Cornelius Van Der Bilt (Venderbilt)

Steamship and railroad promoter, financier, born at Port Richmond, Staten Island, N.Y. (now part of New York City), was the fourth child and second son of Cornelius and Phebe (Hand) Vander Bilt.

His paternal ancestors, who came from Holland and settled on Long Island in the latter half of the seventeenth century, wrote the family name in three words, van der Bilt. The subject of the present sketch preferred to write it Van Derbilt, but during his lifetime other members of the family consolidated the name into one word.

His father, a poor man with a large family, did a bit of farming on Staten Island and some boating and lightering aroung New York harbor. The blue eyed, flaxen-haired, boisterous boy Cornelius had no inclination and little opportunity for education, and did not spend a day in school after he was eleven.

Already big in body and strong, he became at that age his father's helper. At about thirteen he is said to have superintended the job of lightering a vessel, his father being engaged elsewhere.

He had barely reached his sxiteenth birthday when, with $100 advanced by his parents, he bought a small sailing vessel called a piragua and began a freight and passenger ferrying business between Staten Island and New York City.

On Dec. 19 1813, whe he was only nineteen yeras old, he married his cousin and neighbor, Sophia Johnson, daughter of his father's sister Eleanor, and set up a home of his own near his birthplace.

The War of 1812 had opened new opportunities for him, and he was busy day and night. Among other important jobs, he had a three months' contract from the government for provisioning the forts in and around New York harbor.

Before the war was over, he had several boats under his command. He built a schooner in 1814 for service to Long Island Sound, and, in the following two years, two larger schooners for the coastwise trade. These he sent out - he himself being in command of the largest - not only as cargo boats, but also as traders up the Hudson River and along the coast from New England to Charleston. In 1818 he startled his friends by selling all his sailing vessels and going to work as a captain for Thomas Gibbons, owner of a ferry between New Brunswick, on the Raritan estuary, and New York City - an important link in the New York-Philadelphia fright, mail, and passenger route.

Gibbons was fighting for life against the steam-navigation monopoly in New York waters which had been granted to Robert Fulton by the New York legislature several years before. Vanderbilt loved a fight; he took Gibbons' one small vessel, put her in better condition, selected a hard-bitten crew and drove them to the limit of endurance, and within a year had turned a losing venture into a profitable one. Whe he entered Gibbons' service, he removed his family to New Brunswick, took over a rundown tavern by the river-side there, and installed his wife as hotel keeper. She renovated the house and made it famous for good food an service. "Bellona Hall", as it was called, became a favourite stopping place for travelers between New York and Philadelphia. In addition to her duties as chief factotum of the hotel, Mrs. Vanderbilt gave birth to a child about every two years while living in New Brunswick; she had thirteen in all.

Vanderbilt soon induced Gibbons to build a larger and finer steamer, the Bellona (1818). Meanwhile, the New York monopoly had brought suit against Gibbons, and for several years there was legal, and sometimes physical warfare. Only Vanderbilt's lusty, dynamic spirit and recourcefulness kept his employer's line in operation. For months on end New York deputy sheriffs tried to arrest him whenever his boat entered New York waters, but he foiled them in one way or another.

He is said to have built a secret compartment on the vessel in which he would hide at such times. Finally, in 1824, the United States Supreme Court ruled that a monopoly such as that granted by the New York legislature was unconsitutional. During the eleven years of his service with Gibbons, young Vanderbilt increased and broadened the business enormously. He had built seven more steamers for his employer,some for the New York-New Brunswick-Elisabeth ferries, others to ply a new line on the Delaware.

Vanderbilt had ambitions of his own; and in 1829, having accumulated a considerable nestegg through his own and his wife's exertions, he resigned from Gibbons' employ in order to enter the steamboat business on his own. Much against the will of his wife, he disposed of "Bellona Hall" and moved her and the eight or nine children to New York City.

His first ventures were on the Hudson River, where other concerns were already operating; he inaugurated rate wars with a characteristic zest for conflict. here, in a competition for the trade between New York and Peekskill, he came into collision, in 1834, with Daniel Drew. The fare between the two points was finally cut to twelve and a half cents, and then Drew sold out to Vanderbilt.

The latter now entered the Albany trade, where a more powerful corporation, the Hudson River Association, was functioning. He put two boats on the Albany run and began cutting rates again. In the end his opponents paid him a goodly sum for his agreement to withdraw from competition for ten years.

He next established lines on Long Island Sound and on to Providence and Boston. Later he returned to the Hudson River.He is given credit for bringing about a great and rapid advance in the size, comfort, and elegance of steamboats. The "floating palaces" of the 1840's and 1850's would not suffer greatly by comparison with the boats of today in such waters; in many cses they were more luxurious,even if they lacked electric appliances and some other modern conveniences.

