Cornelius Vanderbilt

At 82 years old, Cornelius Vanderbilt has this physical status:

Cornelius Vanderbilt (May 27, 1794-1977) was an American business magnate who created his fortune in railroads and shipping.

Vanderbilt went from being employed in father's company to leadership roles in the inland water trade and invested in the quickly expanding railroad industry.

He is known for owning the New York Central Railroad, nicknamed "The Commodore."

"He greatly upgraded and extended the country's transportation system," his biographer T. J. Stiles says, contributing to a change in the country's geographical geography."

He adopted emerging technologies and emerging ways of corporate governance, and competed with them to succeed...."He contributed to the establishment of the corporate economy that would help the United States define the 21st century. Vanderbilt, as one of the richest Americans in history and one of the richest figures in general, was the patriarch of the wealthy and influential Vanderbilt family.

In Nashville, Tennessee, he gave Vanderbilt University the first gift.

"Contemporaries, too, often loathed or feared Vanderbilt or at least considered him an unmannered brute," historian H. Roger Grant said.

Although Vanderbilt might have been a rascal, offensive, and cunning, he was much more a builder than a wrecker, [...] being honorable, shrewd, and hard-working."

Early years

Cornelius Vanderbilt was born on May 27, 1794, to Cornelius van Derbilt and Phebe Hand. As a child, he started working on his father's ferry in New York Harbor, but he had to leave school at the age of 11. Vanderbilt decided to start his own ferry company at the age of 16. According to one version of events, he borrowed $100 (equivalent to $1,700 in 2021) from his mother to buy a periauger (a shallow draft, two-masted sailing vessel) that he christened the Swiftsure. However, according to the first account of his life, which was published in 1853, the periauger belonged to his father, and the younger Vanderbilt received half of the money. On a ferry between Staten Island and Manhattan, he began delivering freight and passengers. Given his passion and eagerness in his trade, other captains in the area began to call him The Commodore in jest, a term that stuck with him all his life.

Cornelius Vanderbilt, although many Vanderbilt family members had joined the Episcopal Church, was a Moravian Church member from his time. He, along with other Vanderbilt family members, helped build a local Moravian parish church in his town.

Sophia Johnson, who was 19 years old at the time, married his first cousin on December 19, 1813. On Broad Street in Manhattan, they converted to a boarding house.

They had 13 children together: Phebe in 1814, Ethelinda in 1819, Emily in 1820, Emma in 1826, Frances in 1828, Joseph in 1828, Catherine in 1838, George in 1828, Thomas in 1831, George in 1821, and Joseph in 1839, George in 1828, Catherine in 1838, and George in 1839.

Vanderbilt purchased his brother-in-law John De Forest's schooner Charlotte and sold food and merchandise in joint venture with his father and others in addition to running his ferry. However, Thomas Gibbons, a ferry entrepreneur, had Vanderbilt command his steamboat between New Jersey and New York on November 24, 1817. Although Vanderbilt owned his own businesses, he became Gibbons' business manager.

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Gibbons, the politically influential patrician Robert Livingston and Robert Fulton, who had planned the steamboat, were fighting against a steamboat monopoly in New York waters when Vanderbilt took over. Despite the fact that both Livingston and Fulton had died by the time Vanderbilt started working for Gibbons, the monopoly was still monopoly was ruled by Livingston's heirs. Aaron Ogden had been given a license to operate a ferry between New York and New Jersey. Gibbons began his steamboat business in reaction to a personal feud with Ogden, whom he hoped to avoid bankruptcy. He undercut prices and filed a landmark court suit, Gibbons vs. Ogden, to reverse the monopoly.

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Vanderbilt's time with Gibbons learned how to run a large and complicated company. He and his family travelled from New Brunswick, New Jersey, to a stop on Gibbons' line between New York and Philadelphia. Sophia, his wife, operated a very profitable business, utilizing the funds to feed, clothe, and educate their children. Vanderbilt also conducted a quick study into legal matters, advising Gibbons in meetings with lawyers. Daniel Webster was also hired by Washington, D.C., to represent the Supreme Court. Vanderbilt appealed his own case against the monopoly to the Supreme Court, which was next in the court after Gibbons vs. Ogden. The court never heard Vanderbilt's appeal because, on March 2, 1824, Gibbons' favor was ruled in Gibbons' favour, meaning that states had no power to intervene in interstate trade. The lawsuit is also considered a landmark decision. A large part of the country's economic growth is due to the protection of competitive interstate trade.

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