Titan
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Nevins, Allan. “Letter to the Editor About Henry Demarest Lloyd.” American Historical Review 50 (April 1945).
“New Facts About Oil King’s Father Told by Partner.” The World, March 1, 1908.
Norden, Van. “Rockefeller: Man or Monster?” The World Mirror, January 1909.
Patteson, Suzanne Louise. “At Home with the Rockefellers in the Seventies.” Cleveland Plain Dealer, February 12, 1922.
Paulson, F. M. “The House by the Side of the Road.” The Sohioan, October 1947.
Ralph, Julian. “John Davison Rockefeller.” Cosmopolitan, May 1902.
Randall, S. E. “A Square Deal for John D. Rockefeller.” Leslie’s Weekly, September 20, 1906.
Roan, Leonard. “Atlanta Knows the Real John D.” The Atlanta Georgia, February 12, 1922.
Rockefeller, John D. “Giving Away Money.” Farm and Fireside, January 6, 1917.
“Rockefeller Sees No Portent of Disaster.” The New York Times, October 20, 1907.
“The Rockefeller Story.” New York Daily News, August 23, 1959.
Rose, Kenneth W. “Why Chicago and Not Cleveland? The Religious Imperative Behind John D. Rockefeller’s Early Philanthropy, 1855–1900.” Typescript. RAC.
Sandage, Scott. “ ‘I do so long to save my husband’: Ruined Men and Desperate Wives in Nineteenth-Century America,” presented at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians Conference, Washington, D.C., March 1995.
Schmitt, J. P. “John D. Rockefeller as He Is and the Lesson His Life Teaches.” New Yorker Echo, May 30, 1908.
“Secret Double Life of Rockefeller’s Father Revealed by The World. ” The World, February 2, 1908.
“Standard Oil Company (N.J.) Passes Half-Century Mark.” Oil, Paint and Drug Reporter, January 19, 1920.
“The Standard Oil Melons.” The Literary Digest, October 28, 1922.
Stapleton, Darwin H. “Religion, Reform, Race and Rockefeller: Cleveland History Viewed Through the Lens of Philanthropy.” Typescript. RAC.
Steffens, Lincoln. “Rhode Island: A State for Sale.” McClure’s Magazine, February 24, 1905.
Tarbell, Ida M. “John D. Rockefeller: A Character Study.” McClure’s Magazine, July and August 1905.
———. “The Oil Age.” McClure’s Magazine, November 1924.
Train, Arthur. “Rockefeller Challenges Capital.” Hearst’s International, July 1923.
Vandegrift, Josephine. “Brooklyn Citizen Writer Spends a Week with John D. Rockefeller on Vacation.” Brooklyn Citizen, March 4, 1923.
Wallis, Louis. “Mr. Rockefeller’s Dilemma.” Harper’s Weekly, November 8, 1913.
Ware, Louise. “The Rockefeller Benefactions.” Seminar Report, May 20, 1937.
Waters, Deborah Dependahl. “Guide to the Rockefeller Rooms.” Typescript. The Museum of the City of New York, April 1993.
“What Rockefeller Thinks of Rockefeller.” The World, March 7, 1915.
“What the Town That Makes Him Shudder Thinks of John D. Rockefeller.” The World, November 1, 1903.
White, Clarice F. “Over Fifty Years a Cleveland Doctor.” Cleveland Plain Dealer, December 7, 1919.
Williamson, Samuel T. “The Rockefeller Boys.” The New York Times Magazine, April 9, 1939.
Wills, Garry. “Sons and Daughters of Chicago.” New York Review of Books, June 9, 1994.
Wilson, George, and N. W. Winkelman. “Generalized Alopecia.” Journal of the American Medical Association, May 8, 1926.
Winkler, John K. “Notes on a Well-Known Citizen.” The New Yorker, January 22 and 29, 1927.
Woodbury, Charles J. “Rockefeller and His Standard: Some of the Unwritten Rules He Enforced.” Saturday Evening Post, October 21, 1911.
