John Davison Rockefeller

John Davison Rockefeller (July 8, 1839 - May 23, 1937) was one of the biggest names when you want to know who started the way for Standard Oil Company’s, which grew to dominate the oil industry and became one of the first big trusts in the United States.

Rockefeller was born in Tioga County, New York, on July 8, 1839 on a farm. Rockefeller was the second child out of the six children of William A. Rockefeller and Eliza Rockefeller. When he was younger he moved around a little bit they first moved to Moravia then to Oswego, New York, the later moving to Ohio in 1853. He went to Central High school for his education, after he graduated high school in 1855 he went to college at Folsom Mercantile for business. He was very well educated for the fact that he finished a six month college course in three months’ time. While he was in college he looked for a job that could give him a little bit of a business experience as a assistant bookkeeper, a small firm of commission merchants. He also found a job which was a commission firm that bought, sold and shipped grain, coal and other things. (He also considered September 26, the day he started the position and entered the business world, so significant that as an adult he commemorated this “job day” with an annual celebration.) This job experience gave him the courage to open his own commission firm in 1859. In 1863 Rockefeller and many other entered the prosperous industry of oil by putting their money in a Cleveland refinery. In 1864, Rockefeller got married to a woman by the name of Laura Celestia “Cettie” Spelman (1839-1915). Rockefeller and Spelman had four daughters and one son. In 1865 Rockefeller decided it was time to take charge and borrowed money to buy out his old partners and clam the refinery as his own, which during that time had become the largest in Cleveland. Through his time he received new business partners to grow the company. In 1870, Rockefeller created the Standard Oil Company of Ohio, with his only brother William (1841-1922), Henry Flagler (1830-1913), and some other men. Rockefeller was still the head of the company as president and largest shareholder.

Standard oil business gained a lot in the oil industry by producing companies that they could spread out to different people and buying different refineries. In 1882 those different companies took a huge leap and combined into the Standard Oil Trust, which was very successful in the end due to the fact that it ended up controlling 90 percent of the nation’s refineries and pipelines.

As a person doing very well in the world he was a beacon for journalists, politicians and others who saw as a person full of greed and they also criticized the way he created his business. In The New York Times the reported: “He was accused of crushing out competition, getting rich on rebates from railroads, bribing men to spy on competing companies, of making secret agreements, of coercing rivals to join the Standard Oil Company under threat of being forced out of business, building up enormous fortunes on the ruins of other men, and so on”.

In 1890, everything went down in smoke when “the U.S. Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act, the first federal legislation prohibiting trusts and combinations that restrained trade. If they would have tried to keep things running for Two more years, the Ohio Supreme Court would have dissolved the Standard Oil Trust which would of put them back in business; however, the businesses within the trust soon became part of Standard Oil of New Jersey so it was too late for them to bounce back.