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Everything about The Rockefeller Family totally explained

The Rockefeller family, the renowned Cleveland family of John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) ("Senior") and his brother William Rockefeller (1841-1922), is an American industrial, banking, and political family of German American origin that made the world's largest private fortune in the oil business during the late 19th and early 20th century, primarily through the Standard Oil Company. The family is also known for its long association with and financial interest in the Chase Manhattan Bank, now JP Morgan Chase. The family was also the fourth richest family in history.

Name and origin

The name is an anglicized version of the German Rokkenfelder or Rockenfeller, meaning from Rockenfeld. The Rockefeller's origin can be explicitly traced back to the villages of Ehlscheid, Segendorf and Fahr, (all suburbanised to Neuwied) . These are neighbored to the small settlement of Rockenfeld - part of Neuwied's quarter Feldkirchen. In Germany, Rockenfeller is known as a family name.
   Family records in parish registers reach back to the end of the Thirty Years' War. The earliest known ancestors (direct line) are Johann Wilhem Rockenfeller (*ca. 1628,†1702) and Johannes Rockenfeller (*ca. 1634,†1684). Johann Peter (*1682), son of Johannes, moved in 1723 to Ringoes, NJ. Johann Thiel (*1695), grand-son of Johann Wilhelm, immigrated in 1735 to Germantown, NY. William Avery Rockefeller was looking for a noble descent and a possible connection to a french huguenot family de Roquefeullie was discussed. However, this is unlikely because the name Rockenfeld is recorded in the region long before the huguenots had to flee France.
   Johann Peter's grandson, William, married a distant relative, Christina, the granddaughter of a cousin of Johann Peter. This marriage produced a son, Godfrey, who married Lucy Avery in 1806. Avery's ancestors were part of the Puritan tide from Devon, England to Massachusetts around 1630. Lucy Avery could justly claim descent from Edmund Ironside, the English king, crowned in 1016.
   Godfrey and Lucy eventually shifted to the remote, backwater stagecoach stop of Richford, in the western part of New York State. Their son, William Avery Rockefeller (1810–1906) was a trader in salt and timber who adopted a vagabond life as a confidence man and was known as "Big Bill", who sired two illegitimate children to his housekeeper. He married up, to Eliza Davison in 1837; her father, John Davison, was relatively rich for the time. Their second child was John Davison Rockefeller, and their third William Rockefeller.
   The Rockefellers eventually settled near Cleveland, Ohio, where they'd become the world-renowned family empire they're today. It was in Cleveland where John D. Sr. would amass his great fortune through Standard Oil, and where he'd later be laid to rest at Lake View Cemetery. In the generations since, however, the Rockefeller family largely migrated to New York City, although many of the family's decendants remain in Cleveland or have since spread out across the country (for example Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia). The family business headquarters now resides in New York City's Rockefeller Plaza.

Generational philanthropy

The members of the Rockefeller family are noted for their philanthropy; a Rockefeller Archive Center study in 2004 documents an incomplete list of 72 major institutions that the family has created and/or endowed up to the present day. Historically, the major focus of their benefactions have been in the educational, health and conservation areas.
   Family leaders in both philanthropy and business have included John D. Sr., John D. Jr. ("Junior"), John D. III, Laurance Rockefeller and David Rockefeller, who is the family's current patriarch. Several family members have held high public office, including Vice President of the United States (Nelson Rockefeller), United States Senator (Jay Rockefeller), state Governor (Nelson, Jay, and Winthrop Rockefeller), and Lieutenant Governor (Winthrop Paul Rockefeller). Another noted family member was Michael Rockefeller, son of Nelson, an anthropologist who came to media attention after he was presumed killed in New Guinea in 1961.
   The corporate, financial and personal affairs of the family - numbering around 150 blood relatives of John D. Rockefeller - are run from the family office, Room 5600, known officially as "Rockefeller Family and Associates". It comprises three floors of the GE Building in Rockefeller Center; all private family legal matters are handled by the family-associated New York law firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. Room 5600 is also the base of the current family historian, Peter J. Johnson, who assisted with David Rockefeller's Memoirs, published in 2002.
   To distinguish the generations and facilitate communication, the fourth generation is generically known as "The Cousins" (24 in all, with 21 still living) and the younger family members are known as the "Fifth/Sixth" generation. Many if not all of these family members are involved in institutionalised philanthropic pursuits. Family links are solidified through the practice of ritualised family meetings - which started with the regular "brothers' meetings" held in Room 5600 or in their respective private residences, beginning in 1945. Family get-togethers are held today at the "Playhouse", in the Westchester County family estate of Pocantico, in June (the "cousins weekend") and December of each year (see Kykuit).

