DIFFICULTY IN DETERMINING THE FACTS.

Most of the material put out on the Astors shows the unmistakable mark of distortion by writers and historians giving information in line with what the Astors wanted the public to get. Books on the Astors contain both believable and unbelievable material, fact, and fiction, Some of the real facts may remain obscured forever, but that has not stopped us from getting the most accurate picture we could reconstruct. The Astors do not make the task of investigating them easy. They have been very secret and very deceptive since they arrived In this nation. John Jacob Astor, the first prominent Astor was a notorious liar, “he was 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.) John Jacob’s son insured that his father’s lies would go unchallenged by incinerating all of his personal records, business records, and other papers.