John D Rockefeller
By Ryan Conrad
Childhood
John D Rockefeller was born in July, 8 1839 in Richford New York. He often moved because his dads job was a salesman who traveled a lot. He as a young child got money by farming turkeys, selling foods especially candy, and doing jobs for his neighbors. His mother was a very religious person, she showed him how it was important to donate to charities and do things for people by doing volunteer work. In 1853 his family moved to Cleveland Ohio. There he went to high school and shortly went to a commercial college.
In 1855 his first official job was working as a clerk in a commission in Cleveland. They mainly bought and sold things like grains and coal but they also dealt with other goods.
In 1859 he opened his own commission with a business partner. Also in that year oil was drilled in America for the first time.
On the road to success
In 1859 he invested in Cleveland oil Refinery In 1964 he married Laura Celestia Spelman. Together they had four daughters and one son. In 1865 he borrowed money to buy shares from his business partner. He spent the next few years expanding his businesses and getting new business partners around Cleveland. In 1870 He opened a standard oil company with many business partners including his younger brother William. Not only was he the president of that company but he was the biggest shareholder. He spent the next few years making lots of money and buying his competitors businesses. Because his fame and fortune was expanding that made him a target for people like journalists and reporters they said bad things about him and make him seem like a mean and cruel person who only cared about money and never the people. In 1911 the supreme court declared one company could not own something as important as oil and they said it had to be broken up into different companies.
Older years
During the mid 1890s he retired and ended up donating over half a billion dollars mostly toward education and opened a college now called Rockefeller university. He said he wanted to live to be 100 years old but he died at age 97 in May 23 1937 in his winter house in Ormond beach Florida. He was buried in Lakewood cemetery in Cleveland. When he was at his richest he had 900,000,000 dollars not counting all the money he donated. When he died he had a little over 26,000,000 because he had either donated all his money or given it to his family.
Work Cited
"John D. Rockefeller." History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 05 June 2015.
"American Experience: TV's Most-watched History Series." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 05 June 2015.
my reaction
I liked how he became a self made millionaire and how he really did not have much when he was growing up, he was kind of an average family kid. I like how even though he was a millionaire he would still always donate to charities and do volunteer work.