EPUB paragraph 82 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
The Aldrich sisters in 1910. From left: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Elsie Aldrich, and Lucy Aldrich. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Names: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller · Nelson W. Aldrich · Rockefeller Archive Center · Elsie Aldrich · Lucy Aldrich
EPUB paragraph 83 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
The Aldrich family. From left: Abby, Lucy, Senator Aldrich, Winthrop (?), and Mrs. Aldrich. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Names: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller · Winthrop Rockefeller · Nelson W. Aldrich · Rockefeller Archive Center · Lucy
EPUB paragraph 84 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
William Rockefeller. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
EPUB paragraph 85 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
Frank Rockefeller. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
EPUB paragraph 86 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
Frederick T. Gates in his later years. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
EPUB paragraph 87 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
The only existing photo that shows John D. with his father, William Avery Rockefeller, who sits rather awkwardly to the left, while Edith holds John Rockefeller McCormick on her lap, circa 1897. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · William Avery Rockefeller · Edith Rockefeller McCormick · Rockefeller Archive Center · John Rockefeller McCormick
EPUB paragraph 88 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
The aging Eliza Davison Rockefeller bore a comical resemblance to her famous son in his later years. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Names: Eliza Davison Rockefeller · Rockefeller Archive Center
EPUB paragraph 89 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
The tombstone of William Avery Rockefeller—a.k.a. Dr. William Levingston—in Freeport, Illinois. (Courtesy of Heather Brownfield)
Names: William Avery Rockefeller · Freeport · Illinois
EPUB paragraph 90 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
In 1883, Rockefeller and Henry Flagler toured Jacksonville and Saint Augustine, Florida, and reviewed the state’s economic prospects with Dr. Andrew Anderson and tobacco mogul George P. Lorillard. The next year, the Rockefellers headed down to Atlanta, swung west to New Orleans, and wound up in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Two years later, they made an extended trip to Yellowstone Park and returned by way of Chicago. By this point, even Rockefeller wondered whether he would ever escape the continental United States, telling Benjamin Brewster, “I may never get to Europe with my family although we have been expecting we might go in a year or two, but I am very desirous to know more of this dear land in which we live.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Henry M. Flagler · Rockefeller family · Chicago · Atlanta · United States · Europe · Yellowstone National Park · Andrew Anderson · Benjamin Brewster · George P. Lorillard · Florida · Saint Augustine · Los Angeles · New Orleans · Jacksonville · San Francisco
EPUB paragraph 91 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
Deliverance came on June 1, 1887, when Rockefeller and his family set sail for a three-month European vacation, the Standard Oil executives trailing after them on a tugboat to wave good-bye. They must have been relieved because they feared that his indefatigable exertions at Standard Oil might injure his health. It took Rockefeller time to shed his obsessive concern for Standard Oil and allow himself to be lulled by the restful sea spirit. While still 460 miles from Southampton, unable to stop wondering about oil, he broke down and wired George Rogers, “I find I already thirst for knowledge about the business.” A month later, he pleaded from Berlin, “Can’t you glean more of interest from Ex[ecutive] Com[mittee] for me about current business. Am anxious for every scrap of information.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · George D. Rogers · Berlin · Southampton
EPUB paragraph 92 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
After the Civil War, so many Americans flocked to Europe for vacations, presenting a cavalcade of innocents abroad, that their showy vulgarity and bumptious patriotism were frequently parodied by contemporary writers. The Rockefellers must have struck the Europeans as a dry, antiseptic family, somewhat awkward and ill at ease with foreign languages. Rockefeller made no concessions to the European milieu, which only accentuated his homespun style. In London, he booked a hotel room in Piccadilly that gave his family a front-row seat for Queen Victoria’s jubilee, and they stared agog as she whisked by in a magnificent golden carriage.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Rockefeller family · London · Europe · Queen Victoria · Civil War · Piccadilly
EPUB paragraph 93 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
As the party crossed to France, John D. was alert for sharp characters out to swindle him and prey upon his American innocence. Because he didn’t speak French, he knew he looked like a vulnerable rube. At one point, he suspected, correctly, that their tour guide was fleecing them. Politely firing the man, he took charge of financial matters and pored over stacks of incomprehensible bills. Junior left a splendid vignette of his father trying to decipher a French check:
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · France
EPUB paragraph 94 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
I can see him now, going over the long French bills, studying each item, many of them being unintelligible to him. “Poulets!” he would exclaim. “What are poulets, John?” Or again, “Bougies, bougies—what in the world is a bougie?” And so on down the bill. Father was never willing to pay a bill which he did not know to be correct in all its items. Such care in small things might seem penurious to some people, yet to him it was the working out of a life principle.
