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
William Waldorf Astor his collection of statuary and ornaments. In 1906 he gave his eldest son Waldorf Astor and his new daughter-in-law, Nancy Witcher Langhorne, the Cliveden estate as a wedding present. In 1908, he opened The Waldorf Hilton, London in London's West End, to establish an American-style hotel in England. Having become a British subject in 1899, Astor became interested in gaining English social distinction. Among the charities benefited by his gifts were The Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street (to which he gave $250,000 in 1903); University College, London (including a gift of £20,000 in 1902 for professorships); the Cancer