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
John Jacob Astor III and Sarah Cox Todd (1761–1842). His maternal grandparents were Senator John Armstrong, Jr. (1758–1843) and Alida Livingston (1761–1822) of the Livingston family. He was also a nephew of occasional poet John Jacob Astor, Jr. (1791–1869). John Astor studied at Columbia University and the University of Göttingen, following which he went to Harvard Law School. He practiced law for a year, to qualify for assisting in the management of his family's immense estate, one half of which later descended to him. It was based on his paternal grandfather's achieving a monopoly in the lucrative fur trade in the early nineteenth century.