Names: John
EPUB paragraph 95 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
Another traveling companion remembered the Rockefellers sitting at a private dining room in a Roman hotel as the paterfamilias dissected the weekly bill, trying to ascertain whether they had really consumed two whole chickens, as these slippery foreigners alleged:
Names: Rockefeller family
EPUB paragraph 96 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
Mr. Rockefeller listened for a while to the discussion, and then said quietly: “I can settle that very easily. John, did you have a chicken leg?” “Yes.” “Alta, did you have a chicken leg?” “Yes.” “Well, Mother, I think I remember that you had one. Is that right?” “Yes,” said the mother. “I know that I had one, and no chicken has 3 legs. The bill is correct.” I can still see the faces of that family group and hear the tone of Mr. Rockefeller’s voice as he so quietly and so uniquely settled that dispute.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Alta Rockefeller Prentice · John
EPUB paragraph 97 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
As he grew older, Junior was deputized to handle tips and bills, which he later cited as excellent business training.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
EPUB paragraph 98 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
Needless to say, Rockefeller spurned the European music halls and spent most of the trip making pilgrimages to churches or touring pretty scenery. At first, he declined an audience with the pope and yielded only when advised that it might please the Catholic workmen at Standard Oil. Still a man of exceptional fortitude, he and Junior went off for a vigorous mountain climb in Zermatt, Switzerland, and his stamina amazed his son. On this European trip, Rockefeller even found time to read and grew enraptured in Paris by Lew Wallace’s Ben-Hur and by Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Last Days of Pompeii on a visit to Vesuvius. Yet he couldn’t disappear into a reverie for long. He was now so famous that as he went from city to city, his arrival was celebrated in the local papers and crank mail and begging letters began to follow him. So many letters piled up at hotels along the way that he finally had to purchase a big trunk just to carry them back. It was testimony to Rockefeller’s thoroughgoing sense of responsibility that he preserved each letter for review at home. For a man who had fled to Europe for a peaceful interlude, it must have been startling to realize that his fame and notoriety were now so widespread in a world dominated by Standard Oil that he could no longer find refuge anywhere from his own reputation.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Standard Oil · Paris · Europe · Switzerland · Zermatt · Lew Wallace · Ben-Hur · Edward Bulwer-Lytton · Vesuvius
EPUB paragraph 99 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
Beleaguered by supplicants, Rockefeller tried to expand his disbursements to keep pace with his mounting income, and his donations nearly doubled from $61,000 in 1881 to $119,000 three years later. Notwithstanding his somewhat frigid image, he took a close interest in the recipients of his charity and directly monitored their progress. Even as he was being reviled as a corporate malefactor in the press, this contradictory man agonized over the judicious application of his money and found it harder to exercise scrutiny over charities than over business. In this seminal phase of Rockefeller philanthropy, the entire family judged the merits of applications, and the children sometimes audited important meetings. Once grace was said at breakfast, Rockefeller pulled out a folder stuffed with appeals from around the globe and assigned them to the children for further study. At this point, he drew no invidious distinctions among the children and involved all four equally in disposing of his fortune.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
EPUB paragraph 100 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
Rockefeller’s benevolent innovations have often been credited to his extraordinary philanthropic chief, Frederick T. Gates, who arrived on the scene in the 1890s. Yet by the 1880s, Rockefeller had already formulated certain core principles for his bequests, many of them stemming from beliefs he had long entertained as a businessman. For instance, like other industrialists, he worried that charity fostered dependence and pauperized recipients. After he had escorted his family to the notorious Five Points slum of lower Manhattan on their first Thanksgiving Day in New York, he lauded a shelter for homeless men but carped at the “policy of feeding all the tramps that came. My impression is they only do it once a year. I would give them work and make them earn their food.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Frederick T. Gates · New York · Manhattan
EPUB paragraph 101 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
Again, contrary to his stereotype, Rockefeller was acutely concerned about the poverty that accompanied industrialization, urbanization, and immigration in the late nineteenth century. Far from taking refuge in the world to come, he also stressed salvation in this world, prodding one clergyman to go into “the midst of the multitudes thronging up and down the Bowery or thereabouts, and settle and stay right there with them, establish a church.” Starting in 1882, he underwrote the ministry of Edward Judson, who exemplified his belief that a shepherd should abide with his flock. He was the youngest son of Adoniram Judson, a saintly figure among nineteenth-century Baptists for converting the Burmese and translating the Bible into their tongue. Abandoning an affluent congregation in New Jersey, Edward Judson took over the Berea Baptist Church on Manhattan’s West Fifteenth Street to evangelize among poor Italian immigrants. As an exponent of the social gospel, which blended social work with spiritual comfort, he convinced Rockefeller to contribute to a fresh-air and cool-water fund offering poor immigrants a refreshing two-week retreat in the country each summer.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Manhattan · Adoniram Judson · Edward Judson · New Jersey · Bowery · Berea Baptist Church · West Fifteenth Street
