were the parents of our millionaire. They had four sons: George Peter
Astor, born in 1752; Henry Astor, born in 1754; John Melchior Astor,
born in 1759; and John Jacob Astor, born July 17, 1763. Each of these
sons made haste to fly from the privations and contentions of their
home as soon as they were old enough; and, what is more remarkable,
each of them had a cast of character precisely the opposite of their
thriftless father. They were all saving, industrious, temperate, and
enterprising, and all of them became prosperous men at an early period
of their career. They were all duly instructed in their father's
trade; each in turn carried about the streets of Waldorf the basket of
meat, and accompanied the father in his harvest slaughtering tours.
Jovial Jacob, we are told, gloried in being a butcher, but three of
his sons, much to his disgust, manifested a repugnance to it, which
was one of the causes of their flight from the parental nest. The
eldest, who was the first to go, made his way to London, where an
uncle was established in business as a maker of musical instruments.
Astor and Broadwood was the name of the firm, a house that still
exists under the title of Broadwood and Co., one of the most noted
makers of pianos in England. In his uncle's manufactory George Astor
served an apprenticeship, and became at length a partner in the firm.
Henry Astor went next. He alone of his father's sons took to his
father's trade. It used to be thrown in his teeth, when he was a
thriving butcher in the city of New York, that he had come over to
America as a private in the Hessian army. This may only have been the
groundless taunt of an envious rival. It is certain, however, that he
was a butcher in New York when it was a British post during the
revolutionary war, and, remaining after the evacuation, made a large
fortune in his business. The third son, John Melchior Astor, found
employment in Germany, and arrived, at length, at the profitable post
of steward to a nobleman's estate.
Abandoned thus by his three brothers, John Jacob Astor had to endure
for some years a most cheerless and miserable lot. He lost his mother,
too, from whom he had derived all that was good in his character and
most of the happiness of his childhood. A step-mother replaced her,
"who loved not Jacob," nor John Jacob. The father, still devoted to
pleasure, quarrelled so bitterly with his new wife, that his son was
often glad to escape to the house of a schoolfellow (living in 1854),
where he would pass the night in a garret or outhouse, thankfully
accepting for his supper a crust of dry bread, and returning the next
morning to assist in the slaughter-house or carry out the meat. It was
not often that he had enough to eat; his clothes were of the poorest
description; and, as to money, he absolutely had none of it. The
unhappiness of his home and the misconduct of his father made him
ashamed to join in the sports of the village boys; and he passed much
of his leisure alone, brooding over the unhappiness of his lot. The
family increased, but not its income. It is recorded of him that he
tended his little sisters with care and fondness, and sought in all
ways to lessen the dislike and ill-humor of his step-mother.
It is not hardship, however, that enervates a lad. It is indulgence
and luxury that do that. He grew a stout, healthy, tough, and patient
boy, diligent and skilful in the discharge of his duty, often
supplying the place of his father absent in merry-making. If, in later
life, he overvalued money, it should not be forgotten that few men
have had a harder experience of the want of money at the age when
character is forming.
The bitterest lot has its alleviations. Sometimes a letter would reach
him from over the sea, telling of the good fortune of a brother in a
distant land. In his old age he used to boast that in his boyhood he
walked forty-five miles in one day for the sole purpose of getting a
letter that had arrived from England or America. The Astors have
always been noted for the strength of their family affection. Our
millionaire forgot much that he ought to have remembered, but he was
not remiss in fulfilling the obligations of kindred.
It appears, too, that he was fortunate in having a better schoolmaster
than could generally be found at that day in a village school of
Germany. Valentine Jeune was his name, a French Protestant, whose
parents had fled from their country during the reign of Louis XIV. He
was an active and sympathetic teacher, and bestowed unusual pains upon
the boy, partly because he pitied his unhappy situation, and partly
because of his aptitude to learn. Nevertheless, the school routine of
those days was extremely limited. To read and write, to cipher as far
as the Rule of Three, to learn the Catechism by heart, and to sing the
Church Hymns "so that the windows should rattle,"--these were the sole
accomplishments of even the best pupils of Valentine Jeune. Baden was
then under the rule of a Catholic family. It was a saying in Waldorf
that no man could be appointed a swineherd who was not a Catholic, and
that if a mayoralty were vacant the swineherd must have the place if
there were no other Catholic in the town. Hence it was that the line
which separated the Protestant minority from the Catholic majority was
sharply defined, and the Protestant children were the more thoroughly
indoctrinated. Rev. John Philip Steiner, the Protestant pastor of
Waldorf, a learned and faithful minister, was as punctilious in
requiring from the children the thorough learning of the Catechism as
a German sergeant was in exacting all the niceties of the parade.
