The purpose of this research is to examine the career of John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil and the man who established the fabulously wealthy Rockefeller dynasty. John D. Rockefeller's life was fairly typical of that of many other 19th-century Americans. In many other respects, it was a life that has never been equalled. John D. Rockefeller was born on July 8, 1839. One report of his childhood says that "his first distinct recollections were of the rough farming country near the villiage of Moravia in western New York, where he lived from his fourth to his eleventh year; in 1843 his father paid $3100 for the ninety-two acre tract in Moravia township."
This farm country of western New York was practically wilderness. The Rockefellers were not frontiersmen in the sense that they had to fight off Indians, but they did live in the United States at a time when most of the nation was rural. Rockefeller's childhood on the farm was typical of that of most youngsters of his generation. He came from a large family which was not actually poor but had to struggle to avoid being poor. His parents provide an interesting combination of characteristics. Rockefeller's mother was Scotch-Irish and his father was Anglo-Saxon. Both were hardworking, thrift-oriented people who taught their children the value of the work ethic and the value of money, but the resemblance does not seem to have gone further than that in terms of personal character. John Rockefeller's mother, the former Eliza Davison, has been described by one of his biographers in the following manner: "Her deep piety and strong will were accompanied by a remarkable serenity, which she transmitted to her son." The father, William Avery Rockefeller, has been described in the following terms: "He did precisely as he pleased; his will brooked no opposition; he lacked moral scruple in certain relationships, and followed his impulses without proper thought of the ...