Famous Givers and Their Gifts

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

In 1853 the Rockefeller family moved to Cleveland, Ohio; and John, then fourteen years of age, entered the high school. He was a studious boy, especially fond of mathematics and of music, and learned to play on the piano; he was retiring in manner, and exemplary in conduct. When between fourteen and fifteen years of age, he joined the Erie Street Baptist Church of Cleveland, Ohio, now known as the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church, where he has been from that time an earnest and most helpful worker in it. The boy of fifteen did not confine his work in the church to prayer-meetings and Sunday-school. There was a church debt, and it had to be paid. He began to solicit money, standing in the church-door as the people went out, ready to receive what each was willing to contribute. He gave also of his own as much as was possible; thus learning early in life, not only to be generous, but to incite others to generosity.

When about eighteen or nineteen, he was made one of the Board of Trustees of the church, which position he held till his absence from the city in the past few years prevented his serving. He has been the superintendent of the Sunday-school of the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church for about thirty years. When he had held the office for twenty-five years the Sunday-school celebrated the event by a reception for their leader. After addresses and music, each one of the five hundred or more persons present shook hands with Mr. Rockefeller, and laid a flower on the table beside him. From the first he has won the love of the children from his sympathy, kindness, and his interest in their welfare. No picnic even would be satisfactory to them without his presence.

After two years passed in the Cleveland High School, the school-year ending June, 1855, young Rockefeller took a summer course in the Commercial College, and at sixteen was ready to see what obstacles the business world presented to a boy. He found plenty of them. It was the old story of every place seeming to be full; but he would not allow himself to be discouraged by continued refusals. He visited manufacturing establishments, stores, and shops, again and again, determined to find a position.

He succeeded on the twenty-sixth day of September, 1855, and became assistant bookkeeper in the forwarding and commission house of Hewitt & Tuttle. He did not know what pay he was to receive; but he knew he had taken the first step towards success,—he had obtained work. At the end of the year, for the three months, October, November, and December, he received fifty dollars,—not quite four dollars a week.

The next year he was paid twenty-five dollars a month, or three hundred dollars a year, and at the end of fifteen months, took the vacant position with the same firm, at five hundred dollars, as cashier and bookkeeper, of a man who had been receiving a salary of two thousand dollars.

Desirous of earning more, young Rockefeller after a time asked for eight hundred dollars as wages; and, the firm declining to give over seven hundred dollars a year, the enterprising youth, not yet nineteen, decided to start in business for himself. He had industry and energy; he was saving of both time and money; he had faith in his ability to succeed, and the courage to try. He had managed to save about a thousand dollars; and his father loaned him another thousand, on which he paid ten per cent interest, receiving the principal as a gift when he became twenty-one years of age. This certainly was a modest beginning for one of the founders of the Standard Oil Company.

Having formed a partnership with Morris B. Clark, in 1858, in produce commission and forwarding, the firm name became Clark & Rockefeller. The closest attention was given to business. Mr. Rockefeller lived within his means, and worked early and late, finding little or no time for recreation or amusements, but always time for his accustomed work in the church. There was always some person in sickness or sorrow to be visited, some child to be brought into the Sunday-school, or some stranger to be invited to the prayer-meetings.

The firm succeeded in business, and was continued with various partners for seven years, until the spring of 1865. During this time some parts of the country, especially Pennsylvania and Ohio, had become enthusiastic over the finding of large quantities of oil through drilling wells. The Petroleum Age for December, 1881, gives a most interesting account of the first oil-well in this country, drilled at Titusville, on Oil Creek, a branch of the Alleghany River, in August, 1859.

Petroleum had long been known, both in Europe and America, under various names. The Indians used it as a medicine, mixed it with paint to anoint themselves for war, or set fire at night to the oil that floated upon the surface of their creeks, making the illumination a part of their religious ceremonies. In Ohio, in 1819, when, in boring for salt, springs of petroleum were found, Professor Hildreth of Marietta wrote that the oil was used in lamps in workshops, and believed it would be "a valuable article for lighting the street-lamps in the future cities of Ohio." But forty years went by before the first oil-well was drilled, when men became almost as excited as in the rush to California for gold in 1849.