Vanderbilt family

“ That garden supplied the residents along lower Fifth Avenue, and its owner also dealt in ice and cattle. In the house which Mr. Vanderbilt erected for himself Henry C. Frick lived for a time. The Vanderbilt family spent millions of dollars in purchasing property to protect themselves against business encroachments.
In former days the neighbourhood was given over largely to philanthropic and religious institutions. The New York Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb stood between Forty-eighth and Fiftieth Streets and Fourth and Fifth Avenues. ”

“ One hundred thousand men signify, let us say, as many families. Accepting the average of five to a family, here are five hundred thousand souls whose livelihood is dependent upon largely the will of the Vanderbilt family. ”

“ Seventy five years ago the earthly property of the house of Vanderbilt consisted of a sandy farm on Staten Island, and a sail boat that plied up and down New York Harbor. These modest possessions have since grown until they now form the immense estate which, held together as a sort of family trust by the sons of the late William H. Vanderbilt, runs far into the hundreds of millions of dollars. ”

“ As Vice President of the consolidated New York Central and Hudson River he performed an amount of work which, as some of his friends think, contributed to his death—a comparatively premature one in a family distinguished for longevity.
In many minds millions breed envy, and it is only natural that while William H. Vanderbilt’s wonderful ability has been universally recognized, his personal qualities should have been misrepresented. ”

“ Fine beaches line these coasts, which rise sharply into hills inland, and most of the eligible sites are crowned with villas. It was at Stapleton, on Staten Island, that Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, the head of the great family, was born in 1794, and he laid the foundation of his great fortune, at the age of sixteen years, by sailing a ferryboat to New York, six miles away. Upon a plateau in the centre of the island is the village of New Dorp, the original settlement of the Vanderbilts, a farm of about four hundred acres. ”

“ Cornelius Vanderbilt was a descendant of Dutch settlers who had migrated to America in the latter half of the 17th century. He first became interested in shipping while helping his father in odd jobs of boating and lightering around New York Harbor. When still a young man, he went into business for himself. ”

“ The landed possessions of the Astors, preserved intact for four generations and augmented by the unearned increment of New York’s development, hardly afford a parallel case. The rising generation of the Gould family has yet to prove its ability to manage a fortune which was probably [36] as great as Commodore Vanderbilt’s at the time of the latter’s death, but has since been far surpassed by the acquisitions of the Commodore’s successors.
CORNELIUS VANDERBILT’S RESIDENCE AT FIFTY SEVENTH STREET AND FIFTH AVENUE.
Seventy five years ago, as has already been stated, Mr. ”

“ His daughter Emily, wife of William D. Sloan, gave a Maternity Home in connection with the college, costing $250,000. Mr. Vanderbilt's four sons, Cornelius, William, Frederick, and George, have erected a building for clinical instruction as a memorial of their father.
Mr. Vanderbilt gave $100,000 each to the Home and [Pg 310] Foreign Missions of the Primitive Episcopal Church, to the New York Missions of that church, to St. Luke's Hospital, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the United Brethren Church at New Dorp, Staten Island, and to the Young Men's Christian Association. ”

“ He was active in neighborhood affairs and in politics. This brought him in close contact with the people and was of invaluable benefit to him when he became president of a great railroad corporation. He also acquired familiarity in railway management as a director of one on Staten Island.
Mr. William H. Vanderbilt was a man of great ability, and his education made him in many ways an abler man than his father for the new conditions he had to meet. ”

“ He may yet be one of our illustrious men. Who knows? Who knows? Such people are not to be neglected. Great men come of them.'"
Vanderbilt University now has over seven hundred students, and is sending out many capable scholars into fields of usefulness.
Mr. William H. Vanderbilt, the son of Cornelius, gave over $450,000 to the University. His first gift of $100,000 was for the gymnasium, Science Hall, and Wesley Hall, the Home of the Biblical Department. ”

“ He built a great terminal in New York City, and made the system so profitable that, from it, and a series of fortunate speculations, he accumulated a fortune of $100,000,000, practically all of which he bequeathed to his eldest son, William Henry. One million was also given for the establishment of Vanderbilt University at Nashville, Tennessee.
Cornelius Vanderbilt, for many years, had a very poor opinion of his son's financial ability, and giving him a small farm on Staten Island, left him to shift for himself. Everyone has read of the incident which changed this opinion. ”

“ A Young Millionaire not Afraid to Work in Overalls. A TALL, slender young man walked into the office of the master of motive power and construction, in the Grand Central Station, New York. He was dressed in clothes that showed marks of travel, and his face had a tired look. This was young Cornelius Vanderbilt, son of the head of the house of Vanderbilt, and great-grandson of his namesake, the founder of the Vanderbilt fortune. ”

“ These are days when it is the commonest thing for men to meet death with coolness and courage, but even in these days we will not forget the story of Vanderbilt's humanity and sacrifice.” To his friends he was ever accessible, cordial, and generous, to strangers he was dignified, courteous, and affable. ”

“ Nor does it help to label Mrs. Vanderbilt's claim to support a 'property' right and therefore an in personam, rather than an in rem, matter. If it is due process for Nevada to adjudicate the marriage status of a domiciliary without personal service over the absent spouse (as it clearly is, see Williams v. State of North Carolina, I, 317 U.S. 287, 63 S.Ct. 207, 87 L.Ed. 279) , I see no reason why Nevada cannot, at least for the purposes of her own law, also adjudicate the incidents of that status. ”

“ Vanderbilt resides in a handsome old-fashioned brick mansion in East Washington Place. His business office is in Fourth street, near Broadway. His wealth is very great, and is generally estimated in the city at over forty millions of dollars. He is said to have a greater command of large sums of ready money than almost any other American capitalist. ”

