Cornelius Vanderbilt

Cornelius Vanderbilt (May 27, 1794 – January 4, 1877), nicknamed "the Commodore", was an American business magnate who built his wealth in railroads and shipping. After working with his father's business, he worked his way into leadership positions in inland and coastal shipping, then invested in the rapidly growing railroad industry, which transformed the geography of the United States.

As one of the richest Americans in history and wealthiest figures overall, Vanderbilt was the patriarch of the wealthy and influential Vanderbilt family. He provided the initial gift to found Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. For his monopoly on shipping and the railroads, facilitated in part by political manipulation, Vanderbilt is often described as either a "captain of industry" or a "robber baron".

Ancestry

Cornelius Vanderbilt's great-great-great-grandfather, Jan Aertson or Aertszoon ("Aert's son"), was a Dutch farmer from the village of De Bilt in Utrecht, Netherlands, who immigrated to New Amsterdam (later New York) as an indentured servant in 1650. The Dutch van der ("of the") was eventually added to Aertson's village name to create "van der Bilt" ("of the Bilt"). This was eventually condensed to Vanderbilt.

Anthony Janszoon van Salee was one of Cornelius Vanderbilt's great-great-great-great-grandfathers.

Early years

thumb | 220x124px | right | Vanderbilt's mother, Phebe Hand

Cornelius Vanderbilt was born in Staten Island, New York, on May 27, 1794, to Cornelius van Derbilt and Phebe Hand. However, according to the first account of his life, published in 1853, the periauger belonged to his father and the younger Vanderbilt received half the profit. He began his business by ferrying freight and passengers on a ferry between Staten Island and Manhattan. Such was his energy and eagerness in his trade that other captains nearby took to calling him "The Commodore" in jest—a nickname that stuck with him all his life. Cornelius Vanderbilt remained a member of the Moravian Church to his death. Along with other members of the Vanderbilt family, he helped erect a local Moravian parish church in his city.

On December 19, 1813, at age 19 Vanderbilt married his first cousin, Sophia Johnson. They moved into a boarding house on Broad Street in Manhattan.

They had 13 children together: Phebe in 1814, Ethelinda in 1817, Eliza in 1819, William in 1821, Emily in 1823, Sophia in 1825, Maria in 1827, Frances in 1828, Cornelius Jeremiah in 1830, George in 1832 (who died in 1836), Mary in 1834, Catherine in 1836, and another son named George in 1839.

In addition to running his ferry, Vanderbilt bought his brother-in-law John De Forest's schooner Charlotte and traded in food and merchandise in partnership with his father and others. But on November 24, 1817, a ferry entrepreneur named Thomas Gibbons asked Vanderbilt to captain his steamboat between New Jersey and New York. Although Vanderbilt kept his own businesses running, he became Gibbons's business manager.

When Vanderbilt entered his new position, Gibbons was fighting against a steamboat monopoly in New York waters, which had been granted by the New York State Legislature to the politically influential patrician Robert Livingston and Robert Fulton, who had designed the steamboat. Though both Livingston and Fulton had died by the time Vanderbilt started working for Gibbons, the monopoly was held by Livingston's heirs. They had granted a license to Aaron Ogden to run a ferry between New York and New Jersey. Gibbons launched his steamboat venture because of a personal dispute with Ogden, whom he hoped to drive into bankruptcy. To accomplish this, he undercut prices and also brought a landmark legal case—Gibbons v. Ogden—to the United States Supreme Court to overturn the monopoly. During the 1850s, Vanderbilt also bought control of a major shipyard and the Allaire Iron Works, a leading manufacturer of marine steam engines, in Manhattan.]]

