The Rockefeller family ( ) is an American industrial, political, and banking family that owns one of the world's largest fortunes. Their fortune was primarily earned in the American petroleum industry during the late 19th and early 20th centuries by brothers John D. Rockefeller and William A. Rockefeller Jr. who headed Standard Oil, the predecessor corporation of ExxonMobil and Chevron, among othersWorld's largest private fortune - see Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr., London: Warner Books, 1998. (p.370) The family had a long association with, and control of, Chase Manhattan Bank.The Political Economy of Third World Intervention: Mines, Money, and U.S. Policy in the Congo Crisis, David N. Gibbs, University of Chicago Press 1991, page 113 By 1987, the Rockefellers were considered one of the most powerful families in American history.The Rockefeller inheritance, Alvin Moscow, Doubleday 1977, page 418
The Rockefellers originated in the Rhineland in Germany and family members moved to the Americas in the early 18th century, while through Eliza Davison, with family roots in Middlesex County, New Jersey, John D. Rockefeller and William A. Rockefeller Jr. and their descendants are also of Scots-Irish ancestry.
Background
The Rockefeller family traces their origin to the now abandoned German village Rockenfeld in the early 17th century. The American family branch is descended from Johann Peter Rockefeller (1681–1763), who migrated from the Rhineland to Philadelphia in the Province of Pennsylvania around 1723. In the US, he became a plantation owner and landholder in Somerville, and Amwell, New Jersey.Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (p. 3). 2007John Thomas Flynn, God's Gold: The Story of Rockefeller and His Times (p. 9). 1933Henry Oscar Rockefeller, Benjamin Franklin Rockefeller. The Transactions of the Rockefeller Family Association for 1905. Knickerbocker Press, 1915 One of the first members of the Rockefeller family in New York was businessman William A. Rockefeller Sr., who was born to a Protestant family in Granger, New York. He had six children with his first wife Eliza Davison, a daughter of a Scots-Irish farmer, the most prominent of whom were oil tycoons John D. Rockefeller and William A. Rockefeller Jr. who co-founded Standard Oil. John D. Rockefeller (known as "Senior", as opposed to his son John D. Rockefeller Jr., known as "Junior") was a devout Northern Baptist, and he supported many church-based institutions.Chernow 1998, p. 52 While the Rockefeller family are mostly American Baptists, some of the Rockefellers were Episcopalians.
Wealth
The combined wealth of the family—their total assets and investments plus the individual wealth of its members—has never been known with any precision. The records of the family archives relating to both the family and individual members' net worth are closed to researchers.
From the outset, the family's wealth has been under the complete control of the male members of the dynasty, through the family office. Despite strong wives who had influence over their husbands' decisions—such as the pivotal female figure Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, wife of John D. Rockefeller Jr.—in all cases they received allowances only and were never given even partial responsibility for the family fortune.Women in the family with no control over the family fortune—see Bernice Kert, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller: The Woman in the Family. New York: Random House, 1993. (p.100)
Much of the wealth has been locked up in the 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, both administered by Chase Bank, the corporate successor to Chase Manhattan Bank. These trusts have consisted of shares in the successor companies to Standard Oil and other diversified investments, as well as the family's considerable real estate holdings. They are administered by a trust committee that oversees the fortune.
Management of this fortune today also rests with professional money managers who oversee the principal holding company, Rockefeller Financial Services, which controls all the family's investments. The present chairman of the Rockefeller Center is David Rockefeller Jr.
In 1992, it had five main arms: Rockefeller & Co. (money management: universities have invested some of their endowments in this company); Venrock Associates (venture capital: an early investment in Apple Computer was one of many it made in Silicon Valley entrepreneurial start-ups); Rockefeller Trust Company (manages hundreds of family trusts); Rockefeller Insurance Company (manages liability insurance for family members); Acadia Risk Management (insurance broker: contracts out policies for the family's vast art collections, real estate and private planes).Managing the family wealth, 1992 New York Times article Rockefeller Family Tries to Keep A Vast Fortune From Dissipating. (Note: The names and nature of these departments may have changed since 1992.)
