John D. Rockefeller

In a country being remade by oil, John Davison Rockefeller Sr. became the name most closely tied to its rise. Born on July 8, 1839, in Richford, New York, and later settled with his family in Cleveland, Ohio, he lived long enough to see oil move from a refining business into one of the defining forces of modern industry. He became an assistant bookkeeper at 16, entered business partnerships beginning at 20, and in 1870 founded Standard Oil, the company that made him one of the wealthiest Americans of all time.

Rockefeller’s habits were formed early, in a household marked by movement, thrift, and strain. He was the second of six children of William A. Rockefeller Sr. and Eliza Davison. His father, a traveling salesman who sold elixirs and was known for schemes, was often away and later abandoned the family. His mother, a devout Baptist, worked to keep order and taught him to save, keep accounts, and avoid waste. Rockefeller later summed up that training simply: “From the beginning, I was trained to work, to save, and to give.”

As a boy, Rockefeller attended schools in New York and then Cleveland’s Central High School, before taking a ten-week business course at Folsom’s Commercial College, where he studied bookkeeping. Contemporaries described him as reserved, earnest, religious, methodical, and discreet. Those traits suited the world he entered. Standard Oil lowered production costs and expanded distribution through corporate and technological innovations, and as kerosene and gasoline became increasingly important, Rockefeller’s wealth grew rapidly.

By 1900, Standard Oil controlled about 90 percent of the nation’s oil production. The company’s size and methods also made it a target. Critics argued that a favorable legal environment and regulatory capture helped its monopoly power, and author Ida Tarbell’s writings sharpened public criticism of Rockefeller’s business practices. In 1911, the Supreme Court ruled that Standard Oil had violated federal antitrust laws and ordered it dismantled into 34 separate entities, including companies that became ExxonMobil and Chevron Corporation.

The breakup did not diminish Rockefeller’s place in American wealth. It helped make him the country’s first billionaire, with a fortune worth nearly 2 percent of the national economy. His personal wealth was estimated in 1913 at $900 million, almost 3 percent of the United States gross domestic product that year. Yet the last 40 years of his life were spent largely in retirement at Kykuit, his estate in Westchester County, New York, where he turned his attention to philanthropy.

Rockefeller used his fortune to support education, medicine, higher education, scientific research, and efforts to modernize the American South. He founded the University of Chicago and Rockefeller University, funded the establishment of Central Philippine University, and supported foundations that aided medical research, including work tied to the near-eradication of hookworm in the American South and yellow fever in the United States. A devout Baptist who abstained from alcohol and tobacco, he relied closely on his wife, Laura Spelman Rockefeller, with whom he had four daughters and a son. His words still carry because they come from a life of discipline, ambition, controversy, and giving, a life that makes his warning feel earned: “If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it.”