Samuel Russell headed the most important American trading company in China. Russell and Co. trafficked spices and silks from China but also was heavily imvolved in the Opium trade between India and China and the resultant Opium Wars. Warren Delano, grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was a chief operating officer of the Company. Robert Bennet and John Murray Forbes, relations to John Forbes Kerry, headed the company
William Huntington Russell, a cousin of Samuel Russell, founded the Skull and Bones society at Yale with Alphonso Taft.
Alphonso Taft was co-founder of Skull and Bones and father of President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft
