Typical non-American asking a question based off of tv shows and movies I’ve seen. But usually when the show or movie is set in a “small town”, the descendants of the founders appear to be portrayed as important and “untouchable” like they’re something special. I was wondering if there is any truth in that.
37 comments
Only if they are rich
There are certainly some small towns that have that sort of corruption, yes.
Though usually it has more to do with being rich and less to do with your lineage.
I’m sure it’s no different than where you live.
People develop reputations in a small town.
If someone (and their family before) has lived somewhere for a long time, they’re known. They may run for local office. They may win if everyone knows the name.
EDIT: [Famous Friends ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpMOx2Ul9RA&t=10s)is actually a pretty good illustration of how it really works.
And that way, u/RegisterAfraid, you get to say you listened to some American country music today too.
EDIT 2: Anyone saying it’s money has likely never been to a small town.
I doubt most people have any idea who founded their town.
Very very select, extremely weathly communities focused in specific areas and country/yacht clubs, or other such exclusive.
Even then its kinda just a dick measuring contest.
Generally speaking I wouldn’t think so unless they’re very rich. Being rich lets you do pretty much whatever because you can just buy your way out of whatever consequences come your way.
I don’t think it’s nearly as common as you would see on TV. There’s usually some kind of in crowd or rich person clique in a lot of small towns but it has more to do with like, being the Mayor’s nephew or your dad is the chief of police that kind of thing.
Closest thing in my little town was the kids of the guy who owned the local factory – if your dad was the entire community’s source of work, you got treated pretty well.
Years ago, maybe, now, probably not so much.
My family used to be a household name in my hometown, big farm, sold produce, the whole lot.
Now with so many more people moving in and out of town and the town growing, I can’t really name drop myself anymore/at all.
In extremely small towns it can happen. Usually because their ancestor was rich and that passed down. But I wouldn’t consider it in a large percentage of towns.
Not automatically
They, if they are even still around, tend to have money and money buys influence anywhere. It has nothing to do with thier ancestors. If they were broke no one would care two ships about them
That’s TV – not reality. There may be some isolated small town-rich person scenarios where it matters. But that’s more about the $$ than the length of time a family has been in the US. Remember a lot of us who have families who’ve been here a long time, our ancestors were farmers and tradesmen – and not wealthy.
Yeah a lot of small towns where founded by someone trying to set up/expand a business nearby, or if it’s older it would have been founded by nearby landowners. Either way they tend to be among the the wealthier families in smaller towns. Not that this is nowhere near universal, especially with really old towns or towns that survived boom/bust periods.
Sometimes but typically its not a big deal. My small town has two families that have been around forever. They act like they’re important but nobody actually seems to give a crap. More often than not they’re just local yokels (or townies depending on where you live)
Cities and towns can definitely have political or social elites.
“Company towns”, either a town that heavily relied on one specific company or industry or sometimes the company outright founded the town, often had heavy pull in organizing the town and governance. Gary in Northwest Indiana was named after Elbert Henry Gary, the founder of US Steel. The second mayor of Gary was backed by US Steel, while the first mayor was backed by the unions.
I dunno about all that …. what I will say is I recently moved to Nashville and am working in a smaller town outside of Nashville. For the first year and a half or so I was absolutely treated as an outsider by my boss at work. Whether it was because she expected i wouldn’t stay or because of a personality conflict or whatever, the end result was she didn’t like me.
As an aside, I’m also super into genealogy but i didn’t think it was important to talk about that at work lol
One day, it came up with her and I told her I actually had ancestors (Yes, founding families even) from this part of TN even though I was from the gulf south and I am not kidding when I say her interactions with me changed 100 million percent.
Was it related? I dunno…. maybe it was just a coincidence but if it was the timing was suspect as hell.
I wouldn’t think so. However, I have an anecdote of when I received special privelege.
My wife (GF at the time) heard about an event going on near us at the former house of a founding father. One that I’m supposedly related to. (Sorry, I’m trying to keep it vague on purpose)
When she called to get tickets, they told her it was sold out but she could be on a waiting list. She gave them my name and the lady immediately said, “oh, we can make an exception for him! We love it when family comes back!”
I think it’s more of a TV trope than anything else. They want a wealthy powerful “establishment” character in a small town setting, making their great grandfather the town founder is an easy if cartoonish way to set that up.
Maybe 100 years ago.
Now, the descendants themselves would have to be important.
Nobody cares that the waitress at the diner us related ti the town’s founding fathers.
After 3-4 generations the wealth tends to disappear and marrying / mixing kind of dilutes it.
Most towns in the U.S. aren’t founded any later than mid 1800’s so that’s just not really a thing any more.
In period pieces set in the Wild West and colonial times, maybe sure – but it’s not a thing I’ve noticed tbh.
A lot of cities have the bronze statue of some guy from the 1700 or 1800’s and that’s that.
Lots of small towns have multi generational family businesses that’s are town institutions, but that’s gently not connected to the town founders.
If you mean the *nations* founders, many of the surnames (like Washington, Jefferson, etc) are common and not really connected to direct lineage to the famous one.
That’s extra complicated by the fact that founding fathers were slave owners, and so a lot surnames were adopted by slaves by practice or assumed later upon emancipation.