Lucy Avery Rockefeller, the doughty grandmother of John D. Rockefeller. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
John D. Rockefeller’s humble birthplace in Richford, New York. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
The five children of William and Eliza Rockefeller. Seated, from left: John, twenty, Mary Ann, sixteen, and William, eighteen. Standing: Lucy, twenty-one, and Frank, fourteen. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Lucy Henry Spelman, Rockefeller’s mother-in-law, and Harvey Buel Spelman, his father-in-law. The Spelmans were staunch temperance advocates and abolitionists. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
The inseparable Spelman sisters: Lucy, also known as “Lute” (left), and Laura. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
A top-hatted “Colonel” Edwin Drake stands before the landmark well he drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859. (Courtesy of the Drake Well Museum)
After the Civil War, Rockefeller & Andrews occupied second-floor offices in the Sexton Block in Cleveland. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
The storied oil boomtown of Pithole, which sprang up miraculously in 1865 and vanished within a decade. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
The stately Rockefeller home at 424 Euclid Avenue in Cleveland. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Rockefeller’s rambling retreat at Forest Hill, which was briefly run by the family as a hotel. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
A studio portrait of a polished John D. Rockefeller in 1884. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
A family picnic at Forest Hill, circa 1880. Rockefeller stands at far left. Daughters Bessie, left, and Edith, right, sit directly behind the table, while Alta lounges impishly below. Cettie sits at far left and Grandmother Spelman at far right.(Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Rockefeller dines on sardines al fresco during an 1899 camping trip in the American West. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Rockefeller sits erect on the steps of brother William’s estate, Rockwood Hall, flanked to the rear by daughter Alta, left, and William’s daughter Emma; in the foreground, from left, sit William’s children Percy and Ethel and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
The first graduating class of Spelman Seminary, 1887, which was founded to educate freed women slaves and their daughters. (Courtesy of the Spelman College Archives)
John D. Rockefeller, Jr., sits astride his first pony, which was hand-picked by his father. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
John D. Rockefeller, Jr., circa 1880, with his sole childhood friend, Harry Moore, son of the Forest Hill housekeeper. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Alta Rockefeller on the day of her wedding to Ezra Parmalee Prentice. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Harold Fowler McCormick, dreamer and businessman. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Edith Rockefeller McCormick holds aloft John Rockefeller McCormick, whose early death from scarlet fever led to the founding of an institute for infectious diseases in Chicago. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Senior’s massive house at 4 West Fifty-fourth Street, foreground, and Junior’s still grander adjoining house at 10 West Fifty-fourth, on the site now occupied by the Museum of Modern Art. Their carriage house is visible in the foreground. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
For their bedroom at 4 West Fifty-fourth Street, John and Cettie Rockefeller retained the richly exotic furnishings of their predecessor, Arabella Worsham, the mistress of Collis P. Huntington. Such luxury was not their usual style. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Senator Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island, whom Lincoln Steffens dubbed “the political boss of the United States.” (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
The Aldrich sisters in 1910. From left: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Elsie Aldrich, and Lucy Aldrich. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
The Aldrich family. From left: Abby, Lucy, Senator Aldrich, Winthrop (?), and Mrs. Aldrich. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
William Rockefeller. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Frank Roc
kefeller. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Frederick T. Gates in his later years. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
The only existing photo that shows John D. with his father, William Avery Rockefeller, who sits rather awkwardly to the left, while Edith holds John Rockefeller McCormick on her lap, circa 1897. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
The aging Eliza Davison Rockefeller bore a comical resemblance to her famous son in his later years. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
The tombstone of William Avery Rockefeller— a.k.a. Dr. William Levingston—in Freeport, Illinois. (Courtesy of Heather Brownfield)
The cover of McClure’s Magazine containing the malevolent “character sketch” by Ida Tarbell that so deeply wounded Rockefeller. (Courtesy of the Drake Well Museum)
Rockefeller en route to testify in an antitrust case against Standard Oil, November 18, 1908. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Rockefeller goes to court, escorted by John G. Milburn, a Standard Oil lawyer in the federal antitrust suit. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
John D. Archbold, Rockefeller’s combative protégé and successor. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Rockefeller (center) pauses at Forest Hill with some favorite golf cronies. From left: Dr. Hamilton F. Biggar, Elias M. Johnson, Capt. Levi T. Scofield, and Dr. Charles A. Eaton. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
An eerily hairless Rockefeller holds an unidentified grandchild, September 23, 1904. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
