Background

Ethnicity: John Rockefeller's father was of English and German descent, while his mother was of Scots-Irish ancestry.

Rockefeller was born on July 8, 1839, in Richford, New York, the United States, into a poor Cleveland family. Rockefeller was the eldest son and second of six children born to traveling physician and snake-oil salesman William ("Big Bill") Avery Rockefeller and Eliza Davidson.

His father was a traveling salesman who seldom visited his family. He was infamous for his dubious activities and loose morality. Throughout his life, he was notorious for shady schemes. His mother, on the other hand, was a pious housewife who struggled to preserve normalcy at home. She taught John to work, to save, and to give to charities. As a child, John helped his mother with regular household chores and did odd jobs to earn extra money.

The Rockefellers lived in Strongsville and then Parma. After living in Oswego, New York, for several years before settling in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1853 when it was beginning to grow into a city. Despite his father's absences and frequent family moves, young John was a well-behaved, serious, and studious boy. His contemporaries described him as reserved, earnest, religious, methodical, and discreet. He was an excellent debater and expressed himself precisely. He also had a deep love of music and dreamed of it as a possible career.

Education

From 1852 Rockefeller attended Owego Academy in Owego, New York, where the family had moved in 1851. Rockefeller excelled at mental arithmetic and was able to solve difficult arithmetic problems in his head - a talent that would be very useful to him throughout his business career. In other subjects, Rockefeller was an average student but the quality of the education was very high.

In 1853, the Rockefellers moved to Cleveland, Ohio, and John attended high school from 1853 to 1855. He was very good at math and was on the debating team. The school encouraged public speaking and even though Rockefeller was only average, it was a skill that would prove to useful to him.

Rockefeller left high school in 1855 to take a six-month business course at Folsom's Commercial College, which he completed in three months.

Career

Although John had held odd jobs as a boy, such as selling turkeys and vegetables to townsfolk, his first full-time employment was as a bookkeeper for a company brokering produce. He considered September 26, the day he started the position and entered the business world, so significant that as an adult he commemorated this "job day" with an annual celebration. John rapidly developed a skill that would serve him well throughout his career - the ability to reduce the cost of shipping products to markets, enhancing profits. He learned to negotiate shipping costs previously believed to be fixed by ship owners and freight managers, and through the use of rebates with preferred shippers, he developed long term business relationships which remained relatively free of the influence of changing market conditions. He worked as an apprentice, for a period of three years, the last of which saw him compensated at the rate of $58 per month.

In 1859, at the age of 20, he ventured into private business with his partner Maurice B. Clark, and together they raised $4,000 in capital. The partners specialized in selling produce. During the American Civil War, Rockefeller and Clark profited tremendously as they sold supplies to the federal government. The business flourished steadily and by the end of the first year, it had grossed $450,000, making a profit of $4,400 in 1860 and a profit of $17,000 in 1861. The commission merchant business was very competitive and Clark & Rockefeller's success was due in large part to Rockefeller's natural business abilities.

During the Civil War, their business expanded rapidly. Grain prices went up and so did their commissions. Most of their selling was done on commission, so Clark & Rockefeller took no risks from price fluctuations. Rockefeller's style was very precise and calculated. He was not a gambler but a planner. He avoided speculation and refused to make advances or loans.

Rockefeller was extremely hard working. He traveled extensively, drumming up business throughout Ohio, and then would go to the banks and borrow large sums of money to handle the shipments. This aggressive style built the business up every year.

In 1859, Edwin Drake drilled the first oil well, in northwest Pennsylvania, and one of the world’s greatest industries was born. Rockefeller and Clark traded not only produce but petroleum products as well. Cleveland, with its proximity to the Pennsylvania oil fields and its excellent transportation network, quickly became the center of petroleum refining.

