University of Virginia Library

UNTIL the year Eighteen Hundred, Astor lived over his store in Water Street, but he then moved to the plain and modest house at Two Hundred and Twenty-three Broadway, on the site of the old Astor House. Here he lived for twenty-five years.

The fur business was simple and very profitable. Astor now was confining himself mostly to beaver-skins. He fixed the price at one dollar, to be paid to the Indians or trappers. It cost fifty cents to prepare and transport the skin to London. There it was sold at from five to ten dollars. All of the money received for skins was then invested in English merchandise, which was sold in New York at a profit. In Eighteen Hundred, Astor owned three ships which he had bought so as to absolutely control his trade. Ascertaining that London dealers were reshipping furs to China, early in the century he dispatched one of his ships directly to the Orient, loaded with furs, with explicit written instructions to the captain as to what the cargo should be sold for. The money was to be invested in teas and silks.

The ship sailed away, and had been gone a year.

No tidings had come from her.

Suddenly a messenger came with news that the ship was in the bay. We can imagine the interest of Mr. and Mrs. Astor as they locked their store and ran to the Battery. Sure enough, it was their ship, riding gently on the tide, snug, strong and safe as when she had left.

The profit on this one voyage was seventy thousand dollars. By Eighteen Hundred and Ten, John Jacob Astor was worth two million dollars. He began to invest all his surplus money in New York real estate. He bought acerage property in the vicinity of Canal Street. Next he bought Richmond Hill, the estate of Aaron Burr. It consisted of one hundred and sixty acres just above Twenty-third Street. He paid for the land a thousand dollars an acre. People said Astor was crazy. In ten years he began to sell lots from the Richmond Hill property at the rate of five thousand dollars an acre. Fortunately for his estate he did not sell much of the land at this price, for it is this particular dirt that makes up that vast property known as "The Astor Estate."

During the Revolutionary War, Roger Morris, of Putnam County, New York, made the mistake of siding with the Tories.

A mob collected, and Morris and his family escaped, taking ship to England.

Before leaving, Morris declared his intention of coming back as soon as "the insurrection was quelled."

The British troops, we are reliably informed, failed to quell the insurrection.

Roger Morris never came back.

Roger Morris is known in history as the man who married Mary Philipse. And this lady lives in history because she had the felicity of having been proposed to by George Washington. It is George himself, tells of this in his Journal, and George you remember could not tell a lie.

George was twenty-five, he was on his way to Boston, and was entertained at the Philipse house, the Plaza not having

then been built.

Mary was twenty, pink and lissome. She played the harpsichord. Immediately after supper George, finding himself alone in the parlor with the girl, proposed.

He was an opportunist.

The lady pleaded for time, which the Father of his Country declined to give. He was a soldier and demanded immediate surrender. A small quarrel followed, and George saddled his horse and rode on his way to fame and fortune.

Mary thought he would come back, but George never proposed to the same lady twice. Yet he thought kindly of Mary and excused her conduct by recording, "I think ye ladye was not in ye moode."

Just twenty-two years after this bout with Cupid, General George Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, occupied the Roger Morris Mansion as headquarters, the occupants having fled. Washington had a sly sense of humor, and on the occasion of his moving into the mansion, remarked to Colonel Aaron Burr, his aide, "I move in here for sentimental reasons—I have a small and indirect claim on the place."

It was Washington who formally confiscated the property, and turned it over to the State of New York as contraband of war.

The Morris estate of about fifty thousand acres was parceled out and sold by the State of New York to settlers.

It seems, however, that Roger Morris had only a life interest in the estate and this was a legal point so fine that it was entirely overlooked in the joy of confiscation. Washington was a great soldier, but an indifferent lawyer.

John Jacob Astor accidentally ascertained the facts. He was

convinced that the heirs could not be robbed of their rights through the acts of a leaseholder, which, legally was the status of Roger Morris. Astor was a good real estate lawyer himself, but he referred the point to the best counsel he could find. They agreed with him. He next hunted up the heirs and bought their quitclaims for one hundred thousand dollars.

He then notified the parties who had purchased the land, and they in turn made claim upon the State for protection.

After much legal parleying the case was tried according to stipulation with the State of New York, directly, as defendant and Astor and the occupants as plaintiffs. Daniel Webster and Martin Van Buren appeared for the State, and an array of lesser legal lights for Astor.

The case was narrowed down to the plain and simple point that Roger Morris was not the legal owner of the estate, and that the rightful heirs could not be made to suffer for the "treason, contumacy and contravention" of another. Astor won, and as a compromise the State issued him twenty-year bonds bearing six per cent interest, for the neat sum of five hundred thousand dollars—not that Astor needed the money but finance was to him a game, and he had won.