10 Real-Life Historical Figures in HBO’s 'The Gilded Age'

Created by Oscar-winning Downton Abbey writer Julian Fellowes, HBO’s lavish historical drama series The Gilded Age brings high-society living in late 19th-century New York vividly to life. The show chiefly focuses on the tension and interplay between two colorful New York families—the well-established old money of the van Rhijn family, and the ambitious, up-and-coming new money of the Russell family—as they strive to make it to the top of Manhattan’s social ladder. In a time of considerable social and technological change, the battle between the stately and dignified old money of the van Rhijns and the flashier, rougher-around-the-edges new money of the Russells becomes all the more apparent. 

The two families at the center of all the drama are fictional, but have real-life parallels in genuine New York dynasties the Vanderbilts (whose immense railroad empire made them one of the wealthiest nouveaux riches in 19th century America) and any one of the city’s Dutch-descended old-money elite, including the Schuylers (the family of New York senator Philip Schuyler, father-in-law of Alexander Hamilton). Around them, however, the series includes a cast of genuine turn-of-the-last-centuries socialites, businessmen, politicians and other public figures. 

1. Mrs. Astor
2. Carrie Astor
3. Clara Barton
4. The Duke of Buckingham
5. Mary Dickerson
6. Mamie Fish
7. T. Thomas Fortune
8. Ward McAllister
9. John Singer Sargent
10. Booker T. Washington

Mrs. Astor

Mrs. Caroline Webster Schermerhorn Astor, known as the “Mrs. Astor,” was very much the queen and self-styled arbiter of old-money high-society New York in the late 1800s. The wife of businessman and sporting impresario William Backhouse Astor, Jr., Mrs. Astor led the so-called “Four Hundred”—an exclusive and tightly controlled group of high-society elites (supposedly so named because that was the capacity of her ballroom). She oversaw the group as a means of defending the established society scene in New York against the monied arrivistes and industrialists who had recently made their wealth in the rapidly changing landscape of the time. She is played by actress and Broadway legend Donna Murphy in The Gilded Age. 

Carrie Astor

The youngest and arguably best known of Mrs. Astor’s four daughters, Carrie Astor went on to follow in her mother’s footsteps, and became one of the late 19th century’s most noted socialites and party hostesses. Labeled by the press as “the beauty of the house of Astor,” Carrie caused controversy when she fell for Tennessee-born banker Marshall Orme Wilson, whose family her mother deemed to be nouveau riche. Nonetheless, the marriage went ahead, and the couple later lived in a lavish mansion on East 64th Street. She is played by Canadian actress Amy Forsyth. 

Clara Barton

Clara Barton was the Civil War nurse whose wartime experiences led to her founding the American Red Cross in 1881. Barton appeared in an early episode of the first season of The Gilded Age, played by Linda Emond, when the van Rhijns take an interest in supporting her newly founded charity. 

The Duke of Buckingham

In The Gilded Age, the 5th Duke of Buckingham, Hector Vere (played by Ben Lamb), is a handsome and charming young British aristocrat who arrives in New York hoping to secure a marriage to improve his family’s increasingly fraught financial situation. Although his title is certainly a genuine one in the British aristocracy, Hector Vere himself, however, is fictional. In reality, the actual Duke of Buckingham at the time of The Gilded Age was the lavishly named Richard Plantagenet Campbell Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, who was a sixty-something statesman, politician, and former soldier. 

Mary Dickerson

Pioneering businesswoman Mary H. Dickerson appears in Season 3 of The Gilded Age, played by Christiana Clark. Dickerson was the first Black woman to open a shop on Newport, Rhode Island’s famous Bellevue Avenue. Her dress-making establishment catered to many of the high-society women who summered in Newport. 

Mamie Fish

Played by acclaimed character actress Ashlie Atkinson in The Gilded Age, Mamie Fish was the quick-witted and sharp-tongued good-time-girl of nouveau riche New York. The wife of railroad tycoon Stuyvesant Fish, she was known for doing or saying anything for fun, no matter how cutting or risqué, and very much became the antidote to the stuffy and stately balls of old-money Manhattan when she arrived on the society party scene in the 1890s. 

T. Thomas Fortune

The son of slave parents, T. Thomas Fortune arrived in New York in the early 1880s having already made a name for himself as a journalist writing for a groundbreaking Black newspaper in Washington, DC. He continued his work in New York, eventually serving as managing editor of the New York Age for 20 years, during which time he was a major voice in advancing African American causes in post-Civil War America. He is played by Sullivan Jones in The Gilded Age.

Ward McAllister

American lawyer and socialite Ward McAllister, played by Nathan Lane in The Gilded Age, was the close friend of Mrs. Astor who aided in her compilation and management of New York’s glittering “Four Hundred” list. In fact, according to some versions of the tale at least, it was McAllister who came up with the list’s name when he explained in an 1888 interview with the New York Tribune that, “There are only about four hundred people in fashionable New York Society … If you go outside that number, you strike people who are either not at ease in a ballroom or else make other people not at ease.” The Four Hundred list went on to be published in public for the first time in The New York Times in 1892. 

John Singer Sargent

Played by actor Bobby Steggert, the artist John Singer Sargent pops up in season 3 of The Gilded Age, when Russell family matriarch Bertha commissions him to paint a portrait of her daughter, Gladys. Although born in Florence, Sargent was the son of an American surgeon and divided his time between America and Europe. Having made his debut exhibition in Paris in the 1870s, he soon became one of the most sought-after portrait artists of the day on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington, played by actor Michael Braugher, escaped crippling poverty to get himself an education in Virginia in the 1870s, before dedicating his life to educating and expanding the opportunities of Black children in post-Civil War America. He is introduced in Season 2 of The Gilded Age, when Peggy, Agnes van Rhijn’s secretary, stays with him in Tuskegee, Alabama, where he established a renowned institute for Black higher education.