EPUB paragraph 102 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
As a regular dinner guest on Fifty-fourth Street, Judson won over Rockefeller to his vision of a comprehensive religious center that would unite elements of both an urban church and settlement house, ministering to both the worldly and spiritual needs of congregants, a vision spectacularly realized with construction of the Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square in 1892. For this imposing edifice, designed in Greco-Romanesque style by McKim, Mead and White with stained-glass windows by John La Farge, Rockefeller contributed $40,000 of the original $256,000. Both a community center and house of worship, it offered a broad spectrum of services from day nurseries to sewing classes for the poor. By this point, Rockefeller was indisputably the most powerful Baptist layman, and his largesse was already stirring fierce dissension in the ranks—not at all surprising in a denomination filled with working people. In the late 1880s, Judson told him about a convention of Baptist ministers in Philadelphia at which “some very shallow and ill-advised … vehement insinuations were made against the Standard Oil,” prompting another clergyman to deliver a “brave, ringing speech” in Rockefeller’s defense. During the next two decades, this controversy grew more obstreperous as the Baptists tried to figure out whether the munificent oil mogul had been sent to them from heaven or hell.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · Philadelphia · Judson · White · Washington Square · Judson Memorial Church · John La Farge
EPUB paragraph 103 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
The most important concept Rockefeller bequeathed to philanthropy was that of wholesale giving, as opposed to small, scattershot contributions. As Cleveland’s wealthiest philanthropist in the early 1880s, Rockefeller already felt oppressed by the appeals cascading in on him. In 1881, he apologized to Reverend George O. King of the Willson Avenue Baptist Church in Cleveland, saying, “I have been holding back [an] answer in part from the fact that I had so many obligations for benevolent objects that I was almost overwhelmed.” Since for Rockefeller the imperative to make money and donate money emanated from a common religious impulse—“I am more and more satisfied no member of a church can afford not to contribute as the Lord prosper him,” he told a friend—he approached his donations with extreme gravity.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Cleveland · George O. King · Willson Avenue Baptist Church
EPUB paragraph 104 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
In 1882, two of Rockefeller’s interests dovetailed memorably in a commitment to a black women’s school at a time when higher education for both blacks and women was held suspect. He had had a long-standing interest in education, having contributed for years to Denison University, a Baptist college in Ohio. In the 1880s and 1890s, he gave so openhandedly to A. C. Bacone’s Indian University (today Bacone College) in present-day Oklahoma that its first major building was named Rockefeller Hall. During the Civil War, Rockefeller gave to black ministers, churches, orphanages, and a deaf and mute society. He never relinquished a special solicitude for black welfare—quite atypical for a businessman at that time. Imbued with Baptist egalitarianism, he was ripe for conversion to a new cause when Sophia B. Packard and Harriet E. Giles reentered his life.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Sophia B. Packard · Harriet E. Giles · Ohio · Oklahoma · Denison University · Indian University · Rockefeller Hall · Civil War · A. C. Bacone · Bacone College
EPUB paragraph 105 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
The Rockefellers had first met Packard and Giles on their honeymoon stopover at Oread Collegiate Institute, where the two women were newly recruited teachers. They were absorbed in the dismal plight of poor blacks, partly as an extension of their Baptist evangelism. After the Civil War, Baptists had been in the vanguard of forming churches for freed slaves and teaching them to read the Bible and had enjoyed the strongest growth in the black community of any denomination. So when Packard was named corresponding secretary of the new Woman’s American Baptist Home Mission Society in 1878, she had a serviceable vehicle for advancing black education. When she and Giles toured southern black schools two years later, they were appalled by the educational facilities for black women and found one especially glaring omission: Georgia, with the largest black population, lacked a single institution of higher learning for black women. To rectify this, in 1881 they opened a school for young black women—many of them born under slavery and still illiterate—in the dank, dilapidated basement of the Friendship Baptist Church in Atlanta, christening it the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary. The first class had eleven students, mostly mothers. For two sedate, decorous New England ladies to venture into the troubled area of southern race relations represented a courageous act.
