I'm thinking the closest parallel would be the fur traders of the new world, or perhaps Hudson's Bay Company.
The trappers took the risks, braved the arrows, and eked out a living, while the merchant princes lived a comfortable life of imported luxuries.
But it was the men who went in search of the unknown, instead of fortune, who have ended up gracing our tales of romance and adventure.
Given a choice of a well-appointed suite in the International Space Station Grande Hotel, or a little four-seater scoutship out among the asteroids, I know what I would choose.
The fur traders and other commercial enterprises, English and Russian, Hudson's Bay, Virginia, were all chartered, crown charters and other oligarchical and aristocratic family charter companies. East India Company. The elephant in the room is corporations. The whole New World thing was corporations. The closest thing you might find to what you are probably looking for is the Plymouth Colony, and that is the model I think most likely to colonize Mars--a religious organization, monastic in some ways, but still corporate with private property rights.