whit — alumni

Who wants to talk about #SkullandBones ? #secretsociety

Skull and Bones (also known as The Order, Order 322 or The Brotherhood of Death) is an undergraduate senior secret student society at #Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. The oldest senior-class society at the university, Skull and Bones has become a cultural institution known for its powerful #alumni and #conspiracy #theories

Short answer: no one outside the club knows the exact count, but the best-sourced public estimate is ~800 living members at any given time.

•	This figure comes from Yale-society reporter Alexandra Robbins, who told 60 Minutes that because Skull & Bones “taps only 15 people a year… there are about 800 living members at any one time.”  

•	An earlier snapshot supports that scale: in 1991 the society mailed ballots to “nearly 800” members for a vote on admitting women—implying roughly that many reachable, living alumni then.  

•	Total lifetime initiates are often estimated at ~2,800+ (1832 → present, ~15 per year), but many from early decades are no longer living; hence the living-member estimate stays around ~800.

Families often linked to Bones (e.g., Bush, Rockefeller, Taft, Kellogg, Kerry, Vanderbilt) appear in various historical rosters and reporting, but the society hasn’t published official, comprehensive lists since the early 1980s, so modern membership details remain partly speculative.

#Bush family • Reports by CelebrityNetWorth (not always authoritative) put the Bush family’s combined net worth at around $400 million today.

•	Individual members: at the time of their deaths, George H. W. Bush and Barbara Bush each had been reported to have had around $25 million in net worth.  

•	George W. Bush’s net worth has been reported in the single-digit millions range (e.g. ~$9.5 million in 2008) by OpenSecrets.

So the Bush “dynasty” in sum is relatively modest by #billionaire-dynasty standards, with much of their influence deriving from politics and connections rather than vast hidden capital.

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#Rockefeller family

•	The Rockefeller fortune is one of the best documented dynastic fortunes in the U.S., but even then the full current net worth is opaque because of trusts, foundations, and many branches.  

•	A recent article (2025) estimates that the Rockefeller family’s net worth is about $10.3 billion, divided among ~200 descendants.  

•	Historically, John D. Rockefeller had amassed around $900 million in 1913, which is often cited (in inflation-adjusted terms) as equivalent to tens of billions in today’s dollars.

Thus the Rockefeller “family wealth” is in the low tens of billions by present estimates, though with much of it in philanthropic and trust structures, not simply fungible cash.

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#Vanderbilt family

•	The Vanderbilts were once among the richest families in America, especially during the Gilded Age, with Cornelius “the Commodore” Vanderbilt’s fortune often estimated in the hundreds of millions (in 19th-century dollars).  

•	In modern times, much of the original fortune has dissipated by dilution, estate divisions, taxes, and decline of holdings. An article claims that by the 1970s, among 120 descendants, “there was not a millionaire among them” in that reunion.  
•	Media commentary suggests that very little of the original Vanderbilt empire remains intact, and descendants now tend to have ordinary (by Gilded Age standards) wealth.

So while the Vanderbilts once had gargantuan wealth, today their family fortune is not comparable; much has been lost or broken apart over generations.

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#Taft family

I was unable to locate reliable, up-to-date estimates of the Taft family’s total wealth. The Tafts are more known for political influence (e.g. President Taft, Senator Taft) than for a single, enormous financial empire. Many references to “Taft family” refer to branches (law, politics, medicine) rather than a unified fortune.

If you like, I can dig deeper (archives, genealogical estates) to try to estimate the Taft family’s wealth.

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#Kellogg family

Similar difficulty arises with the “Kellogg” family (depending on which Kellogg you mean — e.g. the cereal “Kellogg” or other Kellogg lines). I did not find credible, current estimates of a unified Kellogg family fortune in publicly available sources.

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#Kerry family

For the Kerry family (as in John Kerry, the Massachusetts and U.S. political family), I could not find substantial public documentation of a grand dynastic fortune. Most publicly available profiles focus on their political career, public offices, and investment disclosures for individuals (rather than a large family trust).

In short: their net worth is modest compared to great dynastic families, and I did not find credible evidence of tens or hundreds of billions under “Kerry family” in aggregate.

SkullandBones secretsociety Yale alumni conspiracy theories Bush billionaire

10/4/2025, 4 engagements

• This figure comes from Yale-society reporter Alexandra Robbins, who told 60 Minutes that because Skull & Bones “taps only 15 people a year… there are about 800 living members at any one time.” • An earlier snapshot supports that scale: in 1991 the society mailed ballots to “nearly 800” members for a vote on admitting women—implying roughly that many reachable, living alumni then. • Total lifetime initiates are often estimated at ~2,800+ (1832 → present, ~15 per year), but many from early decades are no longer living; hence the living-member estimate stays around ~800.

• Individual members: at the time of their deaths, George H. W. Bush and Barbara Bush each had been reported to have had around $25 million in net worth. • George W. Bush’s net worth has been reported in the single-digit millions range (e.g. ~$9.5 million in 2008) by OpenSecrets.

• The Rockefeller fortune is one of the best documented dynastic fortunes in the U.S., but even then the full current net worth is opaque because of trusts, foundations, and many branches. • A recent article (2025) estimates that the Rockefeller family’s net worth is about $10.3 billion, divided among ~200 descendants. • Historically, John D. Rockefeller had amassed around $900 million in 1913, which is often cited (in inflation-adjusted terms) as equivalent to tens of billions in today’s dollars.

• The Vanderbilts were once among the richest families in America, especially during the Gilded Age, with Cornelius “the Commodore” Vanderbilt’s fortune often estimated in the hundreds of millions (in 19th-century dollars). • In modern times, much of the original fortune has dissipated by dilution, estate divisions, taxes, and decline of holdings. An article claims that by the 1970s, among 120 descendants, “there was not a millionaire among them” in that reunion. • Media commentary suggests that very little of the original Vanderbilt empire remains intact, and descendants now tend to have ordinary (by Gilded Age standards) wealth.