“ No one ever sees the name of Cornelius Vanderbilt on a subscription paper, nor ever will. In his charities, which are numerous and liberal, he exhibits the reticence which marks his conduct as a man of business. ”

“ Politics did not interest him. He was fond of driving fine horses; he gave one million to Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. He had thirteen children by his first wife."
Among many stories of his daring in storm and danger, this may be told here: In a sailing-race from Staten Island to a buoy five miles out in the Bay, and return; the favorite was a costly and handsome sloop, which could easily outsail Vanderbilt's periagua—this very boat he had earned. Upon the day of the race it blew a gale. Nothing could suit Vanderbilt better. ”

“ Vanderbilt is in every case portrayed as an eminently high-minded man who never stooped to dissimulation, deceit or treachery, and whose first millions, at any rate, were made in the legitimate ways of trade as they were then understood. ”

“ Vanderbilt instituted an action in a New York court praying for separation from petitioner and for alimony. The New York court did not have personal jurisdiction over him, but in order to satisfy his obligations, if any, to Mrs. ”

“ Vanderbilt continued; "it's your freight car—remember that, and you don't want to carry any sap in it. Let me tell you a story. Bill is a fat good-natured cuss and wants to take it easy because he has a rich father. I told him that I wouldn't have him loafing around, and I sent him down on the farm and put him to work there, and Bill is getting along. He played a good joke on me and I've made up my mind that he'll do for the railroad business. ”

“ Since the wife was not subject to its jurisdiction, the Nevada divorce court had no power to extinguish any right which she had under the law of New York to financial support from her husband. It has long been the constitutional rule that a court cannot adjudicate a personal claim or obligation unless it has jurisdiction over the person of the defendant. ”

“ The man is almost seventy-eight years of age, but he looks twenty years younger. He is large of frame, tall, erect, and with a face as handsome and as cold as a statue. He is one of the best known men in the country, and he is called Cornelius Vanderbilt. ”

“ In other words, merely because it is held that the wife must be deprived of one benefit ex parte, in the interest of national uniformity, does not compel us to hold that the other benefit must vanish with it, where the interest in national uniformity is not as compelling. [2]
In deciding this case we must always remember that the reason why the Nevada ex parte divorce has the effect of a judgment in New York even on the question of status is because this Court found, in measuring the competing interests, that uniformity should prevail. ”

“ Quite a different case is presented, it seems to me, where a wife becomes a domiciliary of New York after the ex parte divorce and is then granted support. In such a case New York could not pretend to be assuring the wife the mere survival of a pre-existing right, because the wife could have had no predivorce rights in New York at all. New York would merely be granting the wife a marital right in the teeth of a valid Nevada adjudication that there is no marriage. ”

“ And so it is that everywhere the conviction prevails that whatever fraudulent methods Vanderbilt employed in his later career, he was essentially an honest, straightforward man who was compelled by the promptings of sheer self-preservation to fight back at unscrupulous competitors or antagonists, and who innately was opposed to underhand work or fraud in any form. ”

“ There's only one man in the world who can carry it out."
"Who is that?" I inquired.
"Vanderbilt," said he. "There's the biggest man in the country. He's made ten million dollars with his brain—think of that. He's the Napoleon of this day."
After a while the Hand-Made Gentleman said: "I must have somebody to look after my business who is more than a mere writing machine. I want some gentleman who thinks as I do and will stand up for me like a brother. ”

“ A flint-hard, brute spirit enveloped all business transactions. The business man who lost his fortune was generally looked upon without emotion or pity, and condemned as an incapable. For self interest, business men began to combine in corporations, but these were based purely upon mercenary aims. Not a microscopic trace was visible of that spirit of fellow kindness, sympathy, collective concern and brotherhood already far developed among the organized part of the working class.
As the supereminent magnate of his day, Vanderbilt was invested with extraordinary publicity ”

“ But I see no reason why we should extend that, for me, already somewhat unpalatable mediation to the limits of its logic in order to hold that Nevada's views as to support as well as divorce must be forced onto other States, and that Nevada can not only compel wives domiciled elsewhere to become single against their will, but to be pauperized against their will as well. Of course, the reason for the distinction is not that the wife's right to support is 'worth' more than her interest in remaining a wife. ”

“ But when any business man ventured to overstep these limitations, as Vanderbilt did, and levy a species of commercial blackmail to the extent of millions of dollars, then he was sternly denounced as an arch thief. If Vanderbilt had confined himself to the routine formulas of business, he might have gone down in failure. Many of the bankrupts were composed of business men who, while sharp themselves, were outgeneraled by abler sharpers. ”

“ Young Vanderbilt was always anxious to become a sailor, and, as he approached his seventeenth year, he determined to begin life as a boatman in the harbor of New York. On the 1st of May, 1810, he informed his mother of his determination, and asked her to lend him one hundred dollars to buy a boat. ”

“ The barns on the Vanderbilt estate, now privately owned.
A spring attraction that appealed to many of the Dutchess County residents was the college regatta held each year on the Hudson at Poughkeepsie. Vanderbilt was a regular contributor to this rowing event. The presence of his yacht in the spectator line was frequently mentioned in the papers.
The Vanderbilts enjoyed winter sports during their weekend visits at the pavilion. Their particular delight was sleighing. On a crisp winter day, the Post Road would be alive with handsome turnouts and highstepping horses. ”

“ Vanderbilt said that that had been the greatest day of his life. He later established regular daily runs with his famous coach, from Victoria Hotel in London to the Metropole Hotel in Brighton. Some time before he had become one of the most prominent horsemen in America, his horses winning blue ribbons at every show of importance both here and abroad. In looking back throughout his career one is impressed by the modesty of his sportsmanship. If he had chosen, he could easily have taken front rank as an exhibitor of show horses ”