Public Family Trees/Rockefeller/John Davison Rockefeller Jr.

Philanthropist

John Davison Rockefeller Jr.

1874 - 1960 ยท Male ยท Cleveland, Ohio, United States

Son of John Davison Rockefeller and Laura Celestia Spelman

3

Generation

4

Ancestors

18

Descendants

6

Children

1

Marriages

Biography

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 fโ€ฆ

Life Timeline

Born1874

Born

Born to John Davison Rockefeller, Laura Celestia Spelman.

Family

Married Abby Greene Aldrich

A partnership that connects two branches of the Rockefeller family.

Legacy

Philanthropist

A defining role in the story of the Rockefeller family.

Died1960

Died

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

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William Rockefeller

Gen 2 ยท 1841 - 1922

William Rockefeller was an American businessman and financier and a co-founder of the Standard Oil Company. The younger brother of John D. Rockefeller, he was born in Richford, New York, in 1841 and grew up in Ohio, entering the oil trade alongside his brother and taking charge of Standard Oil's New York office and its export business from 1866. He became one of the most prominent financiers of his era, with major interests in Anaconda Copper, the National City Bank of New York and several railroads. He married Almira Geraldine Goodsell, and their children included Percy Avery Rockefeller and the philanthropist Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge. His country estate, Rockwood Hall, stood near Tarrytown, New York.

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Franklin Rockefeller

Gen 2 ยท 1845 - 1917

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 in the livestock trade. His relationship with his eldest brother was strained for much of his adult life, and the two were often at odds over business matters, a division that was widely reported at the time.

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Percy Avery Rockefeller

Gen 3 ยท 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 ยท 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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William Goodsell Rockefeller

Gen 3 ยท 1870 - 1922

William Goodsell Rockefeller was an American businessman and banker, the eldest son of Standard Oil co-founder William Rockefeller and a nephew of John D. Rockefeller. Born in New York in 1870 and educated at Yale, he entered his father's business interests and held directorships in the National City Bank of New York, Standard Oil companies and a number of railroads. He married Elsie Stillman, a daughter of the National City Bank president James Stillman, strengthening the long association between the Rockefeller and Stillman families; his brother Percy Avery Rockefeller married her sister Isabel. He lived at Rockwood Hall and in Greenwich, Connecticut, and died in 1922, the same year as his father.

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Fowler McCormick

Gen 4 ยท 1898 - 1973

Fowler McCormick was an American industrialist and the only son of Harold Fowler McCormick and Edith Rockefeller McCormick to reach maturity, making him a grandson of both Cyrus McCormick and John D. Rockefeller. Born in Chicago in 1898 and educated at Princeton, he joined International Harvester as a factory hand rather than an executive, worked his way through its plants and sales organization, and became president of the company in 1941 and chairman in 1946, leading it through the Second World War and the postwar farm equipment boom. Like his mother he spent time in Zurich in the circle around Carl Jung. He retired to Arizona, where he was active in southwestern cultural and ranching affairs.

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Charles Augustus Strong

Gen 3 ยท 1862 - 1940

Charles Augustus Strong was an American philosopher and psychologist who married into the Rockefeller family. Born in 1862, the son of a Baptist minister, he studied at Harvard alongside George Santayana, who remained a lifelong friend, and went on to teach psychology at the University of Chicago and then at Columbia University. He worked chiefly on the relationship between mind and body, publishing Why the Mind Has a Body in 1903 and later works defending a critical realist position. In 1889 he married Elizabeth Rockefeller, the eldest daughter of John D. Rockefeller. In his later years he lived at the Villa Le Balze in Fiesole, Italy, which he built and which is now owned by Georgetown University.

