Vermont farmer. [volume] (Newport, Orleans County, Vt.) 1870-1877, 1876-07-14
CORNELIUS VANDERBILT.
His Early History and Later Gigantic p
MRMeIal TrRnsactiOns.

mnMeIal TrRnsa ctiOns.
Commodore Vanderbilt - so called by
courtesy although he was never sea cap
tain, but merely a merchant skipper, en-
blowing other captains at starvation wages
has been sick a good while of stomach
and digestive diseases, both bladder and
rectum. He cannot long survive, as he is
eighty.three years old.
Commodore Vanderbilt without going
from home, and merely improving the CEN
tury's great opportunities as they began
and consolidated in the waters OF New
York, gained gigantic fortuae. He was as
brave, obstinate, selfish and grasping as
Peter Stuyvesant Not irreligIous, his cast
was almost heather. The island of his birth
and its "kids" and coasts were western
Batavia. He took to the water in child
hood, arose in the infancy of steam naviga-
ton and without inventing or suggesting
anything lived the whole period actually
between the eras of Robert Fulton and
George NJ. Pullman, between the stage
coach and palace car. The extent Of rail-
road in America in the commodores eighty
second year of age is 75,0S0 miles the ear.
lest American locomotive engine builder,
Peter Cooper, is still alive. A train has
Just passed in eighty hours from New York
TO San Francisco, or less time than was
commonly required to go from New York to
Washington when Vanderbilt began steam
boating. There are in 1876, when the man
il lying ill., $4,000 miles of railroad in North
America, lS4, 900 in the world. The heir
of the PtOlemies has failed as the owner of a
railroad and realm, and his sultan Is de-
posed. India is full OF British railways and
so was Polynesia Drew, his old antagonist
who dies insolvent, and Wall street is mere
brokers' market, its credit destroyed, deal
ing 10 suppositions marine and prairie rail-
way stocks. Russell Sage, Alexander
Mitchell, Jay Gould and Cornelius Garrison
hold, perhaps, the only formidable purses in
Broad street, and foreign ministers and high
public men are disgraced for dabbling in the
leavings Of half century's speculation.
Length of days and opportunity count
vastly in the returns of a merchants life.
The steamboat was invented in sight OF
Vanderbilt's birthplace on Station Island,
and he saw and probably knew Robert Full
ton, as he certainly knew and opposed
Chancellor Livingstone, Stevens, Aaron,
Ogden and others. Up to that time he had
been mere waterman, huckster, slOop cap.
tain and ish-monger, calling no farther
than New Brunswick, on the Raritan OF
Shrewsbury or Kingston. His knowledge
of the waters led him to be employed by
the steamboat rivals of Livingstone and
Stevens as early as 1916. He was more
properly the product of Lcng Island than
Of New York. His first patron, Thomas
Gibbons, was Georgia Jerseyman from
Elizabeth. This part Of Jersey was settled
however by Dutch stock, and New Bruins
wick, the head of steamboat navigation to
ward Philadelphia, was so Enthusiastically
Dutch that its principal avenue is called
Albany street. 1t IS fourteen miles from
Station Island to New Brunswick, six miles
to New York, one mile to Elizabethport anC
eight miles to the open ocean. Within
these limits the young Vanderbilt knew
every sboal, current and sounding. He was
besides, intelligent, bold and athletic; 81
he was Immediately needed when capita
and invention were prepared with the steam
boat. Eizabethport was the end OF the mar
old road across Jersey to New York-rock
and marshes intervening above the points *
no road was fit to travel beyond it-whel
Washington proceeded to New York to b,
be inaugurated, took barge from Elizabetl
Point to the first capital. The man who ad
ministered the oath to Washington on tina
occasion introduced Fulton and the steam
boat to America.
Vanderbilt's father had been very ordi
nary huckster and boat.sailer his mothe
was of Covenanter.Scotc descent, from
Scotch Plains, N. ia superior woman
She had been a woman hired out. His frs
wife aud mother as we'll kept taverns Ill
was bred among a rough crew-oystermen
'longshore men and their girls-and had n
education or association other than that passed
through his ferry aud boat. But he pos
sessed the power of making women feel hi
will and talent. Men disliked aud wer
afraid of him. lie had no manners, an
mashed his way to fortune. Gibbons,
co.chewing planter from Georgia, VIII
was fighting Aaron Ogden, first employee
him. From him Vanderbilt got tho idea o
opposition as standard principle and max
ing standard lines buy him of. His Who'll
seafaring life was an heroic form Of black
mail-Claude Duval After fifty years o
this sort of work he concluded to abandO
the seas aud take to railrOading.
The grandeur of Vauderbilt's dnancil
transactions was shown in his Harlem corne
at the close of the war. The stock was sell
selling at 40 in the market, par at 80.
there were 10000 shares, it required onl
S2,S00,0O0 TO buy the whole stock. At pa
Vanderbilt L. Co., bought out the who
stock, while the "shorts" offered %. HaN