America's Richest Families: 185 Clans With Billion Dollar Fortunes

Edited By Kerry A. Dolan and Luisa Kroll

The Mellons. The Kennedys. The Rockefellers. You know the names already. Now Forbes has compiled the first comprehensive ranking of the richest families in America: 185 dynasties with fortunes of at least $1 billion. They're collectively worth $1.2 trillion. Many are working at increasing their fortunes. Others are merely sleepy heirs, several generations removed from their families' heydays. Nearly all have ties to some of the most storied businesses and brands in American history, including Jack Daniel's, L.L. Bean, Getty Oil, Hallmark and Budweiser Budweiser.

The wealthiest family in America, and also the world, is the Walton family, which includes the three living children of Wal-Mart Stores Wal-Mart Stores founder Sam Walton; the wife of his son John, who died in 2005 in a plane crash; and the two daughters of his brother James "Bud" Walton, who helped found the Arkansas retailer in 1962. They are worth $152 billion, $63 billion more than the second richest family, headed by the politically active and often controversial Koch brothers. The three richest families are worth $301 billion, one fourth of cumulative net worth of all the wealthiest families.

This portrait of Sam Walton, his wife and children, decades before his heirs became the wealthiest dynasty in American history, hung in the Wal-Mart Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas. (Photo: Gilles Mingasson/Getty Images)