Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 December 1885 — WILLIAM H. VANDERBILT. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WILLIAM H. VANDERBILT.

A Sketch of tho Recently Deceased Millionaire. The late William H. Vanderbilt was bom in New Brunswick, N. J., May 8, 1821. His father, at the time of his birth, was owner and in command of a steamboat running to Now York. The family soon removed to New York City, where, and in Staten Island, William attended the public schools, finishing his education at the Columbia Grammar School. At 18 he entered as a clerk the house of Drew, Robinson & Co., a leading firm of bankers and stockbrokers. At the end of two years his business aptitude was so great that the firm offered him a junior partnership. Remaining until two years thereafter, his health failed him in consequence of close application. He then pur-

chased seventy-five acres of land on Staten Island, which was soon increased to 350, and went to work farming. During the first years of this activity he was chosen receiver of the Staten island Railroad, and after two years of hard work, having restored its finances to a sound condition, he was elected its President. His father was a large stockholder in this road, but, as is well understood, lent no adventitious aid to his elder son’s career. After a few years of hard work on his farm and in the railroad office, Mr. Vanderbilt went to Europe, in consequence of the precaiious condition of his brother George’s health. He remained with him until his death, a period 'of several months, when he returned to Staten Island and his farm, not engaging any further in railroad administration untfl 1864, when he became, by his father’s desire and the election of the corporation, Vice President of the New York and Harlem Railroad. He married in 1811 Miss Kissam, daughter of a well-known Brooklyn physician, by whom he had eight children, four boys and four girls. After assuming executive control of the Harlem he was, in 1865, elected Vice President of the New York and Hudson River Railroad. During the five years that followed his entrance into railroad affairs Mr. Vanderbilt was probably the hardest working executive in the country. He made himself familiar with every detail of administration, personally examining each mile of the great system under his charge and becoming acquainted with the nature of every man’s duties, and work, and wages, and the relations they bore to all others employed by the corporations he controlled. Competent critics claim that he lifted the burdens of administration from his father’s shoulders, and became by the date of the consolidation of the three New York lines under the Vanderbilt hand into one complete trunk line system between New York and Buffalo, which was brought about in 1869, one of the best informed and most capable railway executive* in the land.

John Gurney, the Mayor elect of Norfolk, England, is blind. In some parts of Mexico the natives build pig-sties with rosewood logs. Thebe are nearly three thousand women voters on the lists in Toronto. They have full municipal suffrage.