He is considered the richest man in history, the American government had to separate his companies to eliminate the monopoly that the tycoon had created and from which the great Rockefeller family still benefits .
He is one of the richest business men in the world.
John D. Rockefeller Biography
He was born on July 8, 1839 in Richford ( New York ).He was raised in a family descended from German-Jewish immigrants who arrived in the United States in 1733.
During his modest beginnings as an accountant for the firm Hewit and Tuttle , he undertook the writing of a kind of economic journal which he titled ” Ledger A “. That record and the annotations contained in his autobiography ” Random Reminiscences “, expose an austere and ambitious personality.
He studied in public schools in Cleveland (Ohio) and at sixteen he was a librarian in Cleveland.
He was 1.8 meters tall and weighed 85 kilograms.
He died of arteriosclerosis on May 23, 1937, just before his 98th birthday, at his home in Ormond Beach, Florida. In Cleveland, he rests in Lake View Cemetery.
But what kind of man was he? Intelligent. The eye of an eagle and the nose of a hunting dog for business. Insatiable: all profit – even the sky-high – seemed little to him. Religious to the core. Republican in politics. Unbelievably thrifty : always the same clothes, lunch at the cheapest restaurants, and –according to witnesses–, ” the most miserable tips ever known “.
John D. Rockefeller Career
They did not take long to notice the talent of the young man, especially in relation to capital control and intuition to make businesses prosper . After a few years in the industry, the founder of his dynasty decided to start his own business with a brokerage firm.
The first year alone reported a profit of $4,000. The second, the number quadrupled and the career of him took off definitively.
The activity with his first businesses was going from strength to strength. However, that never satisfied the concerns of this promising entrepreneur. In the brewing American Civil War , he saw an opportunity to grow his empire, and he jumped at it.
Together with a partner, Clark, they dedicated themselves to supplying food to the troops at the front. It should be noted that the young man managed to get rid of fighting in the conflict by sending and paying soldiers in his place.
He also made generous contributions to the northern side to avoid his involvement in combat.
The commercial activity carried out during the Civil War generated a number of benefits that, possibly, the two involved in the company had not imagined. However, the conflict ended and, therefore, the business too.
This caused Clark and him to start looking at other possible avenues of income. Where they finally set their sights was on the refining of crude oil , a movement that will be the definitive one for the protagonist of this biography.
In the early 1960s, with the war still unfinished, Clark and John opened their first refinery in Cleveland.
In those years, the oil industry moved in a continuous waste in which the by-products of refining were not used at all. His orderly and methodical mindset would change this by creating a company so efficient that it soon dominated the market.
The figures speak for themselves: the refineries that were competing only took advantage of 60% of the crude. That of Rockefeller and Clark, almost 100%, creating products such as gasoline, naphtha or tar.
In 1865, he took over the entire company after a public auction process in which he exceeded the amount offered by Clark and others interested in his purchase. The tycoon, already a benchmark in the industry, began his rise alone in an unstoppable way.
In the early 1970s, he changed the name of his company to Standard Oil . This company is a myth in the business world, since it quickly became a kind of owner of all the oil used in the United States.
The 1970s saw both the founding of this company and its growth. John D. Rockefeller’s plan was simple: to become the owner of all the oil in the world. Although he did not achieve it, he was not too far from this ambitious goal.
His methods were as simple as they were predatory. Due to his economic capacity, he bought or ruined any other company that was within the sector. In a short time, this company achieved that his seal was present in 95% of all the oil that moved in the country.
But the US government did not seem too happy that a single firm monopolized a vital market for the country’s economy. In a decades-long litigation that was not effectively consummated until well into the 20th century, judges ruled that Standard Oil had to be broken up into more than 30 separate companies.
John D. Rockefeller Last Year
In 1911, with deteriorating health at age 72, stepped down as president of the company and reduced his work activity.
Retired and more dedicated to real estate and philanthropic activities, the tycoon would extend his days until 1937 , when he would die in the state of Florida.
During his later years, the businessman started projects such as Rockefeller Center . Currently, this complex of 19 commercial buildings is one of the most important business centers in the world.
The tycoon’s contributions and donations were a constant throughout his life, although it was in recent years that they became higher and more regular. The religious communities were the special recipient of it, although there were also artistic causes that received important contributions from the businessman.
Due to a great moral, ethical and religious sense, instilled from a very young age by his mother, Rockefeller did not stop practicing truly splendid charitable and charitable works, a practice that dated back to his youthful days as a clerk in Cleveland, in which he gave small contributions for the maintenance of the small Baptist church, practices that he always carried out without the propaganda zeal that other distinguished millionaires of his time displayed.
In the year 1891, he invested 45 million dollars in the reconstruction of the University of Chicago, of which he was president.
Two years later, in 1903, the General Education Board was born , thanks to his donation of 96 million dollars, with the aim of educating the most marginalized populations in his country, especially those of color. In 1910, he created the Rockefeller Foundation, with the mission of administering the enormous family fortune, giving 50 million dollars to each of its three depositories in Standard Oil titles.to constitute the initial fund of the organization. 
He was accused of opportunism and of trying to divert a large part of his fortune by undertaking such a great project shortly before the sentence that the Supreme Court was going to rule against the monopoly of his company.
But, three years later, he was able to convince the judicial authorities of his country of the good intentions of the work, which was officially approved and endowed with its own statutes. His last philanthropic work was the creation of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, integrated into the program of activities of the Foundation itself in 1918.
In short, his biography is that of a self-made man who built one of the largest business empires in history. This still stands, the Rockefeller family being one of the richest and most influential in the world.
John D. Rockefeller Net Worth
The man who is said to be the richest American of all time has a net worth of around $340 billion as of June 2022. In 1914, he earned $58,000,000 from his various investments on his own. His family is still very wealthy, ranking as the 22nd richest in the United States.
When he was 50 years old, he experienced digestive problems and depression. In 1890, he lost all his body hair due to alopecia. He tried everything, but his hair never grew back. He had to reduce his workload due to health problems.
He is one of the richest people in the history of the world, with a net worth equivalent to $340 billion today, when he died in 1937.
Despite the fact that commonplace often mentions him as “the most admired… and most hated man in the United States”: a ruthless, ruthless, ruthless baron of industry, etc…
He donated almost his entire fortune to charity , and left behind an astonishing cultural legacy: the University of Chicago (birthplace of 87 Nobel laureates), New York’s Rockefeller University, Lincoln Center, foundations for the advancement of education, medicine, and scientific research, and an architectural prodigy like the Rockefeller Center –which he never got to see: he died before the inauguration–. A complex of 19 commercial buildings, covering 22 acres between 48th and 51st streets: perhaps the emblem of New York, the quintessential magical city of modern times. If men are known by their works (biblical precept), that man was also the same one that so many reviled. And even today, although very faint, those echoes reach him… It doesn’t matter: that each one puts on the scale the weights he wants. But, whether he leans towards Evil or towards Good, nothing will erase what is wonderfully well done.
John D. Rockefeller Private Life
He married Laura Celestia Spelman , a New York professor , for life, and they had five children: Elizabeth, Alice, Alta, Edith, and John D. , who left this world in 1960.
A brood whose grandchildren and great-grandchildren, until Today, they kept the torch of power and money burning, unlike other powerful families that barely left a mark.
