John Jacob Astor: Freemason, Intel Operative and Made Man

American businessman John Jacob Astor (1763-1848) enjoyed an astonishing rise to great wealth and, at every turn, seemed to be backed by “friendly forces” and in the right places. Astor was the first multi-millionaire in the United States and, at the time of his death, was the wealthiest man in the country. In terms of hidden history, there is a lot that is sketchy about Astor.

He was a notorious liar “known on occasion to invent romantic tales for the edification of people who annoyed him with questions … Men who knew him best were, therefore, neither ready to discredit completely all legends about his exploits nor to repeat them as gospel. The truth, they suspected, lay somewhere between the two extremes” [Terrell, John Upton. Furs by Astor., p. 102].

Astor was baptized in the German Reformed Church (evangelical Calvinism) located in Walldorf, Baden, Germany. There is some controversy that he was crypto-Jewish. Astor’s step-mother, Christina Barbara, is described as “the perfect, cruel fairy tale stepmother.” Here we see mention of the classic Sabattean chosenite predatory mentality of people set loose upon the sheep of humanity.

Astor left Germany for London in 1780 at age 16. Somehow the German-speaking peasant was able to converse face to face with the influential Backhouse family in England. The Backhouse clan had a long-standing interests in esoteric and alchemic incarnations and were leading Freemasons.

The conventional narrative holds that correspondence between John Jacob and his brother Henry in New York City convinced him that New Yorkers had a pent-up demand for luxury items. The Astor brothers were eager to cash in on this demand by starting a transatlantic trade in musical instruments.

Arriving in New York City on the heels of the Revolutionary War, American fur trader Robert Bowne hired Astor to assist him with his business. Astor worked for Bowne for several months and learned how to buy and sell furs and prepare peltries.

Then, by sheer coinkydink, Astor was allied with the Thomas Backhouse Fur Trading Company. Fur was a very desirable and high-profit business. It was a lot like Dope, Inc. in that no schmuck could just take over by showing up. New entrants to the market would definitely have to be arranged.

So “peasant” John Jacob Astor from Baden was able to get early start advantages in both fur and opium trades. In fact, he somehow managed to get competitors to step aside in this lucrative business, and he eventually created a monopoly. His business model for dealing with the Indians in trade was to offer liquor, get them drunk and then fleece them.

He also just happened to trade in guns and firearms, particularly during the Latin American Independence Wars. The Freemason lodges were instrumental in these independence movements and Astor, as a chieftain of the New York City lodge, received first-hand intelligence.

Henry also introduced John Jacob to the congregation of the German Reformed Church of New York. John soon became an active member of the congregation and served as the church’s treasurer from 1791 to 1797. In this important post, he was responsible for managing all of the congregation’s finances. The church provided Astor with a social network of German co-religionists.

Astor married the perfect wife in 1785, one Sarah Cox Todd, who came from a family of Scottish origin that had resided in New York City for several generations. The Todd family frequently had associations with the occult.

For Astor, his marriage to Sarah Todd not only brought personal happiness but also economic independence. Sarah’s modest wedding dowry enabled Astor to expand his small import business. Sarah was a pious, loving and business-minded wife and gradually became his most important business partner. She handled the family’s business affairs in New York whenever Astor was away from home and even when they were estranged.

The Todd family’s social connections permitted Astor true entry into upper-class society and enabled him to forge useful connections with merchants, traders, ship owners and other New York elites.

Powerful Freemason

Two years after his marriage, Astor joined the German Society of the City of New York; but, unlike his religious commitment to the German Reformed Church, he showed little interest in German-American social issues. Instead, Astor became intrigued by the Freemasons and decided that the secret fraternal order might be a more effective venue than German society for cultivating business and social contacts within New York’s elite social and political circles.

In 1789, he was officially accepted as member of Holland Lodge No. 8, which was part of the Grand Lodge of the State of New York. He enjoyed regular meetings with many of his fellow businessmen and other highly placed and powerful New Yorkers, including DeWitt Clinton, who became mayor of New York City and later governor of New York, and George Clinton, who was DeWitt’s uncle and a close friend of Thomas Jefferson.

It was well known that Astor was anti-social, “a man who didn’t have charm, wit or grace” [a quote from a relative of the DuPont family, who wrote a sympathetic biography titled “The Astor Family”]. He wasn’t even 30, spoke English with a thick German accent and was unattractive. Yet, within a few years, he somehow became a senior warden of the lodge and ended his career as Master of the Holland Lodge. He was Grand Treasurer of the Grand Lodge of New York between 1796 and 1801. He fit the mold of a made man in the early iteration of what Winter Watch calls the “Crime Syndicate.”

