John Davison Rockefeller Sr. (July 8, 1839 – May 23, 1937) was an American businessman and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest Americans of all time and one of the richest people in history. Rockefeller was born into a large family in Upstate New York who moved several times before eventually settling in Cleveland, Ohio. He became an assistant bookkeeper at age 16 and went into several business partnerships beginning at age 20, concentrating his business on oil refining. Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil Company in 1870. He ran it until 1897 and remained its largest shareholder. In his retirement, he focused his energy and wealth on philanthropy, especially regarding education, medicine, higher education, and modernizing the Southern United States.
Rockefeller's wealth grew substantially as kerosene and gasoline became increasingly important commodities, eventually making him the richest person in the United States. By 1900, Standard Oil controlled about 90% of the nation's oil production. The company lowered production costs and expanded oil distribution through corporate and technological innovations, but it also benefited from a legal environment that enabled consolidation. Critics argue that regulatory capture played a role in facilitating its monopoly power–a view reinforced by Rockefeller's reputed remark, "Competition is a sin."
Rockefeller's company and business practices came under criticism, particularly in the writings of author Ida Tarbell. The Supreme Court ruled in 1911 that Standard Oil must be dismantled for violation of federal antitrust laws. It was broken up into 34 separate entities, which included companies that became ExxonMobil, Chevron Corporation, and others—some of which remain among the largest companies by revenue worldwide. His personal wealth in 1913 was estimated at $900 million, which was 2.3% of the US gross domestic product (GDP). Rockefeller became the country's first billionaire on 28 September 1916.
Rockefeller spent much of the last 40 years of his life in retirement at Kykuit, his estate in Westchester County, New York, defining the structure of philanthropy, along with other key industrialists such as Andrew Carnegie. His fortune was used chiefly to create the modern systematic approach of targeted philanthropy through the creation of foundations that supported medicine, education, and scientific research. His foundations pioneered developments in medical research and were instrumental in the near-eradication of hookworm in the American South, and yellow fever in the United States. He and Carnegie gave form and impetus through their charities to the work of Abraham Flexner, who in his essay "Medical Education in America" emphatically endowed empiricism as the basis for the US medical system of the 20th century.
Rockefeller was the founder of the University of Chicago and Rockefeller University, and funded the establishment of Central Philippine University in the Philippines. He was a devout mainline Baptist Christian and supported many church-based institutions. He adhered to total abstinence from alcohol and tobacco throughout his life. For advice, he relied closely on his wife, Laura Spelman Rockefeller; they had four daughters and a son together. He was a faithful congregant of the Erie Street Baptist Mission Church, taught Sunday school, and served as a trustee, clerk, and occasional janitor. Religion was a guiding force throughout his life, and he believed it to be the source of his success. Rockefeller was also considered a supporter of capitalism based on a perspective of social Darwinism, and he was quoted often as saying, "The growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest."
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Early life and education
Rockefeller was the second of six children born in Richford, New York, to con artist William A. Rockefeller Sr. and Eliza Davison. Rockefeller had an elder sister named Lucy and four younger siblings: William Jr., Mary, and fraternal twins Franklin (Frank) and Frances. His father was of English and German descent, while his mother was of Ulster Scot descent. One source says that some ancestors were Huguenots, the Roquefeuille family, who fled to Germany from France during the reign of Louis XIV and a period of religious persecution. By the time their descendants immigrated to North America, their name had taken German form. William Sr. worked first as a lumberman and then a traveling salesman. He claimed to be a "botanic physician" who sold elixirs, and was described by locals as "Big Bill" and "Devil Bill." Unshackled by conventional morality, he led a vagabond existence and returned to his family infrequently. Throughout his life, Bill was notorious for conducting schemes. In between the births of Lucy and John, Bill and his mistress and housekeeper Nancy Brown had a daughter named Clorinda, who died young. Between John and William Jr.'s births, Bill and Nancy had another daughter, named Cornelia.
