A history of Cleveland and its environs; the heart of new Connecticut, Part 1

Author: Avery, Elroy McKendree, 1844-1935; Lewis Publishing Company
Publication date: 1918
Publisher: Chicago, New York The Lewis Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 904

USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > A history of Cleveland and its environs; the heart of new Connecticut > Part 1

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Gc 977.102 C59a v.2 1198369

GENEALOGY COLLECTIL.

GEN

ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 02481 0910

A History of

Cleveland and Its Environs

The Heart of New Connecticut

Ebony Mic Kendret (l)

VOLUME II BIOGRAPHY

ILLUSTRATED

THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY CHICAGO AND NEW YORK 1918

1198369

Cleveland and Its Environs

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER. It was in Cleveland that John D. Rockefeller grew from boyhood to manhood, married and brought up his family, got his first job, had his first exper- rience as a business man, and organized the Standard Oil Company along lines that have not only made him the richest man in the world but have served as the pattern of modern business organization everywhere. It was in Cleveland that he began in boyhood his habit of careful and systematic giving, al- though earning only sixteen dollars a month, the system whereby he has up to the be- ginning of 1918 spent nearly $300,000,000 for the lasting good of mankind and seems likely to give many millions more; though it is believed by those most familiar with Mr. Rockefeller's history that his connection with the upbuilding of industrial enterprises in this and other countries has done even more than all his beneficences for the good of humanity, in furnishing steady employment and sure pay to countless numbers of men. During a period of nearly sixty years his relation to business enterprises in Cleveland, including the oil refining, has furnished steady employ- ment to many thousands of Cleveland men. He and his associates have done more perhaps than any other group of men to build up the city.

John Davison Rockefeller was born at Rich- ford, Tioga County, New York, July 8, 1839, the second child of William Avery Rocke- feller and Eliza, daughter of John Davison, a well-to-do farmer of Niles Township, Cayuga County, New York. The Davisons were an old New Jersey family of English and Scottish stock. William was the eldest son of Godfrey Rockefeller, who had been sheriff at Great Barrington, Massachusetts, but removed to a farm at Hudson, Columbia County, New York and thence to Richford. The Rocke- fellers have been traced back to a family of Huguenots, driven out of France by religious persecution. Their name was Rochefeuille, a

name significant of the power to endure and thrive in spite of adversity. Godfrey Rocke- feller was of the fourth or fifth generation of his family in this country. His wife was Lucy Avery, whom he married at Livingston, New York, in 1806, one of the seventh generation of the Groton Avery Clan, of Groton, Connect- icut, noted as pioneers, Indian fighters, trad- ers, and stubborn contenders for American liberty.

In the Battle of Groton Heights, September 6, 1781, it is recorded that eleven Averys were killed and seven wounded. No Avery was a Tory. Yet Lucy Avery's great-great-grand- mother, Susannah Palmes, wife of Samuel Avery of New London, Connecticut, was of royal descent, being the granddaughter of John Humfrey, who married in England the Lady Susan, daughter of the third Earl of Lincoln, who was descended from Edmund Ironside, king of England, and several kings of Scotland, and France and Spain.

William A. Rockefeller was an unusually resourceful, active, aggressive, all around man of affairs in Cayuga County, New York near to Moravia, on the beautiful Owasco Lake. Among the first of his activities was the fell- ing of the wonderful pine forests of Tioga County and having these forests converted into lumber when the price of the best pine lumber was, say, $5 or $8 a thousand. In this work he was often up and off with the bob- . sleds at four o'clock in the winter mornings. He was a pioneer in securing a district school in the country above Moravia, New York, where the children had their early instruction. His wife was noted for her kindness, her excellent training and management of the children, and her deep interest in religion and benevolence. The girls had their household tasks, and the boys had to do their daily chores and keep the garden weeded and well culti- vated, though they still had time enough for school and play.

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

Young John raised a brood of turkeys when he was eight years old, their keep costing him nothing, and made a nice profit on them. The care of these fowls was a mere incident in the daily routine. He never knew a time when work was strange or a hardship to him, nor was there ever a time since childhood when he was not earning and saving money. The boy was sent out among the neighboring farms to buy the supply of wood for the winter- and he got full measure of wood, straight and solid. No crooked stuff.

