Frederick Taylor Gates

Frederick Taylor Gates (July 22, 1853, Maine, Broome County, New York – February 6, 1929, Phoenix, Arizona) was an American Baptist clergyman, educator, and the principal business and philanthropic advisor to the major oil industrialist John D. Rockefeller, Sr., from 1891 to 1923. Early life Gates was born on July 2, 1853, in Maine, Broome County, New York. He was the son of Granville and Sarah Jane (née Bowers) Gates. His father was a Baptist minister and his neighbor, and uncle, was Cyrus Gates a cartographer, abolitionist and local judge. He graduated from the University of Rochester in 1877 and from the Rochester Theological Seminary in 1880. He was a member of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity. From 1880 to 1888, he served as pastor of the Central Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He left the ministry and was appointed the secretary of the newly formed American Baptist Education Society where he championed a Baptist university in Chicago to fill a void that existed in Baptist education. Rockefeller adviser On January 21, 1889, Gates met the lifetime Baptist, John D. Rockefeller, Sr. He proved to be central to the suggestion and subsequent design of the funding plans for the creation by Rockefeller, Sr. of the Baptist University of Chicago; he subsequently served for many years as a trustee on its board.