Broke

From Millionaires to $400: The Shocking Fall of Macon’s Richest Families. Just days after walking through the desperate lives inside Macon’s 1870 Poor House and Hospital, the numbers from 1860 hit like a punch. Ten years earlier, a tiny group of families controlled obscene wealth built on railroads, contracting, and slavery. By 1870, almost all of it had vanished.

Here are the Top 10 wealthiest families from the 1860 Bibb County census and what was left of their fortunes in 1870:

Rank	Surname	1860 Net Worth	1870 Net Worth (est.)	Still in Macon?
1	Alexander	$1,115,500	~$15,000	Yes
2	Jordan	$200,000+	$200,000	Yes
3	Lowe	$100,000+	$3,000	Yes
4	Davis	$100,000	$8,000	Yes
5	Phillips	$81,300	$2,500	Yes
6	Willburn	$49,400	$4,000	Yes
7	Massey	$44,000	$1,500	Yes
8	Riggins	$43,400	$2,000	Yes
9	Wimberly	$30K–$50K	$3,500	Yes
10	Nelson	$20K–$30K	$1,200	Yes

The brutal reality: Every single one of these families (or their direct descendants) was still in Macon or Bibb County in 1870. Yet for nine out of ten, their vast fortunes had been decimated. The county-wide median personal estate had plummeted to just $400.Only the Jordan family kept their elite status. The rest went from living like kings in 1860 to barely surviving in 1870 — while the Poor House filled with the human cost of that collapse.Let the Ancestor SpeakLana Reed

@ltas411

Let the Ancestor Speak