Vanderbilt University - Commodore Yearbook (Nashville, TN)

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The Descendants of Commodore Vanderbilt. Pacific Coast. He was not a provin- cial man. He was the first to suggest a canal across the Isthmus, though he wanted it in Nicaragua. At the age of 60, which I like to think was older then than it is now, he had the foresight to sell all his ships and get into railroads-a pretty radical move. There is a very amusing book, The Days of Daniel Drew, in which Drew tells of the many machinations of those days. Daniel Drew was a drover, which meant that he drove cattle from Pen- nsylvania and Western New York to a market in Upper Manhattan. He thought up the idea of not letting his cattle drink any water for three days before they arrived in Manhattan, then they were turned into pastures where they had all the water they wanted, and then they were sold by weight. This was the origination of watered stock, which became the term, as you know, for inflated values of securities. We look on the deals of those days as scandalous, but if we are honest and look around us today at the I.T.8z T. mess, the Watergate incident, the grain deal with Russia, the dairy deal during the campaign and others, I wonder if we have become all that much more honest and moral.

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Mr. William Vanderbilt Vice-President, Board of Trust The Centennial Celebration: MARCH 16-I7, 1973 Remarks by William H. Vanderbiltatthe dinner for Commodore Vanderbilts descendants, Friday, March 16, 1973 President and Mrs. Vaughn, Chancellor and Mrs. Heard, ladies and gentlemen: One hundred and sixty years ago, the Commodore married his cousin, Sophia Iohnson, and they had 13 children. I guess that's where this reunion started. Seven daughters and one son had children and from that small start on that small Island in New York Harbor, we have spread a long way. Some 700 descendants have been identified. We are grateful to Alex and lean Heard for joining with us in giving this party and for allowing us to hold it in their home. I am very grateful to all of you for coming to this reunion. When Alex Heard suggested we invite descendants of the Com- modore, I agreed but told him I thought we would get very few-and now, much to my sur- prise, we have about 120. The Commodore was the sth generation of Vanderbilts in this country. His branch of the family moved to Staten Island and he grew up there on a farm. He earned his first hundred dollars from his mother by clearing and plowing a field. This money he used to buy a boat and he was off and away, running a ferry service to Manhat- tan. This was the first of many ships owned by him, ships that plied the Hudson River, the Atlantic to Europe, to Central America and the

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Many of you are interested in horticulture in one form or another. This involves, careful and knowledgeable grafting and pruning. A family is somewhat the same. The Commodore pruned off his ships and grafted on the new lifeblood of railroads. The strength of his tree comes from such courageous processes of new in- terests, which in turn, strengthen the family. While we cannot very well be called a united family fthis is the first time a vast majority of us has seen each otherj, we, the descendants of a common ancestor, have grown in strength, resources and horizons. We have branched out and joined with other religions, nationalities and points of view, all of which is good. The Commodore has, of course, been grouped with the so-called robber barons. Without in any way defending the practices of those days, I would point out that the Commodore was a builder. He