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WHITNEY.    -2-

Staten Island, and his great-great-grandson, Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877) known as the Commodore, who married his cousin, Sophia Johnson, made his home in the city of New York. While still under twenty he laid the foundation of the great shipping interests centering at New York which made him a power in mercantile and transportation affairs. Shortly before the Civil War he began to transfer his capital from shipping to railroad enterprises, obtaining a controlling interest in the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad; and it was his consolidation and expansion of the New York Central and subsidiary lines that made that system the principal carrier between New York and Chicago.
His son, William Henry Vanderbilt (1821-1865), as business manager of his father's railroads, by his economical efficiency further developed the Vanderbilt holdings. As a collector of paintings, he encouraged art,