Young Astor became, therefore, a very decided Protestant; he lived and
died a member of the Church in which he was born.
The great day in the life of a German child is that of his
confirmation, which usually occurs in his fourteenth year. The
ceremony, which was performed at Waldorf every two years, was a
festival at once solemn and joyous. The children, long prepared
beforehand by the joint labors of minister, schoolmaster, and parents,
walk in procession to the church, the girls in white, the boys in
their best clothes, and there, after the requisite examinations, the
rite is performed, and the Sacrament is administered. The day
concludes with festivity. Confirmation also is the point of division
between childhood and youth,--between absolute dependence and the
beginning of responsibility. After confirmation, the boys of a German
peasant take their place in life as apprentices or as servants; and
the girls, unless their services are required at home, are placed in
situations. Childhood ends, maturity begins, when the child has tasted
for the first time the bread and wine of the Communion. Whether a boy
then becomes an apprentice or a servant depends upon whether his
parents have been provident enough to save a sum of money sufficient
to pay the usual premium required by a master as compensation for his
trouble in teaching his trade. This premium varied at that day from
fifty dollars to two hundred, according to the difficulty and
respectability of the vocation. A carpenter or a blacksmith might be
satisfied with a premium of sixty or seventy dollars, while a
cabinet-maker would demand a hundred, and a musical instrument maker
or a clock-maker two hundred.
On Palm Sunday, 1777, when he was about fourteen years of age, John
Jacob Astor was confirmed. He then consulted his father upon his
future. Money to apprentice him there was none in the paternal
coffers. The trade of butcher he knew and disliked. Nor was he
inclined to accept as his destiny for life the condition of servant or
laborer. The father, who thought the occupation of butcher one of the
best in the world, and who needed the help of his son, particularly in
the approaching season of harvest, paid no heed to the entreaties of
the lad, who saw himself condemned without hope to a business which he
loathed, and to labor at it without reward.
A deep discontent settled upon him. The tidings of the good fortune of
his brothers inflamed his desire to seek his fortune in the world. The
news of the Revolutionary War, which drew all eyes upon America, and
in which the people of all lands sympathized with the struggling
colonies, had its effect upon him. He began to long for the "New
Land," as the Germans then styled America; and it is believed in
Waldorf that soon after the capture of Burgoyne had spread abroad a
confidence in the final success of the colonists, the youth formed the
secret determination to emigrate to America. Nevertheless, he had to
wait three miserable years longer, until the surrender of Cornwallis
made it certain that America was to be free, before he was able to
enter upon the gratification of his desire.
In getting to America, he displayed the same sagacity in adapting
means to ends that distinguished him during his business career in New
York. Money he had never had in his life, beyond a few silver coins of
the smallest denomination. His father had none to give him, even if he
had been inclined to do so. It was only when the lad was evidently
resolved to go that he gave a slow, reluctant consent to his
departure. Waldorf is nearly three hundred miles from the seaport in
Holland most convenient for his purpose. Despite the difficulties,
this penniless youth formed the resolution of going down the Rhine to
Holland, there taking ship for London, where he would join his
brother, and, while earning money for his passage to America, learn
the language of the country to which he was destined. It appears that
he dreaded more the difficulties of the English tongue than he did
those of the long and expensive journey; but he was resolved not to
sail for America until he had acquired the language, and saved a
little money beyond the expenses of the voyage. It appears, also, that
there prevailed in Baden the belief that Americans were exceedingly
selfish and inhospitable, and regarded the poor emigrant only in the
light of prey. John Jacob was determined not to land among such a
people without the means of understanding their tricks and paying his
way. In all ways, too, he endeavored to get a knowledge of the country
to which he was going.
With a small bundle of clothes hung over his shoulder upon a stick,
with a crown or two in his pocket, he said the last farewell to his
father and his friends, and set out on foot for the Rhine, a few miles
distant. Valentine Jeune, his old schoolmaster, said, as the lad was
lost to view: "I am not afraid of Jacob; he '11 get through the world.
He has a clear head and everything right behind the ears." He was then
a stout, strong lad of nearly seventeen, exceedingly well made, though
slightly undersized, and he had a clear, composed, intelligent look in
the eyes, which seemed to ratify the prediction of the schoolmaster.
He strode manfully out of town, with tears in his eyes and a sob in
his throat,--for he loved his father, his friends, and his native
village, though his lot there had been forlorn enough. While still in
sight of Waldorf, he sat down under a tree and thought of the future
before him and the friends he had left. He there, as he used to relate
in after-life, made three resolutions: to be honest, to be
industrious, and not to gamble,--excellent resolutions, as far as they
go. Having sat awhile under the tree, he took up his bundle and
resumed his journey with better heart.
