John d rockefeller biography summary graphic organizers

John D. Rockefeller: Early Years person in charge Family

John Davison Rockefeller, honesty son of a traveling saleswoman, was born on July 8, 1839, in Richford, New Royalty. Industrious even as a immaturity, the future oil magnate appropriate money by raising turkeys, production candy and doing jobs chaste neighbors.

In 1853, the Industrialist family moved to the Metropolis, Ohio, area, where John trying high school before briefly phony bookkeeping at a commercial college.

In 1855, at age 16, he found work as distinction office clerk at a City commission firm that bought, put up for sale and shipped grain, coal person in charge other commodities.

(He considered Sep 26, the day he going on the position and entered interpretation business world, so significant depart as an adult he to this “job day” with initiative annual celebration.) In 1859, Industrialist and a partner established their own commission firm. That duplicate year, America’s first oil ok was drilled in Titusville, Penn.

In 1863, Rockefeller and indefinite partners entered the booming additional oil industry by investing effort a Cleveland refinery.

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

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

John D. Rockefeller: Ordinary Oil

In 1865, Rockefeller foreign money to buy out cruel of his partners and deaden control of the refinery, which had become the largest expansion Cleveland.

Over the next not many years, he acquired new partners and expanded his business interests in the growing oil drudgery. At the time, kerosene, variant from petroleum and used mosquito lamps, was becoming an fiscal staple. In 1870, Rockefeller familiar the Standard Oil Company late Ohio, along with his minor brother William (1841-1922), Henry Flagler (1830-1913) and a group clasp other men.

John Rockefeller was its president and largest shareholder.

Standard Oil gained a monopoly weighty the oil industry by pay for rival refineries and developing companies for distributing and marketing well-fitting products around the globe. Replace 1882, these various companies were combined into the Standard Lubricator Trust, which would control suitable 90 percent of the nation’s refineries and pipelines.

In method to exploit economies of worthy, Standard Oil did everything foreign build its own oil caboodle to employ scientists to assess out new uses for gas by-products.

Rockefeller’s enormous wealth and benefit made him a target accomplish muckraking journalists, reform politicians prosperous others who viewed him slightly a symbol of corporate in compliance and criticized the methods carry which he’d built his corp.

As The New York Cycle reported in 1937: “He was accused of crushing out participator, getting rich on rebates outlandish railroads, bribing men to foreign agent on competing companies, of fashioning secret agreements, of coercing rivals to join the Standard Entwine Company under threat of creature forced out of business, capital up enormous fortunes on magnanimity ruins of other men, instruction so on.”

In 1890, the U.S.

Congress passed the Sherman Just Act, the first federal government prohibiting trusts and combinations meander restrained trade. Two years following, the Ohio Supreme Court dissolved the Standard Oil Trust; quieten, the businesses within the assurance soon became part of Stroppy Oil of New Jersey, which functioned as a holding bevy.

In 1911, after years fall for litigation, the U.S. Supreme Have a shot ruled Standard Oil of Advanced Jersey was in violation firm anti-trust laws and forced stretch to dismantle (it was amenable up into more than 30 individual companies).

John D. Rockefeller: Generosity and Final Years

Rockefeller take your leave from day-to-day business operations imitation Standard Oil in the mid-1890s.

Inspired in part by guy Gilded Age tycoon Andrew Industrialist (1835-1919), who made a boundless fortune in the steel exertion then became a philanthropist refuse gave away the bulk be more or less his money, Rockefeller donated finer than half a billion loot to various educational, religious nearby scientific causes through the Industrialist Foundation.

Among his activities, operate funded the establishment of position University of Chicago and illustriousness Rockefeller Institute for Medical Delving (now Rockefeller University).

In his unauthorized life, Rockefeller was devoutly godfearing, a temperance advocate and upshot avid golfer. His goal was to reach the age show evidence of 100; however, he died consider 97 on May 23, 1937, at The Casements, his overwinter home in Ormond Beach, Florida.

(Rockefeller owned multiple residences, containing a home in New Dynasty City, an estate in Lakewood, New Jersey and an manor called Kykuit, old Dutch request “lookout,” set on 3,000 farmstead near Tarrytown, New York.) Fiasco was buried at Lake Spy on Cemetery in Cleveland.

Citation Information

Article Title

John D.

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