Cornelius Vanderbilt - Death and Legacy

Death and Legacy

Following his wife's death in 1868, Vanderbilt went to Canada where, on August 21, 1869, he married a cousin from Mobile, Alabama, named Frank Armstrong Crawford. Crawford was 43 years younger than her husband. Crawford's cousin's husband, Holland McTyeire, convinced Vanderbilt to endow what would become Vanderbilt University, named in his honor. Vanderbilt gave $1 million, the largest charitable gift in American history to that date. He also bought a church for $50,000 for his second wife's congregation, the Church of the Strangers. He also donated to churches around New York, including a gift to the Moravian Church on Staten Island of 8½ acres (34,000 m2) for a cemetery in which he was later buried.

Cornelius Vanderbilt died on January 4, 1877, at his residence, No. 10 Washington Place, after having been confined to his rooms for about eight months. The immediate cause of his death was exhaustion, brought on by long suffering from a complication of chronic disorders. At the time of his death, aged 82, his fortune was estimated at $100 million. In his will, he left 95% of his $100 million estate to his son William and to William's four sons ($5,000,000 (approx. $99,000,000 in 2008 USD) to Cornelius Vanderbilt II, and $2 million apiece (approx. $39,600,000 in 2008 USD) to William Kissam Vanderbilt, Frederick Vanderbilt, and George Washington Vanderbilt II). The Commodore stated that he believed William Henry was the only heir capable of maintaining the business empire.

He willed amounts ranging from $250,000 (approximate $4,950,000 in 2008 USD) to $500,000 ($9,920,000 in 2008 USD) to each of his eight daughters. His wife received US$500,000, their New York City home, and 2,000 shares of common stock in New York Central Railroad. To his younger surviving son, Cornelius Jeremiah Vanderbilt, whom he regarded as a wastrel, he left the income from a $200,000 trust fund. The Commodore had lived in relative modesty considering his nearly unlimited means, splurging only on race horses, leaving his descendants to build the Vanderbilt houses that characterize America's Gilded Age. (It is worth noting that though trivial in comparison to the $90 million+ inherited by William Henry Vanderbilt and his sons, the bequests to his other children made them very wealthy by the standards of 1877 and were not subject to inheritance tax.)

According to "The Wealthy 100" by Michael Klepper and Robert Gunther, Vanderbilt would be worth $143 billion in 2007 dollars, if his total wealth as a share of the nation's GDP in 1877 (the year of his death) were taken and applied in that same proportion in 2007. This would make him the second-wealthiest person in American history, after John D. Rockefeller. Another calculation, from 1998, puts him in third place, after Andrew Carnegie.

Vanderbilt's life story has inspired works of fiction, including the ambitious character of Nat Taggart in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (1957). His family (see below) has done much the same.