John D. Rockefeller - Oil tycoon

John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937), founder of the Standard Oil Company, became one of the world’s wealthiest men and a major philanthropist.

From 1852 Rockefeller attended Owego Academy in Owego, New York, where the family had moved in 1851. Rockefeller excelled at mental arithmetic.

In 1853, the Rockefellers moved to Cleveland, Ohio, and John attended high school from 1853 to 1855.

On September 26, 1855, he got a job as an assistant bookkeeper with Hewitt & Tuttle, commission merchants and produce shippers. 

On March 1, 1859 -- several months before his 20th birthday -- Rockefeller went into business for himself, forming a partnership with a neighbor, Maurice Clark. Each man put up $2,000 and formed Clark & Rockefeller -- commission merchants in grain, hay, meats, and miscellaneous goods. At the end of the first year of business, they had grossed $450,000, making a profit of $4,400 in 1860 and a profit of $17,000 in 1861. 

By 1868, Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler Company (formed in 1867) was the largest refiner in the world.

On January 10, 1870, the Standard Oil Company of Ohio was created by John D. Rockefeller (30%), William Rockefeller (13.34%), Henry Flagler (16.67%), Samuel Andrews (16.67%), Stephen Harkness (13.34%), and O. B. Jennings (brother-in-law of William Rockefeller, 10%). It held about 10% of the oil business at the time of its formation.

On January 2, 1882 the Standard Oil Trust was formed. Attorney Samuel Dodd came up with the idea of a trust. A Board of Trustees was set up and all the Standard properties were placed in its hands. Every stockholder received 20 Trust certificates for each share of Standard Oil stock.

In his 50s Rockefeller suffered from moderate depression and digestive troubles and, during a stressful period in the 1890s, developed alopecia, a condition that causes the loss of some or all body hair. By 1901 he did not have a hair on his body, and he began wearing wigs. The hair never grew back, but his other health complaints subsided as he lightened his workload.

The total of Rockefeller's lifetime philanthropies has been estimated at about $550 million. Eventually the amounts involved became so huge (his fortune reached $900 million by 1913) that he developed a staff of specialists to help him. Out of this came the Rockefeller Foundation, chartered in 1913, "to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world."

Rockefeller died of arteriosclerosis on May 23, 1937, less than two months shy of his 98th birthday,at The Casements, his home in Ormond Beach, Florida. He was buried in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland.