William Rockefeller

• Born: May 31, 1841
• Birthplace: Richford, New York
• Died: June 24, 1922
• Place of death: Tarrytown, New York

American industrialist and financier

Rockefeller was a shrewd but well-liked manager of the Standard Oil Company. He helped his more famous brother, John D. Rockefeller, gain a monopoly on kerosene and other petroleum products in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and he later became a major investor in other companies.

Sources of wealth: Oil; investments

Bequeathal of wealth: Children; relatives

Early Life

William Avery Rockefeller (RAW-keh-fehl-luhr), Jr., grew up in the small town of Richford, New York, where he attended local schools. The family moved to Strongsville, Ohio, in 1853, where he and his brother John D. Rockefeller attended Cleveland High School. The brothers became reasonably close friends and maintained this friendship throughout their lives. William’s father, William Avery Rockefeller, Sr., sold patent medicine, and he had to make many trips away from home to promote sales. William’s father taught both brothers about the positive and negative aspects of business. His mother, Eliza Davidson Rockefeller, had a hard time raising her sons because of her husband’s long absences and heavy drinking.

First Ventures

In 1857, young William worked as a bookkeeper in Cleveland, Ohio. After a year, he went to work for a produce commission business, becoming a partner there in 1862. His brother John also went into the produce commission business in 1858, working for the firm of Clark & Rockefeller. John and his partner, M. B. Clark, built an oil refinery in Cleveland in 1863. In those years, kerosene was the primary product produced from oil.

John bought the firm from Clark in 1865 and started a new business, Rockefeller & Andrews, with Samuel Andrews. John convinced William to invest in Rockefeller & Andrews when the firm built a second oil refinery called the Standard Works. William accepted the offer, and he was put in charge of selling the refinery’s products in New York City. William was a shrewd man who had a likable personality. In contrast to John, William did not believe in donating money to charities. William turned out to be a great export manager who was able to keep an eye on kerosene prices and ensure that the Ohio refineries produced the needed amount of oil. He also was able to borrow money for the refineries more cheaply in New York than in Ohio.

Mature Wealth

In 1870, the name of the firm was changed to Standard Oil of Ohio, with John as president and William as vice president. William supported John’s efforts to acquire other oil companies. The Rockefellers purchased most of the oil companies in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1872, and they soon controlled nearly 90 percent of the refineries in the United States.

The control of these companies became complicated, since many state laws made it difficult for a company in one state to run a company in another state. Thus, the Rockefellers had to turn their companies into separate corporations in different states. These corporations were finally united into a single company called the Standard Oil Trust. William was one of the original trustees of this trust until the Ohio courts declared it illegal. The Rockefellers then reorganized the trust into Standard Oil of New Jersey, with William as director. He also became the president of Standard Oil of New York.

By the 1890’s, William was making a fortune in Standard Oil, and he began to invest in gas, electric utilities, mining ventures, and railroads. In 1911, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Standard Oil of New Jersey had violated the Sherman Antitrust Act and ordered the company to be broken up into thirty-four smaller firms. By that time, William had given up the management of all of his companies, and he focused on his railroad investments.

Legacy

With his brother John D. Rockefeller, William Rockefeller built a major empire that controlled the production of all oil products from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Many criticized the way that the brothers monopolized the industry and attacked Standard Oil for its size and wealth. Nevertheless, kerosene prices dropped by about 80 percent in these years, and the quality of the kerosene improved.

William’s involvement in Standard Oil and his many investments made him a very wealthy man. When he died in 1922, he left his children an estate valued at about $100 million.

Bibliography

Abels, Jules. The Rockefeller Billions. New York: Macmillan, 1965.

Hidy, Ralph W., and Muriel E. Hidy. History of the Standard Oil Company. New York: Ayer, 1987.

Izant, Grace Goulder. John D. Rockefeller: The Cleveland Years. Cleveland, Ohio: Western Reserve Historical Society, 1973.

Levy, George. Brother William: The Story of William Rockefeller. Macon, Ga.: Henchard Press, 2009.