Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 September 1896 — THE HOUSE OF VANDERBILT. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE HOUSE OF VANDERBILT.

THE house of Vanderbilt—brought once more attention of. the American people by the recent ■erions illness of its present head—is distinguished in many ways, but in all rways distinguished for its association 'with money getting and immense wealth. It has upreared a system of railroads matchless in its beauty and •tility—for whatever may be said of «be Vanderbilt power it must not be •aid that it has been used to wreck enterprise and to create wealth for itself ‘*y killing honest competition. The (Vanderbilt system has been used as an tavestment by its owners—the old •■“commodore” having but fought a rijval, the Nicaraguan Company, which *efnsed to keep its contract with him. To. sue was impossible. He challenged It in the open aud drove it off the seas. (Commercial conquest by safe, conservative methods has been they policy of the iVonderbilt life. In all the generations the’ Vanderbilts there are no statestuen, soldiers, patriots, philosophers, painters, poets or scientists. But in (this century all the Vanderbilts have Been rich. Money getting and the upbuilding of vast wealth and not the sacrifice of the concrete to the ideal has been their supreme moving force. This family has a coat of arms. The •tudent of heraldry,looking back through its line, can find no point at which a jVanderbilt was ennobled by a king or ■eceived from a monarch a title. Nor yet can he find in the age of chivalry the ♦Vanderbilt who, in his pride of place ■nd of arms, took to himself the symbols of his bravery and family trait’s ■nd fixed them on an escutcheon. The jVanderbilt arms, whatever they are, •nean little. There is no record of an •Id Vanderbilt who lived on a hill in a Dutch stronghold and abused his weak-

er neighbors, and from whom the present family dates its foundation. Indeed, the farther back lh(> Vanderbilts go the obscurer become the lines on both aides. The vanishing point of the breed of Vanderbilt is seen in Aris Van Der Bylt, who was a farmer. Nobody knows when he was born or where, who his parents were or why lie came to America. It has been said of him that ho settled in Flatbush; L. 1., some time ■bout the year 1(185, and that he was Quarried to a woman whose given name rwas Hiltje. What the woman’s surname was no one can tell. True, so far as is known, the foundation of this illustrious house was laid by Aris, who Quarried an unknown woman. Jacob Vanderbilt 1. was the son of 'Aris, and. like his father, was a farmer. (He was born, it is said, in 1(02, and moved from Long Island to Staten Island. Jacob Vanderbilt the first was married to a woman whose Christian name is said to have been Jyeilje. What this lady's family name was the world twill never know. In 1723 Jacob Vanderbilt 11. was born on Staten Island and succeeded his father ns a farmer. 'Jacob the second was married and the name of his wife is fortunately known. ■Rhe was not a Dutch woman. Her name rwas Mary Sprague. From this union •prang Cornelips Vanderbilt the first, iwho was bom in 17G4 am, who married Phoebe Hand. The house of Vanderbilt is now beginning to wax. With Cornelius the first tomes the initial greatness of the famfly. Which is the. equivalent of saying

Mat if the first Cornelius had stuck to farming the last Cornelius would not piow be lying in the Unost marble palace ,fla America. Had the first Cornelius had any faith in the soil the last Cornelius ■sight have been a railroad switchman. tJßat Cornelius the first bought a row|floht and varied his pursuits of agriculture with the, occasional occupation of la ferryman. In this departure lay the joeetl of the jVanderbilt millions. •.» . Eighty yfars age Cornelius VagderHult was a country' lad of 20, the son of ’■ Staten Island farmer, and tlm de•cendant 6f - A<•tine of Dutch bettlefs •wi» had never manifested any ambiflioa to rise above the internal soil. His worldly possessions consisted of a small (float with whiqlfejie was operating a primitive native t»l-

and and New York. His oportunities certainly seeme4 small, but his natural aptitude for money getting was extraordinary. He was a man who would have grown rich upon a desert island. At 23 he had a steamer plying from the metropolis through the Kills to New Brunswick, with a hotel at the latter place managed by his wife. But the vision of the bold young ferryman was fixed upon far greater things. He foresaw that the future of

American commerce lay with the West, and he conceived a plan for a steamship line to the Pacific coast by way of Central America. His plan, however, proved a failure. Meantime he was graduating from steamships into railways—a fiekl of operations whose vaster possibilities he was one of the first to realize. He gradually obtained control of the New York Central. His operations in its stock were such as Wall street had never seen before and has not witnessed since. He found that railroad an unprofitable, second-rate concern, and he left it quite or nearly the finest and

most substantial railroad property in America. The second son, William 11., took up the work begun by the father. He made the New York Central the nucleus of the far-reaching network of steel highways that is now the Vanderbilt system. The old commodore in his seventy years of business activity had amassed a fortune of §90,000,000. William H. in nine years added quite or nearly §150.000,000 to this pile and proved himself the superior financier. In January. 1877, the commodore died and in 1885 William 11. followed him. The latter's estate—probably the greatest ever left by will—was divided among hijs eight children, the bulk of it going to the two elder sons, Cornelius and William Klssam. Each of the others—the hvo younger sons, Frederick and George, and the four daughters, Mrs. Elliott F. Shepard, Mrs. W. Seward Webb. Mrs. 'William D. Sloane and Mrs. H. McK. Twombly—-received $lO,000,000 and a Fifth avenue mansion.

"COMMODORE'S" STATEN ISLAND HOME.

CORNELIUS VANDERBILT’S NEW RESIDENCE.