Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

After a brief description of the Rockefeller family background in America, which dates back to the early-18th century, Chapter 1 focuses on Rockefeller’s colorful and peripatetic father, William Avery Rockefeller—“The Flimflam Man.” Born in 1810, William Avery Rockefeller, aka “Big Bill'' or “Devil Bill,” made a long career as a traveling charlatan who, among other things, peddled phony medicinal remedies to credulous consumers in small towns across North America. After Bill’s parents—John D.’s grandparents—move to Richford on the New York frontier in the 1830s, Bill, who was by all accounts an affable, confident, and seemingly worldly young man, courts a “sheltered farm girl” named Eliza Davison (7). Over her father’s strenuous objection, the two are married in 1837. A daughter Lucy is born in 1838. Then, on July 8, 1839, Eliza gives birth to John Davison Rockefeller. Meanwhile, Bill moves his mistress into the home as a housekeeper and begins fathering children by her. Bill also abandons Eliza and the children for months at a time, only to return without warning, nearly always flush with cash. In 1840, the family moves to Moravia, New York, near Eliza’s childhood home.

In Moravia, the story of Bill and Eliza continues, set against the backdrop of the Second Great Awakening and the burgeoning temperance and antislavery social-reform movements of the 1840s. While Bill briefly shows signs of settling down, which suggests “an underlying craving for respectability” (16), Eliza is drawn to the local Baptist church. As a boy, John D. finds genuine comfort in the church, where drinking, smoking, card-playing, and other self-destructive temptations are forbidden. This gives direction to his life. John D. grows close to his mother. His father remains an ambivalent figure in his life: talented, gregarious, attentive when present, and not altogether devoid of paternal concern (especially when training his children to look after their money), but also a mysterious, perennial absentee. In Moravia, rumors fly that Bill is a part-time horse thief. He is also indicted (though never arrested) for rape. Due in part to the rumors and the indictment, the family moves to Owego, New York, on the Pennsylvania border. Bill resumes his wandering ways. Eliza uses her faith to endure her plight and encourages John D. to become a better man than his father.

In 1853, the Rockefellers settle in Strongsville, Ohio. Bill sends John D. and his brother William to school in nearby Cleveland. Surviving high school essays show John D. as a “young democrat and confirmed abolitionist” who despised “aristocracies and priesthoods” as “defenders of privilege against enterprising commoners” (39). The family moves to Parma and then again shortly thereafter to a house within Cleveland city limits. Masquerading as a doctor named William Levingston, Bill begins his career as a bigamist when he meets and marries Margaret Allen of Norwich, Ontario, across Lake Erie from Cleveland. Perhaps because Bill’s financial support grows less certain as his appearances in Cleveland become more infrequent, John D. drops out of high school in 1855.

On September 26, 1855, John D. finds a job as a bookkeeper with the Cleveland merchant firm of Hewitt and Tuttle. Freed from dependence on his unreliable father, John D. flourishes in the business world. A three-month internship becomes a permanent position, with back pay. John D. joins a local Baptist church, from which he continues to derive solidity. He loves money more than he is willing to admit, but he also derives satisfaction from the job itself. Significantly, even as a teenager, John D. Rockefeller gives away between six and ten percent of his earnings to charity. In the midst of the Panic of 1857, Bill reappears in Cleveland and pays his son to build a new home for the family on Cheshire Street. Bill then again drifts out of his son’s life, materializing at random times periodically over the next half-century but effectively abandoning Eliza and the children for good. In 1858, John D. forms a produce-selling partnership with his neighbor and former classmate, Maurice Clark.

The produce-selling partnership of Clark and Rockefeller succeeds, albeit with a few hiccups. To generate business, Clark adds George W. Gardner to the partnership. The strait-laced Rockefeller clashes with the lighthearted and extravagant Gardner, who probably reminds Rockefeller of his father. In Cleveland, Rockefeller develops a reputation as a hardworking and cautious businessman, which enhances his credit and allows him to borrow on good terms from banks.

The Civil War proves “a bonanza for the commodity business” (68). Though dedicated to the causes espoused by Northern radicals, in particular abolitionism, Rockefeller hires a substitute rather than join the Union Army. In light of Bill’s abandonment, Eliza and his siblings rely on young Rockefeller as a primary source of financial support, and this reliance exempts him from service. Rockefeller’s youngest brother Frank serves in the war and is scarred by the experience. Though he regularly relies on Rockefeller for money, Frank comes to resent his older brother, and then in later years to despise him. As wartime profits surge, Rockefeller, still in his mid-20s, becomes wealthy.