John D. Rockefeller

John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937), American industrialist. Rockefeller was born in Richford, New York, on July 8, 1839, and educated in the public schools of Cleveland, Ohio. He became a bookkeeper in Cleveland at the age of 16. In 1862 he went into business with entrepreneur Henry Flagler and with Samuel Andrews, the inventor of an inexpensive process for the refinement of crude petroleum. In 1870 their firm, Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler, changed its name to the Standard Oil Company, often referred to as the Standard Oil Company of Ohio. Rockefeller, his brother William, Andrews, and Flagler ran the business.

In early 1872 Rockefeller helped form the South Improvement Company, an association that unified many oil refiners in Cleveland with the Standard Oil Company. Since Standard Oil used railroads daily to transport huge amounts of cargo, Rockefeller was able to make a deal with railroad conductors that would profit both industries. Railroad companies decided to set high freight rates but agreed to award substantial rebates for members of the South Improvement Company. This plan prevented price wars among railroad companies and forced smaller oil refiners to go out of business if they didn’t join the association. After three months of much public protest, the railroad companies and Rockefeller’s group cancelled their deal. However, most of Rockefeller's competitors in Cleveland had already been forced to sell out to the Standard Oil Company. By 1878 Standard Oil also owned the major refineries in New York City; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In 1882 Rockefeller and his partners formed the first corporate trust, Standard Oil Trust, to merge many oil businesses throughout the United States into a single company. Rockefeller soon controlled 90 percent of the oil refineries in the country. Journalists, small oil refiners, and many others heavily criticized Standard Oil for monopolizing the industry. In 1892 the Ohio Supreme Court ordered the Standard Oil Company of Ohio to separate from the trust and become an independent business. As a result, the trust dissolved and Rockefeller and his associates reorganized and consolidated the Standard Oil conglomerate into 20 businesses.

After the reorganization, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, which was founded as part of the trust in 1882, became the largest Standard Oil corporation. In 1892 it was renamed Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), often referred to as Jersey Standard. Jersey Standard became the sole holding company for all of Standard Oil in 1899. However, in 1911 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that Standard Oil had continued to act as a monopoly. The Court’s antitrust ruling forced all of the Standard Oil companies to become independent businesses. That year Rockefeller, at age 72, retired as president of Standard Oil.

At its peak, Rockefeller's personal fortune was estimated at almost $1 billion. The total amount of his philanthropic contributions was about $550 million; about 80 percent of these funds were given to four charitable organizations founded by Rockefeller. These were the Rockefeller Foundation; the General Education Board; the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller University); and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, established in 1918 and incorporated into the Rockefeller Foundation in 1929. Rockefeller died at Ormond Beach, Florida, on May 23, 1937.