I dreamt I was rich and famous...\n\nCommodore Vanderbilt, was an American entrepreneur who built his wealth in shipping and railroads and was the patriarch of the Vanderbilt family.\n\nCornelius Vanderbilt and Phebe Hand had a family of modest means in Port Richmond on Staten Island.\n\nAt the time of his death, aged 82, Cornelius Vanderbilt\'s fortune was estimated at more than US$100 million. He willed US$95 million to son William but \"only\" US$500,000 to each of his eight daughters. His wife received US$500,000 in cash, their modest New York City home, and 2,000 shares of common stock in New York Central Railroad.\n\nVanderbilt gave little of his vast fortune to charitable works, leaving the $1 million (the equivalent of $19 million today) he had promised for Vanderbilt University and $50,000 to the Church of the Strangers in New York City. He lived modestly, leaving his descendants to build the Vanderbilt houses that characterize America\'s Gilded Age.\n\nAccording to \"The Wealthy 100\" by Michael Klepper and Robert Gunther, Vanderbilt would be worth $143 billion in 2007 dollars, if you take his total wealth as a share of the nation\'s GDP in 1877 and apply that same proportion in 2007, making him the second-wealthiest person in American history after Rockefeller.[6]\n\nVanderbilt is also heavily associated with the standardization of gauges and the use of steel in rails.

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