American dynasty born with the death of John Jacob Astor

When John Jacob Astor died people thought he was miserly because he left only a small portion of his fortune to the community

A portrait of tycoon John Jacob Astor circa 1825 in a painting by John Wesley Jarvis.

When John Jacob Astor died 170 years ago today, he was the wealthiest man in the United States. A great patron of the arts in his lifetime, he was expected to make some generous gifts out of his vast fortune, estimated between $8 million and $30 million.

But there was a public outcry when it was discovered he had bestowed just $400,000 to build what is now part of the New York Public Library. Smaller amounts were given to build an institution for the poor, one for the blind and an orphanage in Walldorf, the town in what is today Germany, where he was born. But the bulk of his fortune stayed with his family, who would be the cream of New York society for more than a century.

The library built with the $400,000 bequest from John Jacob Astor. It later became part of the New York Public Library.

When Astor died, on March 29, 1848, his oldest son, John Jacob Jr, had suffered some kind of mental breakdown that left him unable to run the family empire. Instead it was his younger brother William Backhouse Astor who inherited the family fortune and would go on to double it.

The founding member of the Astor dynasty was born Johann Jakob Astor in 1763 in Walldorf, near Heidelberg, in the Electoral Palatinate (what is today the German state of Baden-Wurttemberg). His father was a butcher but he and his brother went to England to work for an uncle who made musical instruments.

In 1783 he migrated to the US, where he became involved in fur trading. In 1786 he opened his own fur goods shop in New York. His business was boosted when the US signed the Jay Treaty with England, which opened up markets in areas of America still under British control.

By 1800 he was one of the wealthiest and most influential fur traders in America.

In 1808 he founded the American Fur Company. An attempt to establish a network of trading posts in Oregon was thwarted by the War of 1812, but the fort he built there became the basis of the town of Astoria. Despite his fur trade being curtailed by the war, he did well out of government bonds he bought during the war and after the war was helped by protectionist laws that kept out competitive foreign furs.

At the same time he was investing in real estate, speculating on property in New York. By 1834 he had sold his fur company and was making his fortune from renting the land and buildings that he had accumulated, rather than actually building anything himself.

His son John Jr had shown signs of being brilliant as a young
man, but Astor may have demanded too much from his oldest and while studying at the University of Geneva he had his breakdown.
Astor pinned his hopes on his next-born son William.

William Backhouse Astor, circa 1850, inherited his father, John Jacob Astor's, fortune and doubled it.

Astor retired in the 1840s and was a patron of the arts when he died.

Born William Backhouse Astor in 1792, William proved to be as canny a real estate investor as his father, but unlike his father, was not averse to undertaking the development himself. He also improved his tenement buildings after accusations of being a slum landlord. He also greatly expanded the library his father had founded with his bequest.

When William died in 1875 the family fortune stood at about
$50 million. William’s son, John Jacob Astor III, already a formidable businessman in his own right, took over running the empire and increased it to about $100 million, while still being generous in his gifts to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Trinity Church and the Astor Library.

His son William Waldorf Astor, best known for building the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York, went into politics for a time but later moved to England where he started a new branch of the Astor family, becoming 1st Viscount Astor of Hever Castle.

William Backhouse Astor’s other son, William Jr, was another successful businessman, who was also into horse breeding and yachting. His son was John Jacob “Jack” Astor IV born in 1863, who also had a gift for real estate investment, but had a range of other interests.

He served in the Spanish-American War, patented several inventions and helped develop a turbine engine. He also wrote a science fiction novel, A Journey In Other Worlds, published in 1894 speculating about life on other planets in the year 2000.

Colonel John Jacob Astor IV died in the sinking of the Titanic. His wife Madeleine survived and later gave birth to a son, John Jacob VI.

He would become one of the most famous Astors simply for how he died. In 1911 he married his second wife, Madeleine, and the couple were travelling overseas when she became pregnant.

Jack Astor booked passage on the Titanic so that she could have her baby in the US. He died when the ship sank in April 1912 but Madeleine survived and gave birth to their son, John Jacob Astor VI, in August that year.

Jack Astor had left the bulk of his fortune to Vincent Astor, his son by his first wife, Ava, which meant John Jacob VI had to fight legal battles to claim a greater share of the fortune.

Originally published as American dynasty born with the death of John Jacob Astor