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
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