John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) was the wealthiest man in history and the founder of a great philanthropic dynasty. No American fortune has approached that of Rockefeller as a percentage of the United States economy.
Rockefeller sat for this rare early photograph at age eighteen when he was an assistant bookkeeper in Cleveland. After spending the 1860s building his oil business, he formed Standard Oil in 1870.
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