Famous Givers and Their Gifts
The picturesque home of the Averys, built in 1656, in the town of New London (now Groton), by Captain James Avery, was occupied by his descendants until it was destroyed by fire in 1894. A monument has been erected upon the site, with a bronze tablet containing a fac-simile of the old home.
The youngest son of Captain James Avery was Samuel, whose fine face looks out from the pages of the interesting Avery Genealogy, which Homer D. L. Sweet, of Syracuse, spent thirty years in writing. Samuel, an able and public-spirited man, married, in 1686, in Swanzey, Mass., Susannah Palmes, a direct descendant, through thirty-four generations, of Egbert, the first king of England. The name has always been retained in the family, Lucy Avery Rockefeller naming her youngest son Egbert. Her eldest son, William Avery, married Eliza Davison; and of their six children, John Davison Rockefeller is the second child and eldest son.
He was born in Richford, Tioga County, N.Y., July 8, 1839. His father, William Avery, was a physician and business man as well. With great energy he cleared the forest, built a sawmill, loaned his money, and, like his noted son, knew how to overcome obstacles.
The mother, Eliza Davison, was a woman of rare common sense and executive ability. Self-poised in manner, charitable, persevering in whatever she attempted, she gave careful attention to the needs of her family, but did not forget that she had Christian duties outside her home. The devotion of Mr. Rockefeller to his mother as long as she lived was marked, and worthy of example.
The Rockefeller home in Richford was one of mutual work and helpfulness. The eldest child, Lucy, now dead, was less than two years older than John; the third child, William, about two years younger; Mary, Franklin and Frances, twins, each about two years younger than the others; the last named died early. All were taught the value of labor and of economy.
The eldest son, John, early took responsibility upon himself. Willing and glad to work, he cared for the garden, milked the cows, and acquired the valuable habit of never wasting his time. When about nine years old he raised and sold turkeys, and instead of spending the money, probably his first earnings, saved it, and loaned it at seven per cent. It would be interesting to know if the lad ever dreamed then of being perhaps the richest man in America?
In 1853 the Rockefeller family moved to Cleveland, Ohio; and John, then fourteen years of age, entered the high school. He was a studious boy, especially fond of mathematics and of music, and learned to play on the piano; he was retiring in manner, and exemplary in conduct. When between fourteen and fifteen years of age, he joined the Erie Street Baptist Church of Cleveland, Ohio, now known as the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church, where he has been from that time an earnest and most helpful worker in it. The boy of fifteen did not confine his work in the church to prayer-meetings and Sunday-school. There was a church debt, and it had to be paid. He began to solicit money, standing in the church-door as the people went out, ready to receive what each was willing to contribute. He gave also of his own as much as was possible; thus learning early in life, not only to be generous, but to incite others to generosity.
When about eighteen or nineteen, he was made one of the Board of Trustees of the church, which position he held till his absence from the city in the past few years prevented his serving. He has been the superintendent of the Sunday-school of the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church for about thirty years. When he had held the office for twenty-five years the Sunday-school celebrated the event by a reception for their leader. After addresses and music, each one of the five hundred or more persons present shook hands with Mr. Rockefeller, and laid a flower on the table beside him. From the first he has won the love of the children from his sympathy, kindness, and his interest in their welfare. No picnic even would be satisfactory to them without his presence.
After two years passed in the Cleveland High School, the school-year ending June, 1855, young Rockefeller took a summer course in the Commercial College, and at sixteen was ready to see what obstacles the business world presented to a boy. He found plenty of them. It was the old story of every place seeming to be full; but he would not allow himself to be discouraged by continued refusals. He visited manufacturing establishments, stores, and shops, again and again, determined to find a position.
He succeeded on the twenty-sixth day of September, 1855, and became assistant bookkeeper in the forwarding and commission house of Hewitt & Tuttle. He did not know what pay he was to receive; but he knew he had taken the first step towards success, – he had obtained work. At the end of the year, for the three months, October, November, and December, he received fifty dollars, – not quite four dollars a week.