Names: Sophia B. Packard · Harriet E. Giles · Spelman Seminary · Rockefeller family · Atlanta · New England · Georgia · American Baptist Home Mission Society · Oread Collegiate Institute · Woman · Civil War · Friendship Baptist Church
EPUB paragraph 106 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
In June 1882, Packard and Giles visited Cleveland to make an appeal to potential donors at the Willson Avenue Baptist Church. For forty years, the Spelmans had passionately backed abolitionism and sundry black causes. The recently deceased Harvey B. Spelman had sat on the executive committee of the American Freedmen’s Union Commission. In consequence, Reverend King had a powerful hunch that the Rockefellers would respond enthusiastically to the pleas of Packard and Giles and promised the two women that if they came to his church, he would deliver John and Cettie Rockefeller in the audience.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Laura Spelman Rockefeller · Sophia B. Packard · Harriet E. Giles · Harvey Buel Spelman · Rockefeller family · Cleveland · Willson Avenue Baptist Church · American Freedmen’s Union Commission · Reverend King · John
EPUB paragraph 107 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
Packard and Giles dressed with the same spinsterish simplicity, but the similarities ended there. Tall and blue-eyed, Packard was a brisk woman with a ready wit and great managerial gifts, while the younger Giles seemed timorous, gentle, and retiring in manner. That evening they made an affecting presentation, summoning up images of the 150 students, many unlettered but eager, who crowded the drab church basement to learn. As rain dripped down the walls and gathered in stagnant pools on the muddy floor, Packard and Giles sometimes stood in puddles as they taught eleven or twelve classes apiece each day; some classes were tightly wedged into a dusty area formerly used for coal storage. Breathing air thick with smoke and dust and ducking overhead heating pipes, the students had to kneel and write on wooden benches. To teach math, Packard and Giles laid sticks across the planks and had the students count them. At first, most of the women were provided with little more than a Bible, pad, and pencil, and the lighting was so poor that they couldn’t read on rainy days.
