[1][2] He practiced law for a year, to qualify for assisting in the management of his family's immense estate, one half of which later descended to him.

[5] Astor donated objects and funds to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (in 1887 he presented it with his wife's collection of valuable laces and left a bequest of $50,000).

His deeply religious wife Charlotte supported the newly formed Children's Aid Society and sat on the board of the Women's Hospital of New York, an institution that to her dismay refused to accept cancer patients.

From 1872 until her death, she was a manager of the Woman's Hospital, besides taking an active part in the Niobrara League to aid the Indians and in many other charities.

[7] She was a descendant of Charles Apthorp, Jan Cornelius Van den Heuvel, and South Carolina Governor Robert Gibbes.

Later, he had an imposing vacation home, Beaulieu, built in Newport, Rhode Island, and he had a country estate, Nuits, at Ardsley-on-Hudson in Irvington, New York.

[8] John Jacob Astor III died on February 22, 1890, and was interred in the Trinity Church Cemetery in Manhattan.