Today, we begin our investigation into the storied Gilded Age American family, the Vanderbilts. We’ll start with the second generation, where no one was shy about their wealth, with the lives of Cornelius Vanderbilt II and his wife Alice Claypoole Gwynne Vanderbilt, and their seven children. It is a wild ride of 70 years of one family’s history that encompasses weddings, divorces, deaths, and a name that is inextricably tied to a time in the life of America.
Sources:
Francis Ormond French Obituary (nytimes.com)
Poor Little Rich Lady (nytimes.com)
Wedded At The Breakers (nytimes.com)
Beyond the Breakers: The Newport Homes of Alice and Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Children (schoolfieldcountryhouse.com)
Gloria’s Euphoria (vanityfair.com)
The Breakers and The Vanderbilts in Newport, Rhode Island (untappedcities.com)
Anderson Cooper, the First Gay Vanderbilt? Part III (mrmhadams.typepad.com)
Grace Wilson Vanderbilt (discoverlowcountry.com)
William Henry Vanderbilt II (findagrave.com)
Margaret Mary Emerson (findagrave.com)
Mr. Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt (rmslusitania.info)
The Women Who Built the New York Art World (artsy.net)