John D. Rockefeller: A Photographic History

by Kristin Aguilera and Keith E. Rolfe
Photographs courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center

When John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) passed away, America lost the foremost icon of late-19th and early-20th century capitalism, a man whose last name was so infused into American culture that it even appeared in upscale appetizers like "Oysters Rockefeller."

Rockefeller lived to be 97, and during his long life witnessed numerous historical events of significance, not to mention all of the events he participated in himself. To commemorate his passing, The Progressive Labor World (May 29, 1937) printed a political cartoon, a medley of drawings of industrial creations from the telegraph to the telephone, giving a perspective about how many things evolved and came to pass during his lifetime. A list appears in the lower right corner of the cartoon, noting events like "The Civil War" and inventions such as "The Submarine," but the most telling line is the last one, which reads "Etc. Etc." What surrounded Rockefeller, as countless and important as the events were, tells only a part of his story, for John D.'s life was filled with endless toil, much controversy, and of course, massive business success.

John's father,
William Avery Rockefeller

William Avery Rockefeller

John D.'s father, William Avery "Doc" Rockefeller (1810-1906), a man with "calculating eyes" as well as a "ready laugh and a quick wit," expended considerable energy throughout his lifetime on schemes to avoid hard work. He also traveled so much during John D.'s childhood that his family was often unsure when, and if, he would return.

William met his future wife (and John D.'s mother), Eliza Davison (1813-1889), 30 miles northwest of his home in Richford, New York, where he was posing as a deaf-mute peddler. He made the majority of his money as a self-proclaimed "Celebrated Cancer Specialist," charging each patient $25, the equivalent of about two month's pay.

Against the advice of her father, Eliza married William in 1837. The Rockefellers were considered poor country folk in comparison to the Davisons, and the marriage, as Eliza's father expected, was an unhappy one for her. William often abandoned his wife to live the life of a wandering peddler and philanderer. On June 12, 1855, "Doc" married Margaret Allen, who was about 25 years his junior (just four years older than John D.), while still legally bound to Eliza, and maintained a dual life for the rest of his days.

When William did return from the scam of the moment, he appeared without notice riding new horses, wearing fine clothes, and flaunting a wad of large bills, which he then used to pay off the family's debts at the local store.

John's mother,
Eliza Davison Rockefeller

Eliza Davison Rockefeller

A Richford native once commented that Eliza Davison Rockefeller was "a most excellent woman, but one who bore too heavy a burden…to look after her children [properly]." Indeed, her husband's extended, as well as frequent, absences took their toll on her. One of the family's Richford neighbors also said of John D. and his siblings, "I do not remember ever to have seen more pitiably neglected children. Their clothing was old and tattered, and they looked dirty and hungry."

Despite the troubles that William's lifestyle and personality created, Eliza remained loyal to him and carried herself with considerable dignity. Caring for the children and shielding them from the gossip spread about them, mostly as a result of their father's behavior, was a responsibility she took on with resolve. She created a home environment that stressed her Baptist faith, and maxims, such as "Willful waste makes woeful want," were ingrained in her children, certainly influencing John D. in his formative years. Eliza's resilience, her ability to press forward and deal with frequent inconveniences and disappointments, probably contributed to the development of John. D.'s stoic personality and his sincere respect for women, something lost on most of the Gilded Age businessmen.

The five children of
William and Eliza Rockefeller
Seated: John (20), Mary Ann (16),
and William (18)
Standing: Lucy (21), and Frank (14)

The Young John D.

Most early photos of John D. captured a grave, expressionless boy, who usually seemed lost in thought. He never stood out in school, where he was a slow learner, though patient and persistent. "I was not an easy student," Rockefeller said, "and I had to apply myself diligently to prepare my lessons." He described himself as "reliable," but not "brilliant." Yet he exhibited a gift for business when he bought candy by the pound, divided it into small portions, and then sold it at a profit to his siblings.

On September 26, 1855, a day that Rockefeller would celebrate as "Job Day," an event more important than his birthday, Hewitt and Tuttle, commission merchants, hired him as a bookkeeping apprentice at the rate of 50¢ a day. Rockefeller worked long hours, arriving at about 6:30 a.m., and not leaving until late at night. By 1857, Hewitt and Tuttle promoted the thrifty and punctual young man to chief bookkeeper.

Outside of conversations at work, church was the only social life he allowed himself. At age 19, Rockefeller became a deacon at the Erie Street Baptist Church. Business and religion, the two activities that formed the cornerstone of his personality, were from the beginning the center of his life.

Disciplined, Rockefeller worked without fanfare, but did not allow his presence to go unappreciated. After Hewitt and Tuttle refused to grant him a $200 raise (from $600 to $800 a year), he partnered with Maurice Clark, borrowed $1,000 from his father (at 10 percent interest), and the pair opened a commission merchant business that, in its first year, netted $4,400.

