John Jacobs Astor

John Jacob Astor was an American entrepreneur of German descendant and the founder of the famous Astor business family and its fortune considered to be the first millionaire in American history.

Son of a German butcher, Astor arrived in America at the age of 21 with only $25 to try his luck. Attracted by the stories of the fur trading in the Pacific Northwest, Astor moved into the fur business. Furs were commercially precious item, a symbol of affluence and status worldwide. With savings he opened the fur shop in New York in 1786 and devised the business strategy. He established direct contacts with the American Indians of whom he obtained furs in exchange for colonial goods and alcohol. Since relations between US and Britain were unsettled until the Jay’s treaty of 1794, he was not allowed to import his furs directly from Canada to the US, initially he shipped them to London and then transshipped them to New York.

In 1808 he founded company, the American Fur Company and used its two subsidiaries – Pacific Fur Company and Southwest Fur Company – to control the trade on the Columbia River and the Great Lakes area. Goods that he shipped to Europe, Russia and China where they were exchanged for commodities which were very profitable in America. By 1790 Astor expanded his business to the lucrative Chinese market. He sold furs and skins in exchange for tea and silk, and also became involved in lucrative opium trade buying low-grade Turkish opium that English merchants, who have ruled the market of narcotics, used to adulterate the better quality drug cultivated in India. With the profits from these ventures Astor started to purchase land in Lower Canada and in the Mohawk Valley. Already a wealthy man, he made enormous profits by loaning money to the US government in 1814. Around 1819, Astor withdrew from his other businesses and began to focus on real estate. His investments in New York City real estate ultimately made him an even larger fortune than his earlier ventures.

When he died in 1848 his net worth was of S20 million. Once he said: “The man who makes it the habit of his life to go to bed at nine o’clock usually gets rich and is always reliable… good habits in America make any man rich”.