Excerpt from Commodore Vanderbilt: An Epic of American AchievementOf the children of Jacob II and Mary, the youngest, born August 28, 1764, was named Cornelius, undoubt edly after his uncle, mentioned previously, who was also a seventh son. Poor, young Cornelius grew to manhood in the drear, pinched days of the Revolution, which is possibly an explanation of the character he developed. To tell the truth, the family were due for hard times. In the century that had elapsed since Jacob I and Neilje moved to Staten Island to clear a farm in the forest, generation after generation had been bred upon its scanty acres, lot after lot had been whit tled away for one son or daughter after another. What had been a fine miniature estate was now a patchwork Of odds and ends, no unit of it sufficient to support a family comfortably.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.