Cornelius Vanderbilt: Early Years
A descendant of Dutch settlers who came to America in the mid-1600s, Cornelius Vanderbilt was born into humble circumstances on May 27, 1794, on Staten Island, New York. His parents were farmers and his father also made money by ferrying produce and merchandise between Staten Island and Manhattan in his two-masted sailing vessel, known as a periauger. As a boy, the younger Vanderbilt worked with his father on the water and attended school briefly. When Vanderbilt was a teen he transported cargo around the New York harbor in his own periauger. Eventually, he acquired a fleet of small boats and learned about ship design.
Did you know?
During the U.S. Civil War, Cornelius Vanderbilt donated his largest and fastest steamship, named the Vanderbilt and built for around $1 million, to the Union Navy. The vessel was used to chase down Confederate raiders.
In 1813, Vanderbilt married his cousin Sophia Johnson, and the couple eventually had 13 children. (A year after his first wife died in 1868, Vanderbilt married another female cousin, Frank Armstrong Crawford, who was more than four decades his junior.)
Cornelius Vanderbilt: Steamships
Cornelius Vanderbilt initially made his money in the steamships business before investing in railroads. In 1817, Vanderbilt went to work as a ferry captain for a wealthy businessman, Thomas Gibbons, who owned a commercial steamboat service that operated between New Jersey and New York.
The job provided Vanderbilt the opportunity to learn about the burgeoning steamship industry. In the late 1820s, he went into business on his own, building steamships and operating ferry lines around the New York region. Shrewd and aggressive, he became a dominant force in the industry by engaging in fierce fare wars with his rivals. In some cases, his competitors paid him hefty sums not to compete with them. (Throughout his life, Vanderbilt’s ruthless approach to business would earn him numerous enemies.)
In the 1840s, Vanderbilt constructed a large brick home for his family at 10 Washington Place, in Manhattan’s present-day Greenwich Village neighborhood. Despite his growing wealth, the city’s elite residents were slow to accept Vanderbilt, considering him rough and uncultured.
In the early 1850s, during the California Gold Rush, a time before transcontinental railroads, Vanderbilt launched a steamship service that transported prospectors from New York to San Francisco via a route across Nicaragua. His route was faster than an established route across Panama, and much speedier than the other alternative, around Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America, which could take months. Vanderbilt’s new line was an instant success, earning more than $1 million (about $26 million in today’s money) a year.
