John Rockefeller: The Making of an Oil Tycoon

Early Life:
John Rockefeller was born in Richford, New York, on July 8, 1839. Rockefeller was industrious as a little boy, and sold turkeys and candy and did jobs for neighbors to earn money. In 1853, John and his family moved to Strongsville in Cleveland, Ohio, for John to attend high school and college. When he was 16 years old, he worked at an office firm in Cleveland that bought and sold commodities. In 1859, the first oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania. In 1864, Rockefeller married Laura Spelman whose father was a merchant and an active in the Underground Railroad. They eventually had one son and and four daughters, three of whom survived.

Family:
John was the second eldest of six children. His father, William Avery Rockefeller,

also known as Bill, was a con artist and a traveling salesman but his mother, Eliza Davison, was a devout baptist. His mother and father wanted them to become strong individual men when they grew up. For example, she taught them: “Willful waste makes willful want.” When John was little, he did many chores around the house. their father also taught them: “trade dishes for platters,” which meant to get the best deal out of everything you could get. His father also said he cheated them, just to make them sharp.

House:
John Rockefeller’s main house, also called Kykuit, is located in Potanico Hills, Mt Pleasant in New York. However, his other houses are located in Ormond Beach in Florida, Lakewood, New Jersey, and a home in New York.

Later Life:
Rockefeller retired from his oil business, in the mid 1890. Like Andrew Carnegie, a successful businessman in steel, he donated more than half a billion dollars to educational, religious, and scientific causes. Rockefeller was a religious man, he loved golf, and he wanted to live to the age of 100. However, he lived until 97, and died May 23, 193 and buried at Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland.
Standard Oil:
In 1865, Rockefeller borrowed some money from his friends and expanded his oil industry. He, his younger brother William, and another large group of men formed the Standard Oil Company of Ohio. By buying more and more refineries, Rockefeller gained a monopoly, an absolute control over all other companies of the same kind. With many dominating small companies, they were combined into the large Standard Oil Trust in 1882, controlling 90% of the refineries. However, muckrakers, people trying to help the environment in the early 1900s, viewed him as greedy, criticized how he built his oil companies, and accused him of wrongdoings such as crushing competition, making secret agreements, bribing men to spy on others, and forcing rivals to join his company or else he will force them out of a business. However, in 1890, Theodore Roosevelt used the Sherman Antitrust Act to dissolve many Trusts, including the Standard Oil Company of Ohio, and became Standard Oil of New Jersey. However, in 1911, laws forced the Standard Oil of New Jersey break down into more than thirty smaller companies.

Famous Quotes:

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