It was by no means the intention of this sagacious youth to walk all
the way to the sea-coast. There was a much more convenient way at that
time of accomplishing the distance, even to a young man with only two
dollars in his pocket. The Black Forest is partly in Astor's native
Baden. The rafts of timber cut in the Black Forest, instead of
floating down the Rhine in the manner practised in America, used to be
rowed by sixty or eighty men each, who were paid high wages, as the
labor was severe.
Large numbers of stalwart emigrants availed themselves of this mode of
getting from the interior to the sea-coast, by which they earned their
subsistence on the way and about ten dollars in money. The tradition
in Waldorf is, that young Astor worked his passage down the Rhine, and
earned his passage-money to England as an oarsman on one of these
rafts. Hard as the labor was, the oarsmen had a merry time of it,
cheering their toil with jest and song by night and day. On the
fourteenth day after leaving home, our youth found himself at a Dutch
seaport, with a larger sum of money than he had ever before possessed.
He took passage for London, where he landed a few days after, in total
ignorance of the place and the language. His brother welcomed him with
German warmth, and assisted him to procure employment,--probably in
the flute and piano manufactory of Astor and Broadwood.
As the foregoing brief account of the early life of John Jacob Astor
differs essentially from any previously published in the United
States, it is proper that the reader should be informed of the sources
whence we have derived information so novel and unexpected. The
principal source is a small biography of Astor published in Germany
about ten years ago, written by a native of Baden, a Lutheran
clergyman, who gathered his material in Waldorf, where were then
living a few aged persons who remembered Astor when he was a sad and
solitary lad in his father's disorderly house. The statements of this
little book are confirmed by what some of the surviving friends and
descendants of Mr. Astor in New York remember of his own conversation
respecting his early days. He seldom spoke of his life in Germany,
though he remembered his native place with fondness, revisited it in
the time of his prosperity, pensioned his father, and forgot not
Waldorf in his will; but the little that he did say of his youthful
years accords with the curious narrative in the work to which we have
alluded. We believe the reader may rely on our story as being
essentially true.
Astor brought to London, according to our quaint Lutheran, "a pious,
true, and godly spirit, a clear understanding, a sound youthful
elbow-grease, and the wish to put it to good use." During the two
years of his residence in the British metropolis, he strove most
assiduously for three objects: 1. To save money; 2. To acquire the
English language; 3. To get information respecting America. Much to
his relief and gratification, he found the acquisition of the language
to be the least of his difficulties. Working in a shop with English
mechanics, and having few German friends, he was generally dependent
upon the language of the country for the communication of his desires;
and he was as much surprised as delighted to find how many points of
similarity there were between the two languages. In about six weeks,
he used to say, he could make himself understood a little in English,
and long before he left London he could speak it fluently. He never
learned to write English correctly in his life, nor could he ever
speak it without a decided German accent; but he could always express
his meaning with simplicity and force, both orally and in writing.
Trustworthy information respecting America, in the absence of maps,
gazetteers, and books of travel, was more difficult to procure. The
ordinary Englishman of that day regarded America with horror or
contempt as perverse and rebellious colonies, making a great to-do
about a paltry tax, and giving "the best of kings" a world of trouble
for nothing. He probably heard little of the thundering eloquence with
which Fox, Pitt, Burke, and Sheridan were nightly defending the
American cause in the House of Commons, and assailing the infatuation
of the Government in prosecuting a hopeless war. As often, however, as
our youth met with any one who had been in America, he plied him with
questions, and occasionally he heard from his brother in New York.
Henry Astor was already established, as a butcher on his own account,
wheeling home in a wheelbarrow from Bull's Head his slender purchases
of sheep and calves. But the great difficulty of John Jacob in London
was the accumulation of money. Having no trade, his wages were
necessarily small. Though he rose with the lark, and was at work as
early as five in the morning,--though he labored with all his might,
and saved every farthing that he could spare,--it was two years before
he had saved enough for his purpose. In September, 1783, he possessed
a good suit of Sunday clothes, in the English style, and about fifteen
English guineas,--the total result of two years of unremitting toil
and most pinching economy; and here again charity requires the remark
that if Astor the millionaire carried the virtue of economy to an
extreme, it was Astor the struggling youth in a strange land who
learned the value of money.
In that month of September, 1783, the news reached London that Dr.
