John D. Rockefeller

Rockefeller was born on July 8, 1839, on a farm in Richford, New York, the second of six children of William A. RockefellerWilliam Avery Rockefeller Sr.William Avery Rockefeller Sr. (1810–1906) was the father of Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller. For many years he peddled patent medicines in the American countryside as a self-styled “herbal doctor,” and under the alias William Levingston he started a second family. Newspapers pursued his whereabouts from 1901, and in 1905 Ida Tarbell exposed his early life; he died in 1906, and two years later, in 1908, newspapers revealed his alias and double life, which became a controversial chapter in Rockefeller family history.Open the full entry and Eliza Davison Rockefeller. The family was not well off and moved several times during his childhood.⁠[1][1]

In his memoir he recalled that his father explained the various businesses he ran and taught him the principles and methods of doing business. From childhood he kept a small book recording his income, expenses and the small sums he regularly gave away, which he called “Ledger A.” At seven or eight, with his mother’s help, he raised turkeys for sale, which he described as his first business venture.⁠[2][2][2][2]

In 1853, the Rockefeller family moved to Strongsville, near Cleveland, Ohio. He boarded in Cleveland, attended Central High School from 1853 to 1855, and joined the Erie Street Baptist Church (later the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church), becoming a trustee of the church at 21.⁠[3][1]

In 1855, although his family had intended to send him to college, he left high school shortly before completing the course and enrolled at Folsom Mercantile College in Cleveland to study bookkeeping and other business subjects, finishing a six-month course in three months.⁠[2][1]

On September 26, 1855, after about six weeks of looking for work on the streets, the 16-year-old Rockefeller was hired as an assistant bookkeeper by Hewitt & Tuttle, a produce commission merchant on the Cleveland waterfront. He was not paid until January 1856, receiving $50 for more than three months of work; a year later he was promoted to bookkeeper at a salary of $500 a year.⁠[4][4][4][4]

For the rest of his life he celebrated September 26 each year as “job day,” treating it as more important than his birthday; he later recalled, “All my future seemed to hinge on that day.”⁠[5][5]

In March 1859, Rockefeller went into the produce commission business in partnership with Maurice B. Clark. He had saved about $1,000 himself and borrowed another $1,000 from his father, who charged him 10% annual interest. He later told a Bible class that the firm’s first-year sales were $450,000, with a profit of about $4,400.⁠[3][1][2][4]

After the Civil War broke out, Rockefeller was exempted as his family’s main breadwinner and, as was common practice at the time, paid for a substitute to serve in his place. He explained that he had wanted to enlist but that his new business could not do without him. During the war his commission business was highly profitable, giving him the capital for his move into the oil industry.⁠[5][5][5]

After the first oil well was struck at Titusville in western Pennsylvania in 1859, Cleveland quickly became a refining center. In 1863, Rockefeller, Clark and Samuel Andrews, who had the technical knowledge of refining, formed Andrews, Clark & Co. and built a small refinery on the banks of Kingsbury Run near Cleveland; at that point Rockefeller’s name did not yet appear in the firm’s name.⁠[1][1][4][4]

On September 8, 1864, Rockefeller married Laura C. Spelman, a schoolteacher and his former high school classmate, in Cleveland. They had five children; their only son, John D. Rockefeller Jr.John D. Rockefeller Jr.John D. Rockefeller Jr. (1874–1960) was an American philanthropist and the only son of Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller. He devoted most of his life to philanthropy and public affairs, giving away about $537 million in total; he led the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg, built Rockefeller Center in New York and paid for the land for the United Nations headquarters in New York. In 1914 the Ludlow Massacre at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, controlled by his family, brought him nationwide criticism.Open the full entry, inherited most of the family fortune and carried on his father’s philanthropy.⁠[1][4][1]

In 1865, the partners disagreed over the direction of the business and decided to sell the refinery to the highest bidder. Rockefeller bought it for $72,500, mostly with borrowed money, sold off his other business interests and formed Rockefeller & Andrews with Andrews, devoting himself exclusively to oil from then on.⁠[1][4][3]

In 1867, Rockefeller & Andrews merged with a refinery established by his brother William Rockefeller and took in William Rockefeller and Henry M. Flagler as partners. This was the first in a series of reorganizations and mergers that ultimately produced the Standard Oil trust.⁠[4][4]

On January 10, 1870, the partnership of Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler was reorganized as the Standard Oil Company, a joint-stock company incorporated under Ohio law with capital of $1 million. Rockefeller became president and the largest shareholder; the other founders included William Rockefeller, Samuel Andrews, Henry M. Flagler and Stephen V. Harkness. The company then owned two large refineries in Cleveland, with about one-tenth of the country’s refining capacity.⁠[6][4][3][1][6]

