John Jacob Astor IV Alida Rebecca Armstrong, Astor was also a great-grandson of Senator John Armstrong, Jr. and Alida Livingston of the Livingston family. His maternal grandparents were Abraham Schermerhorn, a wealthy merchant, and socialite Helen Van Courtlandt White. He was also a nephew of financier and philanthropist John Jacob Astor III, and grandnephew of occasional poet John Jacob Astor, Jr. His sister Helen's husband was diplomat James Roosevelt "Rosey" Roosevelt, half-brother of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the Roosevelt family. Another sister, Carrie, a noted philanthropist, was the wife of Marshall Orme Wilson (brother of banker Richard Thornton Wilson, Jr. and socialite Grace
John Jacob Astor IV (née Wilson) Vanderbilt). Astor was also a first cousin of William Waldorf Astor, 1st Viscount Astor, with whom his mother had a notorious feud resulting in William's removal to England. Astor attended St Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire and later attended Harvard College. Astor went by the name "Jack". His ungainly appearance and the perception that he was an aimless dilettante led one newspaper to give him the name "Jack Ass-tor". Among Astor's accomplishments was "A Journey in Other Worlds" (1894), a science fiction novel about life in the year 2000 on the planets Saturn and Jupiter. He also