Cettie Spelman Rockefeller

Laura Celestia Spelman (1839-1915), "Cettie," met John D. Rockefeller in high school, where she was one of the few girls taking commercial courses to learn about business. Although not rich, Cettie came from a respectable, well-off family. There was a considerable class gap between the Spelmans and the Rockefellers, no doubt a factor in the lengthy span between their meeting in 1854 and their eventual marriage nine years later.

John D. and Cettie had much in common, especially when it came to their religious beliefs and their mutual indifference toward developing a fancy social life. Cettie, as her husband, deeply loved music, but John D. never had or gained her appreciation for literature and poetry.

The couple married on September 8, 1864, after a six-month engagement, and they moved into a modest home without servants six months later. Together, they had five children: Elizabeth or "Bessie" (1866-1906), Alice (1869-1870), Alta (1871-1962), Edith (1872-1932), and John D., Jr. (1874-1960).

Cettie was in poor health for the last several years of her life, and she was confined to a wheelchair in 1909. Still, John D. took excellent care of her. He was known to excuse himself from dinner parties in their home, tiptoe up to their bedroom with a flower, and relay tidbits of the dinner conversation to her.

The children of John D. and
Cettie Rockefeller:
Bessie (1866-1906),
Alta (1871-1962),
Edith (1872-1932), and
John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
(1874-1960)

The Family Man

Unlike William Rockefeller, John D. had a consistent, however distanced, influence on his children's development, rigidly structuring their lives much like his own. He appointed Cettie as the "general manager" of their home and required that the children perform chores to earn spending money. They made two cents for killing flies and the same amount for not eating candy, and Rockefeller expected them to note each gain and payment in their own "Ledger A."

He also kept his vast earnings a secret from his kids. Knowledge of their father's success, he thought, would cause them to be indulgent, rather than frugal and industrious.

Rockefeller at times shed his stern demeanor and allowed his playful nature to come out, teaching the children how to swim, row, skate, and ride horses.

An early Rockefeller
business sign

Rockefeller's Early Business Years

Rockefeller built his first oil refinery in Cleveland in 1863. Two years later, at age 26, he and Sam Andrews opened Standard Works, making Rockefeller the largest oil refiner in Cleveland. He recruited his brother, William, as a partner in 1865, and Henry Morrison Flagler was then added as a partner in 1867.

Rockefeller was often bogged down by stress in his early years, especially because oil vapors sometimes caused fires. Even though signs at refineries warned "Smokers Will Be Shot," the perpetual threat of a blaze led to many sleepless nights for those in the industry. "I was always ready, night and day, for a fire alarm from the direction of our works," Rockefeller said. "So we kept ourselves like the firemen, with their horses and hose carts always ready for immediate action." This fear slowly dwindled as years passed, and Rockefeller turned his worries to other issues, such as whether or not the Pennsylvania oil wells would dry up.

On January 10, 1870 Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil Company of Ohio, serving as president. Twelve years later, he formed the first trust in America, the Standard Oil Trust, with a nine member Board overseeing 40 Standard Oil subsidiaries.

John D. Rockefeller,
1884

By 1879, at age 40, John D. Rockefeller was one of America's 20 richest men with his Standard Oil stock alone worth $18 million ($265 million in 1996 dollars). At age 50, newspapers placed his net worth at $150 million, though Rockefeller, claiming that the estimate was too high, reduced it to about $40 to $60 million.

In this picture (left), taken in 1884, Rockefeller appears staid and composed, a perfect example of his poker face. Other coeval photos find him in a jovial mood, with softness in his eyes, and a less sober look on his face.

Sophia B. Packard and
Harriet E. Giles

Sharing the Wealth

In 1881, Harriet E. Giles and Sophia B. Packard opened the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary after touring the South and discovering that few educational opportunities were available to black women in Georgia. Working in a church basement on a small budget, and teaching "classes that were tightly wedged in a dusty area formerly used for coal storage," the two women sought out funding sources to improve the school's facilities.

They approached the Rockefellers, and their appeal fell on neither deaf ears nor cold hearts. The Spelman family, particularly Cettie's father Harvey, who had recently passed away, was committed to abolition and black causes, as were many other Baptists at the time. After listening to Giles's and Packard's pleas for help, Rockefeller instantly pledged $250 and promised more, provided that they "stick" to their initial plan.

When the lease on the school's new property (nine acres and five buildings in Atlanta, Georgia) came due in late-1883, Rockefeller pledged an additional $5,000, yet modestly declined to name the school after himself and gave the honor to his wife's family instead, thus the name Spelman College. In his typical way, never wanting to encourage apathy, Rockefeller refused to endow the school with enough money to support it solely for a long time.

The Rockefeller University

I Love New York

During and after John D.'s life, the Rockefeller family endowed a number of medical (Rockefeller Institute, which became Rockefeller University), educational (The University of Chicago), as well as cultural centers (Lincoln Center, Asia Society, the Museum of Modern Art, and International House), many of which are located in New York.