I went to school with someone descended from a signer of the Declaration of Independence, it was more a funny bit of trivia about her than anything else. To be fair, this was in NYC, not a small community.
Only the generationally wealthy ones. And being a “founding family” is more of a fun extra flavor to the wealth than significant in itself.
No. The only thing they still have are any assets their family passed down and their name. Nobody knows what George Washington’s Great Great Great Great Great Great grandson does now, nor do they care.
America’s founding fathers weren’t too concerened with maintaining their legacy as that would be kinglike. George washington was offered to be King of America and turned it down.
My family founded the town of Tillamook, Oregon. We have a street named after the family, but I doubt that would even get me a free tour of the cheese factory.
I was born and raised in the town founded by my 5th-great-grandfather. Founding, in the case of many small towns, just means that person donated land to become city hall/county government buildings/etc. My family was rich in land, not money, and now has neither. Even those with the founder’s last name are just regular people in town now–some people are aware that there are a lot of us, but that’s about it.
ETA: It’s a town of less than 1000 people (maybe 2000 at its largest) and was settled in the early 1800s by my ancestors but not incorporated until closer to 1900.
From my only experience living in a small town, I’d say it is 100% accurate that your experience living there highly depended on your last name.
Not the founding families, but the rich families. There’s a car dealer in town who also owns our minor league hockey team and he gets awards for his philanthropy. The car dealership has been in the family for generations, and was one of the earliest car dealerships in the country. So yeah, the family is kind of at the top of the pecking order.
As for the founders of our city, I have no idea. I think the town was founded by a bunch of lumberjacks and fur traders who didn’t stick around.
Not really. Wealth surpasses any sort of ancestry and social privilege. Someone like Thomas Jefferson likely has thousands of living descendants. I went to school with a kid who claimed to be a descendant of Ben Franklin, which is probably legit and he has many thousands of descendants (although they would be through his daughter, who had 8 kids, he only had one son survive to adulthood who didn’t have a son).
Not in the way movies and tv portray, no.
Small towns could be virtually owned by a prominent family, who would corrupt the local government, run the major local businesses, employ much of the working population, influence everything from schools to newspapers. It still happens, but not as blatantly as in old movies.
Do the descendants of European kings and queens get treated differently outside of Britain?
Depends how rich the family is. How big the small town is and how much property /how big of a business in the town that family owns.
If so, I’m very unaware of it.
I live in a small rural town in New England and important or untouchable, no. but do we know who all the original families are, yes. they also can be a bit cliquey or have grown in branches to the point that (in our house only) the kids and I talk of the “nice” X’s and the “not so nice” X’s…
In my parents’ small town, there is one family that has lived there since who even knows. Presumably, since it’s the US, after the 1600’s, but just barely. There’s a mountain named after them. There’s a road named for them. That said, they do about 90% of the work in that valley. They ARE the volunteer fire department- going on third generation Fire Chief there. They sell farm equipment. They know everyone, their granddaddy, and their granddaddy’s granddaddy. They’re not wealthy by city standards, but they’re comfortably middle class in a county with a high poverty rate, so they seem to have it all. The thing that makes them well known is that they’re so active in the community.
I’m in New England and for me and where I live, the answer is absolutely yes. Rich or poor, they are typically given a pass on things for which many others would be looked down on, or maybe even legally prosecuted. Let go with a wink and a smile, or somebody will say eh, well you know how it is. They don’t want the hassle or notoriety or pushback, if they would instead actually go through the standard/normal routine. This could be not getting a ticket for speeding, not following labor laws or building codes, not looking too closely at unreported incomes, etc.
There is also, imo, outsized importance laid on some families whose prominence and importance/family wealth primarily comes from terrible atrocities that resulted in nearly wiping out every member of the indigenous tribes that once used to live here.
The answer to “why should you be remembered for posterity?”, shouldn’t be “my great great grandfather slaughtered a bunch of women and kids by burning them alive in their beds, to make his first fortune—and that’s how he made this country great!”.
I think this is more of a thing in rural small towns. And it depends on how old the town is. I grew up in a suburb of Boston that was founded in the mid-1600s. Old families are definitely a thing but not 400 years old. And even though it’s a small town that can be somewhat insular, being a suburb means that there are a lot of other sources of status.
only if they have meaningful money, property and/or connections as a consequence. But after this many generations, the money and property of whoever founded the town in 1870 or whatever has usually been pretty well dispersed through inheritance and marriage.
Lines die out for lack of heirs, descendants decide to sell their stake and move on to better opportunities, someone ill-suited inherits the family business and runs it into the ground, the economy shifts and suddenly the old family business is no longer viable anyway, etc.
“founding families” that don’t hang onto the land/businesses/money and thus have middling or poor descendants still hanging around *are* sometimes seen as almost like… living historical curiosities. Sometimes they can be kind of gatekeepy about “who’s really FROM here” and ppl just let ’em have it bc… what else do they really have, right?
People aren’t going to defer to them unless they can deliver something more useful than approval, though.
now there IS almost always a family or two that has a lot of power and nobody wants to piss off, often bc they own an important local business, or they own a lot of land, and/or they’re very active in local politics.
but those aren’t necessarily related to the founders. They came in 50 years ago, not 150 years ago.