounds with them. In the late 19th century, the wealth of the ...
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Jan 23, 2023 · Most of them were willing to trade their titles for cash. And so, American heiresses were married to British and European aristocrats who, in many cases were in search for solvency, such as a duke, earl, or baron. According to the Library of Congress, these dollar princesses wedded more than a third of the titles represented in the House of Lords.
The so-called American dollar princesses were wealthy American women of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who married into titled European families, exchanging wealth for prestige. According to a book called Titled Americans (1915), there were 454 marriages between Gilded Age and Progressive Era American women and European aristocrats. [ 1 ]
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Europe is broke and America seeks social status. The solution? European nobility marries rich, beautiful American socialites. According to Titled Americans (1915 edition), 454 Gilded Age American heiresses had married into the European aristocracy. Announcements of these transatlantic marriages were pervasive in the newspapers of the day.
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