Phebe Hand laid the foundation for Vanderbilt success
This is the 50th article in the genealogy project, “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.”
Phebe Hand is a paternal fourth great-grand aunt. She was born April 15, 1767 in Rahway, Essex County, New Jersey, the daughter of Samuel Hand and Phebe Lum. She was baptized at Presbyterian Church on Oct. 25, 1767. She came from an English family.
The family oral history passed down is that Phebe’s father, who was in the shipping business, was a Loyalist, while her brother, fourth great-grandfather Obadiah, fought in the American Revolution, and this tore the family apart. Samuel eventually fled to Nova Scotia.
There is no solid information on Phebe’s childhood. At some point when she was a young woman she moved from New Jersey to New York. Several books and online sources, including “The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt” by TJ Stiles, note that Phebe was working as a servant in the home of a minister in Port Richmond, located on Staten Island, when she met Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Phebe married Cornelius Vanderbilt Feb. 5, 1787. He was of Dutch descent with ancestors who had arrived in America in 1650. Phebe had nine children, the fourth being the legendary tycoon, Cornelius.
All sources of information on Phebe describe her as strong and independent with plenty of business savvy. She saved silver in an old grandfather clock and used it more than once to keep the Vanderbilt family out of debt.
The book, “The Vanderbilts and the Story of Their Fortune,” describes Phebe’s keen business sense.
“More than once Mrs. Vanderbilt saved the little family from want, and it is known that on one occasion, when her husband was in a dire strait, she drew from an old clock $3,000, the careful hoarding of years, and rescued the place from his creditors.”
By the time they had six or seven children the Vanderbilts were more prosperous. They moved to a larger home outside Port Richmond in the village of what would become Stapleton. This house, like their former home, was on the water’s edge, which allowed Phebe and her husband to conduct business. Phebe sent her sewing and vegetables to market with her husband and made her own money, which she kept in her clock.
Before her son Cornelius was 16, Phebe made a deal with him. If Cornelius would plow a rocky field of eight acres before his birthday she would lend him $100 to buy a periauger, a type of barge, to transport people and provisions around Staten Island and the other areas on the water. Within a year, young Cornelius had paid Phebe $1,000 to help the family income.
There is not much known about Phebe after her children were grown. Her son Cornelius turned to his mother for advice and guidance and he and his wife, Sophia, named their first child Phebe.
Phebe’s husband died in 1832 and Phebe appears in the 1850 census living with her grown daughter, also named Phebe, in Southfield, Richmond County, New York.
Phebe Hand died June 22, 1854 in Staten Island. She is buried in New Dorp, Richmond County, New York.
Contributor:
Richard De Waine Hand JR (49242609)
hand8787@gmail.com (findagrave.com)