The father would often trade with his boys, dicker and bargain with them as he would with grown men, seeking always to instil into them the truth that self-reliance was the best help for anyone. They knew how to milk cows, take care of the chickens and other fowls, how to harness and drive horses, and feed and clean them. Mr. Rockefeller would lend sums of money to his son John, which the boy used to invest; yet at times, as a test of resourcefulness, the father would suddenly demand his own, and the boy always managed to pay him back on demand. With all their work and trading the boys still had time enough for a healthy amount of play. They swam and fished in beautiful Owasco Lake, and when the family removed to a home three miles above Owego, New York, they lived near the right bank of the Susquehanna River in its most fascinating windings among the green hills of Tioga County, and the boys had a beautiful country to work and play in.

After three years in the Owego Academy, young John D. Rockefeller was enrolled as a pupil in the Cleveland High School, the only one in the small city ; it stood in Euclid Ave- nue, just below what was then called Erie Street, on the site now occupied by the Cit- zens' Savings and Trust Company. Emerson E. White was the principal, a kind, courteous gentleman, who made it pleasant for the lads and girls to acquire learning. Young Rocke- feller was a quiet, hardworking student, rather serious-which is not to be wondered at when it is known that he spent hours every day practising on the piano. He was noted for being always on time. He was not brilliant in any study except mathematies, and even here he got results by unflagging application and his habit of never giving up a problem until he had solved it. He was a member of the Sunday school of the Erie Street Baptist Church, which later became the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church. He was one of the boys in the class of Deacon Sked. In 1854, at the age

of fifteen years, he became a member of the church, in which he served as clerk of the church while still a mere boy. He was grave and reserved, with the manner of a grown man. Yet he had his share of fun, too, and was for years a member of a singing school which met every week in the basement of an old church building in the lower end of Euclid Avenue.

After leaving high school, young Rocke- feller had intended to go through college, but on an intimation received from his father in regard to the expense of doing so he con- cluded it was best not to be a burden to his father; hence his decision to enter a com- mercial school and prepare to earn his own living. He took a course in E. G. Folsom's Commercial College in the Rouse Block, where the Marshall Building now stands, at Superior Avenue and the Public Square. For a fee of $40 in advance the boys were initiated into the arts of fine handwriting, bookkeeping- single and double entry-and commercial work generally. From this school he was graduated in August, 1855, and he began at once to look for work. This was not the casual expedition of a lad who puts in a few days of alleged searching, then goes away to spend the summer with his family and hope for better luck in the fall. Morning after morning young John D. Rockefeller walked downtown-not so far in those days-and made the rounds of the stores and the offices where a lad of sixteen might expect to find work as assistant to the bookkeeper.

Turned back again and again, he calmly walked home to Erie Street, had dinner, came downtown and tried again all afternoon until closing time. Hot weather, crusty men who didn't want to be bothered by a youngster hunting a job, the constant succession of might-be employers whose only answer was "no!" seem not to have discouraged young Rockefeller.

"I didn't think of the discouragement: what I thought of was getting that job," he told some friends once when he was holding the annual celebration of Job Day. "I simply had to get work ; for father had said if I could not find anything to do I might go back to the country, and the mere thought of support by my father gave me a cold chill-it gives me one now to think of it." He did not waste time on retail stores or small shops, but called -always on the head men-at banks, railroad offices, wholesale merchandising establish- ments, etc.

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

From the middle of August until near the end of September the quiet, thoughtful, determined boy plodded on his round, some- times revisiting offices where he had been refused, always politely urgent, never cast down by new refusals. In the forenoon of September 26, 1855, he went into the office of Hewitt and Tuttle, commission merchants, in a three-story brick building in Merwin Street, facing the Cuyahoga River. For the many hundredth time he repeated his request: "1 understand bookkeeping, and I'd like to get work."

Mr. Tuttle told him he might come in again after dinner. Returning after dinner, he was overjoyed when Mr. Tuttle said : "I have talked it over with Mr. Hewitt, and we have decided to give you a trial." That was all the boy wanted-to get a chance. He was willing to stand or fall on his own merits. From that day until the end of the year-three months and four days-the quiet lad worked hard and faithfully, on trial. He did not ask, nor did his employers say, what the pay was to be. On the last day of December he was paid fifty dollars for his services up to date.

