During his adolescence, he worked in a gear factory at age fifteen and then two years later in the mailroom of a securities firm.

Blanch and Edward had one son: He married his second wife, General Foods heiress, Marjorie Merriweather Post, in 1920.

During their marriage (1920–1935) they built Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, and also commissioned the largest privately owned seagoing yacht of the era, the Hussar V, which is best known as the Sea Cloud.

Together they had one child: In February 1936, at age 60, he married 28-year-old Dorothy Dear Metzger, who had divorced her husband, Homer, the previous October.

Dorothy and Homer P. Metzger had one daughter, who became Edward's stepdaughter upon the marriage: Hutton died on July 11, 1962, in Old Westbury, New York.