Eliza was a homemaker and a devout Baptist who struggled to maintain a semblance of stability at home, as Bill was frequently gone for extended periods. She also put up with his philandering and his double life, which included bigamy. He permanently abandoned his family around 1855 and lived with second wife, Margaret L. Allen.
Eliza was thrifty by nature and by necessity, and she taught her son that "willful waste makes woeful want". She taught John how to save and track money, and the importance of it. John did his share of the regular household chores and earned extra money raising turkeys, selling potatoes and candy, and eventually lending small sums of money to neighbors. He followed his father's advice to "trade dishes for platters" and always get the better part of any deal. Bill once bragged, "I cheat my boys every chance I get. I want to make 'em sharp." However, his mother was more influential in John's upbringing and beyond, while he distanced himself further and further from his father as his life progressed. He later stated, "From the beginning, I was trained to work, to save, and to give."
When he was a boy, his family moved to Moravia, New York, and to Owego, New York, in 1851, where he attended Owego Academy. In 1853, his family moved to Strongsville, Ohio, and he attended Cleveland's Central High School, the first high school in Cleveland and the first free public high school west of the Alleghenies. Then he took a ten-week business course at Folsom's Commercial College, where he studied bookkeeping. Rockefeller was a well-behaved, serious, and studious boy despite his father's absences and frequent family moves. His contemporaries described him as reserved, earnest, religious, methodical, and discreet. He was an excellent debater and expressed himself precisely. He also had a deep love of music and dreamed of it as a possible career.
Bookkeeper
In September 1855, when Rockefeller was sixteen, he got his first job as an assistant bookkeeper working for a small produce commission firm in Cleveland called Hewitt & Tuttle. He worked long hours and delighted, as he later recalled, in "all the methods and systems of the office." He was particularly adept at calculating transportation costs, which served him well later in his career. Much of Rockefeller's duties involved negotiating with barge canal owners, ship captains, and freight agents. In these negotiations, he learned that posted transportation rates that were believed to be fixed could be altered depending on conditions and timing of freight and through the use of rebates to preferred shippers. The practices he learned during his years as a bookkeeper, in terms of keeping a close eye on the ledger, he would continue throughout his life. He reportedly, started at a young age, putting aside, from his meager earnings, money for charity. Rockefeller was also given the duties of collecting debts when Hewitt instructed him to do so. Instead of using his father's method of presence to collect debts, Rockefeller relied on a persistent pestering approach. Rockefeller received $16 a month for his three-month apprenticeship. During his first year, he received $31 a month, which was increased to $50 a month. His final year provided him $58 a month.
As a youth, Rockefeller reportedly said that his two great ambitions were to make $100,000 (equivalent to $3.46 million in 2025 dollars) and to live 100 years.
Business career
Business partnership and Civil War service
In 1859, Rockefeller went into the produce commission business with two partners, Maurice B. Clark and George W. Gardner, under Clark, Gardner & Company, and they raised $4,000 ($143,333 in 2025 dollars) in capital. Clark initiated the idea of the partnership and offered $2,000 towards the goal. Rockefeller had only $800 saved up at the time and so borrowed $1,000 from his father, "Big Bill" Rockefeller, at 10 percent interest. This loan by Bill to John, nearly $40,000 in today's money, was pivotal in John's start in his career, allowing him to build his own wealth beyond his meager pay as an employee. In their first and second years of business, Clark, Gardner & Rockefeller netted $4,400 (on nearly half a million dollars in business) and $17,000 worth of profit, respectively, and their profits soared with the outbreak of the American Civil War when the Union Army called for massive amounts of food and supplies. During the second year of the war, Gardner withdrew from the business, and the firm became Clark & Rockefeller.
When the Civil War was nearing a close and with the prospect of those war-time profits ending, Clark & Rockefeller looked toward the refining of crude oil. While his brother Frank fought in the Civil War, Rockefeller tended his business. He gave some money to the Union cause, as did many rich Northerners who avoided combat. "I wanted to go in the army and do my part," Rockefeller said. "But it was simply out of the question. There was no one to take my place. We were in a new business, and if I had not stayed it must have stopped—and with so many dependent on it."
