American businessman and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Sr. was born on July 8, 1839, and died on May 23, 1937. He was among the richest people in contemporary history and among the wealthiest Americans of all time. Born in Upstate New York, Rockefeller came from a large family that relocated multiple times before settling in Cleveland, Ohio. At the age of 16, he started working as an assistant bookkeeper. At the age of 20, he entered into multiple business partnerships, focusing on oil refining. In 1870, Rockefeller established the Standard Oil Company. He continued to be its biggest shareholder and operated it until 1897. During his retirement, he concentrated his fortune and efforts on philanthropy, particularly in the areas of higher education, education, medicine, and modernizing the South.
As gasoline and kerosene became more and more valuable commodities, Rockefeller’s fortune increased significantly, and he finally became the richest person in the United States. Approximately 90% of the country’s oil production was under Standard Oil’s control by 1900. Through technological and corporate advancements, the corporation increased oil distribution and reduced production costs, but it also profited from a legislative climate that allowed for consolidation. Opponents contend that regulatory capture contributed to its monopoly strength, a claim that is supported by Rockefeller’s alleged statement that “Competition is a sin.”
In particular, novelist Ida Tarbell’s articles criticized Rockefeller’s corporation and commercial practices. In 1911, the Supreme Court declared that Standard Oil was in violation of federal antitrust statutes and had to be dissolved. It was divided into 34 distinct firms, some of which are still among the biggest in the world by revenue, including those that later formed ExxonMobil, Chevron Corporation, and others. As a result, Rockefeller’s fortune was valued at almost 2% of the national GDP, making him the nation’s first billionaire. The estimated value of his personal wealth in 1913 was $900 million, or about 3% of the $39.1 billion US GDP for that year.
Along with other influential entrepreneurs like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller spent a large portion of his final 40 years in retirement at his home, Kykuit, in Westchester County, New York, where he helped define the framework of contemporary charity. His wealth was mostly utilized to establish foundations that financed scientific research, education, and medical care, so establishing the contemporary methodical strategy of targeted philanthropy. In addition to helping to almost eradicate yellow fever in the US and hookworm in the American South, his foundations led the way in medical research advancements.
Through his charitable contributions, he and Carnegie gave shape and momentum to Abraham Flexner’s work, which in his essay “Medical Education in America” firmly established empiricism as the foundation of the twentieth-century US medical system.
In addition to founding Rockefeller University and the University of Chicago, John D. Rockefeller also provided funding for the founding of Central Philippine University in the Philippines. He backed numerous church-based organizations and was a devoted mainline Baptist Christian. Throughout his life, he abstained completely from both alcohol and tobacco. He looked to his wife, Laura Spelman Rockefeller, who had four girls and a son, for guidance.
In addition to teaching Sunday school and serving as a trustee, clerk, and occasionally janitor, he was a devoted member of the Erie Street Baptist Mission Church. Throughout his life, religion served as a compass, and he attributed his success to it. According to social Darwinist theory, John D. Rockefeller was also a proponent of capitalism. He was frequently cited as saying, “The growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest.”
Rockefeller Philanthropy
Born in Richford, New York, John D. Rockefeller was the second of six children born to con artists Eliza Davison and William A. Rockefeller Sr. Rockefeller had four younger siblings: Mary, Franklin (Frank) and Frances, fraternal twins, and an older sister named Lucy. His mother was of Ulster Scot ancestry, and his father was of English and German ancestry. According to one account, the Roquefeuille family, who fled France during Louis XIV’s reign and a time of religious persecution, were among the forebears who were Huguenots. Their name had become German by the time their descendants arrived to North America. Prior to becoming a traveling salesman, William Sr. was a lumberman.
A “botanic physician” who sold elixirs, he was referred to by the villagers as “Big Bill” and “Devil Bill.” Unrestrained by traditional morals, he lived a nomadic life and rarely visited his family. Bill has a reputation for plotting throughout his life. Bill and his mistress and housekeeper Nancy Brown had a daughter named Clorinda, who passed away at a young age, in between the births of Lucy and John. Bill and Nancy also had another daughter, Cornelia, in between the births of John and William Jr.