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Margaretta Fitler

Gen 4 ยท 1926 - 2015

Margaretta Large Fitler Rockefeller, universally known as Happy, was Second Lady of the United States from 1974 to 1977 and the second wife of Nelson Rockefeller. Born in Philadelphia in 1926 to a socially prominent family, she worked as a volunteer in Nelson Rockefeller's gubernatorial campaigns before their marriage in 1963, a union that drew intense national attention and complicated his pursuit of the Republican presidential nomination. As First Lady of New York and later as the wife of the Vice President, she became one of the country's most visible advocates for women's health awareness, speaking publicly at a time when such subjects were rarely discussed. She and Nelson Rockefeller had two sons.

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Harold Fowler McCormick

Gen 3 ยท 1872 - 1941

Harold Fowler McCormick was an American industrialist who joined the Rockefeller and McCormick fortunes by marriage. A son of Cyrus McCormick, inventor of the mechanical reaper, he was born in Chicago in 1872 and educated at Princeton before entering the family business, serving as president and later chairman of International Harvester. In 1895 he married Edith Rockefeller, the youngest daughter of John D. Rockefeller, and the couple became central patrons of opera and the arts in Chicago, backing the Chicago Grand Opera Company. He was an early promoter of aviation in the United States. He and Edith had four children, including Fowler McCormick, and their marriage ended in divorce in 1921.

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Sharon Percy

Gen 5 ยท b. 1944

Sharon Percy Rockefeller is an American public broadcasting executive and the wife of Senator Jay Rockefeller. Born in 1944, she is a daughter of Charles H. Percy, the United States Senator from Illinois, and graduated from Stanford University. She married Jay Rockefeller in 1967 and served as First Lady of West Virginia during his two terms as governor. A member of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting board from 1977 and later its chair, she became president and chief executive of WETA, the Washington public television and radio stations, in 1989, a post she held for more than three decades, overseeing the production of documentary series by Ken Burns and Henry Louis Gates Jr.

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Marcellus Hartley Dodge

Gen 3 ยท 1881 - 1963

Marcellus Hartley Dodge Sr. was an American industrialist who married into the Rockefeller family. Born in New York in 1881, he inherited the arms and ammunition interests of his grandfather Marcellus Hartley and became head of the Remington Arms Company and of the Union Metallic Cartridge Company, overseeing their large expansion during the First World War. He married Geraldine Rockefeller, daughter of William Rockefeller, in 1907. A graduate of Columbia University, he served on its board of trustees for more than fifty years and was its chairman, and Columbia's Dodge Hall and Dodge Physical Fitness Center carry the family name. He lived on the Giralda Farms estate in Madison, New Jersey.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Who were John Davison Rockefeller Jr.'s parents?+

John Davison Rockefeller Jr.'s recorded parents are John Davison Rockefeller, Laura Celestia Spelman.

Who were John Davison Rockefeller Jr.'s children?+

John Davison Rockefeller Jr. has 6 recorded children: Abby Rockefeller, John Davison Rockefeller III, Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, Laurance Spelman Rockefeller, Winthrop Rockefeller, David Rockefeller.

Who did John Davison Rockefeller Jr. marry?+

John Davison Rockefeller Jr. married Abby Greene Aldrich.

Who were John Davison Rockefeller Jr.'s siblings?+

John Davison Rockefeller Jr. has 3 recorded siblings: Elizabeth Rockefeller, Alta Rockefeller, Edith Rockefeller.

What did John Davison Rockefeller Jr. do?+

John Davison Rockefeller Jr. is recorded as Philanthropist in the Rockefeller family tree.

Where was John Davison Rockefeller Jr. from?+

John Davison Rockefeller Jr.'s recorded native place is Cleveland, Ohio, United States.

How many relatives of John Davison Rockefeller Jr. are recorded?+

4 ancestors and 18 descendants of John Davison Rockefeller Jr. are recorded so far, within a tree of 43 people.

How is John Davison Rockefeller Jr. related to John Davison Rockefeller?+

John Davison Rockefeller Jr. is recorded as John Davison Rockefeller's Son.

What family tree does John Davison Rockefeller Jr. belong to?+

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

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