This is an I-Heart podcast.

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry.

And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

So Marjorie Maryweather Post came up in my research when I was working on Clarence Bird's Eye quite recently. But she has also been mentioned in the news a lot lately, just kind of offhandedly. And that's because she was the person who built Marilago, which is in the news a lot.

She actually willed it to the National Park Service when she died.

We're going to talk about how that transpired and a lot more today because Marjorie Post was a woman who is just fascinating to me.

She helmed a huge corporation when she was still in her 20s in the early 20th century.

And she represents this unique combination of a life that was led with incredible opulence,

but also paired with a very serious hands-on dedication to philanthropy.

And she expanded her wealth in her lifetime.

It wasn't as though she was trying to get rid of it all. But as she matured, she seemed to see that expansion as a way to ensure that she could continue to fund the charities and initiatives that she believed in. Also, her personal life was just so messy, girl, Marjorie. And we'll talk about all... I will say as I was reading through it at one point I got confused. I was like, wait, who is she married now? How many? And some of

the husbands have the same first name to make it extra confusing. We will talk about all that today

and certainly more in behind the scenes on Friday.

But we're going to talk about Marjorie Maryweather Post.

Heads up, there are a couple of sensitive topics that appear in today's episode.

We're not going to spend a ton of time on them, but I just want you to know they're coming.

We do have a mention of a death by suicide and also a very brief mention of a miscarriage.

So to talk about Marjorie, first we need to talk about her father. Charles William Post, who went by C.W. was born in Springfield, Illinois, on October 24, 1854. His father, also named Charles, had chased the early California gold rush, but then

settled into a life in Illinois in the farm equipment business. His mother Caroline was a writer.

C.W. enrolled in Illinois Industrial College as a young teenager, but he didn't finish.

He convinced his parents that he would be better off joining the workforce, so at 15,

...