Historian Michael McGerr delivered the inaugural Founder’s Day Lecture on March 16 in Wilson Hall.

by Kara Furlong

Many are familiar with the basic facts that surround the founding of Vanderbilt University in 1873: Steamboat and railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt gave nearly $1 million to Methodist bishop Holland McTyeire, his wife’s cousin, to endow a new university in Nashville.

But the unusual confluence of characters and events that led to this unlikely gift is the stuff of fiction.

Historian Michael McGerr recounted Cornelius Vanderbilt’s journey from single-minded businessman to university patron in the inaugural Founder’s Day Lecture on March 16 in Wilson Hall. McGerr, the Paul V. McNutt Professor of American History at Indiana University, gave a talk titled “The Commodore’s Strange Gift: The Founding of Vanderbilt.”

McGerr is working on a book about the Vanderbilt family called “The Public Be Damned”: The Vanderbilts and the Unmaking of the Ruling Class.

He described Vanderbilt as “a very hard man.” He was unusually focused, relished economic combat, and possessed a brutal sense of logic that his counterparts found “almost scary,” according to McGerr. He amassed a fortune during his lifetime – first through steamboats, then through the construction of railroads – that totaled around $95 million by the 1870s, easily making him the wealthiest man in America and one of the wealthiest in the world.

“Vanderbilt did not like giving his money away,” said McGerr. He felt that charity was wasteful, and charitable organizations run by fools. He had equal distaste for clergymen and academics.

He expressed no great affection for his two surviving sons or eight daughters. Obsessed with his own name, he felt none were truly fit to be called “Vanderbilt,” according to McGerr. He ruled his wife of more than 50 years, Sophia, through intimidation.

However, when Sophia died in August 1868, “suddenly Vanderbilt was a rootless man,” McGerr said. His longtime spouse had provided familiarity and structure. Enter two pairs of women who directly and indirectly would influence the remaining course of his life.

At the time of Sophia’s death, her cousin, Martha Crawford, and Martha’s adult daughter, Frank Armstrong Crawford, were guests at the Vanderbilts’ New York City estate. In October of 1868, sisters Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin, well-known spiritualists of the day, also knocked on Vanderbilt’s door. “As difficult as he was, Vanderbilt was willing to talk to people,” said McGerr. Communicating with the dead was an accepted practice at the time and one Vanderbilt believed in. He enlisted Woodhull and Claflin’s help in communicating with beloved family members who had died, including his late wife.

Over the course of months, the spiritualists infiltrated Vanderbilt’s life. Woodhull and Claflin’s reputations were notorious. McGerr described them as charlatans, free love advocates, sometimes-prostitutes and unabashed feminists. Vanderbilt’s involvement with them scandalized his children. At different times, he was rumored engaged to Tennessee Claflin and Martha Crawford. He surprised everyone when a year to his first wife’s death, he married Martha’s daughter, Frank, 45 years his junior.

Frank Armstrong Crawford signed a prenuptial agreement before marrying Vanderbilt that guaranteed her only a fraction of his massive fortune. A 30-year-old divorcée, she was reserved, enigmatic and deeply religious. Her piety left her above reproach to those who might otherwise have suggested she was after Vanderbilt’s money. Instead, said McGerr, she sincerely loved Vanderbilt. “She starts working on him right away,” he said. “His soul becomes her project.”

Frank introduced her new husband to Charles Force Deems, her minister at New York’s nondenominational Church of the Strangers. A shrewd judge of character, Vanderbilt came to respect Deems and offered him money to build a permanent facility for his church. “Vanderbilt has actually done a good thing, and he rather likes it,” said McGerr.

Meanwhile, Woodhull and Claflin are using their previous involvement with Vanderbilt to defame him in the press, including through their own publication, Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly. Though deeply embarrassed by her husband’s rumored past, “Frank was very reserved, and she knew how to play her cards,” McGerr said. In 1872 when her cousin and former pastor, Bishop Holland McTyeire, and his wife visited the Vanderbilts in New York, Frank, Deems and McTyeire used their growing influence over Vanderbilt to convince him to give the initial $500,000 to found the university, and he would eventually give nearly half a million more.

“The rest of the story is well-told,” McGerr said. “What fascinates me is the road that got him there.” McGerr cited the chance factors he believes were instrumental in the university’s founding: Vanderbilt’s first wife died; second wife Frank put him in contact with well-intentioned people, such as Deems and McTyeire; and Vanderbilt felt compelled to compensate for the scandal involving Woodhull and Claflin by giving generously to his wife’s pet causes.

“Vanderbilt did not set out to become a philanthropist,” said McGerr. “He was obsessed with his name. He thought his name would live through the New York Central Railroad, which no longer exists.” Vanderbilt would be shocked that his name survives not through industry, but through a university, McGerr said.

“Cornelius Vanderbilt was one of the least likely benefactors in the history of higher education,” he said. “In a peculiar way, this act served his own purposes more than anything else he ever did.”

Audio of McGerr’s lecture is available on VUCast at www.vanderbilt.edu/news.

Posted 03/27/06