A careful and studious businessman who refrained from taking unnecessary risks, Rockefeller sensed an opportunity in the oil business in the early 1860s. With oil production ramping up in western Pennsylvania, Rockefeller decided that establishing an oil refinery near Cleveland, a short distance from Pittsburgh would be a good business move. The men purchased oil wells in Titusville, Pennsylvania, and constructed a well near Cleveland, Ohio. Within two years it was the largest refinery in the area, and thereafter Rockefeller devoted himself exclusively to the oil business. In 1865, Rockefeller bought out Clark's interest in the company, creating Rockefeller & Andrews Oil Company. In this year alone, the business earned approximately 200,000 dollars.

While Rockefeller reaped extensive wealth in 1865, the oil industry was just beginning to grow. Most people only used oil for lighting. The market was limited. Prices fluctuated dramatically, as oil production waxed and waned during this period. To try and stabilize oil prices Rockefeller and Andrews approached O.H. Payne, owner of the largest oil refinery in Cleveland. Rockefeller borrowed money to buy out some of his partners and take control of the refinery, which had become the largest in Cleveland. Over the next few years, he acquired new partners and expanded his business interests in the growing oil industry.

In February 1865, he bought out the Clark brothers at an auction for $72,500 and established the firm Rockefeller & Andrews. He adapted swiftly to capitalize on the rapidly growing industry. In 1866, his brother William Rockefeller Jr. built another refinery in Cleveland, making him a partner. In 1867, Henry M. Flagler joined as a partner, and the firm Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler was established.

By 1868, Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler was the largest refiner in the world. Flagler and Rockefeller understood that the only way to make profits consistently in oil refining was to make the business as large as possible and to utilize all their "waste" products. The refining process during this early period was very primitive - refining consisted simply of cooking the oil and purifying it somewhat. The physical plant was simple: some large vats, stills, the piping, and a few chemicals. A small refinery could be set up with just $10,000, and a large one at $50,000. In modern language, the barriers to entry were very, very low. It would be like setting up a small business in today's business climate.

In 1870, Rockefeller and his associates incorporated the Standard Oil Company, which immediately prospered, thanks to favorable economic/industry conditions and Rockefeller’s drive to streamline the company’s operations and keep margins high. With success came acquisitions, as Standard began buying out its competitors. Standard Oil gained a monopoly in the oil industry by buying rival refineries and developing companies for distributing and marketing its products around the globe.

Standard’s moves were so quick and sweeping that it controlled the majority of refineries in the Cleveland area within two years. Standard then used its size and ubiquity in the region to make favorable deals with railroads to ship its oil. At the same time, Standard got into the business itself with the purchase of pipelines and terminals, setting up a system of transport for its own products. Controlling (or owning) almost every aspect of the business, Standard’s grip on the industry tightened, and it even bought thousands of acres of forest for lumber and drilling and to block competitors from running their own pipelines.

Rockefeller continued buying rival refiners; by 1872, Standard Oil had taken over 22 of its 26 Cleveland opponents. Charles Pratt and Henry H. Rogers, owners of a major New York refinery, Pratt and Company became his partners. Rogers became one of the key members in the formation of the Standard Oil Trust and Pratt's son, Charles Millard Pratt, became its Secretary. By 1879 he was refining 90 percent of American oil, and Standard used its own tank car fleet, ships, docking facilities, barrel-making plants, depots, and warehouses.

Rockefeller came through the Panic of 1873, a severe financial crisis, still urging the organization of the refiners. As his control approached near-monopoly (unfair control over an industry), he fought a war with the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1877 which created a refining company to try to break Rockefeller's control. But bloody railroad strikes (workers' protests) that year forced them to surrender to Standard Oil. Rockefeller's dream of order was near completion.

In 1882, the Standard Oil Trust was established to consolidate the various holdings of the company. Rockefeller and eight other trustees controlled the 41 companies in the trust whose assets included 20,000 domestic wells, 4,000 miles of pipeline, 5,000 tank cars, and over 100,000 employees. Over time, Standard Oil adapted to the changing market demands. It ventured into the European market, expanded into natural gas production in the United States, and supplied gasoline for automobiles.

