The world was astounded to learn that he had more than doubled the family fortune in that short time, leaving him the richest man in the world.” Vanderbilt died suddenly in December 1885, only eight years after his father. The family had grown immeasurably richer by the time of the death of Cornelius’s son William. He went on to build a shipping and railroad empire that, during the 19th century, made him one of the wealthiest men in the world.Īlthough the Commodore himself always occupied a modest home, members of his family would use their wealth to build a resplendent family tomb at the Moravian cemetery on Staten Island and a number of magnificent mansions – on Fifth Avenue in New York, in Newport, and along the Hudson. His father, the first to spell his name as van Derbilt, was born in 1764 and was reared in the home of an uncle where he worked for his room and board.Ĭornelius left school at eleven and started his business career with a steamboat, the Bellona, which operated in a ferry service between New Brunswick in Canada and New York. ![]() The prominence of the Vanderbilt family in America began with Cornelius Vanderbilt, the fourth of nine children born in 1794 to a Staten Island family of modest means which ran a ferry service to Manhattan. Jan’s village name was later added to the Dutch “Van der” (from the) to create “Van der Bilt.”Īmerica. Jan Aertszoon or Aertson was a Dutch farmer from the village of De Bilt near Utrecht who emigrated to the Dutch colony of New Netherland as an indentured servant in 1650. The German and Dutch word bulte meaning “mound” and describing someone who lived by a low hill was the basis of the place-name of De Bilt that lay just northeast of Utrecht in Holland.
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