Caroline Astor was born Caroline Schermerhorn in 1830 to an old Dutch family of famously staid respectability and decent money. In 1853, she married William Backhouse Astor Jr., descendant of a family that had originally made its fortune in fur trading. (The Astor Place subway station mosaics today feature silhouettes of beavers in homage to the family’s roots.) William was a younger son who—not unlike Cornie Vanderbilt—resented his elder brother John Jacob Astor III for having been the favorite of their father and for having a snobbish demeanor.
