Meyer Guggenheim

Meyer Guggenheim (1828 to 1905) was the patriarch of the Guggenheim family in the United States, which became one of the wealthiest families of the nineteenth century and remained so in the twentieth. Born in Lengnau in the Swiss canton of Aargau to a family that fell into poverty, he sold articles door to door as a child. Restrictions in Switzerland blocked his father from remarrying, which pushed the family to emigrate to the United States in 1847, where he started in the importing business. He made one of the largest fortunes of his century through mining and smelting, investing in silver mines in the Leadville district of Colorado and then building smelters across the United States and in northern Mexico. As his sons grew up they took leading roles in the family business, with Daniel Guggenheim becoming head of the family after his death. He died in Palm Beach, Florida, in 1905.