Amazing story of Anna Dodge from Dundee who became one of the world’s richest women

WHEN Anna Thompson Dodge died in 1970, she was among the world’s richest women.

The wealth was hard-earned, her family having played a pivotal role in the revolutionary American automobile industry of the early 20th Century.

But her beginnings had been humble.

Born in Dundee on August 7 1867, Anna died at the age of 103 in Michigan in her beloved 75-room home, Rose Terrace.

The extraordinary building, situated in Grosse Point Farms, housed one of the richest collections of French paintings, furniture and porcelain ever assembled.

But how did this woman from Dundee amass such enormous personal wealth?

In her early childhood Anna, who was born Christina Anna Thompson, was taken to Detroit by her widowed mother in search of a better life.

The family was one of modest circumstances but took pride in having an uncle in Scotland who was an architect.

She went to America with nothing, apart from her knowledge of the piano and patience to teach the art to the middleclass young.

After setting up her pianoteaching business in the 1890s in the small town of Niles, Michigan, Anna met mechanic Horace Elgin Dodge.

The pair married in Windsor, Ontario, in 1896 with barely a penny to their name.

It is said that Horace had 75 cents in his pocket at the time and the newlyweds spent 45 cents on their honeymoon suite for one night, and 20 cents for breakfast – leaving them with 10 cents to start their lives together.

In 1897 Horace, a mechanic, and his brother John arranged a deal to join with a third-party investor to manufacture bicycles using a dirt-proof bicycle bearing that Horace had invented.

By October 1900, the pair had sold the business and used the proceeds to set up their own machine shop in Detroit.

In their first year of business, the Dodge brothers’ company started making parts for the automobile industry.

After agreeing to become the major supplier of components for Henry Ford in 1903, their business continued to grow.

By 1914, John and Horace had formed Dodge Brothers Motor Car Company to develop their own line of automobiles.

Reputed for their quality, the cars were ranked in second place for US sales as early as 1916.

Unfortunately for Horace and John, their success was to be relatively short-lived.

In January 1920, John died aged 55 after contracting influenza and pneumonia while in New York City during the 1918 flu pandemic.

Having also contracted the flu that December following several relapses, Horace died from complications of the disease, including pneumonia and cirrhosis of the liver, aged 52.

Anna and Horace had two children – Delphine and Horace Junior.

By the time Horace died, Anna was already living a decadent lifestyle.

With proceeds of the Ford stock sale, Horace paid $825,000 for a Cartier pearl necklace for Anna that once belonged to Catherine the Great – one of the most expensive jewellery transactions in history.

It is reported that Anna only wore the piece twice before giving it to her daughter.

After being passed down through the Dodge family it was eventually split into three different pearl necklaces, eventually selling for $1.1 million at an auction in 2018.

In 1910 Horace and Anna commissioned the muchlauded architect Albert Kahn to design a palatial house, dubbed Rose Terrace, on Jefferson Avenue.

Six years after Horace’s death, Anna married actor Hugh Dillman and the pair decided to build a completely new mansion.

Calling in the art world’s super-salesman of the time, Joseph Duveen, and architect Horace Trumbauer, Anna supervised the first three years of work on her new palace on the Dodge estate, before announcing she was leaving on a world cruise aboard her yacht, the Delphine.

The yacht, one of the largest

Anna at the age of 100 in 1966.