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, 1st Baron Astor of Hever educated at Eton College and at New College, Oxford. Upon his father's death in 1919, John Jacob V inherited Hever Castle near Edenbridge, Kent, where he lived the life of an English country gentleman. John Jacob Astor V represented Great Britain in rackets at the 1908 Summer Olympics, winning the gold medal in the men's doubles competition together with Vane Pennell, and winning bronze in the men's singles event. Astor had been the British Public Schools rackets champion in 1904–05, and in the same year as his Olympic competition he played singles and doubles in the British Army rackets championships.