Descendants
Cornelius Vanderbilt was buried in the family vault in the Moravian Cemetery at New Dorp on Staten Island. He was later reburied in a tomb in the same cemetery constructed by his son William. Three of his daughters and son, Cornelius Jeremiah Vanderbilt, contested the will on the grounds that their father was of unsound mind and under the influence of his son William Henry and of spiritualists he consulted on a regular basis. The court battle lasted more than a year and was ultimately won outright by William Henry Vanderbilt, who then increased the bequests to his siblings and paid their legal fees. One of the current-surviving members of the Vanderbilt family is Anderson Cooper, who is a great-great-great-grandson.
Cornelius Jeremiah Vanderbilt, an epileptic, committed suicide in 1882. George Washington Vanderbilt also died without issue, during the Civil War. All of the Vanderbilt multimillionaires descend through oldest son William Henry.
- Children of Cornelius Vanderbilt and Sophia Johnson
- Phoebe Jane (Vanderbilt) Cross (1814–1878)
- Ethelinda (Vanderbilt) Allen (1817–1889)
- Eliza (Vanderbilt) Osgood (1819–1890)
- William Henry Vanderbilt (1821–1885)
- Emily Almira (Vanderbilt) Thorn (1823–1896)
- Sophia Johnson (Vanderbilt) Torrance (1825–1912)
- Maria Louisa (Vanderbilt) Clark Niven (1827–1896)
- Frances Lavinia Vanderbilt (1828–1868)
- Cornelius Jeremiah Vanderbilt (1830–1882)
- George Washington Vanderbilt (1832–1836)
- Mary Alicia (Vanderbilt) LaBau Berger (1834–1902)
- Catherine Juliette (Vanderbilt) Barker LaFitte (1836–1881)
- George Washington Vanderbilt (1839–1864)
Read more about this topic: Cornelius Vanderbilt
Famous quotes containing the word descendants:
“Your descendants shall gather your fruits.”
—Virgil [Publius Vergilius Maro] (70–19 B.C.)
“Not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but also clouds their view of their descendants and isolates them from their contemporaries. Each man is for ever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“The descendants of Holy Roman Empire monarchies became feeble-minded in the twentieth century, and after World War I had been done in by the democracies; some were kept on to entertain the tourists, like the one they have in England.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)