In One Ear: Dynasty dynamics

Published 12:15 am Thursday, April 14, 2022

When the news hit on April 16, 1912, that the Titanic actually sank after hitting the iceberg the previous day, one of the headlines in The Morning Oregonian focused solely on the extraordinary wealth of some of the first class passengers.

At the top of the list was Col. John Jacob “Jack” Astor IV,  great-grandson of Astoria’s namesake, worth an estimated $87 million ($2.5 billion now). He was honeymooning with his pregnant second wife, Madeline, when he went down with the ship. His body was recovered, and buried at Trinity Church Cemetery in New York.

Astor left Madeline the annual income from a $5 million trust and several other perks, plus an annual payment of $500,000 until she remarried. She married twice more, had two more sons, and died at 46 in 1940.

A fund of $3 million was left for his unborn child, John Jacob “Jakey” Astor VI, who was born Aug. 14, 1912, but wouldn’t inherit until he was 21.

William Vincent Astor, known as Vincent, inherited the Astor fortune. Even though he was Jakey’s older half-brother, he loathed Jakey and his playboy lifestyle, and didn’t even consider him an Astor. As a result, he left Jakey nothing of their father’s enormous estate when he died in 1959.

Jakey sued, but settled for $250,000 (about $2.4 million now). He married four times, had a son and a daughter, and died in 1992, at the age of 79. He was buried with his parents.