National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior

Historical Overview
business man he has a high reputation, and indeed there are many who know the family who
do not hesitate to say that he has more financial ability than any of his brothers. He is fond
of taking a "flyer" in the street now and then, but never speculates rashly or wildly. His
operations are conducted chiefly through Post, Wales & Co; E.H. Wales, the junior partner, a
son of Salem H. Wales, being one of his closest friends. 190 F.W. Vanderbilt has a cheery,
pleasant, manner which of itself would win him friends, and his wife is also much liked. She
was formerly Miss Anthony, married first Mr. Torrance, a cousin of Mr. Vanderbilt's and
becoming divorced married her present husband. This was about five years ago, and the
marriage, which was very sudden and performed without consultation with his parents,
angered W.H. Vanderbilt excessively. The young couple lived for sometime in an
apartment-house at Park Avenue and Fortieth street, and then, the senior Mr. Vanderbilt,
having relented, were installed in the handsome house formerly occupied by himself at Fifth
avenue and Fortieth street. Mrs. F.W. Vanderbilt meanwhile has become very much liked by
her husband's family, and the relations between herself and her formerly irate father-in-law
finally grew to be most cordial. She entertained considerably last winter, giving a series of
handsome receptions, but her husband's aversion to the gay world keeps her to some extent
out of society. Mr. Vanderbilt spends most of his day at the Grand Central Depot, where he
looks after the interests of the Nickel Plate road. 191
Frederick's love of the Adirondack sporting life was recounted in a newspaper of 1887,
when he was thirty-one years old. Despite his efforts to remain out of the papers, he was here
the subject of a "fish tale" retold by his hunting pals:
The Kildaires are firmly opposed to hounding deer, and the most ardent anti-hounder in the
crowd is Frederick Vanderbilt. Three years ago he owned some deer hounds and ran down
a fine buck with them. The law says deer must not be hunted that way, and he had to step up
like a little man and pay a fine of fifty dollars. . . . Frederick Vanderbilt, while strolling
through the woods alone and unarmed was chased up a tree by a ferocious doe, so one
recollector declares, and he would have frozen stiff on a branch and probably not have
dropped off until late in the spring if his cries had not attracted a large crowd of lumbermen
who came up and drove the animal away with clubs and loud shouts. 192
In 1896, when Frederick was forty years old, a reporter described him as:
a man of most genial and kindly manner, with a sweet and mellow voice and a face that lights
up with a sunny smile. Of the blonde type and having a ruddy complexion, he quite fills the
conception of an English country squire, a character which he seems ambitious to cultivate
since the purchase of this new toy [Hyde Park]. 193
At the age of forty-eight, a St. Paul journalist described Frederick as, "the quietest of all
who bear the family name," and, "the only descendent of the Commodore, who drives trotting
190 Edward H. Wales was born May 28, 1856. He graduated in 1877 from Columbia School of Mines and
then joined his father in patent work. He moved to Washington D.C. and became assistant examiner in
the U.S. Patent Office. In 1880, he returned to New York. He was a member of the firm of Post, Wales &
Co. from 1881 to 1895. He held a seat on the New York Stock Exchange from 1881 to 1897 and retired
from active business in 1895 with his move to Hyde Park. He was in the Naval Reserve Force in World
War I and was made chief of Naval censorship. He was an enthusiastic yachtsman, golfer, and ice boater
and was head of the Hyde Park Ice Yacht Club. He died in New York City on Halloween, 1922. National
Cyclopedia of American Biography, vol. 32. (New York: James T. White & Co., 1945), 451-452.
191 "Is Cornelius the Heir? A Belief that he will Get the Bulk of the Vanderbilt Fortune," uncited
newspaper article, Scrapbook: William H. Vanderbilt, vol. 1, Shelburne Farms Archives.
192 "A Club of Vanderbilts, How the Kildaire Amuse Themselves in the Adirondacks," Davenport Iowa
Gazette, January 12, 1887, Scrapbook 1885 - 1887, IV, Shelburne Farms Archives.
193 Snell, "Historical Handbook Manuscript," 4. Snell cites Poughkeepsie Sunday Courier, July 19, 1896, 2.
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