The next year he was paid twenty-five dollars a month, or three hundred dollars a year, and at the end of fifteen months, took the vacant position with the same firm, at five hundred dollars, as cashier and bookkeeper, of a man who had been receiving a salary of two thousand dollars.
Desirous of earning more, young Rockefeller after a time asked for eight hundred dollars as wages; and, the firm declining to give over seven hundred dollars a year, the enterprising youth, not yet nineteen, decided to start in business for himself. He had industry and energy; he was saving of both time and money; he had faith in his ability to succeed, and the courage to try. He had managed to save about a thousand dollars; and his father loaned him another thousand, on which he paid ten per cent interest, receiving the principal as a gift when he became twenty-one years of age. This certainly was a modest beginning for one of the founders of the Standard Oil Company.
Having formed a partnership with Morris B. Clark, in 1858, in produce commission and forwarding, the firm name became Clark & Rockefeller. The closest attention was given to business. Mr. Rockefeller lived within his means, and worked early and late, finding little or no time for recreation or amusements, but always time for his accustomed work in the church. There was always some person in sickness or sorrow to be visited, some child to be brought into the Sunday-school, or some stranger to be invited to the prayer-meetings.
The firm succeeded in business, and was continued with various partners for seven years, until the spring of 1865. During this time some parts of the country, especially Pennsylvania and Ohio, had become enthusiastic over the finding of large quantities of oil through drilling wells. The Petroleum Age for December, 1881, gives a most interesting account of the first oil-well in this country, drilled at Titusville, on Oil Creek, a branch of the Alleghany River, in August, 1859.
Petroleum had long been known, both in Europe and America, under various names. The Indians used it as a medicine, mixed it with paint to anoint themselves for war, or set fire at night to the oil that floated upon the surface of their creeks, making the illumination a part of their religious ceremonies. In Ohio, in 1819, when, in boring for salt, springs of petroleum were found, Professor Hildreth of Marietta wrote that the oil was used in lamps in workshops, and believed it would be "a valuable article for lighting the street-lamps in the future cities of Ohio." But forty years went by before the first oil-well was drilled, when men became almost as excited as in the rush to California for gold in 1849.
Several refineries were started in Cleveland to prepare the crude oil for illuminating purposes. Mr. Rockefeller, the young commission merchant, like his father a keen observer of men and things, as early as 1860, the year after the first well was drilled, helped to establish an oil-refining business under the firm name of Andrews, Clark, & Co.
The business increased so rapidly that Mr. Rockefeller sold his interest in the commission house in 1865, and with Mr. Samuel Andrews bought out their associates in the refining business, and established the firm of Rockefeller & Andrews, the latter having charge of the practical details.
Mr. Rockefeller was then less than twenty-six years old; but an exceptional opportunity had presented itself, and a young man of exceptional ability was ready for the opportunity. A good and cheap illuminator was a world-wide necessity; and it required brain, and system, and rare business ability to produce the best product, and send it to all nations.
The brother of Mr. Rockefeller, William, entered into the partnership; and a new firm was established, under the name of William Rockefeller & Co. The necessity of a business house in New York for the sale of their products soon became apparent, and all parties were united in the firm of Rockefeller & Co.
In 1867 Mr. Henry M. Flagler, well known in connection with his improvements in St. Augustine, Fla., was taken into the company, which became Rockefeller, Andrews, & Flagler. Three years later, in 1870, the Standard Oil Company of Ohio was established with a capital of $1,000,000, Mr. Rockefeller being made president. He was also made president of the National Refiners' Association.
He was now thirty-one years old, far-seeing, self-centred, quiet and calm in manner, but untiring in work, and comprehensive in his grasp of business. The determination which had won a position for him in youth, even though it brought him but four dollars a week, the confidence in his ability, integrity, and sound judgment, which made the banks willing to lend him money, or men willing to invest their capital in his enterprise, made him a power in the business world thus early in life.
Amid all his business and his church work, he had found time to form another partnership, the wisest and best of all. In the same high school with him for two years was a young girl near his own age, Laura C. Spelman, a bright scholar, refined and sensible.
