Vanderbilt

Vanderbilt, CORNELIUS, was born on Staten Island, New York, in 1794, and at the age of sixteen bought a boat and ferried passengers and goods across to the city. Gradually extending his enterprise, by the age of forty he had become the owner of beautiful sound and river steamers running to Boston and up the Hudson; in 1849 he founded a line, via Lake Nicaragua, to California, and during the Crimean war he established a line of ocean-steamships to Havre. A little later he transferred his capital from steamships, and at the age of seventy entered on a great career of railroad financing, gradually obtaining a controlling interest in a large number of roads, until he extended his system to Chicago. The Grand Central depot in New York City was erected by him. At his death in 1877 he left a fortune of some 100,000,000, nearly all to his eldest son; shortly before he had given 1,000,000 to found Vanderbilt University at Nashville.—His son, WILLIAM HENRY (b. 1821), had been business manager of his father's railroads, and afterwards greatly extended the Vanderbilt system. He died in 1885, and was succeeded by his two eldest sons, Cornelius (1843–99) and William Kissam, his principal heirs. See Croffut, The Vanderbilts and the Story of their Fortune (1886).