er to these men land and water grants before that time
municipally owned--grants now having a present incalculable value.[162]

As was the case with John Jacob Astor, the fortune of the Goelets was
derived from a mixture of commerce, banking and ownership of land.
Profits from trade went toward buying more land, and in providing part
of corrupt funds with which the Legislature of New York was bribed into
granting banking charters, exemptions and other special laws. These
various factors were intertwined; the profits from one line of property
were used in buying up other forms and thus on, reversely and
comminglingly. Peter had two sons; Peter P., and Robert R. Goelet. These
two sons, with an eye for the advantageous, married daughters of Thomas
Buchanan, a rich Scotch merchant of New York City, and for a time a
director of the United States Bank. The result was that when their
father died, they not only inherited a large business and a very
considerable stretch of real estate, but, by means of their money and
marriage, were powerful dignitaries in the directing of some of the
richest and most despotic banks. Peter P. Goelet was for several years
one of the directors of the Bank of New York, and both brothers
benefited by the corrupt control of the United States Bank, and were
principals among the founders of the Chemical Bank.

These brothers had set out with an iron determination to build up the
largest fortune they could, and they allowed no obstacles to hinder
them. When fraud was necessary they, like the bulk of their class,
unhesitatingly used it. In getting their charter for the notorious
Chemical Bank, they bribed members of the Legislature with the same
phlegmatic serenity that they would put through an ordinary business
transaction. This bank, as we have brought out previously, was chartered
after a sufficient number of members of the Legislature had been bribed
with $50,000 in stock and a large sum of money. Yet now that this bank
is one of the richest and most powerful institutions in the United
States, and especially as the criminal nature of its origin is unknown
except to the historic delver, the Goelets mention the connection of
their ancestors with it as a matter of great and just pride. In a
voluminous biography giving the genealogies of the rich families of New
York--material which was supplied and perhaps written by the families
themselves--this boast occurs in the chapter devoted to the Goelets:
"Th