Being a homemaker and a devoted Baptist, Eliza found it difficult to keep things somewhat stable at home because Bill was often away for long periods of time. She also tolerated his double existence, which included bigamy, and his philandering. Around 1855, he left his family behind for good and moved in with Margaret L. Allen, his second wife.
Eliza instilled in her son the lesson that “willful waste makes woeful want” because she was naturally frugal and had to be. John learned from her the value of tracking and saving money. John made extra cash by producing turkeys, selling potatoes and candies, and finally making modest loans to neighbors in addition to doing his fair share of home tasks.
As his father had taught him, he should “trade dishes for platters” and always obtain the better side of every opportunity. “I cheat my boys every chance I get,” Bill boasted once. I wish to sharpen them. But John’s mother had a greater impact on his childhood and beyond, and as his life went on, he grew more and more estranged from his father. He went on to say, “From the beginning, I was trained to work, to save, and to give.”
His family relocated to Moravia, New York, when he was a youngster, and then to Owego, New York, in 1851, where he went to Owego Academy. He attended Cleveland’s Central High School, the city’s first high school and the first free public high school west of the Alleghenies, when his family relocated to Strongsville, Ohio, in 1853. After that, he studied bookkeeping in a ten-week business course at Folsom’s Commercial College. Despite his father’s absences and frequent family movements, John D. Rockefeller was a well-behaved, conscientious, and industrious youngster. His contemporaries characterized him as discrete, meticulous, pious, sincere, and reticent. He articulated himself clearly and was a superb debater. He also had a strong passion for music and envisioned a career in it.
Standard Oil history
In addition to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, upstate New York, and the area in northwest Pennsylvania where the majority of the oil originates, Cleveland was one of the five major refining hubs in the United States by 1865. Three times as much kerosene refining capacity was available by 1869 as was required to meet market demand, and this excess capacity persisted for many years.
In order to co-found Standard Oil of Ohio, John D. Rockefeller disbanded the Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler firm on January 10, 1870. By maintaining his efficiency and work ethic, Rockefeller swiftly grew the business to become Ohio’s most lucrative refiner. It also rose to become one of the nation’s biggest exporters of kerosene and oil.
Due to intense competition for traffic, the railroads established the South Improvement Company to try to control freight costs by granting special discounts to large customers like Standard Oil outside of the major oil locations. As a high-volume shipper, the cartel provided special treatment, which included rebates for the shipment of rival items in addition to hefty discounts or refunds of up to 50% for their product.
This plan included the announcement of significantly higher freight costs. The discovery of Standard Oil’s involvement in the transaction resulted from a flurry of protests by independent oil well owners, including boycotts and vandalism. Railroads quickly withdrew their support for this idea after a significant refiner in New York, Charles Pratt and Company, directed by Charles Pratt and Henry H. Rogers, opposed it. The cartel’s charter was withdrawn by Pennsylvania, and non-preferential prices were temporarily reinstated. Rockefeller’s efforts did result in cheaper kerosene and other oil by-products for American consumers, despite the dissatisfaction of rivals. Prior to 1870, only the wealthy could afford oil light, which was supplied by pricey whale oil. Kerosene became widely accessible to the working and middle classes during the course of the following ten years.
Despite being demonized by the media for the first time, John D. Rockefeller persisted in his self-reinforcing cycle of purchasing the least productive rival refiners, increasing the effectiveness of his business, negotiating better prices for oil shipments, undercutting his rivals, negotiating in secret, expanding investment pools, and purchasing rivals out. What became known as “The Cleveland Conquest” or “The Cleveland Massacre” occurred in 1872 when Standard Oil acquired 22 of its 26 Cleveland rivals in less than four months. Even his erstwhile rivals, Pratt and Rogers, eventually realized the pointlessness of battling Standard Oil any longer, and in 1874 they reached a covert deal with Rockefeller to be bought out.
Rogers and Pratt joined John D. Rockefeller as partners. Specifically, Rogers emerged as one of Rockefeller’s most important figures in the establishment of the Standard Oil Trust. Charles Millard Pratt, Pratt’s son, was appointed Standard Oil’s secretary. For several of his rivals, Rockefeller only needed to show them his books to give them a sense of the competition before making a reasonable offer. He threatened to force them into bankruptcy and then purchase their assets at auction for a low price if they rejected his offer. He did not, however, seek to completely eradicate competition. Regarding that charge, his partner Pratt really stated, “We must have competitors… They will undoubtedly raise another if we take them in.
