THE CLIMAX OF THE ASTOR FORTUNE
The impressive fortune that William B. Astor left was mainly bequeathed in about equal parts to his sons John Jacob II. and William. These scions, by inheritance from various family sources, intermarriage with other rich families, or both, were already rich. Furthermore, having the backing of their father's immense riches, they had enjoyed singularly exceptional opportunities for amassing wealth on their own account.
In 1853 William Astor had married one of the Schermerhorn family. The Schermerhorns were powerful New York City landholders; and if not quite on the same pinnacle in point of wealth as the Astors, were at any rate very rich. The immensely valuable areas of land then held by the Schermerhorns, and still in their possession, were largely obtained by precisely the same means that the Astors, Goelets, Rhinelanders and other conspicuous land families had used.
INTERRELATED WEALTH.
The settled policy, from the start, of the rich men, and very greatly of rich women, was to marry within their class. The result obviously was to increase and centralize still greater wealth in the circumscribed ownership of a few families. In estimating, therefore, the collective wealth of the Astors, as in fact of nearly all of the great fortunes, the measure should not be merely the possessions of one family, but should embrace the combined wealth of interrelated rich families.
The wedding of William Astor (as was that of his son John Jacob Astor thirty-eight years later to a daughter of one of the richest landholding