Cornelius Vanderbilt

          Cornelius Vanderbilt was born May 27, 1794 to of Dutch descendants who immigrated in the 1600s. He was raised in Staten Island, New York by farming parents. When Vanderbilt was in his teens, he went to work for a cargo transporter. Later he married one of his cousins and they had thirteen children together. After his first wife died, Cornelius married another one of his cousins.

Vanderbilt bought a sailing ship and started a business transporting goods across the Hudson. He made up a large fleet and destroyed the competition. Then when steamboats came around, Vanderbilt realized that he could not compete with the speed and reliability of the steamboat, he sold his sailing ships and business. In 1817 Vanderbilt became a ferry captain for a commercial steamboat service. During this time Vanderbilt learned the steamboat industry. By the late 1820s Vanderbilt started his own business build steamboats and operating ferry lines. He became so dominant in the industry that his competitors started to pay to not compete with them. Being so dominant, Vanderbilt made many enemies in the industry. In the 1840s Vanderbilt built a large brick home at 10 Washington Place. He was not easily accepted into the elite residents because people thought that he was to rough and uncultured. I think that the other resident were jealous of Vanderbilt because he came from and rural back ground and is now a multi millionaire, they just used his rural background as a reason not to like him. In the 1850s Vanderbilt launched a steamship that transported people to and from New York and San Francisco. This was because many people were trying to get to California for the Gold Rush. Vanderbilt used a different route than most people and went through Nicaragua. Most routes were taken through the Panama Canal and around the Cape Horn of South America. This venture made Vanderbilt $1,000,000, which in today’s money is $26,000,000.

After the Gold Rush in the 1860s Vanderbilt switched to railroads. He gained control of most the railroads in between Chicago and New York. His railroad company did many things to help the industry. It lowered costs, increased efficiency, and sped up the travel and shipment times. Vanderbilt really pushed the construction of Manhattan’s Grand Central Depot in 1871. This later became the Grand Central Terminal in 1913.

Unlike other industrial giants like John D. Rockefeller, Vanderbilt was not very philanthropic. One of his only donations was $1,000,000 to start Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. When he died at the age of 82, Vanderbilt left $100 million to his son William. His descendants also built the Biltmore estate in Ashville.