For 10 points, name this richest man in early nineteenth-century America, a fur magnate.
In order to get around the Jeffersonian embargo, this man disguised a Chinese shopkeeper as a fictitious diplomat named "Punqua Winchong" and got permission to sail to China, where he had an exclusive contract with the British East India Company. This man allied with his former rivals William Clark, Pierre Chouteau, and Manuel Lisa, ten years after he commissioned Captain (*) Thorn to sail the ship Tonquin to Cape Disappointment, where the first American colony on the Pacific coast was named for him. He used his fortune to found what became the New York Public Library. For 10 points, name this richest man in early nineteenth-century America, a fur magnate.
In order to get around the Jeffersonian embargo, this man disguised a Chinese shopkeeper as a fictitious diplomat named "Punqua Winchong" and got permission to sail to China, where he had an exclusive contract with the British East India Company.
John Jacob Astor