In November 1871, Rockefeller learned of a plan proposed by Thomas A. Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad under which the South Improvement Company would coordinate the railroads’ oil traffic, with member refiners receiving rebates as well as drawbacks on the freight paid by nonmembers. Standard Oil’s management at first hesitated but later held 900 of the company’s 2,000 shares. After the plan became public in February 1872, producers and refiners in the Oil Region held mass meetings and boycotted the member refiners, and the railroads canceled the rate increases on March 28; Rockefeller confirmed in early April that the plan had been abandoned.⁠[6][6][6][6][6]

Between February 17 and March 28, Standard Oil bought 22 of the 26 independent refineries in Cleveland, an episode later known as the “Cleveland Massacre”; most of the acquired plants were valued as scrap, and by the end of the year only four were still operating. Rockefeller always denied that the plan was the reason for Standard Oil’s growth, stressing that it had been proposed by the railroads and that no oil was ever shipped under it.⁠[6][6][6][6]

By 1872, Standard Oil had bought nearly all of Cleveland’s refining businesses and two refineries in the New York area, refined 29,000 barrels of crude oil a day, and had its own barrel-making plants, storage tanks and warehouses as well as paint and glue factories.⁠[1][1]

By 1880, Rockefeller was worth about $18 million. He also invested in other industries, holding shares in the Cleveland Arcade Co., owning iron mines and timberland, and investing in manufacturing, transportation and other businesses.⁠[3][1]

In 1882, all of Standard Oil’s assets were placed in the Standard Oil Trust, with initial capital of $70 million and 42 original certificate holders.⁠[1]

The same year, Rockefeller began supporting the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, a school for Black women in Atlanta. In 1884 the school was renamed Spelman Seminary in honor of his wife, Laura, and her parents, and in 1924 it became Spelman College.⁠[5][5]

From the 1870s, Rockefeller frequently traveled to New York on business. In 1884 he bought a large brownstone at 4 West 54th Street in New York, and gradually made New York his legal residence, while still spending summers at Forest Hill in Cleveland.⁠[1][1][3][3]

In the 1880s, Rockefeller developed a practice of conditional giving, contributing only when others also provided substantial funds. Working with the American Baptist Education Society, he helped found the University of Chicago, pledging $600,000 toward an initial $1 million endowment on the condition that the remainder be pledged by others within 90 days. The university was incorporated in 1890.⁠[1][1]

Over the next 20 years he continued to give to the University of Chicago, always requiring others to contribute as well; in 1910 he made a final gift of $10 million, bringing his total giving to $35 million. In his memoir he said he valued the university’s emphasis on research and had been impressed by the enthusiasm of its first president, William R. Harper.⁠[1][2][2]

On March 2, 1892, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled in a quo warranto action brought by the state that the Standard Oil Company of Ohio had unlawfully taken part in the trust. The trust was subsequently dissolved in Ohio, and its constituent companies later formed Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) on the basis of a New Jersey law that allowed a parent company to hold stock in other companies.⁠[7][7][1]

In 1896, at 57, Rockefeller withdrew from the day-to-day leadership of Standard Oil, though he kept the title of president until 1911, and thereafter devoted most of his energy to philanthropy. By one estimate, Standard Oil controlled 75% of the U.S. oil business in the 1890s.⁠[1][3][1]

He hired the Rev. Frederick T. Gates, who had been involved with the American Baptist Education Society and the affairs of the University of Chicago, to manage his philanthropy, and on the advice of Gates and his son, John D. Rockefeller Jr., established a series of institutions that hold an important place in the history of American philanthropy, science, medicine and public health.⁠[1][1]

In 1901, Rockefeller formally established the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, which he had discussed with Gates and his son for three years, with the aim of discovering the causes of disease and the means of preventing and treating it. It was the first biomedical research center in the United States. Its laboratories opened at York Avenue and 66th Street in New York in 1906, its affiliated hospital opened in 1910, and in 1965 it was renamed The Rockefeller University. Scientists at the institute later showed that DNA is the key genetic material.⁠[8][1][8][8][8][8][1]

In 1902, Rockefeller established the General Education Board to promote education in the United States “without distinction of race, sex or creed.” Between 1902 and 1965 the board made grants of $325 million, focusing on higher education, including medical schools, and in the American South funding schools for both white and African American students; the 4-H club movement and the federal agricultural extension program also grew out of its work with children’s clubs.⁠[1][1][1]

