Fur Trade Magnate

Corporate Pioneer.

Considered one of the richest and most powerful men of his time, John Jacob Astor was an entrepreneurial wizard who made his fortune from the western fur trade and urban real .estate. Astor was a key part of many of the economic changes that propelled westward expansion in the nineteenth century. He created a corporate structure that spanned the continent and reached out to markets in Europe, South America, and Asia. In many ways his business practices anticipated the creation of the large corporations in the late nineteenth century made famous by John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie.

Millionaire Fur Trader.

Born on 17 July 1763 in the city of Walldorf in what is now Germany, Astor left for London, England, at the age of sixteen to help his brother market musical instruments. At age twenty he arrived in Baltimore, Maryland...