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William Henry Vanderbilt (1821)close

Financier William Henry Vanderbilt was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He controlled one of America's greatest family fortunes and headed one of the nation's largest corporations - the New York Central Railroad. Vanderbilt managed to double his family's fortune to the present-day equivalent of $3 billion, making him the richest man in the world at the time of his death in 1885.

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