Are the Vanderbilts old money?

The Gilded Age's Vanderbilt family was considered a new-money family because, unlike the old money families, the Vanderbilts were not prominent before the American Revolution. Cornelius Vanderbilt was the patriarch who amassed a large fortune in the shipping and railroad industries in the mid-1800s.



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Consuelo's children, John Albert Edward William Spencer-Churchill and Ivor Charles Spencer-Churchill share a common ancestor with Princess Diana; his name was James Hamilton, Duke of Abercorn. The Duke of Abercorn was their great-grandfather and is Prince William's 4th great-grandfather.

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At the time of Cornelius Vanderbilt's death, his $100 million estate was 1/87th, or 1.1% of the nation's GDP. That's one out of every 87 dollar bills in the United States in Vanderbilt's wallet. The equivalency in today's wealth would be about $200 billion, putting him on par with today's mega billionaires.

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Today, Biltmore is still family owned and operated under George Vanderbilt's mission of preservation through self-sufficiency – a philosophy embraced before the first stone was ever placed.

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