Who is rockefeller john d

Rockefeller's business dealings necessitated increasingly more time in New York; he bought a home there in and eventually made that his legal residence. His summer stays were usually short enough for him to avoid becoming liable for taxes, but his wife's illness had forced the Rockefellers to extend their stay in During the dispute, Rockefeller was under a subpoena that prevented him from entering Ohio.

After the dispute was resolved, Rockefeller continued his support Cleveland-area institutions, but never returned to Forest Hill. Rockefeller's charity, as well as business, began in Cleveland. Rockefeller's influence on the oil business even is visible today. The man who headed that powerful concern was pretty weird, as genius often is.

But his critics—of which there were many—probably would have said that he was stretching the definition of honest. By the early s, Standard Oil controlled more than 90 percent of the market. His business was described as an octopus , a grasping monster:.

Two years later, the Ohio Supreme Court dissolved the Standard Oil Trust; however, the businesses within the trust soon became part of Standard Oil of New Jersey , which functioned as a holding company. In , after years of litigation, the U. Supreme Court ruled Standard Oil of New Jersey was in violation of anti-trust laws and forced it to dismantle it was broken up into more than 30 individual companies. Rockefeller retired from day-to-day business operations of Standard Oil in the mids.

Inspired in part by fellow Gilded Age tycoon Andrew Carnegie , who made a vast fortune in the steel industry then became a philanthropist and gave away the bulk of his money, Rockefeller donated more than half a billion dollars to various educational, religious and scientific causes through the Rockefeller Foundation. Among his activities, he funded the establishment of the University of Chicago and the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research now Rockefeller University.

In his personal life, Rockefeller was devoutly religious, a temperance advocate and an avid golfer. His goal was to reach the age of ; however, he died at 97 on May 23, , at The Casements, his winter home in Ormond Beach, Florida.

He was buried at Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. His father was a con artist and a bigamist. When he was a child, John D.

Rockefeller watched his father count his money—huge wads of which he refused to keep in a bank and lovingly stacked in front of his impressionable son. The 19th century was a period of great change and rapid industrialization. The iron and steel industry spawned new construction materials, the railroads connected the country and the discovery of oil provided a new source of fuel. He arranged complicated transportation deals that typically involved moving a single shipment of freight by railroad, canal, and lake boats.

He began to engage in trading ventures on his own account. He was naturally cautious and only undertook a business venture when he calculated that it would be successful. After he carefully weighed a course of action, he would then act quickly and boldly to see it through to fruition.

He had iron nerves and would carry through very complicated deals without hesitation. This combination of caution, precision, and resolve soon brought him attention and respect in the broader business community in Cleveland. On March 1, -- several months before his 20th birthday — Rockefeller went into business for himself, forming a partnership with a neighbor, Maurice Clark. During the Civil War their business expanded rapidly.

Grain prices went up and so did their commissions. Rockefeller's style was very precise and calculated. He was not a gambler but a planner. He avoided speculation and refused to make advances or loans. Rockefeller was extremely hard working. He traveled extensively, drumming up business throughout Ohio, and then would go to the banks and borrow large sums of money to handle the shipments. This aggressive style built the business up every year. However, by the early s, Rockefeller realized that the future of the commission merchant business in Cleveland was going to be limited.

He had become convinced that the railroads were going to become the primary means of transportation for agricultural commodities. This would be to the disadvantage of Cleveland, because its position as an important Lake Erie port was its primary transportation advantage. He saw that the rising grain output of the Midwest and the Northwest of J. Hill would change the nature of the business for good. The huge elevators on Lake Michigan and the flour-millers of Minneapolis would be the dominant players in the business.

Rockefeller came to believe that the future of Cleveland lay in the collection and shipment of raw industrial materials -- not agricultural commodities. This would allow Cleveland to exploit its geographical advantages -- mid-way between the Eastern seaboard and Chicago -- and accessible to both rail and water transportation.

He saw his chance in -- oil. Oil Refining On August 27, , Edwin Drake struck oil near Titusville, Pennsylvania, setting off a frenzied oil boom in what soon became known as the "oil regions" of northwestern Pennsylvania. They had obtained a sample of the Pennsylvania oil and had a Yale University chemist analyze it.

The chemist determined that the Pennsylvania oil was of very high quality and could be refined into a variety of useful products. The technology used by Drake was not new. What was new was the idea of drilling for oil -- the idea that you could pump oil out of the ground like you could pump water. The technology for drilling wells was quite advanced by To that time, wells were drilled for either water or salt more accurately, brine which would be refined to get the salt.

In the process of drilling for salt all over the United States in the early 19th century it was not uncommon -- especially in the Pennsylvania area — to get oil seepage into the salt well. Most of the time this was regarded as a nuisance, but some enterprising merchants went into the business of selling the oil in small bottles as a "Natural Remedy" or "Curative Agent. The technology for refining oil was also known by the early s.

Doctor Abraham Gesner, a Canadian, in August patented a method for distilling kerosene a name he invented from the Greek "keros" — wax — and "elaion" — oil from coal. In , a Scottish industrial chemist, James Young, patented a method of obtaining "burning oils" from petroleum through destructive distillation.

In two Boston chemists, Luther and William Atwood, began making lubricants from coal tar. Finally, in , Samuel Downer, a whale-oil merchant, bought out the Atwoods and boosted production to , gallons of refined oil a year. By , coal-oil lamps were widespread and coal-oil was even made in Cleveland. Samuel Adams had experience with shale-oil refining, and Clark brought in his brothers.

This immediately gave Cleveland a transportation advantage over Pittsburgh, which was dominated by the Pennsylvania Railroad. The Pennsylvania oil was of high quality. Rockefeller abhorred waste and devoted considerable energy to increasing the efficiency of his refining business. He believed that the secret of success was attention to detail — to wringing little efficiencies out of every aspect of his business. He hired his own plumber and bought his own plumbing supplies.

He built his own cooperage shop and made his own barrels for the oil. He bought tracts of white-oak timber for making the barrels. Instead of transporting the freshly cut green timber directly to the cooperage shop, he had kilns built on the timber tracts to dry the wood on site, to reduce the shipping weight of the lumber. He bought his own wagons and horses to transport the wood to the cooperage shop in Cleveland. We would call this "vertical integration" today. The Clarks had resisted borrowing money to expand and Rockefeller was convinced of the correctness of his course.

He immediately moved to greatly extend his enterprise. He borrowed heavily and plowed all his profits back into the business in order to expand it further, and took decisive steps to strengthen and increase the efficiency of all aspects of the firm. In , John D. They also opened a New York City office with William Rockefeller in charge, to handle the export business, which eventually became larger than the domestic business. Henry M. Flagler In , Henry M. Flagler had left school at age Not wanting to burden his poor family any further, he walked to the Erie Canal in and took it to Lake Erie, and then went to Ohio via a lake steamer.

Flagler and Rockefeller had met years earlier in Bellevue, Ohio, when Rockefeller was buying grain for his commission house and Flagler was a grain merchant. Flagler had gone into the salt well business but went broke in He began to recoup his fortune in in Cleveland as a manufacturer of oil barrels and had an office in the same building as Rockefeller.