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
John Jacob Astor III the street address of the Empire State Building. Later, he had an imposing vacation home, "Beaulieu", built in Newport, Rhode Island, and he had a country estate, Nuits, at Ardsley-on-Hudson in Irvington, New York. Astor increasingly visited London in his later years. His son moved there permanently with his family in 1891 and became a citizen in 1899 where he was later made a peer. John Jacob Astor III died on February 22, 1890 and was interred in the Trinity Church Cemetery in Manhattan. John Jacob Astor III John Jacob Astor III (June 10, 1822 – February 22, 1890) was