John Jacob Astor

For other people named John Jacob Astor, see John Jacob Astor (disambiguation).

John Jacob Astor
Oil painting by Gilbert Stuart, 1794
Born	Johann Jacob Astor July 17, 1763(1763-07-17) Walldorf, Palatinate, Germany
Died	March 29, 1848(1848-03-29) (aged 84) Manhattan, New York, U.S.
Resting place	Trinity Churchyard Cemetery, Manhattan
Nationality	German; U.S. from 1789
Occupation	Businessman, investor
Known for	First multi-millionaire in the United States
Net worth	Estimated $110.1 billion in 2006 dollars US$20 million at the time of his death (approximately 1/107th of US GNP)
Religion	Reformed
Spouse	Sarah Todd Astor
Children	Magdalen Astor Bristed John Jacob Astor II William Backhouse Astor, Sr. Dorothee Astor Langdon Eliza Astor von Rumpff
Parents	Johann Jacob and Magdalena Astor
Relatives	John Henry Astor (elder brother) George Astor (eldest brother)
Signature

John Jacob Astor (July 17, 1763 – March 29, 1848), born Johann Jakob Astor, was a German-American business magnate and investor who was the first prominent member of the Astor family and the first multi-millionaire in the United States. He was the creator of the first trust in America.

He went to the United States following the American Revolutionary War and built a fur-trading empire that extended to the Great Lakes region and Canada, and later expanded into the American West and Pacific coast. He also got involved in smuggling opium. In the early 19th century he diversified into New York City real estate and later became a famed patron of the arts.

Biography

Early life

John Jacob Astor's ancestors were Waldensian refugees from Savoy, and Astor remained a member of the Reformed church throughout his life. He was born in Walldorf, near Heidelberg in the old Palatinate which became part of the Duchy of Baden in 1803, Germany (now in Rhein-Neckar-Kreis in the state of Baden-Württemberg). His father, Johann Jacob Astor (July 7, 1724-April 18, 1816), was a butcher. The son's career began with working in Germany as assistant in his father's business as a dairy salesman. In 1779 at age 16 he emigrated to London, where he learned English while working for his brother, George Astor, manufacturing musical instruments.

Astor arrived in the United States in March 1784, just after the end of the Revolutionary War. He traded furs with Indians and in the late 1780s started a fur goods shop in New York City. He also became the New York agent of his brother's musical instrument business.

Astor married Sarah Todd on September 19, 1785. Although she brought him a dowry of only $300, she possessed a frugal mind and a business judgment that he declared better than that of most merchants, and she assisted him in the practical details of his business.

Fortune from fur trade

Astor took advantage of the Jay Treaty between Great Britain and the United States in 1794, which opened new markets in Canada and the Great Lakes region. Then in London, Astor at once made a contract with the Northwest Company of Montreal and Quebec (then the magnate of the Canadian Northwest fur trade). He imported furs from Montreal to New York, and shipped them to all parts of Europe. By 1800 he had amassed almost a quarter of a million dollars, and had become one of the leading figures in the fur trade. In 1800, following the example of the Empress of China, the first American trading vessel to China, Astor traded furs, teas and sandalwood with Canton in China, and greatly benefited from it.

The U.S. Embargo Act in 1807, however, disrupted his import/export business. With the permission of President Thomas Jefferson, Astor established the American Fur Company on April 6, 1808. He later formed subsidiaries: the Pacific Fur Company, and the Southwest Fur Company (in which Canadians had a part), in order to control fur trading in the Columbia River and Great Lakes areas.

His Columbia River trading post at Fort Astoria (established in April 1811) was the first United States community on the Pacific coast. He financed the overland Astor Expedition in 1810–12 to reach the outpost. Members of the expedition were to discover South Pass, through which hundreds of thousands of settlers on the Oregon, California and Mormon trails passed through the Rocky Mountains.

Astor's fur trading ventures were again disrupted when the British captured his trading posts during the War of 1812. In 1816, he joined the opium smuggling trade. His American Fur Company purchased ten tons of Turkish opium, then shipped the contraband item to Canton on the packet ship Macedonian. Astor later left the China opium trade and sold solely to England.