The first winter after obtaining a situation, though he lacked some necessary warm gar- ments, he did not acquaint his father with the fact, preferring the nip of frost to increasing dependence, and determining thereafter to pay his own way, especially as his father had always been so kind and considerate in pro- viding for all his needs.

Young Rockefeller took the place of the bookkeeper who retired from the firm in January, 1857. He served the firm faithfully for three years and six months, yet $1,525 was all the pay he got for all his work during that period. But he got much more than pay out of the job; he got a business training and experience which, extended along the lines in which he had been instructed by his father, were soon to prove invaluable. He kept the books of the firm with scrupulous exactness, scrutinized every bill presented, and never put his O. K. on one until he was sure every item was correct; collected rents and bills for the house, and settled disputes that arose over shipments of goods by rail and lake.

All this gave the boy a grasp on business and on the problems of transportation which later was to prove of the highest value to him. He became an adapt at negotiation, settling in a friendly way all sorts of disputes over goods damaged or delayed in transit, and learning how to deal with men. The work

was hard, the hours long; but the boy was preparing for something big, though he did not suspect what it was. He saved his money, too, against the day when he would need capital for his own business. Yet this was no novelty, for he had been saving money that he had earned from the time he was eight years old. He always had a little put away.

Besides carefully saving, the boy was con- stantly giving. The little memorandum book, its brown leather cover shiny from long wear and handling, on which one still can read the title, "Ledger A," inscribed by his boyish hand with the flourishes proper in a young bookkeeper, bears a careful record of his receipts and expenditures. He did not wait until he had made his fortune to begin giving. At a time when he was earning about $16 a month he was recording in "Ledger A" such items as, "For a present to the teacher, 12 cents," "For a poor man in church, 25 cents," and "For a poor woman in church, 50 cents." As his income grew, the size of his gifts increased with it; but it is significant that his habit of deliberate, careful giving toward causes well worth while was begun early, and has continued throughout all his life since childhood.

When Mr. Hewitt could not see his way clear to pay John D. Rockefeller $800 a year, he gave up his job. He had saved his money, he had acquired familiarity with business dealings, had made small but profitable invest- ments, and had already put through one good- sized contract. In 1857, when he was only nineteen, his father had told him to build a house, giving him only the general outlines. Young Rockefeller decided upon the plans, got the material and found a builder. He put up a handsome structure of dark red brick at No. 33 Cheshire Street, which is still stand- ing at the time of this writing, its lines as true as on the day it was finished. Perhaps still more remarkable is the fact that the work was all done within the contract price with a little money left over after all was finished. Into this house the Rockefeller family moved and made their home for years.

In coming to Cleveland from the country as a poor boy, Mr. Rockefeller was fortunate in at once finding a good environment in church and schools, where kind friends inter- ested themselves in the young stranger; and still later, when he began his business career, he had exceptional opportunities in meeting the leading and most influental men in the

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

city, who were frequently in the office of his employer. In this way lasting acquaintances and friendships were formed, which were of value to him in after life.

M. B. Clark, a young Englishman, some ten years older than John D. Rockefeller, wanted a partner to join him in the commission busi- ness. He had $2,000 capital. Young Rocke- feller had saved $1,000, and his father who had intended to give him $1,000 when he reached the age of twenty-one, lent him the money at ten per cent. interest, until that time. The firm of Clark and Rockefeller was formed in April, 1859. They at once began to do a large business in their office in River Street, dealing in carload lots and cargoes of produce. Soon they needed more money to take care of their increasing trade. Young Rockefeller, still short of his twentieth birth- day, called on T. P. Handy, president of a Cleveland bank. He took the young man's note, with the warehouse receipts of his own firm as collateral, and lent him $2,000. “I believe," said the banker, "that you will con- duct your business along conservative and proper lines." His confidence was justified. The junior partner went through the States of Indiana and Ohio, soliciting business from pretty nearly everybody in the commission line. The response was generous. In the first year the young firm's sales amounted to half a million dollars.

