rockefeller

John Davison Rockefeller was born on July 8th, 1839 in Richford, New York. He was the second of six children to William Avery and Eliza Davison Rockefeller. From the start, his mother raised him in religion. Eliza was a devout baptist and she taught him to work and save, and what he did save, to give to charities (“Entrepreneurs and American Economic Growth”). On the other hand, his father was not such a good role model. William, or “Wild Bill” (“John D. Rockefeller: Lover of Money or Enterprise”), as called by many, was a bigamist and a liar. For years, William would leave for weeks on end and return with large sums of cash from the fake cancer medication he sold (“Biography: John D. Rockefeller, Senior”). In 1849, after William was accused of rape, the family moved to Owego, New York, closer to the Pennsylvania border (Timeline: The Rockefellers). A few years later, William moved his family to Cleveland, by his sister and brother-in-law, for unknown reasons.

In 1853, now in Cleveland, Rockefeller began attending Cleveland Central High School. He excelled at mental arithmetic and debating, which would prove helpful later on in his business career. At the age of 16, John dropped out of high school and attended Folsom Commercial College for 10 weeks. During this time, he studied a wide variety of courses, such as bookkeeping, penmanship, banking, and many others. Following his graduation, Rockefeller started his search for a job. At this time, jobs were hard to come by in Cleveland. But John persisted, sometimes visiting businesses multiple times. On the 26th of September in 1855, he finally landed a job being an assistant bookkeeper at Hewitt & Tuttle, which was a firm of produce shippers and commission merchants. Rockefeller ce...

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...gh Rockefeller did not take part in this case, his name is often associated with it because of his relationship with Standard Oil.

The legacy of John D. Rockefeller is often not looked at as a good one. People rarely take into account all of the great things he did. Rockefeller donated more money than anyone else in American History, totaling more than $550,000,000, the equivalent to about $663.4 billion in today’s money. One of his many contributions was the creation of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, which since then has been the place where the cure for meningitis was discovered, the identification of DNA and central genetic matter, and various other causes and cures for diseases. Also, he founded the General Education Board in 1903. It helped establish high schools throughout the South by giving advice for improving education and instruction.