Franklin and his associates in Paris, after two years of negotiation,
had signed the definitive treaty which completed the independence of
the United States. Franklin had been in the habit of predicting that
as soon as America had become an independent nation, the best blood in
Europe, and some of the finest fortunes, would hasten to seek a career
or an asylum in the New World. Perhaps he would have hardly recognized
the emigration of this poor German youth as part of the fulfilment of
his prophecy. Nevertheless, the news of the conclusion of the treaty
had no sooner reached England than young Astor, then twenty years old,
began to prepare for his departure for the "New Land," and in November
he embarked for Baltimore. He paid five of his guineas for a passage
in the steerage, which entitled him to sailors' fare of salt beef and
biscuit. He invested part of his remaining capital in seven flutes,
and carried the rest, about five pounds sterling, in the form of
money.
America gave a cold welcome to the young emigrant. The winter of
1783-4 was one of the celebrated severe winters on both sides of the
ocean. November gales and December storms wreaked all their fury upon
the ship, retarding its progress so long that January arrived before
she had reached Chesapeake Bay. Floating ice filled the bay as far as
the eye could reach, and a January storm drove the ship among the
masses with such force, that she was in danger of being broken to
pieces. It was on one of those days of peril and consternation, that
young Astor appeared on deck in his best clothes, and on being asked
the reason of this strange proceeding, said that if he escaped with
life he should save his best clothes, and if he lost it his clothes
would be of no further use to him. Tradition further reports that he,
a steerage passenger, ventured one day to come upon the quarter-deck,
when the captain roughly ordered him forward. Tradition adds that that
very captain, twenty years after, commanded a ship owned by the
steerage passenger. When the ship was within a day's sail of her port
the wind died away, the cold increased, and the next morning beheld
the vessel hard and fast in a sea of ice. For two whole months she
remained immovable. Provisions gave out. The passengers were only
relieved when the ice extended to the shore, and became strong enough
to afford communication with other ships and with the coasts of the
bay. Some of the passengers made their way to the shore, and travelled
by land to their homes; but this resource was not within the means of
our young adventurer, and he was obliged to stick to the ship.
Fortune is an obsequious jade, that favors the strong and turns her
back upon the weak. This exasperating delay of two months was the
means of putting young Astor upon the shortest and easiest road to
fortune that the continent of America then afforded to a poor man.
Among his fellow-passengers there was one German, with whom he made
acquaintance on the voyage, and with whom he continually associated
during the detention of the winter. They told each other their past
history, their present plans, their future hopes. The stranger
informed young Astor that he too had emigrated to America, a few years
before, without friends or money; that he had soon managed to get into
the business of buying furs of the Indians, and of the boatmen coming
to New York from the river settlements; that at length he had embarked
all his capital in skins, and had taken them himself to England in a
returning transport, where he had sold them to great advantage, and
had invested the proceeds in toys and trinkets, with which to continue
his trade in the wilderness. He strongly advised Astor to follow his
example. He told him the prices of the various skins in America, and
the prices they commanded in London. With German friendliness he
imparted to him the secrets of the craft: told him where to buy, how
to pack, transport, and preserve the skins; the names of the principal
dealers in New York, Montreal, and London; and the season of the year
when the skins were most abundant. All this was interesting to the
young man; but he asked his friend how it was possible to begin such a
business without capital. The stranger told him that no great capital
was required for a beginning. With a basket of toys, or even of cakes,
he said, a man could buy valuable skins on the wharves and in the
markets of New York, which could be sold with some profit to New York
furriers. But the grand object was to establish a connection with a
house in London, where furs brought four or five times their value in
America. In short, John Jacob Astor determined to lose no time after
reaching New York, in trying his hand at this profitable traffic.
The ice broke up in March. The ship made its way to Baltimore, and the
two friends travelled together to New York. The detention in the ice
and the journey to New York almost exhausted Astor's purse. He arrived
in this city, where now his estate is valued at forty millions, with
little more than his seven German flutes, and a long German head full
of available knowledge and quiet determination. He went straight to
the humble abode of his brother Henry, a kindly, generous, jovial
soul, who gave him a truly fraternal welcome, and received with
hospitable warmth the companion of his voyage.
Henry Astor's prosperity had been temporarily checked by the
evacuation of New York, which had occurred five months before, and
which had deprived the tradesmen of the city of their best customers.
It was not only the British army that had left the city in November,
1783, but a host of British officials and old Tory families as well;
while the new-comers were Whigs, whom seven years of war had
impoverished, and young adventurers who had still their career to
make. During the Revolution, Henry Astor had speculated occasionally
in cattle captured from the farmers of Westchester, which were sold at
auction at Bull's Head, and he had advanced from a wheelbarrow to the
ownership of a horse. An advertisement informs us that, about the time
of his brother's arrival, this horse was stolen, with saddle and
bridle, and that the owner offered three guineas reward for the
recovery of the property; but that "for the thief, horse, saddle, and
bridle, ten guineas would be paid." A month after, we find him
becoming a citizen of the United States, and soon he began to share in
the returning prosperity of the city.