DeLancey Astor Kane the mother of Peter Augustus Jay), and Sybil Kent Kane. He was the grandson of Walter Langdon and Dorothea (née Astor) Langdon and the great-grandson of John Jacob Astor. He was a cousin of Lt. Col. John Jacob Astor IV. His paternal lineage descended from John O'Kane who emigrated to the country in 1752 from County Londonderry and Antrim, Ireland. During the American Revolutionary War, O'Kane (who dropped the "'O" once in America) was living at Sharyvogne, his estate in Dutchess County, which was confiscated after the War due to his Loyalist times. His eldest son, John Jr., stayed and
William Waldorf Astor Hotel in 1897, and the complex became the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. In 1891 he fell into a family feud with socialite Caroline Webster "Lina" Schermerhorn (1830–1908), wife of Willy's uncle businessman William Backhouse Astor, Jr. (1829–1892) and mother of rival cousin Jack, over who should be the "official Mrs. Astor". After Lina won the argument, Willy moved with his wife and children to England. He rented Lansdowne House in London until 1893. That year he purchased a country estate at Cliveden-on-Thames in Taplow, Buckinghamshire from the Duke of Westminster. To disappear from public view, in the summer of 1892, Astor faked