Vanderbilt found pleasure in making his vessels stanch, fast, handsome,and comfortable. About 1846 he launched on the Hudson perhaps the finest boat yet seen by New Yorkers; it was named for himself.
Before his time he was undoubtedly a millionaire. He was supposed to have passed the half million mark at the age of forty. But he and his family had so far failed to make any impression upon the exclusive New York society of that day. Cornelius himself was not a figure for the drawing-room or for a luncheon table of fastidious gentlemen. He was apt to be loud, rustic, and coarse in speech, his talk interlarded with profanity and slang of the wharves.

He was a big, bumptious, ruthless, tobacco-chewing, hardheaded, hard-swearing, hard-fighting man, yet constructive,courageous, clear-sighted in buisness matters, broad-visioned for his day and graced by a certain alluring frankness and faithfulness to a bargain. It is believed that a certain smoldering resentment because of the social cold shoulder turned to him, together with the persuasion of his wife, caused him to build a fine mansion on Staten Island and take his family back there in 1840. But he still wanted to pry open those closed doors on Manhattan, and in 1846, despite his wife's protests, he began building a town house on Washington Place.

Scarcely was it ready when Mrs. Vanderbilt was committed to a private sanitarium for insanity, upon his delation, and perhaps because of her tearful yet stubborn refusal to move back to New York. She was released in the spring of 1847, after a few months' confinement, and went obediently to the new home in the city.

The gold rush opened new vistas to Vanderbilt, whom men were now calling "Commodore." Before the end of 1849, traffic to California was beginning to go via Panama, freight and passengers crossing the Isthmus on muleback. Vanderbilt conceived the idea of starting a line of his own via Nicaragua - through San Juan River to Lake Nicaragua and perhaps thence by canal to the Pacific.

At first he called this the American Atlantic & Pacific Ship Canal Company. A trip to England in 1850 in search of capital to finance the venture was fruitless, and he proceeded to develop the route himself. He procured from the Nicaraguan government a charter for himself in the name of the Accessory Transit Company. He then improved to some extent the channel of San Juan River, built docks on the east and west coasts of Nicaragua, and made a fine twelve-mile macadam road from the latter place to his west-coast port.

Meanwhile, he was beginning the construction of a fleet of eight new steamers with which he ran lines from New York, and later from New Orleans. His route was two days shorter than that via Panama; he greatly reduced the New York - San Francisco passenger fare and garnered most of the traffic. He made money so rapidly that in 1853 he announced that he was going to take the first vacaction of his life.

He built a steam yacht, the North Star, sumptuously appointed, and with his entire family, even his sons-in-law and grandchildren, and with several invited guests, including the Rev. Dr. John Overton Choules as chaplain and chronicler, he embarked for a triumphal tour of Europe. Dr. Choules wrote a fulsome history of the voyage, full of unconscious humor, which was published as The Cruise of the Steam Yacht North Star (1854).

Before going abroad, Vanderbilt resigned the presidency of the Accessory Transit Company, and committed its management to Charles Morgan and Cornelius K. Garrison who, durin his absence, manipulated the stock and secured control of the company; but by shrewd buying he won it back in a few months. However, William Walker, the America filibuster who had seized control of the Nicaraguan government, allied himself with Morgan and Garrison, rescinded the Transit Company's charter on the ground that its terms had been disregarded, and issued a new charter to the rival group.

Vanderbilt thereupon aided in bringing about Walker's downfall early in 1857. The doughty "Commodore", now sixty-three, but a harder fighter than ever, had to battle his way through other enemies in Wall Street and Central America, but he triumphed, and the Transit Company was his own again.

Scarcely had he brushed aside the last opposition, however, when he approached the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, and the United States Mail Steamship Company, the great carriers via Panama, and offered to abandon the Nicaragua line if they would buy the North Star for some $400,000 and pay him $ 40,000 a month indemnity. They came to his figures reluctantly, but a year later, when he threatened to open the Transit line again, they increased his monthly stipend to $ 56,000. In the middle fifities he built three vessels, one of which, the Vanderbilt, was the largest and finest he had yet constructed, and entered into competition for the Atlantic trade with the Cunard Line and the Collins line, even offering to carry the mail to Havre for nothing.

He found this an unprofitable venture, however, and at the beginning of the Civil War was glad to sell his Atlantic line for $ 3,000,000 retaining only the Vanderbilt which he fitted up as a warship and turned over to the government. It has benn claimed that he intended only to make a loan of this vessel, but it was interpreted as a gift.

His connection with the expedition of Nathaniel P. Banks to New Orleans was less happy, for many of the vessels chartered by him under commission of the government proved unseaworthy. However, his name was expunged from the Senate resolution of censure.