Her father was a merchant, a Representative in the Legislature of Ohio, an earnest helper in the church, in temperance, and in all that lifts the world upward. He was the friend of the slave; and the Spelman home was one of the restful stations on that "underground railroad" to which so many colored men and women owe their freedom. He was an active member for years of Plymouth Congregational Church in Cleveland, and later of Dr. Buddington's church in Brooklyn, and of the Broadway Tabernacle, New York, under Dr. Wm. M. Taylor. He died in New York City, Oct. 10, 1881.
Mrs. Spelman, the mother, was also a devoted Christian. She now lives, at the age of eighty-six, with her daughter, grateful, as she says, for life's beautiful sunset. She is loved by everybody, and her sweet face and voice would be sadly missed. She retains all her faculties, and has as deep an interest as ever in all religious, philanthropic, and political affairs.
The Spelman ancestors are English. Sir Henry Spelman, knighted by King James I., died in 1641, and lies buried in Westminster Abbey. Henry S., the third son of Sir Henry, and first of the name in America, came to Jamestown, Va., in 1609, and was killed by the Indians. Richard Spelman, born in Danbury, England, in 1665, came to Middletown, Conn., in 1700, and died in 1750. Laura's grandfather, Samuel, was the fourth in line from Richard. He was one of the pioneers in Ohio, moving thither from Granville, Mass. Her father, Harvey B. Spelman, was born in a log cabin in Rootstown, Ohio. Her mother's family came also from Massachusetts, from the town of Blanford; and her father and mother met and were married in Ohio.
Laura Spelman was a member of the first graduating class of the Cleveland High School, and has always retained the deepest interest in her classmates. After graduating, and spending some time in a boarding-school at the East, she taught very successfully for five years in the Cleveland public schools, being assistant in one of the large grammar schools.
At the age of twenty-five Mr. Rockefeller married Miss Spelman, Sept. 8, 1864. Disliking display or extravagance, fond of books, a wise adviser in her home, a leader for many years of the infant department in the Sunday-school, like her father a worker for temperance and in all philanthropic movements, Mrs. Rockefeller has been an example to the rich, and a friend and helper to the poor. Comparatively few men and women can be intrusted with millions, and make the best use of the money. With Mr. Rockefeller's married life thus happily and wisely begun, business activities went on as before, perchance with less wear of body and mind. It was, of course, impossible to organize and carry forward a great business without anxiety and care.
In Cleave's "Biographical Cyclopædia of Cuyahoga County," it is stated that, in 1872, two years after the organization of the Standard Oil Company, "nearly the entire refining interest of Cleveland, and other interests in New York and the oil-regions, were combined in this company [the Standard Oil], the capital stock of which was raised to two and a half millions, and its business reached in one year over twenty-five million dollars, – the largest company of the kind in the world. The New York establishment was enlarged in its refining departments; large tracts of land were purchased, and fine warehouses erected for the storage of petroleum; a considerable number of iron cars were procured, and the business of transporting oil entered upon; interests were purchased in oil-pipes in the producing regions.
"Works were erected for the manufacture of barrels, paints, and glue, and everything used in the manufacture or shipment of oil. The works had a capacity of distilling twenty-nine thousand barrels of crude oil per day, and from thirty-five hundred to four thousand men were employed in the various departments. The cooperage factory, the largest in the world, turned out nine thousand barrels a day, which consumed over two hundred thousand staves and headings, the product of from fifteen to twenty acres of selected oak."
Ten years after this time, in 1882, the Standard Oil Trust was formed, with a capital of $70,000,000, afterwards increased to $95,000,000, which in a few years became possessed of large oil-producing interests, and of the stock of the companies controlling the greater part of the refining of petroleum in this country.
Ten years later, in 1892, the Supreme Court of Ohio having declared the Trust to be illegal, it was dissolved, and the business is now conducted by separate companies. In each of these Mr. Rockefeller is a shareholder.
Mr. Rockefeller has proved himself a remarkable organizer. His associates have been able men; and his vast business has been so systematized, and the leaders of departments held responsible, that it is managed with comparative ease.