Both in the produce business and in the oil refining industry, which he entered a few years later, young Rockefeller was a frequent and heavy borrower. From the day that Mr. Handy lent him that first $2,000 his credit was always good, for he was noted for his strict attention to detail and the certainty of keeping his word. He was always a success- ful money-raiser, a good beggar, as he has since phrased it. When he was only eighteen, but already a trustee of the Erie Street Baptist Church, the minister announced from the pulpit one Sunday morning that $2,000 would have to be raised within a few months, or a mortgage for that amount would be foreclosed and the church left without a home. Young Rockefeller took his stand at the door of the church, buttonholed each member who came by; pleaded, urged, almost threatened, and got a promise from each to help pay the debt. He recorded each promise in his little book. The campaign lasted for months, and although many of the subscriptions were for only twenty-five or fifty cents a week, the entire $2,000 was raised in good time. It is not

without significance in viewing his career to note that he worked as hard at eighteen to raise the $2,000 for the imperilled church as he did to raise the $2,000 with which he embarked in his first business at nineteen, and that though he was still at the age when many lads are at school, or, at most, freshmen in college, he was already a grave and settled business man, addressed by those who had dealings with him as "Mr. Rockefeller."

Soon after Drake struck oil, near Titus- ville, Pennsylvania, in 1859, there was a rush for the hills and flats along Oil Creek. Wells were drilled by the hundred when it was found that by the simple process of refining an excellent illuminating oil could be made from the crude petroleum. The gold craze in California ten years before attracted no greater attention nor lured more men from their normal pursuits than did the oil craze of the early '60s. Drilling wells, transporting oil, refining oil, drew thousands of adven- turers from humdrum tasks into this great get-rich-quick enterprise.

Early in 1862 the copartnership of An- drews, Clark & Company was formed, to engage in oil refining. M. B. Clark and Mr. Rockefeller were the "company" in this concern, while they yet continued in the produce commission business of Clark and Rockefeller, and at the same time took the financial and business management of the new oil firm. In their small refinery on Kings- bury Run, in Cleveland, were laid the founda- tions of the concern which was soon to supply light to a great part of mankind, in all parts of the world, and whose application of the principles of service, co-operation and economy were to serve as models in the organization of business enterprise among all civilized men.

The studious youth who was to do all this had no idea of the vastness of the work he was undertaking nor of the great fortune he was to achieve. "We were simply trying to com- pass a situation," is the answer he has often given when asked how he came to organize the Standard Oil Company. Born with a pre- disposition toward method, order, economy and industry, which qualities had been fostered by his parents, he conducted his business with scrupulous care. He knew to a penny what every department in the business was costing and what profit it was showing. Other part- ners had been taken in, and there was in some quarters a resentment against so much exact- ness. When it was proposed, in a perfectly friendly way, to put the business up at auction

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

and let whichever partner would bid the highest take it, young Mr. Rockefeller as- sented. After a few bids, he calmly offered a bonus of $72,000 above the actual value as shown by the books, and the concern was knocked down to him. He had no attorney or other adviser present, but conducted alone all the negotiations with a group of men, all of whom were considerably older than he.

Thus, on April 1, 1865, Mr. Rockefeller took over the oil business, kept Samuel Andrews with him and formed the firm of Rockefeller & Andrews; at which time also he sold out his interest in the firm of Clark & Rockefeller in the produce commission business.

The reorganized business made money very fast at times, and at other times stood still. Though it showed a profit at the end of each year, it felt, as did all oil refining firms throughout the country, the fluctuations due to alternating scarcity and floods of crude oil, as old wells ran dry or new ones gushed in prodigal richness. Speculation in oil ran riot. Men were enriched or beggared in a few days. The wildest romances of the gold fields were paralleled in the oil world. But the twenty- five or thirty firms engaged in refining and selling petroleum in Cleveland were much disturbed by the upward and downward leaps and plunges of the price of their com- modity.