The sheer size of Standard Oil made Rockefeller a lightning rod: critics called the company “the Octopus,” an antitrust movement arose, and muckraking magazines made him and Standard Oil their chief targets. The journalist Ida M. Tarbell published The History of the Standard Oil Company, which criticized its business methods; he was accused of stifling competition, obtaining rebates from railroads, paying people to spy on competitors, making secret agreements and coercing rivals into joining Standard Oil. Rockefeller denied all the charges, calling Standard Oil a “good trust” and saying his wealth had been honestly earned.⁠[4][4][4][4][4]

In 1905, at the end of her investigative series in McClure’s magazine, Tarbell published two character studies of Rockefeller himself that also touched on his father’s history. Rockefeller was furious and called Tarbell a “poison woman.” He seldom responded publicly, for the most part declining to comment.⁠[9][9][4]

On November 15, 1906, the U.S. government brought suit under the Sherman Anti-trust Act of 1890 against Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and other companies in the U.S. Circuit Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, also naming as defendants individuals including Rockefeller himself and his brother William Rockefeller.⁠[7][7][7]

In 1909, Rockefeller established the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission for the Eradication of Hookworm Disease, which carried out hookworm control and public education in 11 Southern states, holding more than 25,000 public meetings attended by more than 2 million people.⁠[1][1][1]

The same year he published his memoir, Random Reminiscences of Men and Events, the only book he published during his lifetime. In it he acknowledged that the Standard Oil Company of Ohio had received railroad rebates before 1880 but said the company had provided corresponding consideration in return; he also argued that combinations of large businesses would continue to grow and that the era in which individual competition dominated large industries was over.⁠[2][4][2][2][2]

On May 15, 1911, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s decision, finding that the Standard Oil trust had violated antitrust law. It ordered the dissolution of the parent company, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, and extended the deadline for compliance to at least six months; the 38 companies it controlled were split off as independent businesses. Rockefeller then held 244,500 of the company’s 983,383 outstanding shares, and he stepped down as president about six months after the ruling.⁠[7][1][7][1][4]

In the first few years after the breakup, the share prices of the successor companies doubled or even tripled, and the fortune of Rockefeller, who owned about a quarter of the shares, grew substantially as a result.⁠[5][5]

In 1913, Rockefeller established The Rockefeller Foundation with the mission “to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world.” The foundation’s International Health Division extended hookworm control to 52 countries and established and funded the world’s first school of hygiene and public health at Johns Hopkins University; its agricultural program in Mexico helped launch the “Green Revolution.”⁠[1][1][1][1]

The same year he became embroiled in a tax dispute with local officials in Ohio. Because his wife was ill, the family stayed at Forest Hill past the February 1, 1913, tax assessment deadline, and the county presented him with a $1.5 million tax bill, which he refused to pay. During the dispute he could not enter Ohio because of a subpoena, and he never returned to Forest Hill.⁠[3][3][3]

In 1918, Rockefeller established the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial; by 1934 he had given it $73,985,313.⁠[3][4]

In 1921, his son John D. Rockefeller Jr. stated publicly that his father’s fortune had never reached $1 billion and had been greatly reduced by his large gifts. In 1923, testimony in a Senate oil investigation showed that Rockefeller was no longer a shareholder of Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and held less than 1% of any Standard Oil company; he had distributed most of his property to members of his family.⁠[4][4][4]

Rockefeller died on May 23, 1937, at The Casements, his home in Ormond Beach, Florida, at the age of 97. He was buried in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland.⁠[1][3]

From his teens, Rockefeller gave part of his income to his church and to charities. His giving in Cleveland amounted to $19.31 in 1856, rose to $250,000 in 1887 and reached $1.35 million in 1892. Figures released after his death showed that from 1855 to 1934 he gave a total of $530,853,632 to charitable and educational institutions of all kinds, including $182,851,480 to The Rockefeller Foundation, $129,209,167 to the General Education Board, $59,931,891 to the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research and $34,708,375 to the University of Chicago.⁠[1][3][4][4][4][4]

He often made his gifts conditional, requiring recipient institutions to raise matching amounts on their own. Beyond the institutions he founded, he personally supported theological seminaries, the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, victims of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the Anti-Saloon League, Baptist missionary organizations and colleges and universities including Brown, Harvard, YaleYale UniversityYale University is a research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Its predecessor, the Collegiate School, received a charter in 1701. Trustees chose New Haven in 1716; the institution became Yale College in 1718 and Yale University in 1887. Yale provides undergraduate, graduate and professional education and has 14 undergraduate residential colleges. As of October 2026, its president was Maurie McInnis, who took office in July 2024. In 2026, Yale expanded aid for incoming undergraduates and celebrated its 325th anniversary.Open the full entry and Vassar.⁠[4][1][1]