Born on October 15, 1892 in Ft. Bragg, CA, Cornelius Vander Starr (also known as Neil Starr) was the son of a railroad engineer of Dutch decent, whom he was named after. He briefly attended college at the University of California, Berkeley in 1910-11, enlisted in the U.S. Army as a private in 1917-18, and worked for a short time for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company in Yokohama, Japan, before setting out on his own in Shanghai, China. During his 76-year life-span C.V. Starr, the founder of the predecessor companies of American International Group, Inc. (AIG), had a diversified career as a journalist, a lawyer, an international businessman, a publisher and a philanthropist.
Exhibit Curator
Ria Koopmans-de Bruijn