Michel Bouvier, a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, was a French cabinet maker who immigrated to Philadelphia in 1815. By the time of his death, he had become wealthy, owning a cabinet-making business and large lands which contained coal reserves.
His sons John Vernou Bouvier Sr. and Michel “M.C.” Bouvier worked on Wall Street, relocating to New York and further growing the family fortune. His daughter Emma Mary Bouvier (1833–1883), married financier Francis Anthony Drexel, the son of Francis Martin Drexel and the brother of Anthony Joseph Drexel who founded present-day J.P. Morgan & Co. and was influential in developing the private banking system of the United States.[1]
John Vernou Bouvier Jr. was born in 1866 and inherited US$250,000 (equivalent to $4,436,047 in 2023) from the family, some of which he lost in the Wall Street Crash of 1929. He was also a successful attorney.[2]
John Vernou Bouvier III, the son of J. V. Bouvier Jr married Janet Norton Lee in 1928. Her father was James Thomas Lee, who came from another prominent Manhattan family. His father, Dr. James Lee, was the superintendent of New York Public Schools, as well as a local physician. Lee became a lawyer in the real estate industry, before investing in real estate successfully and developing several luxury buildings in Manhattan, including the Peter Stuyvesant Apartments.[3]
In 1975 Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter “Little Edie” were the subjects of a documentary called Grey Gardens. It documented their day-to-day lives living in the dilapidated Grey Gardens mansion with raccoons and cats in increasing squalor.
They are most known for their connection with the Kennedy family.[5]