John D. Rockefeller viewed himself as the industry’s savior, “an angel of mercy” who would take in the weak and make the sector stronger, more efficient, and more competitive overall, rather than seeking to eradicate them. Standard was expanding both vertically and horizontally. It expanded its home delivery network, tank cars, and pipes. It made its products accessible for the typical home, maintained oil costs low to deter competitors, and occasionally offered below cost to expand its market share. It created more than 300 oil-based goods, including chewing gum, paint, tar, and petroleum jelly. Standard was refining more than 90% of the oil in the United States by the end of the 1870s. In 2024, $1 million is equal to $33 million, hence Rockefeller was already a millionaire.
He instinctively realized that orderliness would only proceed from centralized control of large aggregations of plant and capital, with the one aim of an orderly flow of products from the producer to the consumer. That orderly, economic, efficient flow is what we now, many years later, call ‘vertical integration‘. I do not know whether Mr. Rockefeller ever used the word ‘integration’. I only know he conceived the idea. — A Standard Oil of Ohio successor of Rockefeller.
Thomas A. Scott, the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Standard’s main hauler, and Standard had a disagreement in 1877. John D. Rockefeller launched an effort to construct and purchase pipelines because he saw them as an alternate oil transportation method. In response to Standard’s foray into the transportation and pipeline industries, the railroad established a subsidiary to purchase and construct pipelines and oil refineries.
Standard retaliated, halted its shipments, and, with the assistance of other railroads, initiated a pricing war that resulted in labor unrest and a significant reduction in freight payments. The railroad sold its oil assets to Standard after Rockefeller won the case. Following that conflict, John D. Rockefeller was charged with monopolizing the oil trade by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1879, which sparked a wave of similar court cases in other states and brought Standard Oil’s business methods to the attention of the country. As he implemented his consolidation and integration strategy and faced journalistic attacks in the 1870s and 1880s, Rockefeller was under a lot of pressure. He lamented that most nights he was unable to sleep. Later, Rockefeller said:
All the fortune that I have made has not served to compensate me for the anxiety of that period.
When cash flow issues arose in 1902, John Cleveland Osgood sought a loan from George Jay Gould, a major Denver & Rio Grande investor. Gould recruited John D. Rockefeller to assist with loan financing through Rockefeller’s financial advisor, Frederick Taylor Gates. John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s analysis of the business’s operations revealed a significant need for additional funding, which was given in return for the purchase of CF&I’s subsidiaries, including the Crystal River Railroad Company, the Colorado and Wyoming Railway Company, and perhaps the Rocky Mountain Coal and Iron Company. In 1903, the Iowa Group lost control to Gould and Rockefeller interests, with Gould holding the reins and Rockefeller and Gates representing a minority. After departing the company in 1904, Osgood focused his energies on running rival coal and coke operations.
Personal Life
Family
Genealogists established Rockefeller’s German ancestry and tracked it back to the early 17th century, dispelling long-held rumors that his family had French ancestry. With three children, Johann Peter Rockenfeller left Altwied (now a district of Neuwied, Rhineland-Palatinate) for North America in 1723. He was christened on September 27, 1682, at the Protestant church of Rengsdorf. Germantown, Pennsylvania, became his home.
The now-defunct village of Rockenfeld in the Neuwied area is referred to as Rockenfeller.
Marriage
Laura Celestia “Cettie” Spelman (1839–1915), the daughter of Harvey Buell Spelman and Lucy Henry, was married to John D. Rockefeller in 1864. Together, they had one son and four daughters. “Her judgment was always better than mine,” he subsequently remarked. I wouldn’t have anything if it weren’t for her wise counsel. With the exception of the estate, Laura and John were known to lead a modest lifestyle, frequently eschewing ostentatious goods.