Of Vanderbilt's thirteen children, one boy had died young and all of the nine daughters were living. His youngest and favourite child, George, born in 1839, was a soldier in the Civil War and died in 1866 from effects of exposure in the Corinth campaign. His second son, Cornelius Jeremiah, an epileptic, gambler, and ne'er-do-well, had been a gread disappointment. The eldest son, William Henry, he had regarded as being of little force, and had exiled to a farm on Staten Island, though later he became aware of his ability and at last gave him opportunity to use it.

This was in connection with railroad enterprises, to which Vanderbilt turned from shipping as he neared seventy. He had begun buying New York & Harlem Railroad stock in 1862 when it was selling at a very low figure. In 1863 he induced the city council to give him permission to extend the line by street-car tracks to the Battery. The stock, which he had already driven up, rose greatly upon public announcement of the ordinance, and even more when Vanderbilt was elected president.

Daniel Drew now plotted with members of the council to sell Harlem stock "short", rescind the ordinance, and buy the shares for delivery after the price had dropped to a certain figure. The plot was carried out, but the price dropped much less than was expected, for Vanderbilt bought every share that was offered, and presently it was discovered that the "short" traders had sold more shares than were in existence. The price rapidly rose, and when Vanderbilt forced a settlement, many of the plotters were ruined.

He made William vice-president of the Harlem road, and thereafter his son was his first lieutenant.
He next turned his attention to the Harlem's competitor, the Hudson River Railroad, another rundown property. While buying control of the railroad, he sought authority from the legislature to combine the two. Undeterred by his former experience, Drew again plotted, this time with some of the legislators, to sell the stock "short", defeat the consolidation bill, hammer down the price, and make a "killing".

The former story was repeated: The bill was lost; the price declined considerably but not enough; Vanderbilt, aided by other operators, bought every share offered; the "shorts" discovered that they had agreed to deliver far more shares than were in existence; the price rose greatly; and again Cornelius had revenge on those who had tried to break him.

He bided his time on the consolidation of the roads, improving their equipment and service, as he did that of every property he owned, and presently had them on a paying basis. He next sought control of the New York Central Railroad, running from Albany to Buffalo. Its directors countered by forming an alliance with Drew's Hudson River boat line and sending through freight and passengers from Albany to New York by that route.

But when the river froze in early winter and the steamboats were stopped, they sought to transfer traffic to the Hudson River road, only to discover that Vanderbilt was halting its trains on the east side of the river, a mile from Albany. Stock in the New York Central declined and Vanderbilt bought quantities of it, finally securing control in 1867. He promptly spent $ 2,000,000 of his own money in improving the line and buying new rolling stock.

He united these two railroads by legislative act in 1869, as the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, and in 1872 leased the Harlem Railroad to it. He increased the capital stock by $ 42,000,000 (which was a stock-watering operation of magnitude), but out of three inefficient roads he created a single line, giving uninterrupted service.

In 1868 he sought control of the Erie Railway, a rival line to Buffalo and Chicago. He pursued the same tactics as before, buying every share of stock offered. Buth this time Drew, Jay Gould, and James Fisk, Jr., who were in control of Erie, outmaneuvered him, throwing 50,000 shares of fraudulent stock into the marked, then fleeing to New Jersey to avoid prosecution and bribing the New Jersey legislature to legalize the stock issue.

Vanderbilt lost millions by this coup, but the plotters had to compromise with him inorder to return to New York with impunity, and his loss was greatly reduced. Upon the insistence of his son William that extension of their rail system to Chicago was advisable in 1873 he bought control of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway, and two years before his death the Michigan Central Railroad and the Canada Southern Railway. Thus did he create one of the great American systems of transportation. In the last years of his life, his influence on national finance was stabilizing. When the panic of 1873 was at its worst, he announced that the New York Central was paying its millions of dividends as usual, and let contracts for the building of the Grand Central Terminal in New York City, with four tracks leading from it, giving employment to thousands of men. He saw to it, however, that the city paid half the cost of the viaduct and open-cut approacheds to the station.

His first wife died in1868, and on Aug. 21, 1869, he married Frank Armstrong Crawford, a young lady from Mobile, Ala., who survived him when he died on Jan. 4, 1877, after an illness of about eight months. His fortune was estimated at more than $ 100,000,000, of which he left about $ 90,000,000 to William and about $7,500,000 to the latter's four sons; he expressed his contempt for womankind by leaving less than $4,000,000 to be distributed amon his own eight daughters. His wife received a half million in cash, the New York home, and 2,000 shares of New York Central stock. Vanderbilt bestowed no money philantropically until late in life, when he gave $ 1,000,000 to Vanderbilt University (previously Central University) at Nashville, Tenn., of which he is regarded as the founder, and $50,000 to the Church of the Strangers in New York, of which his friend, the Rev. Charles F. Deems, was pastor.

(From: Dictionary of American Biography)