An American Fortune, A British тιтle, and a Family War Across the Atlantic
In 1880, self-made millionaire Frank Work made a decision fueled by anger and conviction. Having risen from an Ohio farm to become one of the wealthiest men on Wall Street, Work embodied the American dream. By the 1870s, he had built a fortune estimated at $15 million — an astronomical sum at a time when factory workers earned just a few dollars a week. He believed in ambition, grit, and self-made success. Aristocracy, in his view, represented the opposite: inherited privilege without merit.
So when his daughter, Frances Work, fell in love with James Boothby Burke Roche, an Irish aristocrat with a тιтle but little money, Frank Work was outraged. To him, Roche was not a romantic suitor but a fortune hunter cloaked in nobility. Despite her father’s protests, Frances married Roche, becoming Lady Fermoy.
Frank Work responded decisively. He cut Frances out of his will and publicly condemned the marriage. He swore that no “foreign lord” would ever benefit from his hard-earned American fortune. In his mind, he was defending not only his wealth but also his principles.
Time, however, complicated the story.
The marriage between Frances and James Roche quickly deteriorated. Financial strain and mounting debts plagued the union, confirming many of Frank Work’s fears. By 1891, Frances filed for divorce in a scandal that drew attention on both sides of the Atlantic. She returned to America with her children — a quiet acknowledgment that her father’s warnings had not been unfounded.
Frank Work saw an opportunity to protect his legacy. He rewrote his will with extraordinary conditions. His grandchildren could inherit his fortune only if they renounced their British тιтles, abandoned the Roche surname, legally adopted the name “Work,” and pledged lifelong American citizenship. Determined to secure their inheritance, they agreed.
When Frank Work died in 1911, he believed he had successfully severed his bloodline from British aristocracy forever.
He was wrong.
After his death, legal challenges slowly unraveled the strict conditions he had imposed. Within a generation, Edmund Maurice Burke Roche — Frances’ son — reclaimed the Fermoy тιтle, becoming the 4th Baron Fermoy.
The “Work” name faded, and the aristocratic lineage was restored.
Yet the most remarkable twist was still to come.
Edmund’s wife, Ruth Gill (later known as Ruth, Lady Fermoy), was an ambitious and socially adept woman who cultivated close ties with the British royal family. She formed a lasting friendship with the Queen Mother and became a regular presence within royal circles. Through her careful navigation of elite society, the once-disgraced transatlantic family reestablished itself in the heart of Britain’s upper class.
Her granddaughter was Diana Spencer.
When Diana began her courtship with Prince Charles, Ruth reportedly supported and encouraged the match. Decades after Frank Work had fought to prevent his descendants from entangling with European nobility, his great-great-granddaughter walked down the aisle of St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1981 before a global audience of 750 million people. Diana became Princess of Wales — just one step away from the British throne.
But the story grows even more intriguing when DNA and genealogical research enter the picture.
Modern genealogists have uncovered that Princess Diana’s American connections ran far deeper than her link to Frank Work. Through colonial-era ancestors, she was distantly related to several prominent American figures, including George Washington, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Calvin Coolidge, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Even cultural and financial icons such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and J.P. Morgan appear within her extended family tree.
These connections were not speculative myths but documented genealogical lines tracing back to early colonial families. Many of those families, in turn, descended from medieval English nobility — including King Edward III. In other words, the same royal bloodlines that anchored British monarchy also wove themselves into America’s founding families centuries earlier.
The Atlantic Ocean, it turns out, was never a clean divide between “Old World” and “New World.” Bloodlines crossed repeatedly over generations, intertwining revolutionaries, presidents, poets, financiers — and eventually, royalty.
Prince William, Diana’s eldest son, inherits all of this. When he eventually becomes king, he will carry within him not only the lineage of British monarchs but also ancestral ties reaching into the earliest chapters of American history. The very republic that emerged from rebellion against the crown shares distant ancestral threads with the monarch who will one day sit upon it.
Frank Work spent decades trying to construct a genetic firewall between his descendants and British aristocracy. He believed that legal documents, name changes, and oaths could permanently redirect history.
Yet heritage cannot be so easily contained.
Within two generations of his death, his lineage had not only returned to the aristocracy — it had risen to its pinnacle. His great-great-granddaughter became Princess of Wales. His great-great-great-grandson will wear the crown.
In the end, DNA proved stronger than intention. The American tycoon who rejected inherited тιтles became, through time and ancestry, part of the royal story he tried so hard to escape.
