![]() Newspapers of the era reveled in the fight between the robber barons. In response, Gould and Fisk issued additional, watered down shares, which Vanderbilt continued to buy. The Erie was controlled by Daniel Drew, who conspired with Vanderbilt to buy up the majority of shares in the railroad. 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. Cornelius Vanderbilt: RailroadsĪmerican industrialist Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794 - 1877) standing astride two railroads competing with James Fisk (1835 - 1872) for control of the Erie Railroad. Vanderbilt’s new line was an instant success, earning more than $1 million (about $26 million in today’s money) a year. His route was faster than an established route across Panama, and much speedier than the other alternative, around Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America, which could take months. 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. Despite his growing wealth, the city’s elite residents were slow to accept Vanderbilt, considering him rough and uncultured. In the 1840s, Vanderbilt constructed a large brick home for his family at 10 Washington Place, in Manhattan’s present-day Greenwich Village neighborhood. (Throughout his life, Vanderbilt’s ruthless approach to business would earn him numerous enemies.) In some cases, his competitors paid him hefty sums not to compete with them. Shrewd and aggressive, he became a dominant force in the industry by engaging in fierce fare wars with his rivals. In the late 1820s, he went into business on his own, building steamships and operating ferry lines around the New York region. The job provided Vanderbilt the opportunity to learn about the burgeoning steamship industry. 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. (A year after his first wife died in 1868, Vanderbilt married another female cousin, Frank Armstrong Crawford, who was more than four decades his junior.) Cornelius Vanderbilt: SteamshipsĬornelius Vanderbilt initially made his money in the steamships business before investing in railroads. In 1813, Vanderbilt married his cousin Sophia Johnson, and the couple eventually had 13 children. The vessel was used to chase down Confederate raiders. Civil War, Cornelius Vanderbilt donated his largest and fastest steamship, named the Vanderbilt and built for around $1 million, to the Union Navy. Eventually, he acquired a fleet of small boats and learned about ship design.ĭid you know? During the U.S. When Vanderbilt was a teen he transported cargo around the New York harbor in his own periauger. As a boy, the younger Vanderbilt worked with his father on the water and attended school briefly. His parents were farmers and his father also made money by ferrying produce and merchandise between Staten Island and Manhattan in his two-masted sailing vessel, known as a periauger. A descendant of Dutch settlers who came to America in the mid-1600s, Cornelius Vanderbilt was born into humble circumstances on May 27, 1794, on Staten Island, New York.
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