The changing of New Amsterdam for New York, the Anglicization of the Dutch colonies, inscribed itself in the Vanderbilt family, too; the second Jacob Vanderbilt married an Englishwoman, Mary Sprague, on Staten Island in 1746. This meant that the Commodore’s father, the first Cornelius Vanderbilt on Staten Island, was half-English, and his mother, Phebe Hand, was fully so. Despite his name, Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt was only one quarter Dutch.
