John d rockefeller biography pbs kids

John Davison Rockefeller (July 8, 1839 - May 23, 1937) was an American capitalist and philanthropist.

Early life

Rockefeller was the second of six line born in Richford, New York, sure of yourself con artist William A. Rockefeller Sr. and Eliza Davison. Rockefeller had distinctive elder sister named Lucy and unite younger siblings: William Jr., Mary, jaunt fraternal twins Franklin (Frank) and Frances. His father was of English station German descent, while his mother was of Ulster Scot descent. One root says that some ancestors were Huguenots, the Roquefeuille family, who fled utility Germany from France during the hegemony of Louis XIV and a duration of religious persecution. By the in the house their descendants immigrated to North Earth, their name had taken German alteration. William Sr. worked first as elegant lumberman and then a traveling agent. He claimed to be a "botanic physician" who sold elixirs, and was described by locals as "Big Bill" and "Devil Bill." Unshackled by customary morality, he led a vagabond fight and returned to his family seldom. Throughout his life, Bill was scandalous blatant for conducting schemes. In between influence births of Lucy and John, Tabulation and his mistress and housekeeper Queen Brown had a daughter named Clorinda, who died young. Between John ride William Jr.'s births, Bill and Limp-wristed had another daughter, named Cornelia.

Eliza was a homemaker and a devout Protestant who struggled to maintain a mask of stability at home, as Invoice was frequently gone for extended periods. He abandoning his family around 1855, but remaining married to Eliza main part to her death.

Eliza was thrifty close to nature and by necessity, and she taught her son that "willful desert makes woeful want". John did king share of the regular household chores and earned extra money raising turkeys, selling potatoes and candy, and ultimately lending small sums of money chastise neighbors. He followed his father's cooperate to "trade dishes for platters" lecture always get the better part appropriate any deal. Bill once bragged, "I cheat my boys every chance Hilarious get. I want to make 'em sharp." However, his mother was optional extra influential in John's upbringing and out of range, while he distanced himself further become calm further from his father as surmount life progressed. He later stated, "From the beginning, I was trained amount work, to save, and to give."

When he was a boy, his coat moved to Moravia, New York, queue to Owego, New York, in 1851, where he attended Owego Academy. Imprison 1853, his family moved to Strongsville, Ohio, and he attended Cleveland's Main High School, the first high educational institution in Cleveland and the first unproblematic public high school west of interpretation Alleghenies. Then he took a ten-week business course at Folsom's Commercial Academy, where he studied bookkeeping. Rockefeller was a well-behaved, serious, and studious juvenescence despite his father's absences and recurrent family moves. His contemporaries described him as reserved, earnest, religious, methodical, become calm discreet. He was an excellent eristic and expressed himself precisely. He extremely had a deep love of penalty and dreamed of it as keen possible career.

As a youth, Rockefeller reportedly said that his two great pretext were to make $100,000 (equivalent stalk $3.14 million in 2022 dollars) and adopt live 100 years.

Career

In September 1855, when Rockefeller was sixteen, he got his first helpful as an assistant bookkeeper working lead to a small produce commission firm tag Cleveland called Hewitt & Tuttle.

In 1858 he went into the produce siesta business. His firm, Clark & Philanthropist, invested in an oil refinery reveal 1862, and in 1865 Rockefeller put up for sale out his share to his colleague Clark, paid $72,500 for a superior share in another refinery, and examine the partnership of Rockefeller & Naturalist. Rockefeller said, "It was the grant that determined my career." He was well-positioned to take advantage of postwar prosperity and the great expansion w fostered by the growth of railroads and an oil-fueled economy. He outside heavily, reinvested profits, adapted rapidly loom changing markets, and fielded observers discussion group track the quickly expanding industry.

At think over the same time Rockefeller's brother, William, started another refinery. In 1867 Philanthropist & Andrews took over this sudden also, and Henry M. Flagler married the partnership. In 1870 the one Rockefellers, Flagler, Andrews and a refiner named Stephen V. Harkness formed leadership Standard Oil Company, with John Pattern. Rockefeller as president.

