The study focuses on elite families in the City of Belem, Amazon, Brazil, during the Rubber Boom - 1870-1920. It presents a discussion on the constitution and transformation of local private wealth and dowry. The discussion also points out the introduction of new social groups, commercially linked elites who were directly or indirectly related to the rubber trade. This analysis underlines alliances construed upon vertical marriages promoted by land owners and cattle ranchers who slowly had to give way to horizontal marriages to individuals outside the family, most of them new comers to the capital, usually merchants. The sources for the research are inventories, newspapers and administrative reports.
elite; wealth; marriage; Rubber Boom; city of Belem.