The Standard Oil Companies own hundreds of thousands of acres of oil-lands, and wells, refineries, and many thousand miles of pipe-lines throughout the United States. They have business houses in the principal cities of the Old World as well as the New, and carry their oil in their own great oil-steamships abroad as easily as in their pipe-lines to the American seaboard. They control the greater part of the petroleum business of this country, and export much of the oil used abroad. They employ from forty to fifty thousand men in this great industry, many of whom have remained with the companies for twenty or thirty years. It is said that strikes are unknown among them.
When it is stated, as in the last United States Census reports, that the production of crude petroleum in this country is about thirty-five million barrels a year, the capital invested in the production $114,000,000, and the value of the exports of petroleum in various forms amounts to nearly $50,000,000 a year, the vastness of the business is apparent.
With such power in their hands, instead of selling their product at high rates, they have kept oil at such low prices that the poorest all over the world have been enabled to buy and use it.
Mr. Rockefeller has not confined his business interests to the Standard Oil Company. He owns iron-mines and land in various States; he owns a dozen or more immense vessels on the lakes, besides being largely interested in other steamship lines on both the ocean and the great lakes; he has investments in several railroads, and is connected with many other industrial enterprises.
With all these different lines of business, and being necessarily a very busy man, he never seems hurried or worried. His manner is always kindly and considerate. He is a good talker, an equally good listener, and gathers knowledge from every source. Meeting the best educators of the country, coming in contact with leading business and professional men as well, and having travelled abroad and in his own country, Mr. Rockefeller has become a man of wide and varied intelligence. In physique he is of medium height, light hair turning gray, blue eyes, and pleasant face.
He is a lover of trees, never allowing one to be cut down on his grounds unless necessity demands it, fond of flowers, knows the birds by their song or plumage, and never tires of the beauties of nature.
He is as courteous to a servant as to a millionnaire, is social and genial, and enjoys the pleasantry of bright conversation. He has great power of concentration, is very systematic in business and also in his every-day life, allotting certain hours to work, and other hours to exercise, the bicycle being one of his chief out-door pleasures. He is fond of animals, and owns several valuable horses. A great Saint Bernard dog, white and yellow, called "Laddie," was for years the pet of the household and the admiration of friends. When recently killed accidentally by an electric wire, the dog was carefully buried, and the grave covered with myrtle. A pretty stone, a foot and a half high, cut in imitation of the trunk of an oak-tree, at whose base fern-leaves cluster, marks the spot, with the words "Our dog Laddie; died, 1895," carved upon a tiny slab.
It may be comparatively easy to do great deeds, but the little deeds of thoughtfulness and love for the dumb creatures who have loved us show the real beauty and refinement of character.
Mr. Rockefeller belongs to few social organizations, his church work and his home-life sufficing. He is a member of the New England Society, the Union League Club of New York, and of the Empire State Sons of the Revolution, as his ancestors, both on his father's and mother's side, were in the Revolutionary War.
His home is a very happy one. Into it have been born five children, – Bessie, Alice, who died early, Alta, Edith, and John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
Bessie is married to Charles A. Strong, Associate Professor of Psychology in Chicago University, a graduate of both the University of Rochester and Harvard, and has been a student at the Universities of Berlin and Paris. He is a son of the Rev. Dr. Augustus H. Strong, President of Rochester Theological Seminary.
Edith is married to Harold F. McCormick of Chicago, a graduate of Princeton, and son of the late Cyrus H. McCormick, whose invention of the reaper has been a great blessing to the world. Mr. McCormick gave generously of his millions after he had acquired wealth.
John D. Rockefeller, Jr., is at Brown University, and will probably be associated with his father in business, for which he has shown much aptitude.
The children have all been reared with the good sense and Christian teaching that are the foundations of the best homes. They have dressed simply, lived without display, been active in hospital, Sunday-school, and other good works, and found their pleasures in music, in which all the family are especially skilled, and in reading. They enjoy out-door life, skating in winter, and rowing, walking, and riding in the summer; but there is no lavish use of money for their pleasures.
