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
The Astor Orphan The Astor Orphan The Astor Orphan is a 2013 memoir by Alexandra Aldrich, a member of the Astor family. Alexandra Aldrich, a direct descendant to John Jacob Astor, recounts her childhood at Rokeby, a 43-room historic estate in Barrytown, New York. The family is land-rich but cash-poor. Her father is unemployed and her grandmother is an alcoholic. The book ends as she leaves for boarding school. The book was described by "Publishers Weekly" as a "sparklingly mischievous debut". In the "Chicago Tribune", Kevin Nance compared it to "Grey Gardens", adding that, "Aldrich delivers buckets of eccentricity." However, he argued that