By 1883, after winning control of the pipeline industry, Standard's monopoly was at a peak. Rockefeller created America's first great "trust" in 1882. Ever since 1872, Standard had placed its gains outside Ohio in the hands of Flagler as "trustee" because laws denied one company's ownership of another's stock. All profits went to the Ohio company while the outside businesses remained independent. Nine trustees of the Standard Oil Trust received the stock of forty businesses and gave the various shareholders trust certificates in return. The trust had a worth of about seventy million dollars, making it the world's largest and richest industrial organization.

In the 1880s the nature of Rockefeller's business began to change. He moved beyond refining oil into producing crude oil itself and moved his wells westward with the new fields opening up. Standard also entered foreign markets in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. From 1885 a committee system of management was developed to control Standard Oil's enormous empire.

Public opposition to Standard Oil grew with the emergence of the muckraking journalists (journalists who expose corruption), in particular, Henry Demarest Lloyd (1847-1903) and Ida Tarbell (1857-1944) who published harsh stories of the oil empire. Rockefeller was criticized for various practices: railroad rebates (a system he did not invent and which many refiners used); price fixing; and bribery (exchanging money for favors); crushing smaller firms by unfair competition, such as cutting off their crude oil supplies or restricting their transportation outlets. Standard Oil was investigated by the New York State Senate and by the United States House of Representatives in 1888. Two years later the Ohio Supreme Court invalidated Standard's original trust agreement. Rockefeller formally disbanded the organization and in 1899 Standard was recreated legally under a new form as a "holding company," (this merger was dissolved by the United States Supreme Court in 1911, long after Rockefeller himself had retired from active control in 1897).

Perhaps Rockefeller's most famous excursion outside the oil industry began in 1893 when he helped develop the Mesabi iron ore range of Minnesota. By 1896 his Consolidated Iron Mines owned a great fleet of ore boats and virtually controlled Great Lakes shipping. Rockefeller now had the power to control the steel industry, and he made an alliance with the steel king, Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), in 1896. Rockefeller agreed not to enter steelmaking and Carnegie agreed not to touch transportation. In 1901 Rockefeller sold his ore holdings to the vast new merger created by Carnegie and J. P. Morgan (1837-1913), United States Steel. In that year his fortune passed the $200 million mark for the first time.

In 1909, New Jersey allowed the trust to be re-created in the form of a single holding company. Rockefeller retained his nominal title as president and kept his stock. In 1911, the Supreme Court of the United States found the company in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. As a result, the Standard Oil Company was broken up into 34 new companies. Rockefeller held over 25% of its stock at the time of its breakup. All the stockholders received fair shares in each of the 34 companies. Over the next decade, the companies' combined net worth increased manifold and Rockefeller’s personal wealth reached $900 million.

Rockefeller dedicated the remainder of his life to philanthropic efforts. He used his wealth to establish the University of Chicago in 1892 and the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in 1901. Rockefeller also was a driving force behind the preservation of Williamsburg, Virginia, as a historic landmark. He donated funds to innumerable other charities through the Rockefeller Foundation.

Achievements

• Rockefeller was one of the wealthiest industrialists of the United States. He founded the Standard Oil Company, which almost monopolized the oil industry in the United States and made him a billionaire. The company was one of the world's first and largest multinational corporations. He also established numerous philanthropic charities through which he donated several hundred million dollars. He was also the first American to be worth more than a billion dollars.
  
  Rockefeller passed away in 1937 but his legacy, however, lives on: Rockefeller is considered one of America's leading businessmen and is credited for helping to shape the United States into what it is today.

Religion

Rockefeller’s mother had been pious and devout, of the Baptist faith, and she imparted her religious and moral beliefs on her son, who in turn applied them to his business dealings (in his own mind) and to his children. His charitable giving was based on the Christian belief recorded in the Gospel of Luke, that the more one gave the more one would have given to him. Many of his charitable donations were of a religious nature, and he saw no moral conflict between his ruthless nature in business and the act of charitable sharing of the fortune he acquired, often at the expense of others.

