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 boats for coastal trade. He became known as "the commodore" because he had the largest schooner on the Hudson River. By 1817 he had over $9000 to his name. He sold his company and went to Thomas Gibbons in 1818 to be part of ferryboat service on the Hudson. He charged less than a fourth of the going rate and was taken to court in Gibbons vs. Ogden where the supreme court nullified the monopoly New York had given to Fulton and Livingston. After that, Vanderbilt controlled....

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