- 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)
Over the course of the 20th century, the Rockefeller family’s philanthropic, business, and ultimately political ambitions were sustained by their riches, which was dispersed through a network of foundations and trusts. David Rockefeller, the youngest son of John Jr., was a prominent New York banker who oversaw Chase Manhattan (now a division of JPMorgan Chase) for more than 20 years. Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, the second son, served as the 41st Vice President of the United States and as the Republican governor of New York. Winthrop Rockefeller, the fourth son, was the Republican governor of Arkansas. John Davison Rockefeller III and his granddaughter Abigail Aldrich “Abby” Rockefeller went on to become philanthropists. Laurance Spelman Rockefeller, his grandson, turned to conservation.
Another Winthrop, Paul Rockefeller, was the deputy governor of Arkansas for ten years, and his great-grandson, John Davison “Jay” Rockefeller IV, was a Democratic senator from West Virginia from 1985 to 2015 after serving as governor of West Virginia.
Religious View
Richford, New York, where John D. Rockefeller was born, was once a part of the Burned-over district, a section of New York state that saw the Second Great Awakening, an evangelical revival. It attracted large crowds to Protestant churches, particularly Baptist ones, and exhorted followers to uphold principles like diligence, prayer, and good actions in order to establish “the Kingdom of God on Earth.” In his early years, he frequently visited the local Baptist church, the Erie Street Baptist Church (later the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church), with his mother Eliza and siblings. This independent Baptist church eventually became affiliated with the Northern Baptist Convention (1907–1950; currently a part of the contemporary American Baptist Churches USA).
His mother had a significant religious influence on him and was a devout and disciplined individual. His mother would encourage him to give the congregation his few coins during church services. John D. Rockefeller linked philanthropy and the church. He was reportedly urged to “make as much money as he could, and then give away as much as he could” by a Baptist pastor. “It was at this moment, that the financial plan of my life was formed,” Rockefeller recounted later in life. He viewed making money as a “gift from God.”
John D. Rockefeller was a devoted Northern Baptist who led his own Bible study with his wife, read the Bible every day, and went to prayer meetings twice a week. According to Burton Folsom Jr.,
[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 finance universities, encourage Baptist missionary work, and actively participate in religious activities at his church in Cleveland, Ohio. He would make substantial financial contributions to Southern Baptist Convention churches, other Christian denominations, and numerous Black churches when he was touring the South. He made a donation to a Roman Catholic orphanage and helped finance the emancipation of two slaves. His donations increased in size as he became wealthy, particularly to his Cleveland church. The church was demolished in 1925 and replaced with a new structure because it was thought to be outdated.
Rockefeller Philantropy
When John D. Rockefeller was sixteen years old and working as a clerk for the first time, he donated six percent of his wages to charity, as documented in his personal ledger. His charitable contributions surpassed ten percent of his earnings by the time he was twenty. He gave a lot of money for church. The Northern Baptist Convention, which was founded by American Baptists in the North who had ties to their historic missions to build schools and universities for freedmen in the South during the American Civil War, later became associated with his church. Every Sunday, Rockefeller went to a Baptist church. He also frequently attended services at African-American Baptist congregations when on the road, offering a sizable payment.
Rockefeller’s charitable contributions increased along with his fortune, mainly supporting public health and education initiatives but also supporting the arts and basic sciences. After 1891, Frederick Taylor Gates was his main advisor; his son also provided advice after 1897.
John D. Rockefeller supported the Efficiency Movement by 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.”
In order for 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,” Rockefeller and his advisors created the conditional grant.
African-American women’s Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary received significant funding from Rockefeller in 1884. Laura Spelman Rockefeller, his wife, was committed to women’s equality and civil rights. In keeping with their religious convictions, John and Laura sponsored and gave money to the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary. Rockefeller provided significant support for Spelman College, an all-female historically Black university in Atlanta that bears Laura’s family name.
Before the Civil War, Rockefeller’s in-laws, the Spelman family, were fervent abolitionists who were committed to assisting the Underground Railroad. Rockefeller paid out the school’s debt because he was pleased by its vision. Rockefeller Hall, the oldest structure still standing on Spelman’s campus, bears his name. Rockefeller also gave considerable donations to Denison University and other Baptist colleges.