Politics

Rockefeller was a noted abolitionist, which led him to support the newly-formed Republican Party for their anti-slavery stance under President Abraham Lincoln.

Views

When John D. Rockefeller began his first job as a bookkeeper for a produce brokerage, he established the habit of giving a portion of his salary to charity, a practice he continued for the rest of his long life. His charitable donations were often substantial but he also gave away money personally, carrying nickels and dimes in his pocket, which he would pass out to strangers and friends when meeting them on the street or in social situations. He carried a pocketful of dimes for the purpose and was known to give them to his fellow wealthy business moguls, often gleefully giving the small coins to men like Henry Ford or Harvey Firestone, both exceedingly wealthy men in their own right.

Rockefeller was a devout Baptist, and once retired from the daily operations of running one of the world’s largest businesses, he kept himself busy with charitable endeavors, becoming one of the more respected philanthropists in history.

John D. Rockefeller set aside $250 million of his personal wealth to establish the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913, with its charter focusing its work in the areas of public health, public housing, education, and the training of medical professionals. The Rockefeller Foundation, in turn, endowed the School of Hygiene and Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. Rockefeller Foundation money was paramount in the relief efforts in war-torn Europe after World War One, as well as research into the spread and containment of the Spanish Flu Pandemic which took hold during the latter days of the war and which spread with such virulence during its aftermath.

His money helped pay for the creation of the University of Chicago (1892), to which he gave more than $80 million before his death. He also helped found the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (later named Rockefeller University) in New York and the Rockefeller Foundation.

For decades Rockefeller donated money in private to a number of institutions and churches, as well as to the freed slaves during the Civil War, when he gave money to build them schools. Spelman College in Atlanta was largely founded with his money, and named for the maiden name of his wife, Laura Spelman Rockefeller. Not content with supporting one school, he provided substantial sums to Yale University, their main rival Harvard University, and others of the established Eastern schools including Columbia University, Vasser, and what became Rockefeller University in New York in 1965, decades after his death. In total, he gave away more than $530 million to various causes.

Quotations: "If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success."

"The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee. And I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun."

"Every right implies a responsibility; Every opportunity, an obligation, Every possession, a duty."

"The most important thing for a young man is to establish a credit... a reputation, character."

"I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living."

"I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature."

"There is nothing in this world that can compare with the Christian fellowship; nothing that can satisfy but Christ."

"I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money's sake."

"Competition is a sin."

"The only question with wealth is, what do you do with it?"

Personality

When he was a young boy, Rockefeller enjoyed music and even considered making a career out of it. He also exhibited excellent skills with numbers and detailed accounting. As a youth, his ambition was to earn $100K and live 100 years. Rockefeller adhered to total abstinence from alcohol and tobacco throughout his life.

More important to Rockefeller than his own birthday was what he called "Job Day." The future oil magnate was born and raised in upstate New York and took on his first real job at the age of 16 for a grain and coal supplier/shipper after his family relocated to Cleveland, Ohio. The date he started - September 26, 1855 - was when Rockefeller believed he got his official start in business. As an adult, he celebrated the day every year.

Rockefeller’s ingrained frugality was legendary. Despite an army of accountants, bookkeepers, and business managers he continued to insist on going over his company’s books himself, and he kept a pocket ledger in which he scrupulously recorded his personal expenditures daily.

In order to keep his children, and eventually grandchildren, unaware of the vast wealth at the family’s disposal they were prevented from visiting his offices while young, though eventually through employment with Standard Oil the size of their fortune was revealed to them. He taught them the sin of waste and extravagance, and though he built luxurious homes, he did not go to the extremes of many of the rich of the day, who constructed massive estates in Newport, Rhode Island, Massachusetts’ Berkshire Hills, and in the Hudson Valley of New York.

As the nineteenth century drew to an end, Rockefeller began to spend his time in more leisurely pursuits, including becoming an avid golfer, and a habitue of the new sport - bicycling - which was a national fad at the turn of the century.

