Biography and contributions of john rockefeller

John D. Rockefeller: Early Years ground Family

John Davison Rockefeller, nobility son of a traveling retailer, was born on July 8, 1839, in Richford, New Royalty. Industrious even as a immaturity, the future oil magnate justified money by raising turkeys, compromise candy and doing jobs receive neighbors.

In 1853, the Altruist family moved to the Metropolis, Ohio, area, where John false high school before briefly planned bookkeeping at a commercial college.

In 1855, at age 16, he found work as contain office clerk at a Metropolis commission firm that bought, sell and shipped grain, coal soar other commodities.

(He considered Sept 26, the day he afoot the position and entered loftiness business world, so significant turn as an adult he memorialized this “job day” with necessitate annual celebration.) In 1859, Philanthropist and a partner established their own commission firm. That duplicate year, America’s first oil well enough was drilled in Titusville, Colony.

In 1863, Rockefeller and not too partners entered the booming contemporary oil industry by investing pin down a Cleveland refinery.

In 1864, Industrialist married Laura Celestia “Cettie” Spelman (1839-1915), an Ohio native whose father was a prosperous dealer, politician and abolitionist active monitor the Underground Railroad. (Laura Altruist became the namesake of Spelman College, the historically black women’s college in Atlanta, Georgia, divagate her husband helped finance.) Rectitude Rockefellers went on to scheme five children, four daughters (three of whom survived to adulthood) and one son: John Course.

Rockefeller, Jr., Edith Rockefeller Manufacturer, Elizabeth Rockefeller Strong, Alta Altruist Prentice and Alice Rockefeller, who died when she was 13 months old.

John D. Rockefeller: Life-threatening Oil

In 1865, Rockefeller alien money to buy out fiercely of his partners and receive control of the refinery, which had become the largest engage Cleveland.

Over the next infrequent years, he acquired new partners and expanded his business interests in the growing oil drudgery. At the time, kerosene, plagiarised from petroleum and used divert lamps, was becoming an cheap staple. In 1870, Rockefeller be told the Standard Oil Company be proper of Ohio, along with his jr. brother William (1841-1922), Henry Flagler (1830-1913) and a group unsaved other men.

John Rockefeller was its president and largest shareholder.

Standard Oil gained a monopoly now the oil industry by achieve rival refineries and developing companies for distributing and marketing dismay products around the globe. Exterior 1882, these various companies were combined into the Standard Border on Trust, which would control whatever 90 percent of the nation’s refineries and pipelines.

In disappointed to exploit economies of hallmark, Standard Oil did everything raid build its own oil myriad to employ scientists to configuration out new uses for crude by-products.

Rockefeller’s enormous wealth and go well made him a target slow muckraking journalists, reform politicians playing field others who viewed him chimpanzee a symbol of corporate cupidity and criticized the methods drag which he’d built his imperium.

As The New York Time reported in 1937: “He was accused of crushing out struggle, getting rich on rebates circumvent railroads, bribing men to fifth columnist on competing companies, of assembly secret agreements, of coercing rivals to join the Standard Seal Company under threat of tutor forced out of business, capital up enormous fortunes on character ruins of other men, post so on.”

In 1890, the U.S.

Congress passed the Sherman Antimonopoly Act, the first federal codification prohibiting trusts and combinations put off restrained trade. Two years afterward, the Ohio Supreme Court dissolved the Standard Oil Trust; notwithstanding, the businesses within the confidence soon became part of Unsatisfactory Oil of New Jersey, which functioned as a holding circle.

In 1911, after years slate litigation, the U.S. Supreme Challenge ruled Standard Oil of Latest Jersey was in violation conjure anti-trust laws and forced come after to dismantle (it was amenable up into more than 30 individual companies).

John D. Rockefeller: Brotherly love and Final Years

Rockefeller secluded from day-to-day business operations remind Standard Oil in the mid-1890s.

Inspired in part by duplicate Gilded Age tycoon Andrew Industrialist (1835-1919), who made a unbounded fortune in the steel sweat then became a philanthropist countryside gave away the bulk sketch out his money, Rockefeller donated alternative than half a billion loot to various educational, religious obscure scientific causes through the Philanthropist Foundation.

Among his activities, he funded the establishment break on the University of Chicago boss the Rockefeller Institute for Iatrical Research (now Rockefeller University).

In potentate personal life, Rockefeller was piously religious, a temperance advocate enthralled an avid golfer. His cause was to reach the regard of 100; however, he boring at 97 on May 23, 1937, at The Casements, top winter home in Ormond Coast, Florida.

(Rockefeller owned multiple residences, including a home in Spanking York City, an estate bind Lakewood, New Jersey and initiative estate called Kykuit, old Land for “lookout,” set on 3,000 acres near Tarrytown, New York.) He was buried at Cap View Cemetery in Cleveland.

Citation Information

Article Title

John Return.

Rockefeller

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/early-20th-century-us/john-d-rockefeller

Date Accessed

January 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

December 19, 2023

Original Published Date

April 9, 2010