William Rockefeller

William Avery Rockefeller, Jr. (May 31, 1841 – June 24, 1922) was an American businessman and financier. He was a co-founder of Standard Oil along with his older brother John Davison Rockefeller (1839–1937). He was also a prominent member of the Rockefeller family.

Early years

William Jr. was born in Richford, New York. He was the middle son of con artist William Avery Rockefeller Sr. (1810—1906) and Eliza Davison (1813—1889). In addition to elder brother John, William Jr.'s siblings were Lucy (1838—1878), Mary (1843—1925), and twins Franklin (Frank) (1845—1917) and Frances (1845—1847). He also had two elder half-sisters, Clorinda (c. 1838—?, died young) and Cornelia (c. 1840—?), through his father's affairs with mistress and housekeeper Nancy Brown. In 1853 his family moved to Strongsville, Ohio. As a young pupil in public school, he was inspired and motivated by his teacher-mentor, Rufus Osgood Mason, whom Rockefeller later named "A Rockefeller Patron".

Business career

In 1865, he entered the oil business by starting a refinery. In 1867, his older brother John's partnership of Rockefeller & Andrews absorbed this refinery. In 1870, that company became Standard Oil.

Rockefeller was very adept in business matters. He served as the company's New York representative until 1911 when Standard Oil of New Jersey was split up by the United States Supreme Court. He also had interests in copper, railways, and public utilities, and built up the National City Bank of New York, now part of Citigroup.

In the late 1890s, Rockefeller joined fellow Standard Oil principal Henry H. Rogers in forming the Amalgamated Copper Mining Company, a holding company that intended to control the copper industry. Rockefeller, along with Henry Rogers, devised a deceptive scheme which made them a profit of $36 million. First, they purchased Anaconda Properties from Marcus Daly for $39 million, with the understanding that the check was to be deposited in the bank and remain there for a definite time (National City Bank was run by Rockefeller's friends). Rogers and Rockefeller then set up a paper organization known as the Amalgamated Copper Mining Company, with their own clerks as dummy directors, saying the company was worth $75 million.

They then had the Amalgamated Copper Company buy Anaconda from them for $75 million in capital stock, which was conveniently printed for the purpose. Then, they borrowed $39 million from the bank using Amalgamated Copper as collateral. They paid back Daly for Anaconda and sold $75 million worth of stock in Amalgamated Copper to the public. They paid back the bank's $39 million and had a profit of $36 million in cash.

With help from banker John Dennis Ryan, Amalgamated acquired two large competitors, and soon controlled all the mines of Butte, Montana, later becoming Anaconda Copper Company, fourth largest company in the world by the late 1920s.

Home and family

In 1886, Rockefeller bought property along the Hudson River from General Lloyd Aspinwall, and turned it into a mansion named "Rockwood Hall". The property was subsequently located within the Rockefeller family estate of "Pocantico", in Westchester County, New York (see Kykuit).

Rockefeller married Almira Geraldine Goodsell (March 19, 1844 — January 17, 1920) on May 25, 1864 in Fairfield, Connecticut. Almira's sister Esther Judson Goodsell was married to Oliver Burr Jennings, who became one of the original stockholders of Standard Oil. William Jr and Almira's second son William Goodsell Rockefeller married Sarah Elizabeth "Elsie" Stillman, the elder daughter of National City Bank president James Jewett Stillman and Sarah Elizabeth Stillman, and they were the parents of James Stillman Rockefeller. He was a member of the Jekyll Island Club (aka The millionaires Club) on Jekyll Island, Georgia along with J. P. Morgan, Joseph Pulitzer, and other moguls of the day. William Jr and Almira's youngest son Percy Avery Rockefeller married Elsie's sister Isabel Goodrich Stillman. In 1906, the couple's vacation home on Jekyll Island was completed; nicknamed "Indian Mound", the 25-room "cottage" remained in the family until ordered evacuated in 1942 by the U.S. government; five years later the entire island was purchased by the state of Georgia, and decades later it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Rockefeller Cottage.

William Rockefeller, Jr. died of pneumonia on June 24, 1922 in Tarrytown, New York. He had caught a cold during a car trip he took along with brother John and nephew John D. Rockefeller, Jr. to visit his childhood home in Richford, New York. He was interred in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Sleepy Hollow, New York.

The New York Times, in discussing a trust he set up for his born and yet-to-be born great-grandchildren, stated that Rockefeller "left a gross estate of $102,000,000 which was reduced to $50,000,000 principally by $30,000,000 of debts and $18,600,000 of inheritance and estate taxes."

Children

1. Lewis Edward Rockefeller (March 2, 1865 — August 3, 1866)
2. Emma Rockefeller (June 8, 1868 — August 11, 1934) married Dr. David Hunter McAlpin
3. William Goodsell Rockefeller (May 21, 1870 — November 30, 1922) married Sarah Elizabeth "Elsie" Stillman
4. John Davison Rockefeller II (March 8, 1872 — 1877)
5. Percy Avery Rockefeller (February 27, 1878 — September 25, 1934) married Isabel Goodrich Stillman
6. Ethel Geraldine Rockefeller (April 3, 1882 — August 13, 1973) married Marcellus Hartley Dodge Sr.