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Cornelius Vanderbilt was born on May 27, 1794. He was an American Steamship and Railroad builder as well as a financier and promoter. He was born to a poor family and he quit school at eleven. He owned his first business at age sixteen as a transport and freight service. By the war of 1812, the government was contracting him to supply forts around New York and the profits allowed him to build a schooner and two other …

…announced he was going to build Grand Central Station in New York. By 1875 his New York Central Railroad controlled the New York to Chicago route. He never put much into philanthropy, the few no solicited services he accomplished were, $50,000 for the Church of Strangers in New York and $1 million to Central University, now called Vanderbilt University. He left $95 million dollars to his son William and when he died he was the richest man on Earth.