Astor established trading posts along the Missouri and Columbia rivers. He founded the town of Astoria, Oregon, to serve as a terminal station. By 1795, Astor had purchased a fleet of 12 ships. The early fur trade centered on the Michigan Territory. Next, he built a network starting with a line of trading posts along the Missouri River, across the Rockies to Columbia River and on to the Pacific Ocean. St. Louis was to be the distribution point for all posts east of the Rocky Mountains, while the fort to be at the mouth of the Columbia River in Astoria. It was supplied by vessels sailing around Cape Horn and served as a center for all western posts.

This enterprise provided the U.S. government with intelligence about the interior and the West, usually hand selected by Astor and his agents for maximum benefit. He developed extensive connections with the country’s dominant political figures, many of whom were fellow Freemasons. Researcher John Coleman, who had access to old secret documents, discovered that Astor was also a British secret agent.

Astor’s next break came when two men, who are now known to have been in the Illuminati, gave him special government privilege. The two men were President Jefferson and U.S. Secretary Gallatin. The United States government had placed an embargo on all U.S. ships from sailing with goods in 1807. But Astor got a special exemption from these two men for his ship to sail with its cargo. His ship sailed and made close to a $200,000 profit in that day’s money ($4.3 million today). Astor strangely profited greatly from the War of 1812, which crippled almost all the other American shippers.

Astor then became a bankster and sat on the board of five directors of the new national bank that Alexander Hamilton created for the U.S. government, the Bank of the United States, of which Astor owned a large block of stock.

Alexander Hamilton and Nicholas Biddle: Bankster Syndicate Actors and Made Men

Almost as soon as he joined the Freemasons, good real estate deals fell his way and the means to financing them. On May 18, 1789, he bought a lot on the corner of Bowery Lane and Elizabeth Street. Later that year, he bought the neighboring property from James Bolmer, who owned a restaurant nearby. Encouraged by the success of his early real estate transactions he expanded that aspect of his business and acquired more property. He moved his business from its location on Queen Street, where he lived with his wife and young daughter, to a new and bigger commercial space, which he rented at 40 Little Dock Street (now Water Street) in Manhattan. In 1794, he and his wife bought property for their family and business at 149 Broadway, right in the commercial heart of the city where New York’s rich and famous resided.

Flush with trade profits, Astor was well positioned to play Manhattan real estate. In 1803, he bought a 70-acre farm that ran west of Broadway to the Hudson River between 42nd and 46th streets. That same year and the following year, he bought considerable holdings from the disgraced Aaron Burr.

In 1804, Astor purchased from Aaron Burr what remained of a 99-year lease on property in Manhattan. An article from The New York Times dates Oct. 16, 1911, states that the 99-year lease expired in 1866. At the time, Burr was serving as Vice President of the United States under Thomas Jefferson and desperately needed the purchase price of $62,500. Astor began subdividing the land into nearly 250 lots and subleased them. His conditions were that the tenant could do whatever they wish with the lots for 21 years, after which they must renew the lease or Astor would take back the lot.

As one biography said, “When it came to a question of principle versus profit, Astor was a practical man.” Put simply, he had no scruples. Astor had a reputation for being a ruthless landlord. He also had the reputation of not paying his legitimate debts.

In 1816, he joined the opium-smuggling trade. His American Fur Company purchased 10 tons of Turkish opium, then shipped the contraband to Canton on the packet ship “Macedonian.” Astor played in that market for three years then supposedly got out.

During its heyday, the American Fur Company was one of the largest enterprises in the United States and held a total monopoly of the lucrative fur trade in the young nation by the 1820s. Through his profits from the company, John Jacob Astor made numerous, lucrative land investments and became the richest man in the world.

Future President Zachary Taylor once described their operation in the following manner: “Take the American Fur Company in the aggregate, and they are the greatest scoundrels the world has ever known.”

In 1834, Astor sold his fur-trading business to Ramsey Crooks and used the money to buy land in New York. Astor correctly predicted New York’s rapid growth northward on Manhattan Island, and he purchased more and more land in Greenwich Village up to the Bronx, beyond the then-existing city limits.

Upon his death, Astor’s son assured him that his father’s skulduggery would go unchallenged by incinerating all of his personal records, business records and other papers. After making their fortunes while residing in the New York area, the Astors by and large all left for England. But they still wielded great financial power in the United States through proxies.

The latter Astors were the part of the financial backers behind the Round Table groups founded in 1910 along with Abe Bailey. Cecil Rhodes and Lord Milner. [see “Cecil Rhodes and His Warmongering Buggery Hegemony“].

The Franklin D. Roosevelt family has been connected to the Delano family, which is a Black Venetian noble family that goes back for many centuries. The lives of these families also intertwine with the Astors. Also note the Backhouse connection. Examples of the interweaving are:

Franklin Hughes Delano: Heir to a massive whale-oil fortune. He married Lavia Astor, daughter of William Backhouse Astor.

James Roosevelt: Married Helen Astor, daughter of William Backhouse, Jr.

James Roosevelt, Jr.: A Freemason, married the sister of Vincent Astor’s wife.