The edifice complex

Often credited with an "edifice complex", members of the family have been heavily involved in myriad real estate construction projects in the US over the span of the twentieth century. Chief among them:

Select bibliography

  • Abels, Jules. The Rockefeller Billions: The Story of the World's Most Stupendous Fortune. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1965.
  • Aldrich, Nelson W. Jr. Old Money: The Mythology of America's Upper Class. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.
  • Allen, Gary. The Rockefeller File. Seal Beach, California: 1976 Press, 1976.
  • Boorstin, Daniel J. The Americans: The Democratic Experience. New York: Vintage Books, 1974.
  • Brown, E. Richard. Rockefeller Medicine Men: Medicine and Capitalism in America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.
  • Caro, Robert A. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. New York: Vintage, 1975.
  • Chernow, Ron. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. London: Warner Books, 1998.
  • Collier, Peter, and David Horowitz. The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1976.
  • Elmer, Isabel Lincoln. Cinderella Rockefeller: A Life of Wealth Beyond All Knowing. New York: Freundlich Books, 1987.
  • Ernst, Joseph W., editor. "Dear Father"/"Dear Son:" Correspondence of John D. Rockefeller and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. New York: Fordham University Press, with the Rockefeller Archive Center, 1994.
  • Flynn, John T. God's Gold: The Story of Rockefeller and His Times. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1932.
  • Fosdick, Raymond B. John D. Rockefeller, Jr.: A Portrait. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956.
  • Fosdick, Raymond B. The Story of the Rockefeller Foundation. New York: Transaction Publishers, Reprint, 1989.
  • Gates, Frederick Taylor. Chapters in My Life. New York: The Free Press, 1977.
  • Gitelman, Howard M. Legacy of the Ludlow Massacre: A Chapter in American Industrial Relations. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988.
  • Gonzales, Donald J., Chronicled by. The Rockefellers at Williamsburg: Backstage with the Founders, Restorers and World-Renowned Guests. McLean, Virginia: EPM Publications, Inc., 1991.
  • Hanson, Elizabeth. The Rockefeller University Achievements: A Century of Science for the Benefit of Humankind, 1901-2001. New York: The Rockefeller University Press, 2000.
  • Harr, John Ensor, and Peter J. Johnson. The Rockefeller Century: Three Generations of America's Greatest Family. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988.
  • Harr, John Ensor, and Peter J. Johnson. The Rockefeller Conscience: An American Family in Public and in Private. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1991.
  • Hawke, David Freeman. John D.: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers. New York: Harper & Row, 1980.
  • Hidy, Ralph W. and Muriel E. Hidy. Pioneering in Big Business: History of Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), 1882-1911. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1955.
  • Jonas, Gerald. The Circuit Riders: Rockefeller Money and the Rise of Modern Science. New York: W.W.Norton and Co., 1989.
  • Josephson, Emanuel M. The Federal Reserve Conspiracy and the Rockefellers: Their Gold Corner. New York: Chedney Press, 1968.
  • Josephson, Matthew. The Robber Barons. London: Harcourt, 1962.
  • Kert, Bernice. Abby Aldrich Rockefeller: The Woman in the Family. New York: Random House, 2003.
  • Klein, Henry H. Dynastic America and Those Who Own It. New York: Kessinger Publishing, [1921] Reprint, 2003.
  • Kutz, Myer. Rockefeller Power: America's Chosen Family. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974.
  • Lundberg, Ferdinand. America's Sixty Families. New York: Vanguard Press, 1937.
  • Lundberg, Ferdinand. The Rich and the Super-Rich: A Study in the Power of Money Today. New York: Lyle Stuart, 1968.
  • Lundberg, Ferdinand. The Rockefeller Syndrome. Secaucus, New Jersey: Lyle Stuart, Inc., 1975.
  • Manchester, William R. A Rockefeller Family Portrait: From John D. to Nelson. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1959.
  • Moscow, Alvin. The Rockefeller Inheritance. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1977.
  • Nevins, Allan. John D. Rockefeller: The Heroic Age of American Enterprise. 2 vols. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940.
  • Nevins, Allan. Study In Power: John D. Rockefeller, Industrialist and Philanthropist. 2 vols. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953.
  • Okrent, Daniel. Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center. New York: Viking Press, 2003.
  • Reich, Cary. The Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller: Worlds to Conquer 1908-1958. New York: Doubleday, 1996.
  • Roberts, Ann Rockefeller. The Rockefeller Family Home: Kykuit. New York: Abbeville Publishing Group, 1998.
  • Rockefeller, David. Memoirs. New York: Random House, 2002.
  • Rockefeller, Henry Oscar, ed. Rockefeller Genealogy. 4 vols. 1910 - ca.1950.
  • Rockefeller, John D. Random Reminiscences of Men and Events. New York: Doubleday, 1908; London: W. Heinemann. 1909; Sleepy Hollow Press and Rockefeller Archive Center, (Reprint) 1984.
  • Roussel, Christine. The Art of Rockefeller Center. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2006.
  • Scheiffarth, Engelbert. Der New Yorker Gouverneur Nelson A. Rockefeller und die Rockenfeller im Neuwieder Raum Genealogisches Jahrbuch, Vol 9, 1969, p16-41.
  • Sealander, Judith. Private Wealth and Public Life: Foundation Philanthropy and the Reshaping of American Social Policy, from the Progressive Era to the New Deal. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
  • Siegmund-Schultze, Reinhard. Rockefeller and the Internationalization of Mathematics Between the Two World Wars: Documents and Studies for the Social History of Mathematics in the 20th Century. Boston: Birkhauser Verlag, 2001.
  • Stasz, Clarice. The Rockefeller Women: Dynasty of Piety, Privacy, and Service. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995.
  • Tarbell, Ida M. The History of the Standard Oil Company. New York: Phillips & Company, 1904.
  • Winks, Robin W. Laurance S. Rockefeller: Catalyst for Conservation, Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1997.
  • Yergin, Daniel. . New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991.
  • Young, Edgar B. Lincoln Center: The Building of an Institution. New York: New York University Press, 1980.Further Information

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