6 Facts About the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers
The United States may not have a royal family, but it has a number of influential family dynasties that have intrigued the public for centuries. Two families in particular, the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers, are household names whose self-made fortunes made them two of the richest and most powerful American families in history. The Vanderbilts, led by Cornelius Vanderbilt’s railroad empire, amassed staggering wealth during the Gilded Age in the late 19th century. The Rockefellers, meanwhile, propelled by John D. Rockefeller’s dominance of the oil industry, made a large impact with their philanthropy and preservation. Although their ascendence is similar, their legacies ended up looking a little bit different in the end.
Rockefeller and Vanderbilt’s massive business ventures not only amassed them unprecedented personal wealth, but boosted the country’s industrial economy. At the same time, their reputations as “robber barons” emerged, amid criticisms that their successes came at the expense of fair competition, workers’ rights, and ethical standards. At the time, many Americans were living in poverty, a stark contrast to the glitzy guise of the Gilded Age that these wealthy families propped up.
John D. Rockefeller Was America’s First Billionaire
A century before Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, there was John D. Rockefeller. When he was just 12 years old in rural New York, Rockefeller loaned a neighbor $50 of his own hard-earned money. When he received it back the next year with interest, he decided at that moment to let his money work for him instead of the other way around. This foresight and financial acumen lasted him a lifetime, helping him shape the landscape of American business and become the country’s first billionaire.
Trained and working as a bookkeeper by 16 years old, Rockefeller started his own company in agricultural trade within a few years. Through that business, he decided that the true future of industry was in moving raw materials, and at 24 years old, he moved into the oil business. Rockefeller went on to pioneer the American oil industry by founding Standard Oil (later dissolved into Exxon, Chevron, and more). Although his business practices faced their fair share of accusations and criticisms over the years — including colluding to control the price of oil and creating a monopoly by buying competing refineries — Rockefeller amassed an unprecedented $1.4 billion net worth by the time of his death in 1937 (almost $30 billion today). As much as he made, he gave plenty away, too — his philanthropic gifts over the years totaled $530 million.
Cornelius Vanderbilt Had Virtually No Education
He’s a towering figure in American business history, but Cornelius Vanderbilt had little formal education. Born the fourth of nine children in Staten Island, New York, in 1794, Vanderbilt was pulled out of school to work on his father’s shipping boat when he was just 11 years old. By the time he was 16, “the Commodore,” as he became known, had bought his own boat to ferry cargo around the New York Harbor. He got a job in the steamship industry and eventually went into business for himself.
Vanderbilt’s aggressive professional approach helped him accrue wealth quickly, and in the 1840s, he built the first of many large homes the family owned in New York (and elsewhere). When the California gold rush struck, Vanderbilt saw an opportunity: He launched a shorter steamship route from New York to San Francisco than had previously existed. It was an instant success, earning more than $1 million in one year (that’s almost $40 million today). Around this time, Vanderbilt also began to manage the railroads that connected textile mills on the East Coast to shipping ports. The shipping tycoon with no formal education also became a railroad tycoon.
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John D. Rockefeller Celebrated the Anniversary of His First Job Every Year
It was referred to as his “most joyful holiday of the year” — the anniversary of the day John D. Rockefeller got his first job. On September 26, 1855, Cleveland company Hewitt and Tuttle hired a 16-year-old Rockefeller as an assistant bookkeeper. Every September 26 from that year forward, the magnate celebrated “job day.”
“All my future seemed to hinge on that day,” Rockefeller once said. “I often tremble when I ask myself the question: What if I had not got the job?” When the business magnate was 83 years old, The New York Times reported the events of his “job day” celebrations: Festivities included a round of golf (just nine holes, lest he spend too much time on the greens), working on his philanthropic ventures, and a luncheon with friends in which he detailed his job search so many years ago. Rockefeller said that just over three months after he started the job, on New Year’s Eve in 1855, he collected his first pay: $50.
The Vanderbilts Built the Biggest Home in America
On Christmas Eve in 1895, Cornelius Vanderbilt’s grandson George Vanderbilt invited friends and family into his opulent new home for the first time. George first visited Asheville, North Carolina, in 1888. Taken by the region’s picturesque mountainous charm, he began acquiring land, eventually amassing 125,000 acres for his future estate. It took six years for the Biltmore Estate, designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt, to take its iconic form. The 250-room French Renaissance chateau — now the largest home in the United States — even required its own brick factory, woodworking shops, and railway for transporting materials during construction.
Spanning 175,000 square feet — more than 4 acres of floor space — the famous mansion includes 35 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, and 65 fireplaces. Despite the ostentatious footprint of the estate, George was also committed to sustainable land use practices, and following his death in 1914, his wife, Edith Vanderbilt, sold 87,000 acres to the federal government, creating the Pisgah National Forest.
The Rockefellers Made Their Fortune in the Oil Industry — Then Denounced It
At its peak, Standard Oil controlled more than 90% of petroleum products in the United States. Yet in the mid-2010s, two of the Rockefeller family charities announced their plans to divest from the oil industry, walking away from the very product that made them billionaires. The companies cited concerns about the environmental impact of fossil fuels and their contribution to climate change as the reason. While the move was largely symbolic, it certainly reaped rewards. In 2020, five years after announcing the divestment, the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation — which puts approximately $15 million each year into climate change efforts — claimed its oil-free portfolio posted bigger returns than a comparable portfolio with oil holdings over the same time period.. “Oil is obviously a definitional part of my family’s past,” Valerie Rockefeller, the great-great-granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller and chair of the RBF board of trustees, said in a press release at the time. “But it has no place in our future.”
The Vanderbilt and Rockefeller Dynasties Live on in Different Ways
Despite sharing historic and cultural space as two of the wealthiest and most powerful families in American history, the Vanderbilt and Rockefeller dynasties played out quite differently. The vast fortune — upwards of $100 million at the time of his death — built by Cornelius Vanderbilt deteriorated in subsequent generations. “When 120 of the Commodore's descendants gathered at Vanderbilt University in 1973 for the first family reunion, there was not a millionaire among them,” wrote Arthur T. Vanderbilt in Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt. Journalist Anderson Cooper, one of the most famous living Vanderbilt descendants (his mother was Gloria Vanderbilt), also detailed the lavish spending and poor planning that led to their financial fall.
In contrast, the Rockefellers’ wealth has endured. Across several generations and almost 100 descendants, the family maintains a fortune in the billions. Unlike with the Vanderbilts, careful financial planning, strategic philanthropy, and diversified investments have kept the family thriving, as has, according to the modern-day Rockefellers, a system of family values and traditions that includes family get-togethers — featuring upwards of 100 people — at least twice a year.
