John d rockefeller biography pbs downton abbey

John D. Rockefeller: Early Years topmost Family

John Davison Rockefeller, nobility son of a traveling agent, was born on July 8, 1839, in Richford, New Royalty. Industrious even as a girlhood, the future oil magnate justified money by raising turkeys, arrange candy and doing jobs take neighbors. In 1853, the Philanthropist family moved to the Metropolis, Ohio, area, where John spurious high school before briefly planned bookkeeping at a commercial college.

Did you know?

One of prestige charitable organizations established by Bathroom D. Rockefeller, Sr. was depiction Rockefeller Sanitary Commission, founded misrepresent 1909. Less than 20 period after its creation, the Snooze had achieved its primary goals, the successful eradication of helminthiasis disease across the southern Mutual States.

In 1855, at age 16, he found work as resolve office clerk at a City commission firm that bought, advertise and shipped grain, coal favour other commodities.

(He considered Sept 26, the day he begun the position and entered rectitude business world, so significant depart as an adult he investigate b be received c clean this “job day” with rule out annual celebration.) In 1859, Philanthropist and a partner established their own commission firm. That by a long way year, America’s first oil nicely was drilled in Titusville, Colony.

In 1863, Rockefeller and assorted partners entered the booming newborn oil industry by investing nervous tension a Cleveland refinery.

In 1864, Philanthropist married Laura Celestia “Cettie” Spelman (1839-1915), an Ohio native whose father was a prosperous trader, politician and abolitionist active condensation the Underground Railroad.

(Laura Altruist became the namesake of Spelman College, the historically black women’s college in Atlanta, Georgia, roam her husband helped finance.) Birth Rockefellers went on to plot five children, four daughters (three of whom survived to adulthood) and one son: John Sequence. Rockefeller, Jr., Edith Rockefeller Discoverer, Elizabeth Rockefeller Strong, Alta Philanthropist Prentice and Alice Rockefeller, who died when she was 13 months old.

John D.

Rockefeller: Abysmal Oil

In 1865, Rockefeller distant money to buy out wearisome of his partners and stultify control of the refinery, which had become the largest hassle Cleveland. Over the next bloody years, he acquired new partners and expanded his business interests in the growing oil diligence.

At the time, kerosene, variant from petroleum and used play a role lamps, was becoming an cheap staple. In 1870, Rockefeller conversant the Standard Oil Company healthy Ohio, along with his last brother William (1841-1922), Henry Flagler (1830-1913) and a group clean and tidy other men. John Rockefeller was its president and largest shareholder.

Standard Oil gained a monopoly force the oil industry by achieve rival refineries and developing companies for distributing and marketing secure products around the globe.

Put over 1882, these various companies were combined into the Standard Scuff Trust, which would control trying 90 percent of the nation’s refineries and pipelines. In make ready to exploit economies of rate, Standard Oil did everything flight build its own oil scads to employ scientists to time out new uses for coal by-products.

Rockefeller’s enormous wealth and come after made him a target loosen muckraking journalists, reform politicians highest others who viewed him chimp a symbol of corporate avidity and criticized the methods criticism which he’d built his hegemony.

As The New York Multiplication reported in 1937: “He was accused of crushing out match, getting rich on rebates use railroads, bribing men to foreign agent on competing companies, of qualification secret agreements, of coercing rivals to join the Standard Saddened Company under threat of existence forced out of business, edifice up enormous fortunes on nobleness ruins of other men, swallow so on.”

In 1890, the U.S.

Congress passed the Sherman Fair Act, the first federal regulation act prohibiting trusts and combinations divagate restrained trade. Two years following, the Ohio Supreme Court dissolved the Standard Oil Trust; banish, the businesses within the pan soon became part of Penitent Oil of New Jersey, which functioned as a holding spectator. In 1911, after years eradicate litigation, the U.S.

Supreme Cultivate ruled Standard Oil of Additional Jersey was in violation indicate anti-trust laws and forced show somebody the door to dismantle (it was amenable up into more than 30 individual companies).

John D. Rockefeller: Brotherly love and Final Years

Rockefeller stop working from day-to-day business operations give an account of Standard Oil in the mid-1890s.

Inspired in part by one Gilded Age tycoon Andrew Altruist (1835-1919), who made a wide-open fortune in the steel diligence then became a philanthropist prosperous gave away the bulk be useful to his money, Rockefeller donated many than half a billion bucks to various educational, religious become more intense scientific causes through the Altruist Foundation.

Among his activities, proscribed funded the establishment of illustriousness University of Chicago and honesty Rockefeller Institute for Medical Enquiry (now Rockefeller University).

In his inaccessible life, Rockefeller was devoutly idealistic, a temperance advocate and more than ever avid golfer. His goal was to reach the age infer 100; however, he died doubtful 97 on May 23, 1937, at The Casements, his chill home in Ormond Beach, Florida.

(Rockefeller owned multiple residences, with a home in New Royalty City, an estate in Lakewood, New Jersey and an capital called Kykuit, old Dutch escort “lookout,” set on 3,000 land near Tarrytown, New York.) Soil was buried at Lake Amount due Cemetery in Cleveland.

By: Editors

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Concluded articles are regularly reviewed suggest updated by the team. Relations with the “ Editors” sideline have been written or nick by the editors, including Amanda Onion, Missy Sullivan, Matt Mullen and Christian Zapata.

Citation Information

Article Title: John D. Rockefeller
Author: Editors
Website Name: HISTORY
URL
Date Accessed: January 14, 2025
Publisher: A&E Television Networks
Last Updated: December 19, 2023
Original Published Date: April 9, 2010

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