Although Rockefeller lived for a while in Cleveland, Ohio, many bitter battles with local and state officials eventually led to his falling out with the city. Rockefeller even declared that New York City was the better for Cleveland's unfair treatment of him. As Cettie became increasingly ill and close to death, she decided to remain in Cleveland, fearful that it would be the last time she stayed in the home where her children grew up. Because her departure was postponed beyond February 3, 1914, the tax deadline, the Cuyahoga County tax office charged Rockefeller $1.5 million. (He had been a legal, tax-paying resident of New York City since the 1880s.) Rockefeller, of course, protested. Governor James Cox, in response to Rockefeller's refusal, remained steadfast that he must pay and even threatened to subpoena him if he crossed the state line before settling the debt.

More Trouble

After President McKinley's assassination in 1901, public opinion forced Teddy Roosevelt, who replaced McKinley, to take action against the trusts. Knowing the immense power of these conglomerates, as a whole or pared down, Roosevelt thought that potential legislation to stop them would be "as effective as a papal bull against a comet."

By 1907, six states nevertheless went after Standard Oil, most notably Standard Oil of Indiana, which was indicted under the Elkins Act (1903) for taking bribes from the Chicago and Alton Railroad. In August 1907, Judge Landis of Chicago (where the trial was held) fined Standard Oil $29.24 million, only to have the decision overturned.

The U.S. Department of Justice also filed seven suits of its own. And in May 1911, Chief Justice White of the Supreme Court broke the Standard Oil Trust into 39 separate companies.

The trust issue itself led to a wealth of bad publicity for Rockefeller. One political cartoon, entitled "A Hazardous Business" from the World (New York City), depicts Rockefeller cautiously tiptoeing across a tightrope that says "Anti-Trust Law," pushing a wheelbarrow with a money bag holding $400 million, and carrying a golf bag on his back. Another one shows him hitting a golf ball out of a deep $29 million sand trap.

These cartoons suggest that Rockefeller continued to defy the law, but somehow narrowly evaded prosecution. Even more important, they convey the opinions of common Americans who were growing increasingly skeptical of the oil mogul and his business practices.

So, in response to poor publicity surrounding the strike at the Rockefeller-controlled Colorado Fuel & Iron, Rockefeller and his son hired Ivy Lee in 1914 as their public relations manager to clean up their image. In fact, it was Lee who thought of giving out dimes to the public, and he made sure that only positive pictures, like those of him playing golf, were released to the public.

John D. reading from
his bible for a crowd

After Standard Oil

When Rockefeller retired from Standard Oil, he thought he had realized his destiny. There was little else for him to accomplish in business, but a great deal in philanthropy.

Black-and-white, silent films of John D. late in life find him jovial, gentle-mannered, happy to impart a dime to a young child. In his thrifty way, he always told the recipient, "A dime for the bank, a penny to spend." A scene even shows him swinging one leg over a young boy, a sprightly move for a man in his 90s. He also displayed a sense of humor at times. While getting a massage, he commented, "All the oil in the country, they say, and not enough to oil my joints."

Even in retirement, Rockefeller scheduled his life and remained businesslike. He woke at 6:30 a.m., read the paper from 7:00 to 8:00 a.m., attended to business affairs from 8:45-10:00 a.m. (stock trading and sundry matters), and between 10:00 a.m. and noon played nine holes of golf. The remaining hours were divided among listening to music (a passion held since his youth), playing Numerica (a competitive form of Solitaire), and reading the Bible.

His interest in trading stocks, a habit he persued privately, was "a form of shadow boxing," as Collier and Horowitz creatively put it "that reminded him of the great fights of the old days." It kept Rockefeller in the ring at a time in his life when his only opponent was himself.

Throughout his life, despite his extraordinary success, Rockefeller remained the same person, in habit, personality, and faith, as the young man who started as a bookkeeping apprentice. Money may have been his passion but certainly not the backbone of his self-image.

When he first started working for Hewitt and Tuttle, he invariably tithed 10 percent of his paycheck. Success never changed the percentage he gave, only the amount. In 1892, Rockefeller donated $1.5 million to churches and church-related causes, a testament not only to his faith but also his vast net worth. In all, John D. Rockefeller gave away $530 million.

A pious assumption on Rockefeller's part, however, explained the reason for his success: "God gave me the money," he proclaimed in 1905. "I believe that the power to make money is a gift from God." And he concluded that his earnings should be used for "the good of my fellow man…according to my conscience." Rockefeller's beliefs about divine intervention, and his notion that personal wealth should be used for the betterment of society, explains why he aided so many causes, yet could never clarify the connection between wealth and grace.

Kristin Aguilera is the editor of Financial History and the Communications Manager of the Museum. Keith Rolfe will be a graduate student in history at Villanova University this fall.

References "A Hazardous Business." World. New York City. Nov. 1904. Chernow, Ron. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr. New York: Random House, 1998. Collier, Peter and David Horowitz. Rockefeller: An American Dynasty. New York: Hold, Rhinehart, and Winston, 1976. "Once In A Lifetime." The Progressive Labor World. Philadelphia, PA. May 29, 1937. Reed, Henry Hope. Rockefeller New York. New York: Greenward Foundation, 1988. "The Rockefellers." A&E Biography.