When the Civil War began in 1861, Vanderbilt attempted to donate his largest steamship, the Vanderbilt, to the Union Navy. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles refused it, thinking its operation and maintenance too expensive for what he expected to be a short war. Vanderbilt had little choice but to lease it to the War Department, at prices set by ship brokers. When the Confederate ironclad Virginia (popularly known in the North as the Merrimack) wrought havoc with the Union blockading squadron at Hampton Roads, Virginia, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and President Abraham Lincoln called on Vanderbilt for help. This time he succeeded in donating the Vanderbilt to the Union Navy, equipping it with a ram and staffing it with handpicked officers. It helped bottle up the Virginia, after which Vanderbilt converted it into a cruiser to hunt for the Confederate commerce raider Alabama, captained by Raphael Semmes. For donating the Vanderbilt, he was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal. Vanderbilt also paid to outfit a major expedition to New Orleans. He suffered a grievous loss when George Washington Vanderbilt II, his youngest and favorite son, and heir apparent, a graduate of the United States Military Academy, fell ill and died without ever seeing combat. But Gould bribed the legislature to legalize the new stock.

Gould never got the better of Vanderbilt in any other important business matter, but he often embarrassed Vanderbilt, who uncharacteristically lashed out at Gould in public. By contrast, Vanderbilt befriended his other foes after their fights ended, including Drew and Cornelius Garrison.

Later years and philanthropy

thumb|upright|Vanderbilt in his final years

Following his wife Sophia's death in 1868, Vanderbilt went to Canada. On August 21, 1869, in London, Ontario, he married a cousin from Mobile, Alabama, with the name — unusual for a woman — of Frank Armstrong Crawford.

Vanderbilt's second wife convinced him to give ($ in dollars ), the largest charitable gift in American history to that date, to Bishop Holland Nimmons McTyeire, the husband of her cousin, Amelia Townsend, to found Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, named in his honor. He also paid $50,000 for a church for his second wife's congregation, the Church of the Strangers. In addition, he donated to churches around New York, including a gift to the Moravian Church on Staten Island of for a cemetery (the Moravian Cemetery). He chose to be buried there.

Death

Cornelius Vanderbilt died on January 4, 1877, at his residence, No. 10 Washington Place, after being confined to his rooms for about eight months. The immediate cause of his death was exhaustion, brought on by long suffering from a complication of chronic disorders. At the time of his death, aged 82, Vanderbilt had an estimated worth of $105 million ($ in dollars).

thumb|300px|left|Vanderbilt family mausoleum at the [[Moravian Cemetery on Staten Island, where Cornelius is buried]]

In his will, he left 95% of his $105 million estate to his son William (Billy) and four grandsons through him. This left his only other living son, Cornelius Jeremiah Vanderbilt, and 9 daughters (Phebe Jane, Ethelinda, Eliza, Emily Almira, Sophia Johnson, Maria Louisa, Frances Lavinia, Mary Alicia, and Catherine Juliette), to receive comparatively little inheritance; far less than even their young nephews. Corneel, Ethelinda and Mary took the matter of their father's will to court, claiming he was not in his right mind in his old age when he drew up the will; that he had been behaving strangely and was under William's influence as well as that of a corrupt spiritualist in his employ, who'd allegedly been approached and paid off by William to do his bidding, according to eyewitness testimony. Allegedly, William paid the spiritualist (a Mr. Stoddard) to suggest the "spirits"—during a point in the session when said spiritualist would fall into a "trance" in the Commodore's presence—claimed William would be the most trustworthy to inherit the estate and business and that his other children actually hated him and were just waiting for him to die. A "spirit", during this session, came in the form of William's deceased mother, Sophia. Not wanting to risk further public humiliation of the family name in court, William finally settled with his siblings. He gave Corneel an extra $200,000 in cash and a trust fund of $400,000. He gave Mary and Ethelinda the same settlement. Still, all told, this was comparatively very little from the—by far—largest estate in the world at that time.

William's eldest son, Cornelius Vanderbilt II, received $5 million in the will, while his three younger sons—William Kissam Vanderbilt, Frederick William Vanderbilt, and George Washington Vanderbilt II—received $2 million apiece. Vanderbilt willed amounts ranging from $250,000 to $500,000 to each of his daughters. His wife received $500,000, their New York City home, and 2,000 shares of common stock in the New York Central Railroad. To his younger surviving son, Cornelius Jeremiah Vanderbilt, whom he regarded as a wastrel, he left the income from a $200,000 trust fund. (Although his daughters and Cornelius received bequests much smaller than those of their brother William, these made them very wealthy by the standards of 1877 and were not subject to inheritance tax.)

Legacy

Vanderbilt's biographer T. J. Stiles says, "He vastly improved and expanded the nation's transportation infrastructure, contributing to a transformation of the very geography of the United States. He embraced new technologies and new forms of business organization, and used them to compete....He helped to create the corporate economy that would define the United States into the 21st century."

The Commodore had lived in relative modesty considering his nearly unlimited means, splurging only on race horses. His descendants were the ones who built the Vanderbilt houses that characterize the United States' Gilded Age.

According to The Wealthy 100 by Michael Klepper and Robert Gunther, Vanderbilt would be worth $143 billion in 2007 United States dollars if his total wealth as a share of the nation's gross domestic product (GDP) in 1877 (the year of his death) were taken and applied in that same proportion in 2007. This would make him the second-wealthiest person in United States history, after Standard Oil co-founder John Davison Rockefeller (1839–1937). Another calculation, from 1998, puts him in third place, after Andrew Carnegie. In real terms, however, Vanderbilt's peak wealth of $105 million in 1877 is only worth US$ (in dollars).

In 1999, Cornelius Vanderbilt was inducted into the North America Railway Hall of Fame, recognizing his significant contributions to the railroad industry. He was inducted in the "Railway Workers & Builders: North America" category.

Statues of Cornelius Vanderbilt can be found at various locations, including Vanderbilt University and Grand Central Terminal. At Vanderbilt University, a statue of Cornelius Vanderbilt, designed by Giuseppe Moretti in 1897, stands near Kirkland Hall in commemoration of his gift to help found the university. Additionally, a statue of Cornelius Vanderbilt is located on the south side of Grand Central Terminal, facing the Park Avenue road viaduct to the south. The bronze statue was sculpted by Ernst Plassmann and was originally sited at the Hudson River Railroad depot at St. John's Park before being moved to Grand Central Terminal in 1929.

Descendants

thumb|Physician Jared Linsly testifying as to the mental and physical condition of Cornelius Vanderbilt during court proceedings surrounding the challenge to his will. From an 1877 illustration in Harper's Weekly.

Cornelius Vanderbilt was buried in the family vault in the Moravian Cemetery at New Dorp on Staten Island. He was later reburied in a tomb in the same cemetery constructed by his son Billy. Three of his daughters and son, Cornelius Jeremiah Vanderbilt, contested the will on the grounds that their father was of unsound mind and under the influence of his son Billy and spiritualists whom he consulted on a regular basis. The court battle lasted more than a year and was ultimately won outright by Billy, who increased the bequests to his siblings and paid their legal fees.

One of Vanderbilt's great-great-granddaughters, Gloria Vanderbilt, was a renowned fashion designer, and her youngest son, Anderson Cooper, is a television news anchor. Through Billy's daughter Emily Thorn Vanderbilt, another descendant is actor Timothy Olyphant.

Railroads controlled by Vanderbilt

New York and Harlem Railroad (1863–)
Hudson River Railroad (1864–)
New York Central Railroad (1868–)
Canada Southern Railway (1873–)
Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway (1873?–)
Michigan Central Railroad (1877–)
New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad (Nickel Plate Road, 1882–)
West Shore Railroad (1885–)
Rome, Watertown and Ogdensburg Railroad
Dunkirk, Allegheny Valley and Pittsburgh Railroad
Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway
Lake Erie and Western Railroad
Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad

Notes

References

External links

Steerage Passage Contract - Le Havre to New York on the clipper ship "Admiral" of the Vanderbilt European Steamship Line 1854 GG Archives
"The Death of Commodore Vanderbilt", obituary, Scientific American, January 20, 1877, p. 36-37