John Davison Rockefeller Sr. (July 8, 1839 – May 23, 1937) was an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is widely considered the wealthiest American of all time and the richest person in modern history.
John D. Rockefeller was born in 1839 in New York State to a large family. In his childhood we would lend money that he earned from raising turkeys and selling food. He was well behaved and studious as a child.
When he was a boy, his family moved to Moravia, New York, and to Owego, New York, in 1851, where he attended Owego Academy. In 1853, his family moved to Strongsville, Ohio, and he attended Cleveland's Central High School, the first high school in Cleveland and the first free public high school west of the Alleghenies.
He took a ten-week business course at Folsom's Commercial College, where he studied bookkeeping. He was a well-behaved, serious, and studious boy despite his father's absences and frequent family moves. His contemporaries described him as reserved, earnest, religious, methodical, and discreet. He was an excellent debater and expressed himself precisely. He also had a deep love of music and dreamed of it as a possible career.
In 1853 his family moved to Cincinnati and he got his first job there when he was 16 as an assistant book keeper. He also loved music, and would sometimes consider it to be his future career.
In 1870 he founded Standard Oil, and controlled it until 1897. As the importance of fossil fuels increased, his wealth increased dramatically, he owned 90% of the oil industry during the companies peak. His net worth adjusted for inflation was estimated at $400 billion dollars.
His company was split in 1911 after the American Supreme Court found that it violated Anti Trust Laws and he spent the last 40 years of his life as a philanthropist. He is often credited with creating modern philanthropy. He died in 1937 at the age of 97.