OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: John Davison Rockefeller [1]
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by
Darlene E. Kelley
http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374
August 15, 1999
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Historical Collections of Ohio
The Kelley Family Collections
Newspaper article, Plains Dealer
compiled by S.J. Kelley-- 1925
And Then They Went West
by Darlene E. Kelley  1998
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John Davison Rockefeller was the guiding force behind the creation and 
development of the Standard Oil Company, which grew to dominate the oil 
industry and became one of the first big trusts in the United States, 
thus engendering much controversy and opposition regarding its business 
practices and form of organization. Rockefeller also was one of the first 
major philanthropists in the U.S.,establishing several important foundations
and donating a total of $540 million to charitable purposes.

Rockefeller was born on a farm at Richford, in Tioga county, New York,
on July 8, 1839, the second of the six children of William A and Eliza
(Davison) Rockefeller. The family lived in modest circumstances. When he
was a boy, the family moved to Moravia and later to Owego, New York,
before going west to Ohio in 1853. The Rockefeller's bought a house in
Strongsville, near Cleveland. He was then thirteen and he attended
school in Cleveland for three years. In 1855 it became necessary for him
to earn his own living. It was a hard year in the west and the boy
walked the streets for days looking for work. He was about to give it up
and go to the country when, to quote the story as Mr. Rockefeller once
told it to his Cleveland Sunday-School. "As good fortune would have it,
I went down, to the dock an made one more application, and I was told
that if I would come in after dinner [our noon day meal was dinner] they
would see if I could come to work for them. I went down after dinner and
got the position, and I was permitted to remain in the city." The
position, that of a clerk, and bookkeeper, was not to lucrative.
According to a small ledger which has figured frequently in Mr.
Rockefeller's religious instructions, he earned from Sept 26, 1855, to
January, 1856, fifty dollars. "Out of that," Mr. Rockefeller told the
young men of his Sunday-School class, "I paid my washerwomen and the
lady I boarded with, and saved a little money to put away. He proved an
admirable accountant-one of the early-and-late sort, who saw everythng,
an forgot nothing and never talked. In 1856 his salary was raised to
twenty-five dollars a month, and he went on always saving a little money
to be put away. In 1855 he took a business course at Folsom Mercantile
College attending at night. he completed the six-months course in three
months. It was here he met Maurice B. Clark and they became friend's.
Maurice was older than Rockefeller by twelve years and had had a hard
life in England. When Maurice was twenty he left England to seek his
fortune in America. He had landed in Boston in 1847, without a penny and
it had taken three months  for him to earn money to get to Ohio. Here he
had taken the first job at hand, as man of all work, wood-chopper,
teamster and etc. He found his way to Cleveland and had become a
valuable man in the houses where he was employed and here too went to
school at nights and had saved his money.

In 1859, Rockefeller, with $1000, he had saved, and another $1000,
borrowed from his father at 10% interest, formed a partnership in the
commission business, with Maurice B Clark. Maurice was already married
to Mary (Clement)  and had worked on a job on the Ohio and Erie Canal,
which led him into the grocery and grain business, when he went to work
for the commission house of Otis Brownell & Co. on River Street. It was
there he learned the commision business and he was exceptionally good at
it. He and Mary were very thrifty and saved as much as they could.  

The partnership with Rockefeller, was very profitable, with Maurice
doing the work and Rockefeller keeping the books and managing the money.
Maurice had invested $4000 in the business and Rockefeller $2000. By the
end of one year they had made a profit of over $ 17,000. 
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to be continued in part 2--