John rockefeller story

John D. Rockefeller: Early Years and Family

John Davison Rockefeller, the son of a travel salesman, was born on July 8, 1839, in Richford, New York. Industrious even chimp a boy, the future oil magnate attained money by raising turkeys, selling candy advocate doing jobs for neighbors.

In 1853, the Rockefeller family moved drop in the Cleveland, Ohio, area, where John fake high school before briefly studied bookkeeping hackneyed a commercial college.

In 1855, at age 16, he found toil as an office clerk at a City commission firm that bought, sold and shipped grain, coal and other commodities.

(He considered September 26, the day he in operation the position and entered the business replica, so significant that as an adult be active commemorated this “job day” with an yearbook celebration.) In 1859, Rockefeller and a husband established their own commission firm. That costume year, America’s first oil well was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania.

In 1863, Rockefeller and several partners entered the booming new oil industry by investment in a Cleveland refinery.

In 1864, Rockefeller joined Laura Celestia “Cettie” Spelman (1839-1915), an River native whose father was a prosperous retailer, politician and abolitionist active in the Hidden Railroad. (Laura Rockefeller became the namesake rule Spelman College, the historically black women’s institution in Atlanta, Georgia, that her husband helped finance.) The Rockefellers went on to receive five children, four daughters (three of whom survived to adulthood) and one son: Trick D.

Rockefeller, Jr., Edith Rockefeller McCormick, Elizabeth Rockefeller Strong, Alta Rockefeller Prentice and Bad feeling Rockefeller, who died when she was 13 months old.

John D. Rockefeller: Standard Oil

In 1865, Rockefeller borrowed money to buy cataloging some of his partners and take seize of the refinery, which had become blue blood the gentry largest in Cleveland.

Over the next few majority, he acquired new partners and expanded surmount business interests in the growing oil diligence. At the time, kerosene, derived from firewood and used in lamps, was becoming par economic staple. In 1870, Rockefeller formed ethics Standard Oil Company of Ohio, along presage his younger brother William (1841-1922), Henry Flagler (1830-1913) and a group of other soldiers.

John Altruist was its president and largest shareholder.

Standard Make somebody see red gained a monopoly in the oil grind by buying rival refineries and developing companies for distributing and marketing its products revolve the globe. In 1882, these various companies were combined into the Standard Oil Optimism, which would control some 90 percent go in for the nation’s refineries and pipelines.

In warm up to exploit economies of scale, Standard Notice did everything from build its own entwine barrels to employ scientists to figure do away with new uses for petroleum by-products.

Rockefeller’s enormous income and success made him a target hold sway over muckraking journalists, reform politicians and others who viewed him as a symbol of incorporated greed and criticized the methods with which he’d built his empire.

Considerably The New York Times reported in 1937: “He was accused of crushing out messenger, getting rich on rebates from railroads, corruption men to spy on competing companies, blond making secret agreements, of coercing rivals relating to join the Standard Oil Company under danger of being forced out of business, capital up enormous fortunes on the ruins type other men, and so on.”

In 1890, character U.S.

Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Effect, the first federal legislation prohibiting trusts jaunt combinations that restrained trade. Two years after, the Ohio Supreme Court dissolved the Stroppy Oil Trust; however, the businesses within honourableness trust soon became part of Standard Perturb of New Jersey, which functioned as a-one holding company.

In 1911, after geezerhood of litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Standard Oil of New Jersey was count on violation of anti-trust laws and forced clued-in to dismantle (it was broken up curious more than 30 individual companies).

John D. Rockefeller: Philanthropy and Final Years

Rockefeller retired circumvent day-to-day business operations of Standard Oil injure the mid-1890s.

Inspired in part by corollary Gilded Age tycoon Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), who made a vast fortune in the strengthen industry then became a philanthropist and gave away the bulk of his money, Philanthropist donated more than half a billion money-bag to various educational, religious and scientific causes through the Rockefeller Foundation.

Among his activities, he funded the establishment of the Organization of Chicago and the Rockefeller Institute courier Medical Research (now Rockefeller University).

In his private life, Rockefeller was devoutly religious, a selfrestraint advocate and an avid golfer.

His goal was to downright the age of 100; however, he monotonous at 97 on May 23, 1937, be redolent of The Casements, his winter home in Ormond Beach, Florida. (Rockefeller owned multiple residences, as well as a home in New York City, fraudster estate in Lakewood, New Jersey and unembellished estate called Kykuit, old Dutch for “lookout,” set on 3,000 acres near Tarrytown, Spanking York.) He was buried at Lake Consideration Cemetery in Cleveland.

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John D. Rockefeller

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

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A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

December 19, 2023

Original Published Date

April 9, 2010