Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1794, in New York City, to James Jacobus Roosevelt and Maria Helen Van Schaack. He was the last full-blooded Dutch Roosevelt of his line. His great-grandfather was Johannes Roosevelt, the founder of the Oyster Bay branch of the Roosevelt family. Through his grandfather Cornelius Van Schaack Jr., he was a grandnephew of Peter van Schaack and great-great-grandson of Maria Schuyler from the Schuyler family. Through Maria, he was a great-great-great-grandnephew of Dutch-American settler Philip Pieterse Schuyler and a great-great-great-grandson of David Pieterse Schuyler. Cornelius's younger brother, James John Roosevelt, served as a United States Congressman from New York from 1841 until 1843. He attended Columbia College but academic life did not suit him, and he did not graduate.
Career
In 1818, after leaving college, he became his father's partner in importing hardware. "Economy is my doctrine at all times," he once said, "at all events till I become, if it is to be so, a man of fortune." At his insistence, the focus of the business changed from hardware to plate glass. After his father's death in 1840, he inherited a large fortune, and was one of the five richest men in New York City. He continued to work in the business until his retirement in 1865. In the Panic of 1837, he bought many lots in Manhattan for building. In 1844, when New York Chemical Manufacturing Company's original charter expired, the chemical company was liquidated and was reincorporated as a bank only, becoming the Chemical Bank of New York in 1844. Roosevelt was among the bank's first directors under its new charter along with John D. Wolfe, Isaac Platt and Bradish Johnson, as well as the bank's president John Q. Jones. The company sold all remaining inventories from the chemical division as well as real estate holdings by 1851 and later became the present dayChase Bank.
Personal life
On October 9, 1821, he married Margaret Barnhill, a daughter of Robert Craig Barnhill and Elizabeth Potts. Margaret was a descendant of English and Irish Quakers as well as a descendant of Thomas Pott, of Wales. Together, Cornelius and Margaret had six sons: Silas Weir Roosevelt, James Alfred Roosevelt, Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt, Jr., Robert Barnhill Roosevelt, Theodore "Thee" Roosevelt, Sr., and William Wallace Roosevelt. When each of his sons married, he gifted them houses in New York. On July 17, 1871, Cornelius died at his home in Oyster Bay, New York. The New York Times memorialized him as a "merchant of the old school". His estate was valued at between $3 million and $7 million.
