As America’s 250th anniversary approaches, Forbes is celebrating our own version of founding fathers (and mothers): the entrepreneurs behind what have become the largest family fortunes in the country. Most built one (or more) of the nation’s most successful businesses. Many, though not all, of these companies are still owned and run by the descendants of their founders all these years later. That includes everyone from the Hughes family (estimated fortune: $14.7 billion) behind Public Storage, who are now in their third generation, to the oldest clan on the list, the Du Ponts ($22 billion), who founded what became the chemical giant bearing their name in 1802, and are now in their ninth generation.

Forbes first began tracking individual billionaire wealth in 1918, when oil baron and future philanthropist John D. Rockefeller (d. 1937) was featured as the world’s first and only billionaire in Forbes Magazine. Over the last 13 years, we’ve also periodically ranked America’s richest families, including the Rockefellers, who are now in their seventh generation and tied for 45th on this year’s list, with an estimated $12.5 billion fortune. The cutoff for our first ever ranking of the country’s wealthiest clans in 2014 was just $1 billion. But with billionaire wealth skyrocketing to unprecedented heights (Elon Musk briefly became the first trillionaire this month after all), Forbes raised the table stakes for our families list to $10 billion in 2024.

Forbes found a record 54........

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