John Jacob Astor IV IV was born on July 13, 1864 at his parents' country estate Ferncliff in Rhinebeck, New York. He was the youngest of five children and only son of businessman, collector, and race horse breeder/owner William Backhouse Astor, Jr. and socialite Caroline Webster "Lina" Schermerhorn. His four elder sisters were Emily, Helen, Charlotte, and Caroline ("Carrie"). He was a great-grandson of fur-trader John Jacob Astor and Sarah Cox Todd, whose fortune made the Astor family one of the wealthiest in the United States. Astor's paternal grandfather William Backhouse Astor, Sr. was a prominent real estate businessman. Through his paternal grandmother, Margaret
Brooke Astor with her associate Billy Baldwin, decorated the Marshalls' apartment at 1 Gracie Square in New York City. In October 1953, 11 months after Charles Marshall's death, she married her third and final husband, William Vincent Astor (1891–1959), the chairman of the board of "Newsweek" magazine and the last notably rich American member of the famous Astor family. Vincent was the son of "RMS Titanic" victim John Jacob "Jack" Astor IV (1864–1912) and socialite Ava Lowle Willing (1868–1958), he had been married and divorced twice before, was childless, and was known to have a difficult personality. "He had a dreadful childhood,