Cornelius Vanderbilt II

Frank Armstrong Crawford Vanderbilt was the second wife of Cornelius Vanderbilt, whom she married in 1869, and a distant cousin of his through her mother. Born in Mobile, Alabama, and given a man's name after a family friend, she was educated in the South and was some forty five years younger than her husband. She is remembered chiefly for persuading him to make the gift of one million dollars that in 1873 endowed the Central University of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in Nashville, renamed Vanderbilt University in his honour; the institution's founder, Bishop Holland McTyeire, was her kinsman. She had no children with Vanderbilt and survived him by eight years.

Consuelo Vanderbilt, Duchess of Marlborough, was an American born duchess, memoirist and social reformer, the daughter of William Kissam Vanderbilt and Alva Erskine Smith. Born in New York City, she was pressed by her mother into marrying Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough, in 1895, a match that brought a large Vanderbilt settlement to Blenheim Palace and made her the most famous of the American heiresses who married into the British aristocracy. In England she campaigned for prisoners' welfare and for working women and served on the London County Council. Separated from Marlborough in 1906, she married the French airman Jacques Balsan in 1921 and later wrote the memoir The Glitter and the Gold.

William Kissam Vanderbilt II, known as Willie K., was an American motor racing pioneer, yachtsman and amateur naturalist, the elder son of William Kissam Vanderbilt and Alva Erskine Smith. Born in New York City, he set a world land speed record in 1904, founded the Vanderbilt Cup automobile races on Long Island and built the Long Island Motor Parkway, one of the first roads designed for cars alone. He later made a series of long ocean voyages aboard his yachts Ara and Alva, collecting marine and ethnographic specimens that he housed in his own museum at Centerport on Long Island, now the Vanderbilt Museum. He held directorships in the New York Central system and served in the United States Navy in the First World War.

Harold Stirling Vanderbilt was an American yachtsman, railway executive and the inventor of contract bridge, the youngest son of William Kissam Vanderbilt and Alva Erskine Smith. Born at Oakdale on Long Island, New York, and trained as a lawyer at Harvard, he was chairman of the New York Central Railroad's executive committee and the last Vanderbilt to hold real power in the company. He defended the America's Cup successfully three times, in 1930, 1934 and 1937, skippering Enterprise, Rainbow and Ranger. In 1925, on a cruise through the Panama Canal, he devised the scoring system that turned auction bridge into contract bridge, the form of the game played ever since. He was a long serving trustee and benefactor of Vanderbilt University.

John Albert Edward William Spencer-Churchill, 10th Duke of Marlborough, was a British peer, the elder son of the 9th Duke and Consuelo Vanderbilt and therefore a grandson of William Kissam Vanderbilt. Educated at Eton, he served in the Life Guards in the First World War and again in the Second, during which Blenheim Palace, which he had inherited in 1934, was given over first to a relocated school and then to government intelligence work. He sat in the House of Lords, held county office in Oxfordshire, and worked to keep Blenheim intact by opening it more fully to visitors. He was a first cousin once removed of Winston Churchill.

Lord Ivor Charles Spencer-Churchill was a British art collector, the younger son of the 9th Duke of Marlborough and Consuelo Vanderbilt. Educated at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford, and free of the duties that fell to his elder brother the 10th Duke, he devoted himself to modern painting, assembling a notable collection of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works that he lent to public exhibitions in London. He was close to his mother and spent long periods with her and Jacques Balsan in France. He remained a largely private figure, known chiefly within the art world, and died in 1956.

Anderson Hays Cooper is an American broadcast journalist and author, the anchor of Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN and a correspondent for CBS's 60 Minutes. Born in New York City, the younger son of the designer Gloria Vanderbilt and the author Wyatt Emory Cooper, he is a great great great grandson of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. He studied political science at Yale, then began reporting by carrying a camera into Burma, Vietnam and Somalia and selling the results to Channel One. He joined ABC News and then CNN, where his reporting from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 established him as one of the network's central figures. He wrote The Rainbow Comes and Goes with his mother and Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty with Katherine Howe.

Cornelius Jeremiah Vanderbilt was the younger surviving son of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt and Sophia Johnson, and the brother of William Henry Vanderbilt. Born on Staten Island, New York, he was in poor health from childhood and never entered the family shipping or railroad businesses, living instead on allowances from his father and on money raised against the family name. When the Commodore died in 1877 leaving him only the income from a small trust while his brother received almost everything, he contested the will in a celebrated New York court battle that ran for more than a year and aired the family's private affairs in the press. The case was settled in 1879, and he died three years later.

Carter Vanderbilt Cooper was the elder son of the designer Gloria Vanderbilt and the author Wyatt Emory Cooper, and the brother of the journalist Anderson Cooper. Born in New York City, he was educated at the Dalton School and at Princeton University, where he read history and graduated in 1987, and he was working as an editorial assistant at the magazine American Heritage in New York when he died in July 1988 at the age of twenty three. His mother wrote about him in her memoir A Mother's Story, and his brother has written and spoken about him throughout his career.

Cornelia Stuyvesant Vanderbilt was the only child of George Washington Vanderbilt II and Edith Stuyvesant Dresser, and the heiress of Biltmore House near Asheville, North Carolina, where she was born and raised. She married the British diplomat John Francis Amherst Cecil at Asheville in 1924 in a wedding that drew crowds through the town, and their two sons, George and William Cecil, were born at Biltmore. In 1930 the family opened Biltmore House to the public, partly to support the local economy during the Depression. She left North Carolina in the 1930s and, after her marriage ended, lived in England, where she painted and exhibited under other names, dying in London in 1976.

George Henry Vanderbilt Cecil was an American businessman, the elder son of Cornelia Stuyvesant Vanderbilt and John Francis Amherst Cecil and a great grandson of William Henry Vanderbilt. Born at Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina, he served in the United States Navy and studied at Harvard before returning to North Carolina. In the division of the Biltmore inheritance he took the estate's dairy and farmland, which he built into Biltmore Farms, a dairy business and later a substantial land and hospitality company in the Asheville area, while his younger brother William took Biltmore House itself. He was a long standing figure in Asheville business and civic life and died in 2020 at the age of ninety five.