He was pious, often quoting the Bible which he read every day, but found no problem with Christ’s prediction of the difficulty a rich man would have entering heaven. The son of a con-man father and a pious mother, throughout his life he demonstrated that he had learned much from both, and he put those lessons to work for all of his long life.

Along with donating his fortune, John D. Rockefeller spent his last years enjoying his children, grandchildren, and his hobby of landscaping and gardening.

Physical Characteristics: During his life, Rockefeller suffered from several physical and mental illnesses. He spent his middle age struggling with depression. Beginning in his 40s, Rockefeller lost all the hair from his head, his mustache, and his body. The hair never grew back, and in the early 1900s, the tycoon began to wear rotating wigs of various lengths to give the impression of his hair growing and being shorn.

Interests

• landscaping, gardening

• Politicians

  Abraham Lincoln

• Sport & Clubs

  golf, bicycling

Connections

In 1864, Rockefeller married Laura Celestia “Cettie” Spelman (1839-1915), an Ohio native whose father was a prosperous merchant, politician and abolitionist active in the Underground Railroad. The Rockefellers went on to have five children, four daughters (three of whom survived to adulthood) and one son: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Edith Rockefeller McCormick, Elizabeth Rockefeller Strong, Alta Rockefeller Prentice and Alice Rockefeller, who died when she was 13 months old.

Father:

William Avery Rockefeller Sr.

Rockefeller’s father was known by the nicknames "Big Bill" and "Devil Bill." William made his living with a number of different jobs, including the title of "botanic physician." William had a shady reputation as a conman and philanderer.

Mother:

Eliza Davison

In contrast to his wily and chaotic father, Rockefeller’s mother was a devout woman who tried to give her children a stable upbringing.

Spouse:

Laura Celestia Spelman Rockefeller

Rockefeller first met Laura Spelman when they were in accounting classes together at Cleveland. After this, Spelman would return to New England in order to study at the Oread Institute, hoping to become a schoolteacher. She returned to Ohio and married Rockefeller in 1864.

During their marriage, she was a constant source of support and advice to Rockefeller, and she was a noted philanthropist in her own right. The women’s college in Atlanta known as Spelman College was named after her. In keeping with her abolitionist beliefs, the college was founded to educate black women in a time when the major institutions forbade them to attend. Spelman and Rockefeller would remain married until her death in 1915.

Sister:

Lucy Rockefeller

Brother:

William Avery Rockefeller, Jr.

William was a co-founder of Standard Oil along with his older brother.

Sister:

Mary Rockefeller

Brother:

Frank Rockefeller

Frank was an American businessman and member of the prominent Rockefeller family.

Brother:

Frances Rockefeller

Daughter:

Elizabeth Rockefeller

Daughter:

Alice Rockefeller

Daughter:

Alta Rockefeller Prentice

Alta founded Alta House (c. 1900), a settlement house in Little Italy in Cleveland, Ohio, which is named in her honor.

Daughter:

Edith Rockefeller McCormick

Son:

John Rockefeller Jr.

John was an American financier and philanthropist who was a prominent member of the Rockefeller family.

colleague:

Maurice B. Clark

References

• Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
  2004
• John D. Rockefeller on Making Money: Advice and Words of Wisdom on Building and Sharing Wealth Advice and words of wisdom from the greatest American businessman and philanthropist. John D. Rockefeller is considered to be the wealthiest man to have ever lived, after adjusting for inflation. An American businessman who made his wealth as a cofounder and leading figure of the Standard Oil Company, he also had a pivotal role in creating our modern system of philanthropy.
  2015
• John D. Rockefeller: The Wealthiest Man In American History
  2017
• John D. Rockefeller: The Autobiography of an Oil Titan and Philanthropist
  2016
• The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy
  2006
• John D. Rockefeller: Anointed with Oil
  2001
• John D. Rockefeller: A Life From Beginning to End
  2017