Rockefeller was opposed to slavery but never joined the abolitionist cause. He voted for Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and supported the new Republican Party. During the Civil War, military consumption of oil drove the price up from $.35 a barrel in 1862 to as high as $13.75. This created an oil-drilling glut, with thousands of speculators attempting to make their fortunes. Most failed, but those who struck oil did not even need to be efficient. They would blow holes in the ground and gather up the oil as they could, often leading to creeks and rivers flowing with wasted oil in the place of water.
A market existed for the refined oil in the form of kerosene. Coal had previously been used to extract kerosene, but its tedious extraction process and high price prevented broad use. Even with the high costs of freight transportation and a government levy during the Civil War (the government levied a tax of twenty cents a gallon on refined oil), profits on the refined product were large. The price of the refined oil in 1863 was around $13 a barrel, with a profit margin of around $5 to $8 a barrel. The capital expenditures for a refinery at that time were small – around $1,000 to $1,500 and requiring only a few men to operate. In this environment of a wasteful boom, the partners switched from foodstuffs to oil, building an oil refinery in 1863 in "The Flats", then Cleveland's burgeoning industrial area. The refinery was directly owned by Andrews, Clark & Company, which was composed of Clark & Rockefeller, chemist Samuel Andrews, and M. B. Clark's two brothers. The commercial oil business was then in its infancy. Whale oil had become too expensive for the masses, and a cheaper, general-purpose lighting fuel was needed.
Beginning in the oil business
In 1866, William Rockefeller Jr., John's brother, built another refinery in Cleveland and brought John into the partnership. In 1867, Henry Morrison Flagler became a partner, and the firm of Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler was established. By 1868, with Rockefeller continuing practices of borrowing and reinvesting profits, controlling costs, and using refineries' waste, the company owned two Cleveland refineries and a marketing subsidiary in New York; it was the largest oil refinery in the world. Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler was the predecessor of the Standard Oil Company.
Standard Oil
By 1865 Cleveland was one of the five main refining centers in the U.S. (besides Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, upstate New York, and the region in northwestern Pennsylvania where most of the oil originated). By 1869 there was triple the kerosene refining capacity than needed to supply the market, and the capacity remained in excess for many years.
On January 10, 1870, Rockefeller abolished the partnership of Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler, co-founding Standard Oil of Ohio. Continuing to apply his work ethic and efficiency, Rockefeller quickly expanded the company to be the most profitable refiner in Ohio. Likewise, it became one of the largest shippers of oil and kerosene in the country. The railroads competed fiercely for traffic and, in an attempt to create a cartel to control freight rates, formed the South Improvement Company offering special deals to bulk customers like Standard Oil, outside the main oil centers. The cartel offered preferential treatment as a high-volume shipper, which included not just steep discounts/rebates of up to 50% for their product but rebates for the shipment of competing products.
Part of this scheme was the announcement of sharply increased freight charges. This touched off a firestorm of protest from independent oil well owners, including boycotts and vandalism, which led to the discovery of Standard Oil's part in the deal. A major New York refiner, Charles Pratt and Company, headed by Charles Pratt and Henry H. Rogers, led the opposition to this plan, and railroads soon backed off. Pennsylvania revoked the cartel's charter, and non-preferential rates were restored for the time being. While competitors may have been unhappy, Rockefeller's efforts did bring American consumers cheaper kerosene and other oil by-products. Before 1870, oil light was only for the wealthy, provided by expensive whale oil. During the next decade, kerosene became commonly available to the working and middle classes.
Undeterred, though vilified for the first time by the press, Rockefeller continued with his self-reinforcing cycle of buying the least efficient competing refiners, improving the efficiency of his operations, pressing for discounts on oil shipments, undercutting his competition, making secret deals, raising investment pools, and buying rivals out. In less than four months in 1872, in what was later known as "The Cleveland Conquest" or "The Cleveland Massacre", Standard Oil absorbed 22 of its 26 Cleveland competitors. Eventually, even his former antagonists, Pratt and Rogers, saw the futility of continuing to compete against Standard Oil; in 1874, they made a secret agreement with Rockefeller to be acquired.