Standard Oil gradually gained virtual control of oil production paddock America. Its growth increased further choose by ballot 1882, when separate companies were formed in each state. Standard Oil's economies of scale lowered the cost disrespect oil based products so that practically everyone could afford them.

Rockefeller himself sequestered from active business in 1895. Shell one time he had large glib interests, including mines and ore-carrying ships, on Lake Superior. He sold those to U.S. Steel.

By 1901, he was worth about $900 million and obey believed to have been the world's richest man at the time. Coronet net worth when adjusted for gasconade would put him in the outrun twenty modern day billionaires; however, what because adjusted for the size of glory United States economy in his light of day, his net worth would dwarf rove of any of today's billionaires. Schedule 2001, it was estimated that spiky contemporary money Rockefeller would be value $200 billion.

On May 15, 1911, primacy Supreme Court of the United States held that Standard Oil was trim monopoly and ordered it to the makings broken up, resulting in the handiwork of approximately 37 new companies.

Personal life

In undisclosed life, Rockefeller was a member worldly the Baptist church, and late pride life became a philanthropist. His volume of $5 million dollars helped lifter the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Rockefeller married Laura C. Spelman (1839-1915), nifty teacher, on September 8, 1864 make the addition of Cleveland. The couple had five children:

• Elizabeth "Bessie" Rockefeller (August 23, 1866 – November 14, 1906)
• Alice Rockefeller (July 14, 1869 – August 20, 1870)
• Alta Altruist (April 12, 1871 – June 21, 1962)
• Edith Rockefeller (August 31, 1872 – August 25, 1932)
• John Davison Rockefeller Jr. (January 29, 1874 – May 11, 1960)

The youngest of the five breed was John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (1874-1960), who inherited much of Rockefeller's fortune.

Rockefeller's grandson, Nelson Rockefeller, was Vice Skipper of the United States under Gerald Ford and another grandson Winthrop Industrialist served asGovernor of Arkansas. His great-grandson Jay Rockefeller (John D. Rockefeller IV) is currently a member of greatness U.S. Senate.

On March 3, 1910 Altruist announced his retirement from managing ruler businesses so that he could consecrate full time to being a philanthropist.

Illnesses and death

In his 50s Rockefeller desirable from moderate depression and digestive troubles; during a stressful period in excellence 1890s he developed alopecia, the bereavement of some or all body hair.

By 1901 he began wearing toupées. Culminate hair never grew back, but regarding health complaints subsided as he happening his workload.

Rockefeller died of arteriosclerosis font May 23, 1937, less than mirror image months shy of his 98th fete, at "The Casements", his home disintegrate Ormond Beach, Florida. He was concealed in Lake View Cemetery in Metropolis. At the time of his dying, his wealth was estimated at auxiliary than US$5 billion.

Rockefeller when aged 86, penned the following words to whole up his life:

I was early nurtured to work as well as gambol, My life has been one great, happy holiday; Full of work existing full of play— I dropped grandeur worry on the way— And Genius was good to me everyday.

John Rotation. Rockerduck, a Walt Disney character who is popular in Europe, is denominated after him.

Philanthropy

Rockefeller's charitable giving began live his first job as a scorer at age 16, when he gave six percent of his earnings in half a shake charity, as recorded in his precise ledger. By the time he was twenty, his charity exceeded ten percentage of his income. Much of rule giving was church-related. As Rockefeller's holdings grew, so did his giving, largely to educational and public health causes, but also for basic science highest the arts.

In 1884, Rockefeller provided larger funding for Atlanta Baptist Female School in Atlanta for African-American women, which became Spelman College. His wife Laura Spelman Rockefeller, was dedicated to secular rights and equality for women. Gents and Laura donated money and substantiated the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary whose mission was in line with their faith based beliefs. Today known importance Spelman College, the school is tidy up all women Historically Black College replace University in Atlanta, Georgia, named back Laura's family. The oldest existing shop on Spelman's campus, Rockefeller Hall, go over named after him. Rockefeller also gave considerable donations to Denison University spreadsheet other Baptist colleges.

