John Jacob Astor VI was famous before he drew his first breath. His father, Colonel John Jacob Astor IV, had gone down with the Titanic on April 15, 1912.
Four months later, on August 14, 1912, John Jacob Astor VI was born into a world already fascinated by his existence. The press called him the Titanic Baby. The name stuck for the rest of his life.
He had no say in any of it.
Who Was John Jacob Astor VI?
John Jacob Astor VI was an American social-leader and shipping businessman, the posthumous son of Colonel John Jacob Astor IV and his wife Madeleine Talmage Force. He was born in New York City and died in Miami Beach, Florida, on June 26, 1992, at the age of 79. He was buried at Trinity Church Cemetery in Manhattan, alongside his parents.
His family had been among the wealthiest in America for over a century. John Jacob Astor I had built the original fortune through the fur trade and Manhattan real estate in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. By the time John Jacob Astor VI was born, the Astor name meant old money, social standing, and properties on both sides of the Atlantic.
None of that translated into an easy life for John Jacob Astor VI.
His Parents and the Titanic
Colonel John Jacob Astor IV and Madeleine Talmage Force had married on September 9, 1911. They were returning from a honeymoon in Egypt and Europe when they boarded the Titanic at Southampton. Madeleine was five months pregnant. On the night of April 14 into April 15, after the ship struck an iceberg, Colonel Astor placed his wife into Lifeboat 4. She was rescued hours later. He was not.
Colonel Astor’s body was recovered by the cable ship Mackay-Bennett on April 22. Among the items found on him were a gold pocket watch, cufflinks, a diamond ring, and $2,440 in notes. His half-brother Vincent, who inherited the bulk of the estate, kept the watch and wore it for the rest of his life.
John Jacob Astor VI was born into this context four months later. His connection to the Titanic was biological, not experiential, but it defined how the public saw him from birth.
Growing Up in Newport
After the disaster, Madeleine raised John Jacob Astor VI at Beechwood, the Astor family’s grand Newport mansion. That arrangement did not last. Under the terms of Colonel Astor’s will, Madeleine forfeited her right to use the Astor properties the moment she remarried. She remarried in 1916, to William Karl Dick. Beechwood passed out of her hands.
John Jacob Astor VI grew up with two younger half-brothers from his mother’s second marriage, William Force Dick and John Henry Dick II. His own Newport property, once he was older, was Chetwode, a smaller estate. Beechwood had gone to Vincent.
In 1933, Madeleine married again, this time to Enzo Fiermonte, an Italian boxer. John Jacob Astor VI strongly opposed the match and the relationship between mother and son became strained. They eventually reconciled, but the tension had been real. When asked by the press whether his mother was marrying Fiermonte, John Jacob Astor VI gave a brief answer: “Unfortunately, it’s true.”
Madeleine died in 1940. John Jacob Astor VI was 27.
Education and Early Adult Life
John Jacob Astor VI attended St. George’s School in Middletown, Rhode Island, and went on to Harvard University. Both were standard choices for a young man of his background in that era.
On turning 21, he inherited the $3 million trust fund his father had set aside for him under the terms of the Colonel’s will. The figure sounds significant. In the context of the Astor estate, it was not. Vincent had received $69 million. His half-sister Ava Alice Muriel had received a $10 million trust fund. John Jacob Astor VI received $3 million and the Titanic Baby label.
The Feud With Vincent
The dispute between John Jacob Astor VI and his half-brother Vincent was long and bitter. Vincent had inherited the overwhelming majority of their father’s $85 million estate and, by the 1920s, was one of the wealthiest men in the United States. His feelings toward John Jacob Astor VI went beyond indifference.
At one point, Vincent publicly questioned whether John Jacob Astor VI was a biological Astor at all. The claim was never substantiated. It widened a rift that never properly closed.
Vincent died in 1959. John Jacob Astor VI subsequently brought legal proceedings against Vincent’s widow, arguing his entitlement to a share of the estate. The case was settled out of court. John Jacob Astor VI received $250,000.
Four Marriages
John Jacob Astor VI married four times.
His first wife was Ellen Tuck French. They married on June 29, 1934, in Newport. They had a son, William Backhouse Astor III. The marriage ended in divorce.
His second wife was Gertrude Gretsch. They married on September 18, 1944, in New York City. They had a daughter, Mary Jacqueline Astor, born in 1949. That marriage also ended in divorce.
His third wife was Dolores Margaret Fullman, known as Dolly. They married on August 6, 1954, in Arlington, Virginia. They had a son, John Jacob Astor VII. That marriage too ended in divorce.
His fourth and final wife was Sue Sandford. They married in 1956. She died in 1985. John Jacob Astor VI outlived her by seven years, dying in Miami Beach in 1992.
What Became of the Astor Name
Through his children, John Jacob Astor VI was a grandfather to William Backhouse Astor IV, born in 1959, and Gregory Todd Astor, born in 1966, who portrayed Colonel Astor in the stage production of Titanic the Musical in April 2012, a century after his great-grandfather’s death. John Jacob Astor VI also had a granddaughter, Nicholas Astor Drexel, through his daughter.
The family’s public prominence had faded considerably by the time John Jacob Astor VI died. The great New York properties were gone. The political influence of the British branch had diminished. What remained was the name, carried into a fourth and fifth generation by descendants of a man who spent 79 years known primarily for the circumstances of his conception.
John Jacob Astor VI was, by most accounts, a man of his class and his time. He was not his father. He was not Vincent. He was the Titanic Baby, a label he did not choose, attached to a fortune he never received.
