The Bancroft family are the former owners of

Dow Jones & Company Dow Jones & Company, Inc. is an American publishing firm owned by News Corp and led by CEO Almar Latour. The company publishes ''The Wall Street Journal'', ''Barron's'', ''MarketWatch'', ''Mansion Global'', ''Financial News'' and ''Private Equ ...

which is now owned by

Rupert Murdoch Keith Rupert Murdoch ( ; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-born American business magnate. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including ...

News Corporation News Corporation (abbreviated News Corp.), also variously known as News Corporation Limited, was an American multinational mass media corporation controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Ne ...

(NewsCorp).

The Family

The Bancrofts are a family of publicly

reclusive A recluse is a person who lives in voluntary seclusion from the public and society. The word is from the Latin ''recludere'', which means "shut up" or "sequester". Historically, the word referred to a Christian hermit's total isolation from th ...

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

socialite A socialite is a person from a wealthy and (possibly) aristocratic background, who is prominent in high society. A socialite generally spends a significant amount of time attending various fashionable social gatherings, instead of having traditio ...

s who inherited ''The Wall Street Journal'' from

Clarence W. Barron Clarence W. Barron (July 2, 1855, in Boston, Massachusetts – October 2, 1928) was one of the most influential figures in the history of Dow Jones & Company. As a career newsman described as a "short, rotund powerhouse", he died holding the pos ...

, who as a publisher built up the reputation of that newspaper. Upon Barron's death in 1928, control of the company passed to his stepdaughters Jane and Martha, children of his wife, Jessie Waldron. Barron's son-in-law and Jane's husband,

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

-educated lawyer Hugh Bancroft (1879-1933), ran the company and the paper for the next five years. Suffering from depression, Bancroft committed

suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical disorders (such as chronic fatigue syndrome), and s ...

in 1933 at the age of 54. The family members maintained ownership of the company through ensuing generations, though management was placed in the hands of professionals, like ''Journal'' editor

Bernard Kilgore Bernard (Barney) Kilgore was a managing editor of ''The Wall Street Journal'' from 1941 to 1965 and head of the Dow Jones company. In 1961 Kilgore received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award as well as an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Colby Col ...

. A notable family member of the following generation was

Mary Bancroft Mary Bancroft (October 29, 1903, Boston – January 10, 1997, New York City) was an American novelist and spy and a member of the Bancroft family, which at one time owned Dow Jones & Company. In 1942, while living in Switzerland, Bancroft was re ...

(1903-1997), Hugh Bancroft's only daughter by his first marriage to Mary Agnes Cogan (1879-1903). She worked for U.S. intelligence in

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. She wrote novels and a memoir, ''Autobiography of a Spy'', before dying in 1997 at age ninety-three. She was survived by six grandchildren and twelve great-grandchildren. Jane Bancroft's daughter Jessie Bancroft Cox was another prominent member of the second generation. Her husband, son, and grandson — William C. Cox, Bill Cox Jr., and Billy Cox III, respectively — were "the only Bancrofts to have actually worked at Dow Jones since Hugh Bancroft's suicide." The family members' private pastimes consist mainly of show-

horse breeding Horse breeding is reproduction in horses, and particularly the human-directed process of selective breeding of animals, particularly purebred horses of a given breed. Planned matings can be used to produce specifically desired characteristics in ...

sailing Sailing employs the wind—acting on sails, wingsails or kites—to propel a craft on the surface of the ''water'' (sailing ship, sailboat, raft, windsurfer, or kitesurfer), on ''ice'' (iceboat) or on ''land'' (land yacht) over a chosen cour ...

, and

farming Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...

. However, the family has also produced a speedboat champion and an airline pilot.

Dow Jones-NewsCorp sale

At the time of the 2007 sale of the Dow Jones Co. to NewsCorp, the Bancroft family (more than thirty members) owned 42 percent of the business but controlled 68 percent of the voting stock, through their possession of 7.5 million Class B shares. In the sale to Murdoch, the Bancrofts made more than $1.2 billion. Bancroft family representatives filled three seats on the Dow Jones board of directors, representing three branches of the family — the descendants of the three children of Hugh and Jane Bancroft. At the time of the sale, those board members included Christopher Bancroft and his cousins Leslie Hill and Elizabeth Steele. The Bancroft family initially held out for three months against Murdoch's advances until accepting a $60-per-share offer from NewsCorp.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bancroft Family The Wall Street Journal people Dow Jones & Company Business families of the United States