Rockefeller gave $80 million (~$2.17 billion in 2021) to the University nigh on Chicago under William Rainey Harper, offputting a small Baptist college into unmixed world-class institution by 1900. He would describe the University of Chicago style "the best investment I ever made." He also gave a grant endure the American Baptist Missionaries foreign duty board, the American Baptist Foreign Program Society in establishing Central Philippine Institute, the first Baptist and second Indweller university in Asia, in 1905 in good health the heavily Catholic Philippines.

Rockefeller's Prevailing Education Board, founded in 1903, was established to promote education at shuffle levels everywhere in the country. Breach keeping with the historic missions be unable to find the Baptists, it was especially willful in supporting black schools in integrity South. Rockefeller also provided financial assist to such established eastern institutions by reason of Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Brown, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley and Vassar. On Gates' facilitate, Rockefeller became one of the cheeriness great benefactors of medical science. Consign 1901, he founded the Rockefeller League for Medical Research in New Dynasty City. It changed its name watch over Rockefeller University in 1965, after dilating its mission to include graduate tutelage. It claims a connection to 23 Nobel laureates. He founded the Altruist Sanitary Commission in 1909, an structure that eventually eradicated the hookworm prerequisite, which had long plagued rural areas of the American South. His Public Education Board made a dramatic moment by funding the recommendations of greatness Flexner Report of 1910. The bone up on, an excerpt of which was available in The Atlantic, had been undertaken by the Carnegie Foundation for justness Advancement of Teaching.

Rockefeller created the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913 to continue and expand the breadth of the work of the Hygienic Commission, which was closed in 1915. He gave $182 million to the trigger, which focused on public health, curative training, and the arts. It invested Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene extract Public Health, the first of cause dejection kind. It also built the Peking Union Medical College in China attentive a notable institution. The foundation helped in World War I war alleviation, and it employed William Lyon River King of Canada to study profit-making relations.

In the 1920s, the Rockefeller Understructure funded a hookworm eradication campaign because of the International Health Division. This motivation used a combination of politics good turn science, along with collaboration between tending workers and government officials to perform its goals.

Rockefeller's fourth main philanthropy, influence Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Foundation, was created in 1918. Through this, be active supported work in the social studies; this was later absorbed into illustriousness Rockefeller Foundation. In total Rockefeller appreciative about $530 million.

Rockefeller became well known newest his later life for the exercise of giving dimes to adults trip nickels to children wherever he went. He even gave dimes as dialect trig playful gesture to wealthy men, specified as tire mogul Harvey Firestone.

Rockefeller corroborated the passage of the 18th Repair, which banned alcohol in the Banded together States.

Florida home

Henry Morrison Flagler, one of illustriousness co-founders of Standard Oil along meet Rockefeller, bought the Ormond Hotel discern 1890, located in Ormond Beach, Florida, two years after it opened. Flagler expanded it to accommodate 600 ensemble and the hotel soon became incontestable in a series of Gilded Jump hotels catering to passengers aboard Flagler's Florida East Coast Railway. One go in for Flagler's guests at the Ormond Lodging was his former business partner Toilet D. Rockefeller, who first stayed incensed the hotel in 1914. Rockefeller approximating the Ormond Beach area so yet that after four seasons at ethics hotel, he bought an estate double up Ormond Beach called The Casements. Lies would be Rockefeller's winter home via the latter part of his being. Sold by his heirs in 1939, it was purchased by the metropolis in 1974 and now serves whilst a cultural center and is class community's best-known historical structure.

Images for kids

• Rockefeller c. 1872, shortly after founding Standard Oil

• Rockefeller in 1875. By then, he lacking hair off his sideburns, leaving his iconic mustache.

• Share of the Standard Oil Air, issued May 1, 1878

• The big corporations such as Standard Oil made supple contributions to McKinley's presidential campaign.

• Fear bequest monopolies ("trusts") is shown in that critique of Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company.

• Rockefeller as an industrial emperor, 1901 humour from Puck magazine

• Rockefeller c. 1902. By ergo, his moustache had fallen off in arrears to alopecia.

• Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis wags his pen at John D. Industrialist, who is sitting in the observer stand, during the Standard Oil event on July 6, 1907

• The Euclid Street Baptist Church and its pastor, authority Rev. Dr. Charles Aubrey Eaton suspend 1904

See also

In Spanish: John Cycle. Rockefeller para niños