Public Family Trees/Rockefeller/Margaretta Fitler

Second Lady of the United States

Margaretta Fitler

1926 - 2015 Β· Female Β· Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

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Margaretta Fitler

1926 - 2015

Biography

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…

Life Timeline

Born1926

Born

The beginning of Margaretta Fitler's recorded life.

Family

Married Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller

A partnership that connects two branches of the Rockefeller family.

Legacy

Second Lady of the United States

A defining role in the story of the Rockefeller family.

Died2015

Died

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

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More people in the Rockefeller family tree

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William Avery Rockefeller

Gen 1 Β· 1810 - 1906

William Avery Rockefeller was an American traveling salesman and the father of the Rockefeller dynasty. Born in Granger, New York, in 1810, he married Eliza Davison in 1837 and the couple raised six children in Richford, Moravia and Owego in upstate New York before the family moved to Strongsville, Ohio, near Cleveland. He sold patent remedies and traded goods across the countryside and was away from home for long stretches, leaving the household largely to his wife. His son John D. Rockefeller later said his father had trained him in bargaining and bookkeeping from boyhood. Two of his sons, John D. Rockefeller and William Rockefeller, went on to found the Standard Oil Company.

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John Davison Rockefeller

Gen 2 Β· 1839 - 1937

John Davison Rockefeller was an American industrialist and philanthropist who founded the Standard Oil Company and became the defining business figure of the Gilded Age. Born in Richford, New York, to William Avery Rockefeller and Eliza Davison, he moved with his family to Ohio as a teenager, worked as a bookkeeper in Cleveland and entered oil refining in 1863. He incorporated Standard Oil in 1870 with his brother William and partners including Henry Flagler, and built it into a near total monopoly on American refining until the Supreme Court ordered its breakup in 1911. With his wife Laura Spelman he raised four children who reached adulthood. In retirement he gave away much of his fortune, founding the University of Chicago, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research and the Rockefeller Foundation.

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William Rockefeller

Gen 2 Β· 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 Β· 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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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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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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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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Frequently Asked Questions

Who did Margaretta Fitler marry?+

Margaretta Fitler married Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller.

What did Margaretta Fitler do?+

Margaretta Fitler is recorded as Second Lady of the United States in the Rockefeller family tree.

Where was Margaretta Fitler from?+

Margaretta Fitler's recorded native place is Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.

How is Margaretta Fitler related to John Davison Rockefeller?+

Margaretta Fitler is recorded as John Davison Rockefeller's Granddaughter's wife.

What family tree does Margaretta Fitler belong to?+

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

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