participated in the current methods of defrauding the Indians. It is certain that he contrived to get their most valuable furs for a jug of rum or for a few toys or notions. Returning from these strokes of trade, he would ship large quantities of the furs to London where they were sold at great profit.
His marriage to Sarah Todd, a cousin of Henry Brevoort, brought him a good wife, who had the shining quality of being economical, and an accession of some means and considerable family connections. Remarkably close-fisted, he weighed over every penny. As fast as his means increased he used them in extending his business. By 1794 he was somewhat of an expansive merchant. Scores of trappers and agents ravaged the wilderness at his command. Periodically he shipped large quantities of furs to Europe. His modest, even niggardly, ways of living in rooms over his store were not calculated to create the impression that he was a rich man. It was his invariable practice habitually to deceive others as to his possessions and plans. But when, in 1800, he removed to No. 223 Broadway, at the corner of Vesey street, then a fashionable neighborhood, he was rated, perforce, as a man of no inconsiderable means. He was, in fact, as nearly as can be gathered, worth at this time a quarter of a million dollars—a monumental fortune at a period when a man who had $50,000 was thought rich; when a good house could be rented for $350 a year and when $750 or $800 would fully defray the annual expenses of the average well-living family.
The great profits from the fur trade naturally led him into the business of being his own shipowner and shipper, for he was a highly efficient organizer and well understood the needlessness of middlemen. A beaver skin bought for one dollar from the Indian or white trappers in Western New York could be sold in London for six dollars and a quarter. On all other furs there were the same large profits. But, in addition to these, Astor saw that his profits could be still further increased by investing the money that he received from the sale of his furs in England, in English