John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

John D. Rockefeller (bio.com)

John D. Rockefeller was an American entrepreneur who created Standard Oil. He nearly monopolized the oil industry and created a new form of transportation for oil. He created new business tactics and ideas. He is a renaissance person because he created an oil pipeline, new business ideas and practices. He did what other people thought you should not do, and paid for multiple colleges and non profit organizations like the University of Chicago and the Rockefeller Foundation.

John D. Rockefeller Sr. was born on July 8, 1839. His father was a traveling salesman and his mother stayed home and watched him and his siblings. Rockefeller, as a kid, was very good at math, organization, and planning. His first job was raising turkeys for a local farmer, he made about $75. When he was 16, he and his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio. Soon after, he got his first major job as a bookkeeper for a shipping company. When he was 20 he started a trading business that sold foods like meats and grains, hay and other items("John D.RockefellerBio.com"). In his first year, his company grossed over $450,000 in the first year. In Cleveland, Rockefeller began his huge oil empire.

Rockefeller started Standard Oil in 1870, and opened his first oil refinery in Cleveland. Oil refining is purifying crude oil which then becomes petroleum, and products of petroleum are fuels like gasoline and diesel. Rockefeller bought out any independent oil refineries in Ohio, and he owned 10% of oil refining in the United States, and most of the refineries in the Midwest. One of his strokes of brilliance occurred when he was at war with the railroads. Rockefeller owned some railroads but the ones north and east he didn't own. The railroads also started a oil refining plant to try to stop Rockefeller's impending monopoly. Rockefeller, instead of paying the high cost of shipping his oil on the railroads, created a pipeline system that stretched from oil refineries and transported oil north and east. Rockefeller had nearly monopolized the oil industry by 1882, taking only twelve years, twelve short years. Rockefeller then organized the first "great trust". A trust is when a group of businesses come together to monopolize the business. Rockefeller retired from ownership of Standard Oil in 1895.

After retirement Rockefeller's life was devoted to charities. He started many different schools and organizations. One of his organizations, the Rockefeller Foundation met their goal 20 years after being started. Rockefeller University and the University of Chicago are two schools he paid for ("John D. Rockefeller, Senior") He died in 1937, living 98 years.

John D. Rockefeller will always be remembered as a renaissance person because of his contributions to learning, technology and science. Rockefeller, throughout his life, made a total of about 22.22 billion dollars and created the modern way of transporting oil out of refineries. John Rockefeller is a renaissance person because he pushed the limits of literacy, science and technology.