Welthiest people Cornelius Vanderbilt by merrittwilson on DeviantArt (original) (raw)

Cornelius Vanderbilt is standing proudly on the deck of a boat going down a river while a periauger, a paddle steam boat and a train travel in the same direction.

Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877) was

considered one of the wealthiest men in American history. He made his huge fortune in railroads and ships, his shipping empire earned him the nickname the Commodore even though he never served in the military. A commodore is a navel officer with the highest rank above a captain and below a rear admiral. Vanderbilt owned the biggest railroad in the America called the New York Central railroad. He vastly improved and expanded the nation's transportation infrastructure, contributing to a transformation of the very geography of the United States. His family would eventually become one of the wealthiest families in American history and he even has living descendants today including fashion designer Gloria Vanderbilt, her youngest son, journalist Anderson Cooper, actor Timothy Olyphant, musician John P. Hammond and screenwriter James Vanderbilt.

Cornelius Vanderbilt was born in Staten Island, New York in 1794, his father was a farmer and a sailor who made extra money by sailing his own produce to the market place in New York City with a boat called a periauger. As a child Cornelius worked on his father’s boat and he quit school when he was eleven years old. When Cornelius was sixteen years old, he decided to start a business, he borrowed money from his mother and bought his own periauger which he named the Swiftsure, he began to ferry freight and passengers from Staten Island and Manhattan which would eventually become the Staten Island Ferry of today. Eventually, he acquired a fleet of small boats and learned about ship design.

When Cornelius was nineteen years old, he married his cousin, Sophia Johnson, who was the daughter of Nathaniel Johnson and Elizabeth Hand. They moved into a boarding house on Broad Street in Manhattan and had had 13 children together. In the late 1820s, he went into business on his own, building steamships and operating ferry lines around the New York region. Shrewd and aggressive, he became a dominant force in the industry by engaging in fierce fare wars with his rivals. In some cases, his competitors paid him hefty sums not to compete with them.

When the California Gold Rush began in 1848 lots of people on the east coast wanted to go to California to get some of their own gold, Vanderbilt saw a potential that getting those people to the west would bring in more revenue for his shipping empire. In those days, there were no airplanes so if you lived in New York and wanted to visit or move to California you could go overland by stage coach or covered wagons but that could take weeks over 18,000 miles across desserts and mountains, or you could go on a ship that would take you on a 17,000 mile journey around South America which would take three to five months depending on the weather conditions you might encounter, or you can take a ship to Panama travel over the isthmus on mule trains, canoes or on foot. Vanderbilt knew that these trips were taking way to long so he proposed that a canal should be built across Nicaragua so that ships can get from the Atlantic to the Pacific quicker without sailing around Cape Horn, But unfortunately, he could not get enough investment into building the canal nor could he get permission from the Nicaragua government to build it, so he created a steamship line to Nicaragua and founded the Accessory Transit Company which would take passengers to San Juan del Norte which is located on the Caribbean side of Nicaragua. From there, they travelled up the Rio San Juan to Lake Nicaragua, crossing the lake to the town of Rivas. A stagecoach then crossed the narrow isthmus to San Juan del Sur, where another steamer would take the passengers the rest of the way to San Francisco. Vanderbilt’s idea for a canal in Central America fell by the wayside until 1914 with the opening of the Panama Canal which took ten years to build and ever since then sailing from the Atlantic to the Pacific became possible. 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. For donating the Vanderbilt, he was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal. Vanderbilt also paid to outfit a major expedition to New Orleans. He was depressed and sad 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.

