Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty

The Prologue tells the story of the day in early spring 2018 when the last Vanderbilt family member in residence at The Breakers left for good. The Breakers is an opulent summer mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, built at the height of the Vanderbilts’ power. Gladys Szápáry was the great-granddaughter of Cornelius and Alice Vanderbilt, who had built The Breakers in 1895.

The immense mansion and grounds siphoned off millions of dollars over the decades, and in 1972 it was sold to the Preservation Society of Newport County. It had already been opened to the public for tours in the last years of the family’s ownership; now the Preservation Society took full control. Initially, the Vanderbilt heirs were allowed to keep a residence on the third floor for as long as they lived. A legal, and very public, dispute over the society’s plan for renovations on the grounds, however, ended that arrangement, and on March 30, 2018, the last Vanderbilt moved out of The Breakers for good.

This first chapter is about the family patriarch and founder of the Vanderbilt fortune, Cornelius Vanderbilt, also known as “the Commodore.” The authors use a series of flashbacks from his death in 1877 to describe his life. Growing up, he helped his father farm their land on Staten Island, New York, and run an occasional ferry service his father had from there to Manhattan. He started from nothing, with little schooling, and died with a fortune of $100 million (over $2 billion in today’s money)—all built largely upon transportation services.

In 1810, when he was only 16 years old, he borrowed some money from his mother and purchased his own boat to use as a ferry. He soon found success, capitalizing on the War of 1812 to make money from both the British and Americans. Three years later, he married his first wife, Sophia. Together they had 13 children (one died in childhood), but only three mattered to the Commodore because they would carry on the Vanderbilt name: his sons. He put most faith in Billy to continue the legacy; his namesake Cornelius had epilepsy—which the Commodore saw as a weakness—and often squandered money, while the third son died young.

Throughout the mid-19th century, Vanderbilt built up a vast fortune by moving into transport by steamship and then railroads. He gifted a ship, the USS Vanderbilt, to the Union during the Civil War and donated money to the Methodist Church to found a university in Tennessee, which was later named for him. When his first wife died, he married a woman 45 years his junior named Frank (her parents had expected a boy). This led to tension with some of Vanderbilt’s children, who did not take kindly to such a young stepmother and rival for their inheritance. In mid-1876, Vanderbilt became very ill, and it was thought he would soon die. His health vacillated over the ensuing months until he finally succumbed to his illness on January 4, 1877.

The second chapter backs up to describe the first known Vanderbilt ancestor to arrive in America and the milieu of the New York area at the time. The authors name Jan Aertsen, “a broke, undistinguished farmer” (37) from Holland as the first family immigrant to what would later become the United States. He was so poor, in fact, that he came as an indentured servant sometime in the mid-17th century. After gaining his freedom, he settled with his wife in what is now known as Brooklyn.

New Amsterdam, as New York was known at the time, was more cosmopolitan than the English colonies of New England. It was very much a “company town” run by the Dutch West India Company, as opposed to the heavily religious English settlements. Slavery was also more common. Estimates are that about 20% of the population was composed of slaves and about 40% of households relied on slave labor in some way. The Dutch colony in America, called New Netherland, was also populated by other Northern European settlers and various Native American peoples. A map of lower Manhattan from the time, called the Castello Plan, shows a diverse group of people living in close proximity—from rich merchants to ministers to shoemakers. Most of the inhabitants of New Amsterdam were men, there to make money for the Dutch West India Company.

In 1664, the English captured New Amsterdam, soon followed by all New Netherland. After some years of back-and-forth, the Dutch colonies in the New World became English for good. One of Jan Aertsen’s great-grandsons, named Jacob, left Brooklyn to farm in Staten Island. It was this branch of the family that would produce Cornelius Vanderbilt two generations later. Reflecting the city of his birth, Cornelius was part English and part Dutch, and he would challenge the business legacy established by both countries.

The Dutch West India Company had a monopoly over New Amsterdam, and the English continued the monopoly system by granting exclusive rights to certain services. One such monopoly covered ferries, and Vanderbilt challenged this on behalf of Thomas Gibbons, a steamboat operator for whom he worked. Vanderbilt hired the renowned lawyer Daniel Webster, who argued the case Gibbons v. Ogden before the Supreme Court. The 1824 ruling broke the monopoly, allowing for the competition through which Vanderbilt would make his fortune.

The third chapter considers the two sons of Cornelius Vanderbilt who survived him: Cornelius Jeremiah Vanderbilt and William H. Vanderbilt. Cornie and Billy, as they were known, were left very different inheritances, which is the source of the problems discussed in this chapter. Billy received the bulk of the Commodore’s $100 million estate and Cornie a mere pittance. Cornie and his sisters ended up suing Billy for more of their father’s money, which led to a settlement in which Cornie got more—but it still was not enough.

Cornie was an embarrassment to his father because of his epilepsy and because he lacked a sharp business mind. He always seemed to need money and leaned on his father for it. He also developed a gambling habit, through which he lost a lot of money. The elder Vanderbilt only gave Cornie credit for one thing, his marriage to a woman of whom he approved. She was from Connecticut, and the Commodore bought them a fruit farm near Hartford to run; Cornie eventually failed in that endeavor as well and filed for bankruptcy. His wife died in 1872, ending any rapprochement between him and his father.

Billy, on the other hand, became his father’s favorite only over time. The Commodore called him a “blatherskite” and paid him little attention until later in life. Some of Billy’s sisters thought his improved standing stemmed from his being the only one of the children to support the Commodore’s decision to commit his first wife, Sophia, to an asylum later in life. Billy was stricter with money and showed enough business sense to get appointed to positions in his father’s vast railroad empire. When Cornie and his sisters sued Billy, after the Commodore died, he settled out of court, giving Cornie another $1 million in inheritance. It wasn’t enough, and Cornie was soon in debt again. In 1882, he died by suicide in a New York hotel by shooting himself with a pistol.