The principal American organizer and general agent of INC was the shipbroking firm of Peter Wright & Sons, a Philadelphia import-export house.

The company had established friendships and business ties with two prominent Belgian shipowners, Jules-Bernard von Der Becke and William Edouard Marsily.

[4] Clement Griscom, who rose rapidly from clerk to partner at Peter Wright & Sons, was a leader in the firm's shipping affairs and the chief force behind the creation of both INN and the chief negotiator with Belgian's King Leopold, von Der Becke, and Marsily to establish a subsidiary company in Antwerp beginning on September 19, 1872, under the title "Societe Anonyme de Navigation Belge-Americaine" (Red Star Line).

[5] The shipping line's home port was Antwerp and it sailed under the Belgian flag, thereby avoiding the obligation of employing far more expensive American personnel.

[8][10] About a quarter of the some two million Red Star Line migrants were Jews, largely from Eastern Europe until the exodus driven by the rise of Nazi Germany.

[9][11] On learning of the Nazi confiscation of his possessions, Einstein chose not to return to Germany; his letter resigning from the Prussian Academy of Sciences, written on the line's stationery, is a part of the museum exhibit.