"During the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the Winthrop family of Massachusetts produced three colonial governors in three generations; if the third was less potent than the first two, this feat must still be considered remarkable. The family, having reached a kind of apogee by 1700, did not--as would so many early New England families--then fade away. One line drifted south, to Connecticut, and then settled in New York City in the late eighteenth century. It was this branch of the Winthrop family to which Robert belonged, and by the time he was born in 1833 the family was well-established in Manhattan. The book offers a full review of this line of the family in England and America from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the present day. Modern-day descendants include recent U.S. Ambassadors to Great Britain (and Sweden) and Luxembourg, as well as a recent U.S. Undersecretary of Agriculture; more than one hundred heads of family descending from Robert Winthrop are covered"--Publisher's description.