In the 1860’s Vanderbilt decided to change businesses from the shipping to the railroad industry. He took control of a number of railroads connecting for Chicago to New York City. At that time the railroads were not making any money, so Vanderbilt later explained that he wanted to show that he could make railroad’s profitable and he did. Vanderbilt brought his eldest son Billy in as vice-president of the Harlem and New Haven railroad. Billy had had a nervous breakdown early in life, and his father had sent him to a farm on Staten Island. But then he proved to his father and to himself that he is a good businessman, and eventually became the head of the Staten Island Railway. Vanderbilt bought control of the Hudson River Railroad in 1864, the New York Central Railroad in 1867, and the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway in 1869. He later bought the Canada Southern as well. In 1870, he consolidated two of his key lines into the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, one of the first giant corporations in United States history. Vanderbilt decided that a train station should be built in New York City, so he commissioned an architect named John B. Snook to design his new station, dubbed Grand Central Depot, on the site of the 42nd Street depot. The site was far outside the limits of the developed city at the time, and even Vanderbilt's backers warned against building the terminal in such an undeveloped area. Construction started on September 1, 1869, and the depot was completed by October 1871.The project included the creation of Vanderbilt Avenue, a service road along the depot's western border. To reduce confusion and delay, the railroads staggered their inaugural runs to the new station. The Harlem Railroad switched from its Madison Square depot on October 9, 1871; the New Haven Railroad arrived on October 16; and the Hudson River Railroad on November 1, eight days later than planned. Grand Central was the biggest building in New York up until that time covering up to 22 acres, Vanderbilt sank the tracks on 4th Avenue in a cut that later became a tunnel, and 4th Avenue became Park Avenue. The station eventually was torn down and replaced by present-day Grand Central Terminal, which opened in 1913, however Vanderbilt’s family retained their ownership of the new station, they even used their acorn crest in all of the stations decorations, the acorn represents how Vanderbilt was a self-made millionaire that started as a farmer and sailor who worked his way to become a wealthy businessman.

By 1868, Vanderbilt owns 40% of America’s railroads but he wants to own all of railroads, in order to make his empire complete he decided to take control of the Erie Railway which was a railroad that operated in the north eastern United States, it was named after Lake Erie and The Erie Canal since it occupied those areas. Vanderbilt cornered the Erie stock by buying up as much as possible, demanding control of the company which is known as a hostile takeover, but little did he know that his plans would be thwarted by an investor named Jay Gould, a stock broker named Jim Fisk and another investor named Daniel Drew. These three men own and operate the Erie railway and later became known as The Erie Gang.

The Erie Gang began to print their own stalk using a printing press that they set up in the basement of the Erie headquarters, each share they print deludes Vanderbilt’s stake in the company, this is known as Watering Down stock which is against the law today because it’s a form of counterfeiting and fraud. When Vanderbilt found out about the water down stock, he was furious, he had bought $7 million dollars of watered-down stalk from the Erie Gang and in the end, he lost the Erie.

Unlike the Gilded Age titans who followed him Vanderbilt did not own grand homes or give away much of his vast wealth to charitable causes. In fact, the only substantial philanthropic donation he made was in 1873, toward the end of his life, when he gave $1 million to build and endow Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. (In a nod to its founder’s nickname, the school’s athletic teams are called the Commodores.)

Cornelius Vanderbilt died on January 4, 1877, at his residence, No. 10 Washington Place, after having been 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 a fortune estimated at 100million.Inhiswill,heleft95100 million. In his will, he left 95% of his 100million.Inhiswill,heleft95100 million estate to his son William (Billy) and to William's four sons ($5 million to Cornelius, and $2 million apiece to William, Frederick, and George). The Commodore said that he believed William was the only heir capable of maintaining the business empire.

Commodore Vanderbilt willed amounts ranging from 250,000to250,000 to 250,000to500,000 to each of his daughters. His wife received 500,000,theirNewYorkCityhome,and2,000sharesofcommonstockintheNewYorkCentralRailroad.Tohisyoungersurvivingson,CorneliusJeremiahVanderbilt,whomheregardedasawastrel,helefttheincomefroma500,000, 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 500,000,theirNewYorkCityhome,and2,000sharesofcommonstockintheNewYorkCentralRailroad.Tohisyoungersurvivingson,CorneliusJeremiahVanderbilt,whomheregardedasawastrel,helefttheincomefroma200,000 trust fund. 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 America's Gilded Age.