The first version of Kykuit, completed in 1908 and found wanting by John and Cettie. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
The more compact and elegant second version of Kykuit, finished in 1913 and today open to the public. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
An aerial view of John D.’s golf hideaway in Lakewood, New Jersey. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Rockefeller, nattily attired, strolls among the sheep that browsed outside his Golf House residence in Lakewood. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Chief lieutenants of the Rockefeller philanthropies: (top, left) Dr. Simon Flexner, director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research; (top, right) Wickliffe Rose, head of the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission; (bottom, left) Starr J. Murphy, legal adviser to the Rockefeller Family Office; and (bottom, right) Wallace Buttrick, secretary of the General Education Board. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Abby Aldrich and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., circa 1916. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
The Rockefellers could be playful on occasion. Abby Aldrich and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., costumed for a fancy dress ball at Louis Tiffany’s home, probably around 1910. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
John D. Rockefeller, Jr., leaves hearings on the Ludlow Massacre, held at New York’s City Hall in January 1915. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Junior takes the stand to testify about Ludlow. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
A photographer captured an impromptu encounter between Junior and labor organizer Mother Jones—a vocal critic of Colorado Fuel and Iron—at the January 27, 1915, hearings. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Publicist Ivy Lee worked to rehabilitate the tarnished Rockefeller name after the Ludlow disaster. (Courtesy of the Princeton University Library)
Rockefeller sits wedged between two ladies in the backseat of his touring car. His hands often strayed during the afternoon drives. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Jo Davidson sculpts an equally stony-faced Rockefeller in 1924. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Abby Aldrich and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., with their children in Seal Harbor, Maine, 1921. From left to right: Laurance, Babs, John 3rd, David, Winthrop, and Nelson. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Rockefeller with Bessie’s grandchildren, Elizabeth and John de Cuevas, Ormond Beach, 1933. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Rockefeller’s winter home in Ormond Beach, Florida, called The Casements. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Rockefeller trades one-liners with Will Rogers in Ormond Beach, February 1927. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Rockefeller and daughter Alta at Ormond Beach, 1931. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Rockefeller, in trademark goggles, smacks a ball down the fairway at Ormond Beach, December 24, 1932. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Abby and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., tour the Grand Tetons in October 1931. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Junior bashfully greets the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall, December 30, 1937. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Junior and Senior pose with Nelson and his first son, Rod-man. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
The sons of Abby and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in their Eton collars. Left to right: David, Winthrop, Laurance, Nelson, and John 3rd. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
A formal family dinner party at 740 Park Avenue in Manhattan, March 1949. Standing, from left to right: Irving H. Pardee, David, Nelson, Winthrop, and Laurance Rockefeller. Seated: John 3rd and John D. Rockefeller, Jr.(Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
The wives at the same dinner party. From left to right: Abby (Babs) Rockefeller Pardee, Peggy McGrath Rockefeller, Mary “Tod” Rockefeller, Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller, Barbara “Bobo” Sears Rockefeller, and Mary French Rockefeller. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
A photo taken on December 17, 1931, that shows the seamed, leathery face of John D. Rockefeller in his final decade. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
RON CHERNOW
TITAN
Ron Chernow’s first book, The House of Morgan, won the National Book Award, the Ambassador Award for the year’s best study of American culture, and was named one of the 100 best nonfiction books of the century by the Modern Library. His second book, The Warburgs, won the Eccles Prize as the Best Business Book of 1993 and was also selected by the American Library Association as one of that year’s best nonfiction books. In reviewing his recent collection of essays, The Death of the Banker, The New York Times called the author “as elegant an architect of monumental histories as we’ve seen in decades” and chose the paperback original as one of the year’s Notable Books.
ALSO BY RON CHERNOW
The House of Morgan
The Warburgs
The Death of the Banker
SECOND VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, MARCH 2004
Copyright © 1998 by Ron Chernow
Family tree illustration copyright © 1998 by Anita Karl and Jim Kemp
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Random House edition as follows:
Chernow, Ron.
Titan: the life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. / Ron Chernow.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Rockefeller, John D. (John Davison), 1839–1937. 2. Capitalists and
financiers—United States—Biography. 3. Industrialists—United States—
Biography. 4. Philanthropists—United States—Biography.
I. Title.
CT275.R75C.7’622382’092—dc21
[B] 97-33117
www.randomhouse.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-42977-3
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