Their fortune began with Cornelius Vanderbilt, also known as "The Commodore," born in 1794 on Staten Island. In 1810, at the age of 16 (!) Cornelius started a ferry business in New York harbor transporting passengers with one boat. (Now you can't even get a job flippin' hamburgers at the age of 16...) During the War of 1812 (the one where the British captured Washington, D.C. and burned the White House), Cornelius bought several more boats to carry supplies to American government outposts. By then he was 18.
At 24, "The Commodore" sold the ferry business and started his own steamship company operating on the Hudson River. He was like an original Sam Walton - he cut prices but improved accommodations. Ultimately, he controlled traffic on the river, and he added the eastern seacoast to his routes. By 1846, at the age of 52, he was a millionaire.
According to Wikipedia: 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...
Cornelius, aka "The Commodore," sold out of shipping, and there must
have been a non-compete clause in his contract, because he switched his
attention to railroads. He began buying up railroads like we bought the
B&O and Reading Railroad as children playing Monopoly.
At the time of his death in 1877, he was worth over $100 million dollars. At the time, that was the largest personal fortune in America.
(TOTALLY off the subject, did you know "aka" meant "also known as" ???)
When Cornelius Vanderbilt died, he left $1 million to Central University, which later became Vanderbilt University. $1 million in 1877? No wonder they changed the name to Vanderbilt... Almost all of the balance of his fortune he left to his then 56 year old son, William Henry Vanderbilt. At HIS death nine years later, he had doubled the inheritance and was the richest man in the WORLD.
William Henry left the bulk of his estate to his two oldest sons, William Kissam and Cornelius II. His youngest son, George Washington Vanderbilt, was a bibliophile - a lover of books. HE is the one that built the Biltmore estate in Asheville, North Carolina. The others built monster homes in New York City - but they have all been torn down.
George wasn't married when he decided to build in Asheville. Knowing that fact as we toured the home, it was easy to see that there wasn't much of a woman's influence in the construction and furnishing. Don't get me wrong; it is magnificently beautiful. But a woman would have done it differently, I think. For one thing, it is 135,000 sq ft. (some say 175,000 - but what's 40,000 give or take among friends?) No self respecting woman would want to sweep or mop 135,000 sq ft! Men don't think about that though.
It is THE largest privately owned home in America. George called it his "little mountain escape." (Sheesh!) The Biltmore Estate sat on 125,000 acres of land, 85,000 acres having now been sold to the government and is the nucleus of the Pisgah National Forest. Let's see, that left 40,000 acres still belonging to George's descendants. Nice. But that's been whittled away until there is a paltry 8,000 acres left. Bummer. Such a shame. Tsk-tsk. That would hardly make a decent ranch in Texas...
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