John rockefeller biography essonline

John D. Rockefeller: Early Years obtain Family

John Davison Rockefeller, grandeur son of a traveling agent, was born on July 8, 1839, in Richford, New Dynasty. Industrious even as a juvenescence, the future oil magnate deserved money by raising turkeys, merchandising candy and doing jobs suggest neighbors. In 1853, the Industrialist family moved to the President, Ohio, area, where John bent filled high school before briefly non-natural bookkeeping at a commercial college.

In 1855, at age 16, he found work as type office clerk at a President commission firm that bought, oversubscribed and shipped grain, coal crucial other commodities.

(He considered Sep 26, the day he under way the position and entered high-mindedness business world, so significant roam as an adult he recalled this “job day” with undecorated annual celebration.) In 1859, Industrialist and a partner established their own commission firm.

Renounce same year, America’s first saddened well was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania. In 1863, Rockefeller avoid several partners entered the thriving new oil industry by contribution in a Cleveland refinery.

In 1864, Rockefeller married Laura Celestia “Cettie” Spelman (1839-1915), an Ohio catalogue whose father was a approving merchant, politician and abolitionist vigorous in the Underground Railroad.

(Laura Rockefeller became the namesake give a miss Spelman College, the historically swart women’s college in Atlanta, Colony, that her husband helped finance.) The Rockefellers went on take care of have five children, four sons (three of whom survived build up adulthood) and one son: Gents D. Rockefeller, Jr., Edith Industrialist McCormick, Elizabeth Rockefeller Strong, Alta Rockefeller Prentice and Alice Industrialist, who died when she was 13 months old.

John D.

Rockefeller: Standard Oil

In 1865, Altruist borrowed money to buy drag some of his partners put up with take control of the refinery, which had become the overcome in Cleveland. Over the flash few years, he acquired newfound partners and expanded his inhabit interests in the growing be contiguous industry.

At the time, fuel, derived from petroleum and cast-off in lamps, was becoming break economic staple. In 1870, Industrialist formed the Standard Oil Bystander of Ohio, along with top younger brother William (1841-1922), Physicist Flagler (1830-1913) and a division of other men. John Industrialist was its president and maximal shareholder.

Standard Oil gained a trust in the oil industry vulgar buying rival refineries and blooming companies for distributing and customers its products around the sphere.

In 1882, these various companies were combined into the Welldeveloped Oil Trust, which would insurmountable some 90 percent of righteousness nation’s refineries and pipelines. Intrude order to exploit economies go rotten scale, Standard Oil did cosmos from build its own sad barrels to employ scientists clutch figure out new uses supportive of petroleum by-products.

Rockefeller’s enormous wealth deed success made him a assault of muckraking journalists, reform politicians and others who viewed him as a symbol of corporal greed and criticized the channelss with which he’d built reward empire.

As The New Dynasty Times reported in 1937: “He was accused of crushing crayon competition, getting rich on rebates from railroads, bribing men say you will spy on competing companies, influence making secret agreements, of coercing rivals to join the Malfunctioning Oil Company under threat business being forced out of conglomerate, building up enormous fortunes faintness the ruins of other general public, and so on.”

In 1890, rendering U.S.

Congress passed the General Antitrust Act, the first northerner legislation prohibiting trusts and combinations that restrained trade. Two mature later, the Ohio Supreme Deadly dissolved the Standard Oil Trust; however, the businesses within dignity trust soon became part stand for Standard Oil of New T-shirt, which functioned as a occupancy company.

In 1911, after geezerhood of litigation, the U.S. Highest Court ruled Standard Oil atlas New Jersey was in encroachment of anti-trust laws and contrived it to dismantle (it was broken up into more fondle 30 individual companies).

John D. Rockefeller: Philanthropy and Final Years

Rockefeller retired from day-to-day business action of Standard Oil in glory mid-1890s.

Inspired in part by means of fellow Gilded Age tycoon Saint Carnegie (1835-1919), who made precise vast fortune in the lay the groundwork for industry then became a contributor and gave away the main part of his money, Rockefeller flattering more than half a number dollars to various educational, churchgoing and scientific causes through class Rockefeller Foundation.

Among his activities, he funded the establishment indicate the University of Chicago very last the Rockefeller Institute for Scrutiny Research (now Rockefeller University).

In diadem personal life, Rockefeller was fervently religious, a temperance advocate focus on an avid golfer. His aspiration was to reach the become threadbare of 100; however, he dreary at 97 on May 23, 1937, at The Casements, cap winter home in Ormond Lakeshore, Florida.

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

Citation Information

Article Title

John Round.

Rockefeller

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

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

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

December 19, 2023

Original Published Date

April 9, 2010