The Gilded Age Billionaire Who Had 24 Children by Six Women and Built a Castle to Hide From Them All

In this in-depth, full-length documentary, we explore the staggering hidden life of Isaac Merritt Singer, the Gilded Age sewing machine billionaire whose 24 acknowledged children by six different women, public Fifth Avenue carriage scandal, midnight escape on the Great Eastern, and 115-room English castle "The Wigwam" turned the most respected brand in American manufacturing into the most concealed scandal in 19th-century commerce. From Pittstown, New York to Paignton, Devon, this is the dynastic autopsy of Singer Sewing Machine, Edward Cabot Clark, Isabella Boyer, Mary Ann Sponsler, Mary McGonigal, Winnaretta Princesse de Polignac, Paris Singer, Isadora Duncan, and the sixty-part will that paid for Stravinsky. ---------------------------------------- Gain FREE access to secret full-length documentaries on wealthy families "too scandalous for YouTube" by joining our newsletter: https://www.substack.com/@oldmoneyluxury ---------------------------------------- Born October 27, 1811 in Pittstown, New York, Isaac Singer was a failed Shakespearean actor who built the world's first practical sewing machine in eleven days in a Boston shop in September 1850. US Patent No. 8,294 was granted on August 12, 1851. His business partner Edward Cabot Clark designed the installment plan in September 1856 and engineered the first patent pool in American history that same year. By 1860 the company was producing 13,000 machines a year. By 1903, 1.35 million worldwide. Behind the warranty, Singer ran four parallel households simultaneously across New York. Catharine Maria Haley was the legal wife with two children. Mary Ann Sponsler was the common-law spouse of twenty-four years with ten children. Mary Eastwood Walters bore one daughter under the alias "Mr. Merritt." Mary McGonigal bore five children under the alias "Matthews." On August 7, 1860, Mary Ann Sponsler spotted Singer driving Mary McGonigal in a carriage on Fifth Avenue and screamed publicly. Bigamy and assault charges followed. Singer fled the United States on September 19, 1860 aboard the Great Eastern with Kate McGonigal, Mary's sister. In 1863 he married the 22-year-old Parisian Isabella Eugénie Boyer, returned to America briefly, then settled permanently in Paignton, Devon. There he built "The Wigwam," later renamed Oldway Mansion: 115 rooms on 17 acres for roughly £200,000. His will divided the estate into sixty parts. Isabella Boyer's six children received forty-five of them. The American children received fifteen, with the dissenters disinherited in increments. Mary Ann Sponsler sued for $1 million and settled for $75,000 after seven of her own eight children refused to testify for her. Daughter Winnaretta Singer became Princesse de Polignac, ran the most consequential avant-garde music salon in Europe for half a century, and commissioned Stravinsky's Renard, Satie's Socrate, Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos, and Falla's El retablo de maese Pedro from her Singer inheritance. Son Paris Singer rebuilt Oldway in the style of Versailles, became Isadora Duncan's lover, and watched their three-year-old son Patrick drown in the Seine on April 19, 1913 when the family Renault rolled into the river. Isaac Singer died July 23, 1875, buried in Torquay Cemetery in three nested coffins inside a marble tomb. His funeral cortège stretched three-quarters of a mile and was attended by 2,000 mourners, mostly the Paignton tradesmen the local gentry had refused to receive him with. The Singer Building at Liberty Street and Broadway was the tallest building in the world for one year in 1908, and in 1967 became the tallest building ever voluntarily demolished by its owners. The name on the warranty outlived every adult it was ever attached to.