For the first 104 years of ownership, Dow Jones’s controlling Bancroft family remained virtually unknown to the general public. The family, the nearest thing that America has to the English aristocracy, with all the requisite eccentricities, was not the kind to air its affairs to the world.

In the 105th year, a takeover approach by News Corporation forced simmering tensions among the Bancroft family’s three dozen Dow Jones shareholders to the surface.

Many of the older members sought to protect their treasure from Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, who they feared would interfere with The Wall Street Journal’s editorial independence. Many of the younger members, meanwhile, urged their seniors to consider whether Dow Jones had any viable alternatives and emphasised that Mr Murdoch had promised to invest heavily in the business.

Perhaps the most intense disagreement was between Jane Cox MacElree, the daughter of Jessie Bancroft Cox, the larger-than-life matriarch who exerted an iron grip on the company and died in 1982, and her own children. Ms MacElree was among the fiercest defenders of the WSJ’s independence and strongly opposed the takeover. Yet her son, Crawford Hill, wrote an impassioned letter last week in which he said that the family was “paying the price for our passivity over the past 25 years” and pushed for a sale. Meanwhile, Leslie Hill, a Dow Jones director, has been attempting to find an alternative buyer.

Ms MacElree resigned from trusts controlling a large part of the Cook branch of the family’s shares at the last minute, clearing the way for the family to cast its 23 per cent voting block in favour of the deal, which it did on Monday.

The family’s ties to The Wall Street Journal date from 1902, when Clarence Barron, a correspondent for the Dow Jones newswire, bought the publishing group from Charles Dow and Edward Jones. Mr Barron was described by his contemporaries as a “short, rotund, powerhouse” and is respected as the father of modern financial journalism. When he died, he was president of Dow Jones and effectively ran the WSJ.

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