Astor's business rebounded in 1817 after the U.S. Congress passed a protectionist law that barred foreign traders from U.S. territories. The American Fur Company came to dominate trading in the area around the Great Lakes. In 1822, Astor established the Astor House on Mackinac Island as headquarters for the reorganized American Fur Company, making the island a metropolis of the fur trade. A lengthy description based on documents, diaries etc. was given by Washington Irving in his travelogue Astoria. Astor's commercial connections extended over the entire globe, and his ships were found in every sea.

In 1804, Astor purchased from Aaron Burr what remained of a 99-year lease on property in Manhattan. At the time, Burr was serving as vice president under Thomas Jefferson and desperately needed the purchase price of $62,500. The lease was to run until 1866. Astor began subdividing the land into nearly 250 lots and subleased them. His conditions were that the tenant could do whatever they wish with the lots for twenty-one years, after which they must renew the lease or Astor would take back the lot.

Real estate and retirement

In the 1830s, John Jacob Astor foresaw that the next big boom would be the build-up of New York, which would soon emerge as one of the world’s greatest cities. Astor withdrew from the American Fur Company, as well as all his other ventures, and used the money to buy and develop large tracts of Manhattan real estate. Predicting the rapid growth northward on Manhattan Island, Astor purchased more and more land beyond the current city limits. Astor rarely built on his land, and instead let others pay rent to use it.

After retiring from his business, Astor spent the rest of his life as a patron of culture. He supported the ornithologist John James Audubon, the poet/writer Edgar Allan Poe, and the presidential campaign of Henry Clay.

Last will

At the time of his death in 1848, Astor was the wealthiest person in the United States, leaving an estate estimated to be worth at least $20 million. His estimated net worth, if calculated as a fraction of the U.S. gross domestic product at the time, would have been equivalent to $110.1 billion in 2006 U.S. dollars, making him the fourth richest person in American history. An estimate based on inflation from the legally set American gold standard rate of $21 per ounce in the 1850s would result in a much more conservative net worth of $1.272 billion in 2011 dollars.

In his will, he left $400,000 to build the Astor Library for the New York public (later consolidated with other libraries to form New York Public Library), and $50,000 for a poorhouse and orphanage in his German hometown, Walldorf. The Astorhaus is now a museum honoring the city's ancestor Johann Jakob Astor and a renowned festhall for marriages. Further Astor donated $25,000 to the German Society of the City of New York, whose chairman he was from 1837 until 1841. Also $30,000 were to be used for a professor's chair in German literature at Columbia University, but due to differences with the deanship this donation was erased from the testament.

Astor left the bulk of his fortune to his second son, William Backhouse Astor, Sr. His eldest son, John Jacob II, had a mental disability and Astor left enough money to care for him for the rest of his life.

John Jacob Astor is buried in the Trinity Churchyard Cemetery in the New York City borough of Manhattan because many members of his family were members of that church despite Astor remaining a member of the local Reformed congregation to his death. Herman Melville used Astor as a symbol of the earliest fortunes in New York in his novella Bartleby, the Scrivener.

The pair of marble lions that sit by the entrance of the New York Public Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street were originally named Leo Astor and Leo Lenox, after Astor and James Lenox, who founded the library. Then they were called Lord Astor and Lady Lenox (both lions are males). Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia renamed them "Patience" and "Fortitude" during the Great Depression.

In 1908, when the association football club FC Astoria Walldorf was formed in his town of birth, it was named Astoria in his and the family's honor.

