Public Family Trees/Rockefeller/Franklin Rockefeller

Businessman and rancher

Franklin Rockefeller

1845 - 1917 Β· Male Β· Moravia, New York, United States

Son of William Avery Rockefeller and Eliza Davison

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Biography

Franklin Rockefeller, generally known as Frank, was an American businessman and the youngest brother of John D. and William Rockefeller. Born in upstate New York in 1845 and raised in Ohio, he served in the Union Army during the American Civil War and afterward went into business in Cleveland, holding interests in iron and steel concerns and in Standard Oil. He later ran a large cattle ranch in Kansas and was active…

Life Timeline

Born1845

Born

Born to William Avery Rockefeller, Eliza Davison.

Legacy

Businessman and rancher

A defining role in the story of the Rockefeller family.

Died1917

Died

The close of a life whose connections continue through the family record.

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Edith Rockefeller

Gen 3 Β· 1872 - 1932

Edith Rockefeller McCormick was an American arts patron and analytical psychologist and the youngest daughter of John D. Rockefeller. Born in Cleveland in 1872, she married Harold Fowler McCormick, heir to the McCormick harvesting machine fortune, in 1895, and became one of the leading figures of Chicago society, presiding over the Villa Turicum estate at Lake Forest. She was the principal financial backer of the Chicago Grand Opera and later the Chicago Civic Opera. From 1913 she spent eight years in Zurich studying with Carl Jung, helped fund the publication of his work in English and returned to Chicago to practice as an analyst herself. Her son Fowler McCormick later led International Harvester.

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John Davison Rockefeller Jr.

Gen 3 Β· 1874 - 1960

John Davison Rockefeller Jr. was an American philanthropist and the only son of John D. Rockefeller and Laura Spelman Rockefeller. Born in Cleveland in 1874 and educated at Brown University, he joined his father's office in 1897 and from about 1910 devoted himself entirely to giving the family fortune away. He married Abby Greene Aldrich, daughter of Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, in 1901, and they had six children. He financed and built Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, restored Colonial Williamsburg, built Riverside Church and the Cloisters, donated the land for the United Nations headquarters in New York and gave extensive acreage to Acadia, Grand Teton and other national parks. After Abby's death he married Martha Baird Allen in 1951.

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Percy Avery Rockefeller

Gen 3 Β· 1878 - 1934

Percy Avery Rockefeller was an American financier, the younger son of Standard Oil co-founder William Rockefeller and a nephew of John D. Rockefeller. Born in New York in 1878, he graduated from Yale, where he was a member of Skull and Bones, and became a director of a long list of corporations including Remington Arms, the Brown Brothers banking house, Bethlehem Steel and several Standard Oil successor companies. He married Isabel Stillman, daughter of the banker James Stillman, in 1901, and lived at Owenoke Farm in Greenwich, Connecticut. He was an active yachtsman and thoroughbred owner and remained one of the leading figures of the second Rockefeller generation on Wall Street.

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Ethel Geraldine Rockefeller

Gen 3 Β· 1882 - 1973

Ethel Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge was an American philanthropist, art collector and animal welfare patron, the daughter of Standard Oil co-founder William Rockefeller and a niece of John D. Rockefeller. Born in New York in 1882, she married the Remington Arms head Marcellus Hartley Dodge in 1907, a union widely reported at the time as joining two great American fortunes. From her Giralda Farms estate in Madison, New Jersey, she founded and ran the Morris and Essex Dog Show, for decades the largest in the United States, and bred prize dogs and cattle. A major collector of paintings and sculpture, she left her collection and much of her fortune to museums and to animal welfare causes, endowing the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.

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Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller

Gen 4 Β· 1908 - 1979

Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was an American politician, businessman and art collector who served as the 41st Vice President of the United States. Born in Bar Harbor, Maine, in 1908, the second son of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, he was named for his maternal grandfather, Senator Nelson W. Aldrich. He worked on Rockefeller Center, served as Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs and then Assistant Secretary of State under Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, and was elected Governor of New York in 1958, holding the office for four terms until 1973. He sought the Republican presidential nomination three times and was appointed Vice President by Gerald Ford in 1974. A lifelong patron of modern and Latin American art, he was president of the Museum of Modern Art.