By 1900, John D. Rockefeller transformed a modest Baptist college into a world-class university by giving $80 million (about $2.41 billion in 2023) to William Rainey Harper’s University of Chicago. The University of Chicago, he would say, was “the best investment I ever made.” Additionally, he established Central Philippine University, the first Baptist and second American university in Asia, in 1905 in the heavily Catholic Philippines by granting a grant to the American Baptist Missionaries Foreign Mission Board and the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society.
In order to advance education at all levels across the nation, Rockefeller’s General Education Board was organized in 1903. It was particularly active in assisting black schools in the South, in keeping with the Baptists’ historic goals. Additionally, Rockefeller funded prestigious eastern universities including Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Brown, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, and Vassar. Rockefeller became one of the first major donors to medical science on Gates’ recommendation.
He established New York City’s Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in 1901. After adding graduate education to its aim, it renamed itself Rockefeller University in 1965. It asserts that it has ties to 23 Nobel laureates. In 1909, he established the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission, which went on to eradicate the hookworm illness that had long afflicted the American South’s rural communities. His General Education Board’s funding of the 1910 Flexner Report’s recommendations had a significant impact. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching had conducted the study, a portion of which was featured in The Atlantic.
In 1913, John D. Rockefeller established the Rockefeller Foundation to carry on and broaden the Sanitary Commission’s operations, which ended in 1915. He donated $182 million to the foundation, which prioritized the arts, medical education, and public health. It established the first-ever Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. Additionally, it made China’s Peking Union Medical College a prestigious establishment. In addition to providing World War I relief, the foundation hired Canadian William Lyon Mackenzie King to conduct research on industrial relations.
Through the International Health Division, the Rockefeller Foundation provided funding for a hookworm eradication effort in the 1920s. In order to achieve its objectives, this campaign combined science and politics, as well as cooperation between government representatives and healthcare professionals.
The Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Foundation, Rockefeller’s fourth major charity, was established in 1918. By doing this, he provided funding for social studies research, which was eventually incorporated into the Rockefeller Foundation. Rockefeller gave over $530 million in all.
In his final years, Rockefeller gained notoriety for his habit of distributing nickels to kids and dimes to adults everywhere he visited. He even playedfully donated dimes to rich guys like tire tycoon Harvey Firestone.
The 18th Amendment, which outlawed alcohol in the US, was ratified with Rockefeller’s assistance. In a letter dated June 6, 1932, he informed Nicholas Murray Butler that neither Rockefeller nor his parents, nor the mother’s mother or father’s father, were alcoholics. Rockefeller states in the same letter that he has “always stood for whatever measure seemed at the time to give promise of promoting temperance.” Due to his belief that the measure was prohibition, he and his father gave $350,000 to “all branches of the Anti-Saloon League, Federal and State.” However, Rockefeller became disillusioned with prohibition by 1932 due to its inability to deter alcohol consumption and alcoholism. He was in favor of the Republican party’s program including a repeal of the 18th Amendment.
Wealth
For the most part, John D. Rockefeller is remembered mostly for the sheer magnitude of his fortune. According to an audit conducted in 1902, Rockefeller’s net worth was approximately $200 million, which was less than the $24 billion national GDP at the time.
As the demand for gasoline skyrocketed, his wealth continued to increase dramatically (in tandem with the growth of the U.S. economy), reaching approximately $900 million on the eve of World War I. This wealth included substantial holdings in banking, shipping, mining, railroads, and other industries. In 1913, he was valued 900 million dollars, which in 2020 was worth 23.5 billion dollars after accounting for inflation. “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,” reads his obituary in the New York Times. This was most likely the largest sum of money that a private individual had ever accomplished on his own.
While the national GDP was $92 billion at the time of his death in 1937, Rockefeller’s remaining wealth, which was mostly invested in permanent family trusts, was estimated to be $1.4 billion. Rockefeller would undoubtedly rank as the richest individual in recent history based on his net worth during the final decades of his life, according to certain methodologies of calculating wealth. No other American fortune, not even that of Sam Walton or Bill Gates, would even come close to that as a percentage of the US GDP.
At the age of 86, John D. Rockefeller summed up his life in the following words:
I was early taught to work as well as play,
My life has been one long, happy holiday;
Full of work and full of play—
I dropped the worry on the way—
And God was good to me everyday.