Colorado Fuel and Iron
In 1902, facing cash flow problems, John Cleveland Osgood turned to George Jay Gould, a principal stockholder of the Denver and Rio Grande, for a loan. Gould, via Frederick Taylor Gates, Rockefeller's financial adviser, brought John D. Rockefeller in to help finance the loan. Analysis of the company's operations by John D. Rockefeller Jr. showed a need for substantially more funds which were provided in exchange for acquisition of CF&I's subsidiaries such as the Colorado and Wyoming Railway Company, the Crystal River Railroad Company, and possibly the Rocky Mountain Coal and Iron Company. Control was passed from the Iowa Group to Gould and Rockefeller interests in 1903 with Gould in control and Rockefeller and Gates representing a minority interests. Osgood left the company in 1904 and devoted his efforts to operating competing coal and coke operations.
Philanthropy
Rockefeller's charitable giving began with his first job as a clerk at age 16, when he gave six percent of his earnings to charity, as recorded in his personal ledger. By the time he was twenty, his charity exceeded ten percent of his income. Much of his giving was church-related. His church was later affiliated with the Northern Baptist Convention, which formed from American Baptists in the North with ties to their historic missions to establish schools and colleges for freedmen in the South after the American Civil War. Rockefeller attended Baptist churches every Sunday; when traveling he would often attend services at African-American Baptist congregations, leaving a substantial donation. As Rockefeller's wealth grew, so did his giving, primarily to educational and public health causes, but also for basic science and the arts. He was advised primarily by Frederick Taylor Gates after 1891, and, after 1897, also by his son.
Rockefeller believed in the Efficiency Movement, arguing that: "To help an inefficient, ill-located, unnecessary school is a waste ... it is highly probable that enough money has been squandered on unwise educational projects to have built up a national system of higher education adequate to our needs, if the money had been properly directed to that end."
Rockefeller and his advisers invented the conditional grant, which required the recipient to "root the institution in the affections of as many people as possible who, as contributors, become personally concerned, and thereafter may be counted on to give to the institution their watchful interest and cooperation".
In 1884, Rockefeller provided major funding for Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary in Atlanta for African-American women. His wife, Laura Spelman Rockefeller, was dedicated to civil rights and equality for women. John and Laura donated money and supported the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary whose mission was in line with their faith based beliefs. Spelman College, the all-women historically Black college in Atlanta, named after Laura's family, was heavily supported by Rockefeller. The Spelman family, Rockefeller's in-laws, were ardent abolitionists before the Civil War and were dedicated to supporting the underground railroad. Rockefeller was impressed by the vision of the school and paid off the school's debt. The oldest existing building on Spelman's campus, Rockefeller Hall, is named after him. Rockefeller also gave considerable donations to Denison University and other Baptist colleges.
Death
In his 50s, Rockefeller suffered from moderate depression and digestive troubles; during a stressful period in the 1890s he developed alopecia, the loss of some or all body hair.
By 1901, he began wearing toupées and by 1902, his mustache disappeared. His hair never grew back, but other health complaints subsided as he lightened his workload.
Rockefeller died of arteriosclerosis on May 23, 1937, less than two months shy of his 98th birthday, at "The Casements", his home in Ormond Beach, Florida. He was buried in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland.
Personal life
Family
Against long-circulating speculations that his family has French roots, genealogists proved the German origin of Rockefeller and traced them to the early 17th century. Johann Peter Rockenfeller (baptized September 27, 1682, in the Protestant church of Rengsdorf) immigrated in 1723 from Altwied (today a district of Neuwied, Rhineland-Palatinate) with three children to North America. He settled in Germantown, Pennsylvania.The name Rockenfeller refers to the now-abandoned village of Rockenfeld in the district of Neuwied.
Marriage
On September 8th 1864, Rockefeller married Laura Celestia "Cettie" Spelman (1839–1915), daughter of Harvey Buell Spelman and Lucy Henry Spelman. They had four daughters and one son together. He said later, "Her judgment was always better than mine. Without her keen advice, I would be a poor man." Laura and John were known to have a lifestyle that, minus the mansion, lacked opulence often rejecting extravagant items.
