Shipping and Railroad Tycoon. A descendant of Dutch settlers, as a boy, he worked with his father, who operated a boat that ferried cargo between Staten Island, New York, where they lived, and Manhattan. In 1813, Vanderbilt married his cousin Sophia Johnson, and the couple eventually had 13 children. In 1817, Vanderbilt went to work as a ferry captain for a wealthy businessman, Thomas Gibbons, who owned a commercial steamboat service that operated between New Jersey and New York. In the late 1820s, he went into business on his own, building steamships and operating ferry lines, In the early 1850s, during the California Gold Rush, a time before transcontinental railroads, Vanderbilt launched a steamship service that transported prospectors from New York to San Francisco via a route across Nicaragua. In the early 1860’s, Vanderbilt sold all his steamships to the Union navy and began investing in railroads. Sophia had died in 1868, and in 1869, Cornelius married a 31-year-old cousin, Frank Crawford. By 1869, he had merged 17 local railroads to create the New York Central system. He was infamously involved in the Erie Railroad War of 1868, when he battled Wall Street traders Jim Fisk and Jay Gould for financial control of the Erie Railroad. He founded Vanderbilt University with a grant of $1 million. Vanderbilt died at age 82 on January 4, 1877, at his Manhattan home, and was buried in the Old Vanderbilt tomb at Moravian Cemetery in New Dorp, Staten Island. in 1888, the bodies of Cornelius Vanderbilt, his parents, his two wives, and daughter Frances were reinterred within the new Vanderbilt Mausoleum in the Vanderbilt Cemetery next to Moravian.
Bio by: Bobby Kelley (findagrave.com)