How to read this Guinness family tree
Read the Guinness family tree from the top down, one generation to a row. Each of the three lines keeps its own column, so the brewery, the bank and the mission never cross.
A portrait is a picture
Ten people have one.
A silhouette has none
No free likeness is known for eleven.
A line from one parent
The other parent is named in the notes.
A double frame is the centre
Arthur Guinness is the centre.
What the Guinness family tree PDF contains
The Guinness family tree PDF is drawn by this site from the sources at the foot of this page. It copies no chart of the brewery or of any published genealogy. One tall page holds nine generations, from Richard Guinness to the fourth Earl of Iveagh, with the years of each life.
Under the chart the PDF prints the credit of every portrait and the list of sources, so a class can use the Guinness family tree PDF with its attributions on the page. Print it on A3 or tabloid paper for the clearest names, or set the printer to fit A4 or letter.
Richard Guinness and Elizabeth Read at Celbridge
The Guinness family tree starts with Richard Guinness of Celbridge in County Kildare, born about 1690, and his wife Elizabeth Read.3 Richard worked for Archbishop Arthur Price, who died on 17 July 1752 and left £100 each to Richard and to his son Arthur.4
Arthur was born at Celbridge in 1725, usually dated 24 September. The company declared 28 September in 1991, and his gravestone implies 1724, so the chart marks the year as uncertain.4 His brother Samuel was born in 1727.3
Arthur Guinness and the lease of St James’s Gate
Arthur bought a brewery at Leixlip in 1755. On 31 December 1759 he leased the brewery at St James’s Gate in Dublin for 9,000 years at £45 a year.4 He married Olivia Whitmore, born in 1742. His article dates the wedding 17 June 1761, and Wikidata gives 29 May.42
Ten of their children survived birth. The chart draws two sons, Arthur II, who carried on the brewery, and John Grattan, father of the missionary line. Arthur died at Beaumont on 23 January 1803, and Olivia in 1814.42
Samuel Guinness and the banking line
Samuel set up as a goldbeater in Dublin in 1750. His son Richard was a barrister, whose death the family article gives as 1829 in its list and 1830 in its text.3 Richard’s son Robert Rundell Guinness founded a land agency in Dublin in 1836 with John Ross Mahon.12 Guinness Mahon grew into a bank and was sold to Investec in 1998.12
Arthur II and Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness
Arthur II, born in 1768, ran the brewery with his brothers after 1803, married Anne Lee in 1793 and was Governor of the Bank of Ireland from 1820 to 1822.5 His son Benjamin Lee Guinness ran the brewery from 1839 and owned it alone from 1855.5
Benjamin married his cousin Elizabeth Guinness in 1837. He was Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1851, restored St Patrick’s Cathedral at his own expense between 1860 and 1865 and was made a baronet in 1867. He died in London on 19 May 1868.6
Lord Ardilaun, Lord Iveagh and the sale of 1876
Sir Benjamin’s sons Arthur Edward and Edward Cecil ran the brewery together until 1876, when Arthur Edward sold his half to Edward for £600,000. Arthur Edward became Baron Ardilaun in 1880, the year St Stephen’s Green opened to the public, and had no children.7
Edward married his cousin Adelaide Guinness in 1873 and in 1886 floated about two thirds of the company on the London Stock Exchange for £6 million.8 On 2 April 1890 he founded the housing trust now called the Iveagh Trust, which holds over 2,200 homes across Dublin.1 He became Earl of Iveagh in 1919 and left Kenwood House to the nation.8
Rupert, Walter and the later Earls of Iveagh
Edward and Adelaide had three sons, Rupert, Ernest and Walter.8 Rupert married Lady Gwendolen Onslow in 1903, chaired the brewery from 1927 to 1962 and gave Iveagh House to the Irish government in 1939.9 Walter became Baron Moyne in 1932 and Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1941, and he was killed in Cairo on 6 November 1944.10
Rupert’s only son, Viscount Elveden, was killed in action in 1945, so the earldom passed in 1967 to his grandson Benjamin, who died in 1992.9 Benjamin’s son Arthur Edward Guinness, born in 1969, is the fourth Earl of Iveagh. He is living, so this Guinness family tree gives only his name, year of birth and title.3
John Grattan Guinness and Henry Grattan Guinness
John Grattan Guinness served in the Madras Army of the East India Company. His son Henry Grattan Guinness, born in 1835, became a Nonconformist preacher and in 1873 founded the East London Institute for Home and Foreign Missions. He died at Bath in 1910.11
How this Guinness family tree PDF was drawn
The results for this search are a gallery PDF, a book of 1954 and genealogy sites. This chart is a printable file with a source for every person, the disputed dates marked, and an editor behind it. The guide to genograms for family history shows how to draw several lines of one family.
Questions about the Guinness family tree
Where to download the Guinness family tree PDF
The link stands in the section on the PDF and under the chart. The file carries the portrait credits and the sources.
People and sources
A page of its own lists all 21 people on the chart, each with a short note and the sources for it, and the 12 numbered sources this article cites. It also gives the credits of the portraits and this page as a reference in the APA, MLA, Chicago and Harvard styles, ready to copy.