Elizabeth "Bessie" Rockefeller (August 23, 1866 – November 14, 1906)
Alice Rockefeller (July 14, 1869 – August 20, 1870)
Alta Rockefeller (April 12, 1871 – June 21, 1962)
Edith Rockefeller (August 31, 1872 – August 25, 1932)
John Davison Rockefeller Jr. (January 29, 1874 – May 11, 1960)
The Rockefeller wealth, distributed as it was through a system of foundations and trusts, continued to fund family philanthropic, commercial, and, eventually, political aspirations throughout the 20th century. John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s youngest son David Rockefeller was a leading New York banker, serving for over 20 years as CEO of Chase Manhattan (now part of JPMorgan Chase). Second son Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was Republican governor of New York and the 41st Vice President of the United States. Fourth son Winthrop Rockefeller served as Republican Governor of Arkansas. Grandchildren Abigail Aldrich "Abby" Rockefeller and John Davison Rockefeller III became philanthropists. Grandson Laurance Spelman Rockefeller became a conservationist. Great-grandson John Davison "Jay" Rockefeller IV served from 1985 until 2015 as a Democratic senator from West Virginia after serving as governor of West Virginia, and another Winthrop Paul Rockefeller served as lieutenant governor of Arkansas for a decade.
Religious views
John D. Rockefeller was born in Richford, New York, then part of the Burned-over district, a New York state region that became the site of an evangelical revival known as the Second Great Awakening. It drew masses to various Protestant churches—especially Baptist ones—and urged believers to follow such ideals as hard work, prayer, and good deeds to build "the Kingdom of God on Earth." Early in his life, he regularly went with his siblings and mother Eliza to the local Baptist church—the Erie Street Baptist Church (later the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church)—an independent Baptist church that eventually associated with the Northern Baptist Convention (1907–1950; now part of the modern American Baptist Churches USA).
His mother was deeply religious and disciplined, and had a major influence on him in religious matters. During church service, his mother would urge him to contribute his few pennies to the congregation. Rockefeller associated the church with charity. A Baptist preacher once encouraged him to "make as much money as he could, and then give away as much as he could". Later in his life, Rockefeller recalled: "It was at this moment, that the financial plan of my life was formed". Money making was considered by him a "God-given gift".
A devout Northern Baptist, Rockefeller would read the Bible daily, attend prayer meetings twice a week and led his own Bible study with his wife. Burton Folsom Jr. has noted:
[H]e sometimes gave tens of thousands of dollars to Christian groups, while, at the same time, he was trying to borrow over a million dollars to expand his business. His philosophy of giving was founded upon biblical principles. He truly believed in the biblical principle found in Luke 6:38, "Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."
Rockefeller would support Baptist missionary activity, fund universities, and deeply engage in religious activities at his Cleveland, Ohio, church. While traveling the South, he would donate large sums of money to churches belonging to the Southern Baptist Convention, various Black churches, and other Christian denominations. He paid toward the freedom of two slaves and donated to a Roman Catholic orphanage. As he grew rich, his donations became more generous, especially to his church in Cleveland. Believed to be obsolescent, the church was demolished in 1925, and replaced with a new building.
Florida home
Henry Morrison Flagler, one of the co-founders of Standard Oil along with Rockefeller, bought the Ormond Hotel in 1890, located in Ormond Beach, Florida, two years after it opened. Flagler expanded it to accommodate 600 guests and the hotel soon became one in a series of Gilded Age hotels catering to passengers aboard Flagler's Florida East Coast Railway. One of Flagler's guests at the Ormond Hotel was his former business partner John D. Rockefeller, who first stayed at the hotel in 1914.
Rockefeller liked the Ormond Beach area so much that after four seasons at the hotel, he bought an estate in Ormond Beach called The Casements in 1918. Rockefeller was seventy-eight years old when he moved into the Casements. He became known in the area for his elaborate Christmas parties, his love of golf, and for handing out dimes to his neighbors or visitors. During a golf game with Harvey Firestone, the tire magnate made such a good shot that Rockefeller decided he deserved a dime and handed one to his somewhat embarrassed guest.
