Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty

by Anderson Cooper

in 1872 McAllister founded an organization that he named the Society of Patriarchs. This group instituted a series of Patriarch Balls, designed for introducing young people to society and to one another. Each Patriarch was issued a finite number of invitations that he could disseminate to young men and women of his choosing for each ball. The name was rather transparently designed to create the impression of a long-standing tradition, completely belying the fact that the society was a new invention of his own. Under McAllister’s system, there were only twenty-five Patriarchs, defined as “representative men of worth, respectability, and responsibility.”