Biography of rocky fella

American industrial, political and banking family

This article is about the family. For the name in general, see Rockefeller.

The Rockefeller family (ROCK-ə-fell-ər) is an American industrial, political, and banking family that owns one of the world's largest fortunes. The fortune was made in the American petroleum industry during the late 19th and early 20th centuries by brothers John D. Rockefeller and William A. Rockefeller Jr., primarily through Standard Oil (the predecessor of ExxonMobil and Chevron Corporation). The family had a long association with, and control of, Chase Manhattan Bank. By 1987, the Rockefellers were considered one of the most powerful families in American history.

The Rockefellers originated in Rhineland in Germany and family members moved to the Americas in the early 18th century, while through Eliza Davison, with family roots in Middlesex County, New Jersey, John D. Rockefeller and William A. Rockefeller Jr. and their descendants are also of Scots-Irish ancestry.

Background

The Rockefeller family traces their origin to the now abandoned German village Rockenfeld in the early 17th century. The American family branch is descended from Johann Peter Rockefeller (1681-1763), who migrated from the Rhineland to Philadelphia in the Province of Pennsylvania around 1723. In the US, he became a plantation owner and landholder in Somerville, and Amwell, New Jersey. One of the first members of the Rockefeller family in New York was businessman William A. Rockefeller Sr., who was born to a Protestant family in Granger, New York. He had six children with his first wife Eliza Davison, a daughter of a Scots-Irish farmer, the most prominent of which were oil tycoons John D. Rockefeller and William A. Rockefeller Jr., the co-founders of Standard Oil. John D.

American business magnate (1839–1937)

For other people named John D. Rockefeller, see John D. Rockefeller (disambiguation).

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 modern 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 soared as kerosene and gasoline grew in importance, and he became the richest person in the country, controlling 90% of all oil in the United States at his peak in 1900. Oil was used in lamps, and as a fuel for ships and automobiles. Standard Oil was the greatest business trust in the United States. Through use of the company's monopoly power, Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum industry and, through corporate and technological innovations, was instrumental in both widely disseminating an

Billionaire John D. Rockefeller (July 8, 1839 to May 23, 1937) continues to rank as one of the richest men in modern times. He rose from modest beginnings to become the founder of Standard Oil in 1870 and ruthlessly set about destroying his competitors to create a monopoly of the oil industry.

He branched out to ancillary businesses such as iron, steel, and copper—but also railroads, general stores, and newspapers. His quest for total control ran afoul of the U.S. government, which passed the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890 to break up Standard Oil, sparking a running battle that the government finally won in 1911.

Rockefeller retired in 1896, leaving his only son to run his company, and pursued a second career as a philanthropist, donating hundreds of millions of dollars to worthy causes. His hard-edged public persona was softened by his practice of handing out dimes to children.

Dying just six-and-a-half weeks before his 98th birthday, Rockefeller remains one of the great figures of Wall Street—reviled as a villain, applauded as an innovator and a benefactor, and universally recognized as one of the most powerful men in history.

Early Life and Education

Rockefeller’s father, William Avery Rockefeller, led a nomadic life as a snake oil salesman who called himself a physician, while his mother

John D. Rockefeller: Early Years and Family

John Davison Rockefeller, the son of a traveling salesman, was born on July 8, 1839, in Richford, New York. Industrious even as a boy, the future oil magnate earned money by raising turkeys, selling candy and doing jobs for neighbors. In 1853, the Rockefeller family moved to the Cleveland, Ohio, area, where John attended high school before briefly studied bookkeeping at a commercial college.

In 1855, at age 16, he found work as an office clerk at a Cleveland commission firm that bought, sold and shipped grain, coal and other commodities. (He considered September 26, the day he started the position and entered the business world, so significant that as an adult he commemorated this “job day” with an annual celebration.) In 1859, Rockefeller and a partner established their own commission firm. That same year, America’s first oil well was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania. In 1863, Rockefeller and several partners entered the booming new oil industry by investing in a Cleveland refinery.

In 1864, Rockefeller married Laura Celestia “Cettie” Spelman (1839-1915), an Ohio native whose father was a prosperous merchant, politician and abolitionist active in the Underground Railroad. (Laura Rockefeller became the namesake of Spelman College, the historically black women’s college in Atlanta, Georgia, that her husband helped finance.) The Rockefellers went on to have five children, four daughters (three of whom survived to adulthood) and one son: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Edith Rockefeller McCormick, Elizabeth Rockefeller Strong, Alta Rockefeller Prentice and Alice Rockefeller, who died when she was 13 months