They Were the Richest American Family, What Happened to the Vanderbilts?

The family fortune derives from patriarch Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, who rose to become America's richest person by the 1850s off the back of a thriving shipping and railroad business. Following his death in 1877, the lion's share of the fortune passed to his eldest son William Henry. It is William's youngest child George Washington Vanderbilt II (pictured) who commissioned Biltmore, the largest and grandest private home in the US.