Rockefeller, John D. (John Davison), 1839-1937

Variant names
Dates:
Birth 1839-07-08
Death 1937-05-23
Americans
English

Biographical notes:

John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) was born in Richford, New York to William Avery Rockefeller and Eliza Davison. In 1853, he moved with his family to Cleveland, Ohio where he studied bookkeeping. With partner Maurice B. Clark, Rockefeller built an oil refinery in 1863 and bought out his partner two years later. In 1864, he married Laura Celestia “Cettie” Spelman, with whom he had four children. Two years later, Rockefeller joined his brother William to establish Rockefeller, Andrews, & Flagler, which was at that time the largest oil refinery in the world. In 1870, Rockefeller’s company was renamed Standard Oil, and incorporated numerous competing oil competitors throughout the 1870s. In order to more efficiently manage his growing business interests, Rockefeller became the founder, chairman and major shareholder of Standard Oil Trust, a conglomerate of forty-one separate companies. Standard Oil’s nearly complete control of oil refining and marketing by the end of the 1870s resulted in accusations of monopoly and the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission and Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.

Rockefeller was an active philanthropist, who gave regularly causes relating to higher education, including the establishment of Spelman College and the University of Chicago; medical science; and the Northern Baptist Church. In 1913, he created the Rockefeller Foundation, a private philanthropic organization.

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Subjects:

  • Religion
  • Education
  • Business enterprises
  • Capitalists and financiers
  • Civics
  • Competition
  • Consolidation and merger of corporations
  • Corporations
  • Health attitudes
  • Hospital benefactors
  • Humanities
  • Industrial concentration
  • Industrialists
  • International health programs
  • Iron mines and mining
  • Medicine
  • Mining industry and finance
  • Missionaries
  • Oil industries
  • Patriotism
  • Pertroleum
  • Petroleum
  • Petroleum
  • Petroleum industry and trade
  • Petroleum refineries
  • Philanthropists
  • Pipelines
  • Political participation
  • Politics, Practical
  • Real property
  • Race relations
  • Railroads
  • Steel (manufacture)
  • Tank cars
  • Temperance
  • Transportation
  • Trusts, Industrial
  • Youth
  • Petroleum

Occupations:

not available for this record

Places:

  • Wisconsin (as recorded)
  • New York (State) (as recorded)
  • Washington (State) (as recorded)
  • United States (as recorded)
  • New York (City) (as recorded)
  • Ohio (as recorded)
  • United States--Industries (as recorded)
  • Cleveland (Ohio) (as recorded)

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