THE INCEPTION OF THE ASTOR FORTUNE
The founder of the Astor fortune was John Jacob Astor, a butcher's son. He was born in Waldorf, Germany, on July 17, 1763. At the age of eighteen, according to traditional accounts, he went to London, where a brother, George Peter, was in the business of selling musical instruments. Two years later with "one good suit of Sunday clothes, seven flutes and five pounds sterling of money"1 he emigrated to America. Landing at Baltimore he proceeded to New York City.
Here he became an apprentice to George Dieterich, a baker at No. 351 Pearl street, for whom he peddled cakes, as was the custom. Walter Barrett insists that this was Astor's first occupation in New York. Later, Astor went into business for himself. "For a long time," says Barrett, "he peddled [fur] skins, and bought them where he could; and bartered cheap jewelry, etc., from the pack he carried on his back."2 Another story is that he got a job beating furs for $2 a week and board in the store of Robert Bowne, a New York merchant; that while in this place he showed great zest in quizzing the trappers who came in to sell furs, and that in this fashion he gained considerable knowledge of the fur animals. The story proceeds that as Bowne grew older he entrusted to Astor the task of making long and fatiguing journeys to the Indian tribes in the Adirondacks and Canada and bargaining with them for furs.