John Murray Forbes (1813 - 1898) was born in Bordeaux; France. His parents were Ralph Bennett Forbes and wife Margaret Perkins; niece of Thomas Handasyd Perkins; founder of a Boston Brahmin family merchant dynasty involved in the China trade. The Forbes family settled in Milton; Massachusetts; where his father was an energetic but unsuccessful businessman who died when John was only six.

Forbes attended school at Phillips Academy in Andover; Massachusetts; then at Round Hill School in Northampton; Massachusetts; from 1823-28. He was one of three brothers sent by their uncle to Canton (now Guangzhou); China; and achieved some financial success during a short time spent trading in Canton. However; unlike his brother Robert Bennet Forbes who devoted himself to the China trade; Forbes returned to Boston and became an early railroad investor and landowner.

Although Forbes' is best known as a railroad magnate; much of his fortune was based in the opium trade to China. It is said that his opium millions financed the career of author Ralph Waldo Emerson; who married Forbes's daughter; and bankrolled the establishment of the Bell Telephone Company; whose first president was William Hathaway Forbes; father of Ruth Forbes Paine. Pictures From History