"I want to tell you," recently said the venerable Manuel Halle, whom all Cleveland business men know and trust; "I want to tell you that until Mr. Rockefeller and his associates came in and organized the busi- ness, it was running along haphazard, up today and down tomorrow, with many men failing as the market jumped up or down. You might have a big stock on hand that you could not sell because the market was over- stocked; then you saw a big black smoke in the sky, somebody's refinery was burning, a big stock was destroyed, and oil would jump from fifteen cents a gallon to eighteen or nine- teen. Mr. Rockefeller got the best oil refiners of Cleveland into one concern and stabilized the husiness. We all owe him a debt of grati- tude. "'

This combination was not accomplished without long and ardnous labors and many hard knocks. The beginning was not difficult. Mr. Rockefeller had a conference with Colonel O. H. Payne, head of the biggest refinery in Cleveland, pointed out to him the conditions which were threatening the existence of all the oil refining firms, and declared in effect

that for them, as for the signers of the Decla- ration of Independence, the time had come when they must hang together or they'd hang separately. The two came to an agreement at once. The Clark, Payne & Company refinery was appraised and consolidated with the Rockefeller installation. One by one, most of the other refineries in Cleveland came in. Some came in at the first invitation; others held back for one, two, three or five years, or longer. The invitation to come in was ex- tended to all refiners in the country, including those who were weakest and least able to meet the increasing destructive competition, which had already brought loss and failure to many.

Mr. Rockefeller's old employer, Mr. Hewitt, was a member of Alexander, Scofield & Com- pany, one of the most important firms in Cleveland, and desired to take stock for his interest in the firm when they came into the Standard Oil Company; but, turning to his former clerk, he said: "John, I cannot take it because, on account of the losses of our business, my equity is wiped out." To which Mr. Rockefeller responded that he would advance him the money and carry the stock for him. To this Mr. Hewitt gladly assented.

As the fluctuations of the business grew worse rather than better with the passing months, it was not very long before practically all the oil refiners of Cleveland were joined with Mr. Rockefeller, his brother William, Henry M. Flagler, Samuel Andrews and Stephen V. Harkness in the corporation known as the Standard Oil Company, which was chartered on January 10, 1870, with a capital of one million dollars.

The whole venture was more or less uncer- tain as to its future. Many of the conserva- tive business men liked to characterize it as a "rope of sand." Cleveland merchants assured the young men at the head of the enterprise that a similar organization for mutual advantage had been attempted among the shipping men of Lake Erie, and that it ended in dismal failure. William Thaw, the power behind the throne in the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. gravely prophesied that "that young man (Mr. Rockefeller) will make a disastrous failure,"-then, after a pause expressive of doubt-"or a great success."

While a few of the old, conservative mer- chants of Cleveland did not feel so sure that this sober, methodical young man would make a success, William H. Vanderbilt, who began to have business dealings with him in the

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

early '70s, remarked of Mr. Rockefeller : "He will become the richest man in the country." Mr. Rockefeller never had any doubt of the ultimate triumph of the principles upon which the Standard Oil Company was based: the greatest good to the greatest number, accom- plished by the co-operation of the best men in the oil business in buying, transporting, refin- ing, shipping and marketing petroleum and its products, the whole enterprise being con- ducted with the most rigid economy.

Cleveland now became one of the principal petroleum centres of the world, taking the place hitherto occupied by Pittsburgh. The Standard Oil Company provided its own pipe- lines for gathering the crude oil, its own tank cars for carrying it in train-load lots, thereby effecting a great saving, and its own depots and warehouses and docks at the shipping points for the European trade. Other com- panies bought barrels of coopers: the Stand- ard organized its own cooper shops, bought whole forests of timber, built drying houses and seasoned the wood before shipping, thus saving the greater cost of transportation on green wood, made its own glue and paint; in a word, saved money on every process that goes into the gathering, preparation and sell- ing of petroleum products. The Company's corps of scientists toiled incessantly in the laboratories, constantly discovering new ways, of using the by-products of crude petroleum, which hitherto had been wasted.

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A history of Cleveland and its environs; the heart of new Connecticut, Part 1

Author: Avery, Elroy McKendree, 1844-1935; Lewis Publishing Company Publication date: 1918 Publisher: Chicago, New York The Lewis Publishing Company Number of Pages: 904

Author: Avery, Elroy McKendree, 1844-1935; Lewis Publishing Company
Publication date: 1918
Publisher: Chicago, New York The Lewis Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 904