The daughters know how to sew, and have made many garments for poor children. They have been taught the useful things of home-life, and often cook delicacies for the sick. They have found out in their youth that the highest living is not for self. A recent gift from Miss Alta Rockefeller is $1,200 annually to sustain an Italian day-nursery in the eastern part of Cleveland. This summer, 1896, about fifty little people, two years old and upwards, enjoyed a picnic in the grounds of their benefactor. Mrs. Rockefeller's mother and sister, Miss Lucy M. Spelman, a cultivated and philanthropic woman, are the other members of the Rockefeller family.
Besides Mr. Rockefeller's summer home in Cleveland, he has another with about one thousand acres of land at Pocantico Hills, near Tarrytown on the Hudson. The place is picturesque and historic, made doubly interesting through the legends of Washington Irving. From the summit of Kaakoote Mountain the views are of rare beauty. Sleepy Hollow and the grave of Irving are not far distant. The winter home in New York City is a large brick house, with brown-stone front, near Fifth Avenue, furnished richly but not showily, containing some choice paintings and a fine library.
Mr. Rockefeller will be long remembered as a remarkable financier and the founder of a great organization, but he will be remembered longest and honored most as a remarkable giver. We have many rich men in America, but not all are great givers; not all have learned that it is really more blessed to give than to receive; not all remember that we go through life but once, with its opportunities to brighten the lives about us, and to help to bear the burdens of others.
Mr. Rockefeller began to give very early in life, and for the last forty years has steadily increased his giving as his wealth has increased. Always reticent about his gifts, it is impossible to learn how much he has given or for what purposes. Of necessity some gifts become public, such as his latest to Vassar College of $100,000, a like amount to Rochester University and Theological Seminary, and the same, it is believed, to Spelman Seminary, at Atlanta, Ga., named as a memorial to his father-in-law.
This is a school for colored women and girls, with preparatory, normal, musical, and industrial departments. The institute opened with eleven pupils in 1881, and now has 744, with nine buildings on fourteen acres of land. Dr. J. L. M. Curry said in his report for 1893, "In process of erection is the finest school building for normal purposes in the South, planned and constructed expressly with reference to the work of training teachers, which will cost over $50,000." In the industrial department, dress-cutting, sewing, cooking, and laundry work are taught. There is also a training-school for nurses.
In a list of gifts for 1892, in the New York Tribune, Mr. Rockefeller's name appears in connection with Des Moines College, Ia., $25,000; Bucknell College, $10,000; Shurtleff College $10,000; the Memorial Baptist Church in New York, erected through the efforts of Dr. Edward Judson in memory of his father, Dr. Adoniram Judson, $40,000; besides large amounts to Chicago University. It is probable that, aside from Chicago University, these were only a small proportion of his gifts during that year.
An article in the press states that the recent anonymous gift of $25,000 to help purchase the land for the site of Barnard College of Columbia University was from Mr. Rockefeller. He has also pledged $100,000 towards a million dollars, which are to be used for the construction of model tenement houses for the poor in New York City.
He has given largely to the Cleveland Young Men's Christian Association, and to Young Men's and Women's Christian Associations both in this country and abroad. He has built churches, given yearly large sums to foreign and home missions, charity organization societies, Indian associations, hospital work, fresh-air funds, libraries, kindergartens, Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, for the education of the colored people at the South, and to the Woman's Christian Temperance Unions and to the National Temperance Society. He is a total abstainer, and no wine is ever upon his table. He does not use tobacco in any form.
Mr. Rockefeller's private charities have been almost numberless. He has aided young men and women through college, sometimes by gift and sometimes by loan. He has provided the means for persons who were ill to go abroad or elsewhere for rest. He does not forget, when his apples are gathered at Pocantico Hills, to send hundreds of barrels to the various charitable institutions in and near New York, or, when one of his workingmen dies, to continue the support to his family while it is needed. Some of us become too busy to think of the little ways of doing good. It is said by those who know him best, that he gives more time to his benevolences and to their consideration than to his business affairs. He employs secretaries, whose time is given to the investigation of requests for aid, and attending to such cases as are favorably decided upon.
