American Dynasties by Rachel Dickinson

Author:Rachel Dickinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2020-11-14T00:00:00+00:00

John Jacob Astor, the patriarch. Source: Library of Congress.

In New York, John Jacob took a room in a boarding house and soon married Sarah Todd, the daughter of the proprietor. They lived in one room and set up another as a shop for selling fine musical instruments and wild-animal pelts. At first, Astor picked up furs from travelers coming to New York, which he’d then bundle up to take to London, where he found he could make a lot of money selling them. He’d purchase instruments while in England and bring them back to the States to sell.

Soon Astor left his growing family—with Sarah’s blessing—and began traveling to upstate New York to visit the Iroquois tribes. He learned how to barter for furs of fox, lynx, bear, mink, beaver, and wolf. He wandered farther afield into the interior of Canada, where Canada’s North West Company employed fur traders. Astor bought pelts in volume, taking them back to New York, then sending them to European capitals, where they would fetch staggering prices. In his far-flung journeys, Astor became entranced by the vastness of the wilderness that lay to the west.

By 1800, John Jacob Astor had made almost a quarter of a million dollars (in 1800 dollars), an enormous sum of money, most of it made from selling furs. In addition to selling in Europe, Astor traded in furs, tea, and sandalwood in China. After the successful Lewis and Clark Expedition to the Pacific Northwest, Astor wrote to President Thomas Jefferson to seek permission to establish the American Fur Company to control fur trading from the Great Lakes region to the Columbia River. Astor financed the Astor Expedition of 1810–1812. One group traveled by sea around Cape Horn, and the other went overland. Both hoped to find a practical route to the Pacific Northwest. Their goal was to meet at the mouth of the Columbia River and construct the first American colony on the West Coast. The Columbia River trading post, Fort Astoria, was established in 1811. Astoria would provide the jumping-off point for trade to China—packets of fur would go west and porcelain, silk, and tea would come back.

Members of the overland Astor Expedition discovered South Pass, in present-day Wyoming, which became an important way to get through the Rocky Mountains. South Pass became part of the Oregon, Mormon, and California Trails—the route hundreds of thousands of pioneers would take on their way west in the mid-nineteenth century.

The war with the British in 1812 put a halt to Astor’s fur trading when the British captured his trading posts. In 1816 Congress passed a law banning foreign fur traders from the States, partly as a way to punish the British. This enormously benefitted Astor, who bought up most of the Canadian fur-trading companies. Astor’s American Fur Company thrived around the Great Lakes, bringing more wealth to the New Yorker. John Jacob Astor commissioned writer Washington Irving (best known for writing the short stories “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”) to pen a history of the Astor Expedition using diaries, documents, and letters supplied by Astor.

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