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The Rockefeller family, founded by John Davison Rockefeller (1839-1937) ("Senior") and his brother William Rockefeller (1841-1922), is an American industrial/banking/philanthropic family of German-American origin that made the world's largest private fortune in the oil business during the late 19th century, primarily through the Standard Oil Company. The family is also known for its long association with the Chase Manhattan Bank, now JP Morgan Chase. The six-generation dynasty of John D. Rockefeller is undoubtedly the greatest philanthropic family in the United States, after Andrew Carnegie initiated the concept of major philanthropy in the 1880's. Its historical underpinnings are credited to John D.'s devout Christian mother Eliza Davison (1813-1889), who instilled in him the regular practice of tithing, which he began in 1855 when he started his first job as an assistant bookkeeper. A Rockefeller Archive Center study in 2004 documents a partial list of 72 major institutions that the family has created and/or endowed up to the present day. The major focus of their benefactions have been in the educational, health and conservation areas; but through its principal philanthropic organisation, the Rockefeller Foundation (established 1913), and more recently the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (1940) and the Rockefeller Family Fund (1967), this focus extends outwards to encompass every major facet of American society. Family leaders in both philanthropy and business have included John D. Sr., John D. Jr. ("Junior"), John D. 3rd, 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 Room 5600, arguably the most famous family office in America, comprising three floors of the GE Building in Rockefeller Center; all private legal matters are handled by the prominent New York law firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. 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. Family links are solidified through the practice of ritualised family meetings - which started with the regular five brothers' meetings held from 1945 - located at "The Playhouse" in the Westchester County family estate of Pocantico (see Kykuit), in June and December of each year. Name and origin The name is an Americanized version of Rokkenfelder or Rockenfeller, meaning from Rockenfeld. This indicates the roots of the family, which can be directly traced back to the villages of Ehlscheid, Segendorf and Fahr, (all suburbanised to Neuwied) that are neighbored to the small settlement of Rockenfeld part of Neuwied's quarter Feldkirchen.* In Germany the version Rockenfeller is known as a family name. The earliest ancestor known is Goddart Rockenfeller ( Legacy John D. Rockefeller denied ever being worth $1,000,000,000. However, on September 29, 1916, he officially passed that mark and became the richest man in the world, surpassing by far the wealth of Andrew Carnegie. He gave away more than half that amount over his lifetime, US$540 million (in dollar terms of that time) - and was the greatest lay benefactor of medicine in history. His son, "Junior" also gave away over $537 million over his lifetime, bringing the total philanthropy of just two generations of the family to over $1 billion from 1860 to 1960.*Added to this, the New York Times declared in an article in 2005 that David Rockefeller's total benefactions also exceed half a billion dollars. The combined personal and social connections of the various family members are vast, both in America and throughout the world, including the most powerful politicians, public figures and top businessmen. Notable figures through Standard Oil alone have included Henry Flagler and Henry H. Rogers. Contemporary figures include, amongst many others, Henry Kissinger, Nelson Mandela, Richard Parsons (Chairman and CEO of Time Warner), C. Fred Bergsten, Peter G. Peterson (Senior Chairman of the Blackstone Group), and Paul Volcker. The Rockefeller name is imprinted on a number of places throughout the United States, most notably in New York City. John D Junior purchased and then donated the land upon which sits the UN headquarters, in New York in 1945. The family donated a substantial amount towards the rebuilding of France after World War I. Often credited with an "edifice complex", various members of the family have been involved in many real estate construction projects over the years - apart from those above. Chief among them: Senior's donations led to the formation of the University of Chicago in 1889, the Nobel prize-winning University where the first American Nobel Prize in science was produced in 1907.*. This was one instance of a long family tradition of financially supporting Ivy League and other universities over the generations, notably Cornell and Harvard, and extending overseas to the London School of Economics. Senior also created the Rockefeller University in 1901; the General Education Board in 1902, which later evolved into the International Education Board in 1923; the Bureau of Social Hygiene and the International Health Commission in 1913; and to the China Medical Board in 1915. Both he and Junior financially supported numerous other major institutions, notable among them Junior's support of the highly influential foreign policy think tank, the New York Council on Foreign Relations, established in 1921. In 1978 the Rockefeller Foundation initiated the founding of the high-powered financial advisory council called the Group of Thirty. John D Junior was also responsible for the creation and endowment of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation which operates the restored historical town at Williamsburg, Virginia, one of the most extensive historic restorations ever undertaken. For many of the above reasons, the family and its oil, real estate and banking institutions is still considered a benchmark for extreme wealth ("as rich as Rockefeller", which has been rendered in popular song), as Rockefeller Senior is still regarded as the wealthiest man who has ever lived, worth $200 billion in today's figures, easily surpassing Bill Gates, in absolute terms.* Conservation Beginning with Rockefeller Senior, the family has been a major force in land conservation. Over the generations, it has created more than 20 national parks and open spaces, including the Cloisters, Acadia National Park, Forest Hill Park, the Nature Conservancy, and Grand Teton National Park, amongst many others. Rockefeller Jr, and his son Laurance (and his son Larry) were particularly prominent in this area. Most of these efforts were accomplished without public fanfare. The family was honored for its conservation efforts in November, 2005, by the National Audubon Society, one of America's largest and oldest conservation organizations, at which over 30 family members attended. At the event, the society's president, John Flicker, notably stated: "Cumulatively, no other family in America has made the contribution to conservation that the Rockefeller family has made". International politics/finance/economics Members of the Rockefeller family into the fourth generation (especially the prominent banker and statesman David Rockefeller, who is the present family patriarch) have been heavily involved in international politics, and have donated money, established or been involved in the following major institutions: The family archives The Rockefeller Archive Center, a division of Rockefeller University, is a vast three-story underground bunker built below the Martha Baird Rockefeller mansion on the family estate (see Kykuit). Along forty-foot-long walls of shelves on rails, patrolled by ten full-time archivists, is the entire repository of personal and official papers and correspondence of the complete family and its members, along with historical papers of its numerous foundations, as well as other non-family philanthropic institutions. Only deceased family members' records are publicly available to scholars; all records pertaining to living members are closed to historians. As Nelson Rockefeller's researcher, Cary Reich, discovered however, in the case of Nelson's voluminous 3,247 cubic feet of papers, about only one third of these files had been processed (vetted by the archivists) and released to researchers up to 1996. He reports that it will be many years before all the papers will be open to the public, despite Nelson having died in 1979. The Center maintains that this awesome repository of records, covering subjects as diverse as agriculture to business, to politics and to the social sciences, gives unique insights into world issues and developments in both the 19th and 20th centuries. Family wealth The combined wealth of the family - its total assets and investments plus the individual wealth of its members - has never been known with any precision. In 1992, family members estimated it to be between US$5 billion to $10 billion. Much of this has been locked up in the notable family trust of 1934 (which holds the bulk of the fortune and matures on the death of the fourth-generation) and the trust of 1952. These trusts have consisted of shares in the successor companies to Standard Oil as well as real estate holdings. Management of this fortune today rests with professional money managers who oversee the principal holding company called Rockefeller Financial Services, which controls all its investments, now that Rockefeller Center is no longer owned by the family. The present chairman is David Rockefeller, Jr. In 1992, it had five main arms: Ancestors Descendants of John Davison Rockefeller To the sixth generation, with 21 in the fourth (The Cousins). The total number of blood relative descendants as of 2006 is about 150. Descendants of William Rockefeller The total number of descendants in this branch as of 2006 is estimated to be at least 500. Spouses Further reading See also | |||||||
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