Descendants

John Jacob Astor descendants

1. Magdalen Astor (1788–1832), married 1st 1807 Adrian Bentzon, married 2nd 1820 John Bristed (1778–1855), 3 children:
   1. John Jacob Astor Bentzon (1818–?)
   2. Sarah Bentzon
   3. Charles Astor Bristed (1820–1874) (1 son from the 1st, 1 son from the 2nd marriage), married 1st 1847 Laura Brevoort (d. 1861), married 2nd 1867 Grace Ashburner Sedgwick (1833–1897)
2. Sarah Astor (1790–1790) (died in infancy)
3. John Jacob Astor II (1791–1869) (no issue)
4. William Backhouse Astor, Sr. (1792–1875) president American Fur Company, married 1818 Margaret Rebecca Armstrong (1800–1872), 7 children:
   1. Emily Astor (1819–1841), married 1838 Samuel Ward, Jr. (1814–1884) (2 daughters)
   2. John Jacob Astor III (1823–1890), married 1846 Charlotte Augusta Gibbs (died 1887)
      1. William Waldorf Astor, 1st Viscount Astor
         1. John Jacob Astor, 1st Baron Astor of Hever
   3. Laura Eugenia Astor (1824–1902), married 1844 Franklin Hughes Delano (1813–1893) (no issue)
   4. Mary Alida Astor (1826–1881), married 1850 John Carey (1821–1881) (3 children)
   5. William Backhouse Astor, Jr. (1830–1892), married 1853 Caroline Webster Schermerhorn (1830–1908) (5 children)
   6. Henry Astor (1830–1918), married Malvina Dinehart (no issue)
   7. Sarah Astor (1832–1832) (no issue)
5. Dorothea Astor (1795–1874), married 1812 Walter Langdon (1788–1847), 9 children:
   1. Sarah Astor Langdon (1813–1895), married 1834 Jonkheer François Robert Boreel (1806–1869) (6 children)
   2. Sarah Sherburne Langdon (no issue)
   3. John Langdon (1816–1837) (no issue)
   4. Eliza Astor Langdon (1818–1896), married 1842 Matthew Wilks (1816–1899) (6 children)
   5. Louisa Dorothea Langdon (1820–1894), married 1841 (Oliver) DeLancey Kane (1816–1874) (8 children)
   6. Walter Langdon (1822–1894), married Catherine Livingston (1847–?) (no issue)
   7. Woodbury Langdon (1824–1867), married Helen Colford Jones (1824–1895) (1 son)
   8. Cecilia Langdon (1827–1906), married 1840 Johann von Nottbeck, Consul General of Russia (4 children)
   9. Eugene Langdon (1831–1866), married 1859 Harriet Lowndes (2 daughters)
6. Henry Astor (1797–1799) (died in infancy)
7. Eliza Astor (1801–1838), married 1825 Vincenz Graf von Rumpff (1789–1867) (no issue)
8. (son) Astor (1802–1802) (died in infancy)

See also

• Astor family
  • John Jacob Astor IV
  • John Jacob Astor VI
  • John Jacob Astor, 1st Baron Astor of Hever
  • Henry Astor
  • William Waldorf Astor
• Astoria, Oregon
• Astoria, Queens
• Astor Place (Manhattan)
• Astor Row
• List of most wealthy historical figures
• Waldorf-Astoria Hotel

Further reading

• Ebeling, Herbert C. (1998). Johann Jakob Astor zum 150. Todestag. Walldorf: Astor-Stiftung.
• Ebeling, Herbert C. (1998). Johann Jakob Astor - Ein Lebensbild. Walldorf: Astor-Stiftung ISBN 3-00-003749-7.
• Ebeling, Herbert C. (2004). W. O. Horn: Johann Jacob Astor - Ein Lebensbild aus dem Volke, für das Volk und seine Jugend. Walldorf: Astor-Stiftung ISBN 3-00-014021-2.
• Smith, Arthur Douglas Howden (1929). John Jacob Astor, Landlord Of New York. Philadelphia and London: J.B. Lippincott. 

External links

• John Jacob Astor Business Records at Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School
• The Waldorf Astoria Hotel
• The "Astorhaus" in Germany, now a museum
• German Society of the City of New York
• Astoria, Author Washington Irving full text (pdf)
• Frontline show
• Texts on Wikisource:
  • Reynolds, Francis J., ed. (1921) "Astor, John Jacob (merchant)" Collier's New Encyclopedia P. F. Collier & Son Company. Wikisource 
  • Rines, George Edwin (1920). "Astor, John Jacob (merchant)". Encyclopedia Americana. New York, Chicago: The Encyclopedia Americana Corporation. Wikisource 
  • "Astor, John Jacob". The New Student's Reference Work. Chicago: F. E. Compton and Co. 1914. 
  • "Astor, John Jacob". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911. 
  • James Wood (1907). "Astor, John Jacob". The Nuttall Encyclopædia. 
  • Gilman, Daniel Coit; Peck, Harry Thurston; Colby, Frank Moore (1905). "Astor, John Jacob (merchant)". New International Encyclopedia. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company. Wikisource 
  • "Astor, John Jacob". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1900. 
  • "Astor, John Jacob". The American Cyclopædia. 1879. 
  • "Astor, John Jacob". Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2 (9th ed.). 1878. 

Preceded by Unknown

Richest man in the United States ?–1848

Succeeded by William Backhouse Astor, Sr.