John D. Rockefeller: Where Did He Get His Start?

Business is a fascinating topic to research and no one is more fascinating that John D. Rockefeller. This paper answers the age old question of any successful businessman: where did he get his start? I will answer that question with a paper about John D. Rockefeller’s early life. It will also explain how he became one of the first great business leaders for America and some of the major influences in his life and what he did after he retired. .
John D. Rockefeller was born in 1839 this is where he grew up in New York. He mainly lived with his mother because his father would leave at times and not return for months. Him and his family moved to new cities around New York for awhile. Then when he turned 12 him and his family went and moved
to Cleveland, Ohio in 1853. when he was 12 he worked hard and saved up 50 dollars then his mother convinced him to loan the money to a local farmer with an interest rate of 7%.
Rockefeller had many influences in his life one of the biggest ones was his mother Eliza Rockefeller she taught John how to work hard and save his money. She also encouraged him to donate some of his money to charities. One of the other influences in his life was The Erie Street Baptist Church he became a trustee by the age of 21. Rockefeller was average at some subjects in school but he tried hard because he knew education was important. While he was at a school in New York he was very skilled at mental arithmetic this skill would help him in his business career. Then when he moved to Ohio while he was in highschool he was on the debate team and also took public speaking these would be very useful to him.
One of Rockefeller’s first jobs was at Hewitt and Tuttle as an assistant bookkeeper. He worked very hard for this company and they became very impressed with him. In 1858 Rockefeller got a lot more responsibilities at Hewitt and Tuttle he had to arrange very complicated transportation deals.
On March 1, 1859 Rockefeller formed a business with one of his neighbors Maurice Clark they both had put in 2,000 dollars to form a business called Clark and Rockefeller. After the first year of Clark and Rockefeller it had grossed a total of 450,000 dollars . When the civil war started their business had began to start expanding rapidly and the prices of their merchandise went up.
In 1862 he started investing money into the oil refining business then they made the business Andrews, Clark and company. When Rockefeller turned 24 he bought out the Clark brothers and owned the business all to himself. That is when Rockefeller started to expanding his company and he borrowed a lot of money to make this happen. When Rockefeller started his business in Standard Oil he already owned 10% of the oil business in America. he thought that all of the lower firms were hurting his company by lowering all of their prices so he bought them out to eliminate the competition. Rockefeller had an idea that there would only need to be one big firm that would refine all of the oil. Some people thought that he was a great businessman.
Some of the other people thought he was a “robber baron” the definition was someone who enriched themselves by the sweat of others. I think he is one of the first real great business men for America. When he retired he generated a total income of about 900,000,000 million dollars. He retired in 1896 he became a philanthropist donating tons of money to colleges and universities. One of his main ones was The University of Chicago he donated them a total of 75,000,000 million dollars. Rockefeller was largely responsible for creating the creation of this university. In 1905 Rockefeller established a sanitary commision and he named it Rockefeller sanitary commision this is the place that is largely responsible for eradicating hookworm in the south by 1927. Business is a fascinating topic to research and no one is more fascinating that John D. Rockefeller. This paper answers the age old question of any successful businessman: where did he get his start? I will answer that question with a paper about John D. Rockefeller’s early life. It will also explain how he became one of the first great business leaders for America and some of the major influences in his life and what he did after he
retired.