Pirate’s Gold with Andrew Coe

Family….Money….Murder? This Panorama virtual program tells the story of a great American fortune, the man who built it, and the descendants who inherited more money than was good for them. A small town boy from Massachusetts, Henry Huttleston Rogers helped build Standard Oil into the world’s largest oil company, gaining renown as a notorious Wall Street “pirate.” After he died, his children inherited $49,000,000. (One was Mai Rogers Coe, wife of W. R. Coe.) None of them lived so large as Rogers’ son, Colonel Henry Rogers Jr., and his two children, Millicent and Harry. During the 1920s, the public was fascinated by the saga of Millicent’s ill-fated marriage to Count Salm, the Austrian tennis champion with matinee idol good looks. In 1930s, Harry’s involvement in the death of an actress at a drunken party was front page news in every city in the country. This presentation will look beneath the headlines to uncover the roots of these stories: struggles over money and love, and the difficulties of living up to one’s famous family name.

AUTHOR BIO

Andrew Coe is a writer and independent scholar. He and his wife, Jane Ziegelman, are co-authors of “A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression,” which won a James Beard award. His ground-breaking “Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States” was a Financial Times book of the year. He has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Saveur, Gastronomica, and numerous other publications. He has appeared in documentaries such as the National Geographic Channel’s “Eat: The Story of Food” and “The Search for General Tso.” Andrew is the great-grandson of W. R. Coe, who built Planting Fields, and the great-great-grandson of Henry Huttleston Rogers.

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