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Laurance Spelman Rockefeller

Gen 4 Β· 1910 - 2004

Laurance Spelman Rockefeller was an American venture capitalist and conservationist, the third son of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. Born in New York in 1910 and educated at Princeton, he became one of the earliest American venture investors, backing Eastern Air Lines, McDonnell Aircraft and later Intel and Apple among many others. He was equally known for conservation: he developed the Rockresorts hotels, including Caneel Bay, gave the land that created Virgin Islands National Park, chaired the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission under President Eisenhower and advised several presidents on conservation and the environment. He married Mary French in 1934 and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991.

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Winthrop Rockefeller

Gen 4 Β· 1912 - 1973

Winthrop Rockefeller was an American businessman, rancher and politician who served as the 37th Governor of Arkansas. Born in New York in 1912, the fourth son of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, he worked in the Texas oil fields as a young man and enlisted in the United States Army in 1941, serving through the Pacific campaign and rising to lieutenant colonel. In 1953 he moved to Arkansas and built Winrock Farms on Petit Jean Mountain, becoming a noted breeder of Santa Gertrudis cattle and chairman of the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission. Elected governor in 1966, he was the first Republican to hold the office since Reconstruction and served two terms, pressing prison and civil service reform.

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David Rockefeller

Gen 4 Β· 1915 - 2017

David Rockefeller was an American banker and philanthropist, the youngest of the six children of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. Born in New York in 1915, he earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago, served in the United States Army during the Second World War and joined Chase National Bank in 1946, becoming chairman and chief executive of Chase Manhattan from 1969 to 1981 and turning it into a global institution. He founded the Trilateral Commission in 1973 and the Council of the Americas, chaired the Council on Foreign Relations, and was a lifelong patron and chairman of the Museum of Modern Art. He married Margaret McGrath in 1940; their six children include Peggy Dulany and David Rockefeller Jr.

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Rodman Clark Rockefeller

Gen 5 Β· 1932 - 2000

Rodman Clark Rockefeller was an American businessman and the eldest son of Nelson Rockefeller and Mary Todhunter Clark Rockefeller. Born in 1932 and educated at Princeton and Columbia Business School, he spent most of his career at the International Basic Economy Corporation, the development company his father founded in 1947 to invest in agriculture, housing and food distribution in Latin America, serving as its president and then chairman. He was also chairman of the Council of the Americas and a longtime advocate of private investment as a tool of Latin American development. He was a brother of Steven Clark Rockefeller and of Michael Rockefeller, and a trustee of Rockefeller family philanthropies.

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Living
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John Davison Rockefeller IV

Gen 5 Β· b. 1937

John Davison Rockefeller IV, known as Jay Rockefeller, is an American politician who represented West Virginia in the United States Senate from 1985 to 2015. Born in New York in 1937, the only son of John D. Rockefeller III and Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller, he studied at Harvard and in Japan before joining VISTA in 1964 and being assigned to the small mining community of Emmons, West Virginia, which set the course of his career. He was elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates, then served as Secretary of State, president of West Virginia Wesleyan College and Governor of West Virginia from 1977 to 1985. In the Senate he chaired the Commerce and Intelligence Committees and worked chiefly on health care and coalfield issues. He married Sharon Percy in 1967.

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Margaret Dulany Rockefeller

Gen 5 Β· b. 1947

Peggy Dulany, born Margaret Dulany Rockefeller, is an American philanthropist and the third daughter of David Rockefeller and Peggy McGrath Rockefeller. Born in 1947, she studied at Harvard and took a doctorate in education, and worked in Brazilian favelas and in New York City government before founding the Synergos Institute in 1986. Synergos works to reduce poverty by building partnerships between civil society organizations, governments and business, and by developing what she calls bridging leadership, and it has run programs across Latin America, Africa and Asia. She also co-founded the Global Philanthropists Circle with her father and has served as a trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Who were Franklin Rockefeller's parents?+

Franklin Rockefeller's recorded parents are William Avery Rockefeller, Eliza Davison.

Who were Franklin Rockefeller's siblings?+

Franklin Rockefeller has 2 recorded siblings: John Davison Rockefeller, William Rockefeller.

What did Franklin Rockefeller do?+

Franklin Rockefeller is recorded as Businessman and rancher in the Rockefeller family tree.

Where was Franklin Rockefeller from?+

Franklin Rockefeller's recorded native place is Moravia, New York, United States.

How is Franklin Rockefeller related to John Davison Rockefeller?+

Franklin Rockefeller is recorded as John Davison Rockefeller's Brother.

What family tree does Franklin Rockefeller belong to?+

Franklin Rockefeller is recorded in the Rockefeller family tree on My rOoOts, alongside 42 other people.

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