His father, John Murray Forbes, was a French-born railroad magnate.

[1] He was captured by the Confederate States Army on July 6, 1864, and imprisoned in Charleston and Columbia, South Carolina, until December 1864.

[1] In the later 1870s, Forbes was approached by Gardiner Greene Hubbard and Thomas Sanders to invest in their Bell Telephone Company.

[2] Subsequently, Forbes served as the President of the Bell Telephone Company from 1879 to 1887.

[1] Forbes died on October 11, 1897, on Naushon Island, Massachusetts.