Real estate and institutions
The family was heavily involved in numerous real estate construction projects in the U.S. during the 20th century.The Edifice Complex: The Architecture of Power, By Deyan Sudjic, Penguin, April 7, 2011, page 245–255 Chief among them: Rockefeller Center, a multi-building complex built at the start of the Depression in Midtown Manhattan. The construction of Rockefeller Center was financed solely by the family International House of New York, New York City, 1924 (John Jr.) {involvement: John III, Abby Aldrich, David & Peggy, David Jr., Abby O'Neill} Wren Building, College of William and Mary, Virginia, from 1927 (renovation funded by Junior) Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, from 1927 onwards (Junior), Abby Aldrich, John III and Winthrop, historical restoration Museum of Modern Art, New York City, from 1929 (Abby Aldrich, John Jr., Blanchette, Nelson, David, David Jr., Sharon Percy Rockefeller) Riverside Church, New York City, 1930 (John Jr.) The Cloisters, New York City, from 1934 (John Jr.) Rockefeller Apartments, New York City, 1936 (John Jr., Nelson) The Interchurch Center, New York City, 1948 (John Jr.) Asia Society (Asia House), New York City, 1956 (John III) One Chase Manhattan Plaza, New York City, 1961 (David) Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza, Albany, New York, 1962 (Nelson) Lincoln Center, New York City, 1962 (John III) World Trade Center Twin Towers, New York City, 1973–2001 (David and Nelson) Embarcadero Center, San Francisco, 1974 (David) Council of the Americas/Americas Society, New York City, 1985 (David) Major housing developments: Forest Hill Estates, Cleveland, Ohio City Housing Corporation'''s efforts, Sunnyside Gardens, Queens, New York City Thomas Garden Apartments, The Bronx, New York City Paul Laurence Dunbar Housing, Harlem, New York City Lavoisier Apartments, Manhattan, New York City Van Tassel Apartments, Sleepy Hollow, New York (formerly North Tarrytown) A development in Radburn, New Jersey A further project involved David Rockefeller in a major middle-income housing development when he was elected in 1947 as chairman of Morningside Heights, Inc., in Manhattan by fourteen major institutions that were based in the area, including Columbia University. The result, in 1951, was the six-building apartment complex known as Morningside Gardens.The Morningside Heights housing project - see David Rockefeller, Memoirs, New York: Random House, 2002. (pp.385-87). Senior's donations led to the formation of the University of Chicago in 1890 and the Central Philippine University in the Philippines (the first Baptist university and second American university in Asia). This was one instance of a long family and Rockefeller Foundation tradition of financially supporting Ivy League and other major colleges and universities over the generations—seventy-five in total. These include: Brown University Case Western Reserve University Columbia University Cornell University Dartmouth College Harvard University Massachusetts Institute of Technology Princeton University Spelman College Stanford University Tufts University University of California, Berkeley University of Pennsylvania Yale University Institutions overseas such as the London School of Economics and University College London, among many others.Funded colleges and Ivy League universities - see Robert Shaplen, Toward the Well-Being of Mankind: Fifty Years of the Rockefeller Foundation, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1964. (passim) Senior (and Junior) also created Rockefeller University in 1901 General Education Board in 1902, which later (1923) evolved into the International Education Board Rockefeller Sanitary Commission in 1910 Bureau of Social Hygiene in 1913 (Junior) International Health Division in 1913 China Medical Board in 1915. Rockefeller Museum, British Mandate of Palestine, 1925–30 In the 1920s, the International Education Board granted important fellowships to pathbreakers in modern mathematics, such as Stefan Banach, Bartel Leendert van der Waerden, and André Weil, which was a formative part of the gradual shift of world mathematics to the US over this period. To help promote cooperation between physics and mathematics Rockefeller funds also supported the erection of the new Mathematical Institute at the University of Göttingen between 1926 and 1929 The rise of probability and mathematical statistics owes much to the creation of the Institut Henri Poincaré in Paris, partly by the Rockefellers' finances, also around this time. John D. Jr. established International House at Berkeley. Junior was 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.
Residences Over the generations, the family members have resided in some historic homes. A total of 81 Rockefeller residences are on the National Register of Historic Places. Not including all homes owned by the five brothers, some of the more prominent of these residences are:
One Beekman Place - The residence of Laurance in New York City. 10 West 54th Street - A nine-story single-family home, the former residence of Junior before he shifted to 740 Park Avenue, and the largest residence in New York City at the time, it was the home for the five young brothers; it was later given by Junior to the Museum of Modern Art. 13 West 54th Street - A four-story townhouse used by Junior and Abby between 1901 and 1913. 740 Park Avenue - Junior and Abby's famed 40-room triplex apartment in the luxury New York City apartment building, which was later sold for a record price. Bassett Hall - The house at Colonial Williamsburg bought by Junior in 1927 and renovated by 1936, it was the favourite residence of both Junior and Abby and is now a house museum at the family-restored Colonial Revival town. The Casements - A three-story house at Ormond Beach in Florida, where Senior spent his last winters, from 1919 until his death. The Eyrie - A sprawling 100-room summer holiday home on Mount Desert Island in Maine, demolished by family members in 1962. Forest Hill - The family's country estate and a summer home in Cleveland, Ohio, for four decades; built and occupied by Senior, it burned down in 1917. Golf House at Lakewood, New Jersey - The former three-story clubhouse for the elite Ocean County Hunt and Country Club, which Senior bought in 1902 to play golf on its golf course. Kykuit, also known as the John D. Rockefeller Estate - The landmark six-story, 40-room home on the vast Westchester County family estate, home to four generations of the family.