William Kissam Vanderbilt II (1878 - 1944)

Born 2 Mar 1878 in New York City, New York County, New York, United States

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 8 Jan 1944 at age 65 in New York City, New York, United States

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Biography

William Vanderbilt II is Notable.

William Kissam Vanderbilt II was born on 2 March 1878 to William Vanderbilt and Alva Krskine Smith in New York City.^[1]

William married Virginia Graham Fair in 1899. They had three children: William Kissam III, Muriel, and Consuelo. They separated after ten years, but were not divorced until 1927.^[1][2]

William married Rosamund Warburton at the Hotel de Ville (city hall) in Paris, France. He became the legal step-father to Barclay Warburton III.

William died from heart disease on 8 January 1944 and is interred in the family mausoleum a Moravian Cemetery on Staten Island, New York.^[1][3]

Residence

• Deepdale, built in 1902 at Lake Success on Long Island.^[1][4]
• Townhouse at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York City.^[1][4]
• Eagle's Nest, built in 1910 at Centerport, Long Island^[1][4]
• Alva Base, on Fisher Island, Florida was built in 1925^[1][4]

Career

• William attended Harvard University, but did not graduate^[1]
• In 1898 he ordered a French De Dion-Bouton motor tricycle and continued to acquire fast motorized vehicles and was often found speeding through Long Island.^[1]
• William was a skilled sailor and participated in yacht racing. He won the Sir Thomas Lipton Cup in 1900 with the Virginia, named after his wife.^[1]
• William set the land speed record in 1904 at the Daytona Beach Road Course
• William launched the Vanderbilt Cup in 1904, the first major trophy in American auto racing
• William formed a corporation to build the Long Island Motor Parkway in 1907. The toll road never generated sustainable profits and was ceded to the County in 1938.
• William went into active service on 9 May 1917 in the US Navy as a lieutenant junior grade on the USS Tarantula (SP-124) at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. William owned the Tarantula and leased it to the US Navy for the duration of the war. He was assigned to patrol duty in the 3rd Naval District and provided escorts in the waters of New York and New Jersey.^[1]
• William was released from active duty on 1 October 1917 and given a temporary leave of absence to resume his duties as VP of the New York Central Railroad.^[1]
• William was elected as president of the New York Central Railroad in early 1918 and did not return to active duty in the US Navy^[1]
• William published A trip through Italy, Sicily, Tunisia, Algeria and southern France in 1918.
• William was promoted to lieutenant commander in the US Naval Reserve on 17 May 1921 and remained in the reserves until his was transferred to the Honorary Retired List on 1 January 1941 for a physical disability.^[1]
• William was an avid collector of natural history and marine specimens. He once engaged a curator from the American Museum of Natural History to participate in a scientific voyage to the Galapagos Islands.
• William had the Alva built in 1931. He donated the ship to the U.S. Navy on 4 November 1941. The Alva was turned into a gunship and commissioned as the USS Plymouth (PG-57) on 29 December 1941.

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13} Wikipedia contributors, ‘William Kissam Vanderbilt II’, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 17 November 2015, 01:39 UTC, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kissam_Vanderbilt_II> [accessed 19 March 2016]
2. ↑ John Morgan Bullard, The Rotches; (New Bedford, Cabinet Press, 1947) p. 433-434. [Copy available at (https://archive.org/details/rotchesbull00bull) or (http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/005693070).]
3. ↑ Find A Grave contributors, Memorial page for William Kissam Vanderbilt, II (1878-1944), Find A Grave: Memorial No. 6598347, Jul 11, 2002.<http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=6598347>[accessed 30 March 2016]
4. ↑ ^{4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3} Wikipedia contributors, ‘Vanderbilt houses’, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 9 March 2016, 10:10 UTC, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanderbilt_houses> [accessed 29 March 2016]

"New York, New York City Municipal Deaths, 1795-1949", database, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:2WT3-RBT : 3 June 2020), William K. Vanderbilt in entry for William Kissam Vanderbilt, 1944.

"New York Marriages, 1686-1980", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:F67S-W3P : 21 January 2020), William Vanderbilt in entry for William Kissan Vanderbilt, 1899.

Wikidata: Item Q2299910