Death
In 1883, he resigned all his company presidencies and had his sons appointed as important chairmen but left the day-to-day running of the businesses to experienced men appointed president.
He died on December 8, 1885 in New York City. He was interred in the Vanderbilt family mausoleum at the Moravian Cemetery in New Dorp on Staten Island, New York. His estate was divided amongst his eight children and his wife, the bulk of the estate going to his eldest two sons, William Kissam Vanderbilt and Cornelius Vanderbilt II.
Read more about this topic: William Henry Vanderbilt
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Now they heap the funeral pyre,
And the torch of death they light;
Ah! ‘tis hard to die by fire!”
—William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863)
“The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In the twentieth century, death terrifies men less than the absence of real life. All these dead, mechanized, specialized actions, stealing a little bit of life a thousand times a day until the mind and body are exhausted, until that death which is not the end of life but the final saturation with absence.”
—Raoul Vaneigem (b. 1934)