Names: Sophia B. Packard · Harriet E. Giles
EPUB paragraph 108 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
This poignant presentation would have wrung tears from a stone, and the Rockefellers were transfixed. As Harriet Giles recalled, “It was at that meeting that Mr. John D. Rockefeller first became interested in the school. After having emptied his pockets when the box was passed, he asked [us] the characteristic question, ‘Are you going to stick?’ and added, ‘If so, I will do more for you.’ ” On the spot, he pledged $250 more for their building fund. Much to the amazement of the teachers, he returned the next afternoon with three carriages and took them off to Forest Hill, where they drove about as honored guests.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Harriet E. Giles · Rockefeller family · Forest Hill
EPUB paragraph 109 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
Inspired by these women, Rockefeller, though socially conservative, became unalterably committed to black education. As one chronicler of Rockefeller philanthropy has noted, “The Rockefeller files are more extensive on this subject of the welfare of the Negro race than on almost any other.” More than any benevolent project, the black women’s college in Atlanta became a Rockefeller family affair, as John was joined in his interest by his Spelman wife, sister-in-law, and mother-in-law. When it came to black education and welfare, Rockefeller displayed unwonted ardor. “Kindly assure the colored people of my sympathy for and interest in them and tell them, I hope they will in addition to securing knowledge from books, strive to learn to do all kinds of work, and better than any other class of men,” he wrote to one minister friend in the late 1880s. Reciprocating the personal tone of his correspondence, Sophia Packard always saluted him as “Dear Brother” or “Dear Friend.” Amid the hectic rounds of his life, Rockefeller always found time to send letters and small, thoughtful gifts to Packard and Giles to buck up their morale.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Sophia B. Packard · Harriet E. Giles · Spelman Seminary · Rockefeller family · Atlanta · John
EPUB paragraph 110 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
Rockefeller’s involvement in the Atlanta school was at first cautious but gradually acquired irresistible momentum. In late 1882, the Atlanta school bought nine acres and five buildings that had housed Union occupation troops. By late 1883, the fast-growing school had enrolled 450 students, the mortgage on the barracks property was coming due, and the school wavered on the edge of fiscal crisis. At this point, Packard and Giles entreated Rockefeller for a donation to secure the school on a permanent footing: “Give it a name; let it if you please be called Rockefeller College, or if you prefer let it take your good wife’s Maiden name or any other which suits you.” Although Rockefeller retired the $5,000 debt, he humbly declined to use his own name. Instead, in a fitting tribute to his in-laws, he opted for the Spelman name, thus giving birth to Spelman Seminary, renamed Spelman College in 1924. It developed into one of America’s most respected schools for black women, counting Martin Luther King, Jr.’s mother and grandmother among its many prominent alumnae.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Sophia B. Packard · Harriet E. Giles · Spelman Seminary · Atlanta · United States · Union · Rockefeller College · Martin Luther King
EPUB paragraph 111 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
On April 11, 1884, Rockefeller and his family went by train to Atlanta to celebrate the school’s third anniversary, and 450 students packed the chapel to glimpse their patrons. Rockefeller adored Negro hymns and spirituals and now heard them in abundance. After the opening hymn, Sophia Packard exclaimed, “I bless the Lord that I have lived to see this day.” In a string of brief speeches, Cettie Rockefeller paid tribute to the liberating power of song, sister Lute memorialized their father’s abolitionist work, and their mother told how the Spelman home had been a stop on the Underground Railroad. Though Rockefeller virtually never spoke in public, he delivered a talk of unaffected eloquence: “It is in your hearts to make the school one that people will believe in. God will take these small beginnings to do a great work. I am thankful to be here.” When Rockefeller sat down, it was announced, amid sustained cheers and hosannas, that the school had been renamed Spelman Seminary.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Laura Spelman Rockefeller · Sophia B. Packard · Spelman Seminary · Lucy Spelman · Atlanta · Underground Railroad
EPUB paragraph 112 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
As a paradigm of future Rockefeller philanthropy, several things about Spelman should be flagged for attention. In a delicate balancing act, Rockefeller gave enough to get projects under way, yet not so much as to obviate future fund-raising. In 1886, Rockefeller Hall was dedicated, which included dormitory rooms and a beautiful chapel. During the coming years, he gave another eleven acres plus the money for additional dormitories, a laundry, a dining hall, and numerous other buildings, creating a lovely, elegant campus. Presented with architectural plans for one new building, he commented, “My suggestion is to err in getting what seems at present too much room rather than not enough. I judge the crop of colored folks will be large.” In the 1890s, Rockefeller sent his own landscape architects to redesign the campus, and he himself selected the trees and shrubbery.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Spelman Seminary · Rockefeller Hall
EPUB paragraph 113 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c13_r1.htm
Yet for all this fervent support, Packard and Giles had to struggle for years to keep the school afloat. With one check, Rockefeller might have relieved their anxiety forever, but he wanted to avert excessive dependence and keep alive a creative ambiguity about his intentions. While briefly serving on the Spelman board of trustees, he preferred to remain slightly detached and subtly enigmatic, never telegraphing his plans too far in advance.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Sophia B. Packard · Harriet E. Giles · Spelman Seminary
Source: Ron Chernow, Titan. Names and relationships retain the full atlas’s extraction limits. Map points are references; historical sites and regions can be approximate. Open the full interactive atlas.