In 1923, Rockefeller was interviewed by early 20th century American woman writer and a member of the Newspaper Enterprise Association staff, Josephine Van De Grift. Nationwide newspapers sent Van De Grift to spend a week with Rockefeller candidly asking humble questions, taking strolls together, asking about golf, church, and day-to-day life, while staying across the street from him at the Ormond Hotel. She later recounts how readers were only interested in his pocketbook and not about his thoughts on golf or religion. The Casements would be Rockefeller's winter home during the latter part of his life.
Sold by his heirs in 1939, it was purchased by the city in 1974 and now serves as a cultural center and is the community's best-known historical structure.
Legacy
Rockefeller had a long and controversial career in the oil industry followed by a long career in philanthropy. His image is an amalgam of all of these experiences and the many ways he was viewed by his contemporaries. These contemporaries include his former competitors, many of whom were driven to ruin, but many others of whom sold out at a profit (or a profitable stake in Standard Oil, as Rockefeller often offered his shares as payment for a business), and quite a few of whom became very wealthy as managers as well as owners in Standard Oil. They include politicians and writers, some of whom served Rockefeller's interests, and some of whom built their careers by fighting Rockefeller and the "robber barons".
Biographer Allan Nevins, answering Rockefeller's enemies, concluded:
The rise of the Standard Oil men to great wealth was not from poverty. It was not meteor-like, but accomplished over a quarter of a century by courageous venturing in a field so risky that most large capitalists avoided it, by arduous labors, and by more sagacious and farsighted planning than had been applied to any other American industry. The oil fortunes of 1894 were not larger than steel fortunes, banking fortunes, and railroad fortunes made in similar periods. But it is the assertion that the Standard magnates gained their wealth by appropriating "the property of others" that most challenges our attention. We have abundant evidence that Rockefeller's consistent policy was to offer fair terms to competitors and to buy them out, for cash, stock, or both, at fair appraisals; we have the statement of one impartial historian that Rockefeller was decidedly "more humane toward competitors" than Carnegie; we have the conclusion of another that his wealth was "the least tainted of all the great fortunes of his day."
Hostile critics often portrayed Rockefeller as a villain with a suite of bad traits—ruthless, unscrupulous and greedy—and as a bully who connived his cruel path to dominance. Economic historian Robert Whaples warns against ignoring the secrets of his business success:
[R]elentless cost cutting and efficiency improvements, boldness in betting on the long-term prospects of the industry while others were willing to take quick profits, and impressive abilities to spot and reward talent, delegate tasks, and manage a growing empire.
Wealth
Rockefeller is largely remembered for the raw size of his wealth. In 1902, an audit showed Rockefeller was worth about $200 million, over 8% of the total national GDP of $24 billion at the time.
His wealth continued to grow significantly (in line with U.S. economic growth) as the demand for gasoline soared, eventually reaching about $900 million on the eve of the First World War, including significant interests in banking, shipping, mining, railroads, and other industries. His personal wealth was 900 million in 1913 worth $23.5 billion, adjusted for inflation in 2020. According to his New York Times obituary, "it was estimated after Mr. Rockefeller retired from business that he had accumulated close to $1,500,000,000 out of the earnings of the Standard Oil trust and out of his other investments. This was probably the greatest amount of wealth that any private citizen had ever been able to accumulate by his own efforts." By the time of his death in 1937, Rockefeller's remaining fortune, largely tied up in permanent family trusts, was estimated at $1.4 billion, while the total national GDP was $92 billion. According to some methods of wealth calculation, Rockefeller's net worth over the last decades of his life would easily place him as the wealthiest known person in recent history. As a percentage of the United States' GDP, no other American fortune—including those of Bill Gates or Sam Walton—would even come close.
Rockefeller, aged 86, wrote the following words to sum up his life:
In popular culture
Rockefeller's career is highlighted in the History Channel's miniseries docudrama The Men Who Built America.