Early Life
Astor's parents had married on September 9, 1911 and were returning home aboard the Titanic after about three months of honeymooning in Egypt and Europe. Madeleine Astor was five months pregnant when her husband put her in one of Titanic's lifeboats. She was rescued eight hours after her husband went down with the ship. The younger Astor is by some considered a Titanic survivor, albeit in utero.
Under the terms of her husband's will, Madeleine Astor received relatively little from an estate estimated to be as much as $100 million. Provided she did not remarry, the 19-year-old widow received the annual investment income from a five-million-dollar trust fund and the use of her late husband's homes on Fifth Avenue in New York City and in Newport, Rhode Island. No specific provision for the unborn child had yet been made, but a clause of his father's will provided that any surviving child other than his son Vincent and his daughter Ava would receive a bequest of $3 million, to be held in trust until the child reached age 21. This amount eventually went to the younger Astor on his 21st birthday.
His stepfathers were William K. Dick and Enzo Fiermonte.
John Jacob Astor VI graduated from St. George's School in Newport, Rhode Island.
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