On the journey over he met a furrier, who told him that money could be made in buying furs from the Indians and men on the frontier, and selling them to large dealers. As soon as he reached New York, he entered the employ of a Quaker furrier, and learned all he could about the business, meantime selling his flutes, and using the money to buy furs from the Indians and hunters. He opened a little shop in New York for the sale of furs and musical instruments, walked nearly all over New York State in collecting his furs, and finally went back to London to sell his goods. He married, probably in 1786, Sarah Todd, who brought as her marriage portion $300, and what was better still, economy, energy, and a willingness to share her husband's constant labors. As fast as a little money was saved he invested it in land, having great faith in the future of New York City. He lived most simply in the same house where he carried on his business, and after fifteen years found himself the owner of $250,000. [Illustration: John Jacob Astor] In 1809 he organized the American Fur Company, and established trade in furs with France, England, Germany, and Russia, and engaged in trade with China. He used to say in his old age, "The first hundred thousand dollars--that was hard to get; but afterward it was easy to make more." He died March 29, 1848, leaving a fortune estimated at $20,000,000, much of it the result of increased values of land, on which he had built houses for rent. By will Mr. Astor conveyed the large sum, at that time, of $400,000 to found a public library; his friends, Washington Irving, Dr. Joseph G. Cogswell, and Fitz-Greene Halleck, the poet, who was his secretary for seventeen years, having advised the gift of a library when he expressed a desire to do something helpful for the city of New York. He also left $50,000 for the benefit of the poor in his native town of Waldorf. John Jacob Astor's eldest son, and third of his seven children, William B. Astor, left and gave during his lifetime $550,000 to Astor Library. His estate of $45,000,000 was divided between his two sons, John Jacob and William. The son of John Jacob, William Waldorf Astor, a graduate of Columbia College, ex-minister to Italy, is a scholarly man, and the author of several books. The son of William Astor, John Jacob Astor, a graduate of Harvard, lives on Fifth Avenue, New York. He has also written one or more books. In 1879 John Jacob, the grandson of the first Astor in this country, a graduate of Columbia College, a student of the University of Göttingen, and a graduate of the Harvard Law School, erected a third structure for the library similar to those built by his father and grandfather, and gave in all $850,000 to Astor Library. The entire building now has a frontage of two hundred feet, with a depth of one hundred feet. It is of brown-stone and brick, and is Byzantine in style of architecture. In 1893 its total number of volumes was 245,349.