John D. Rockefeller portrait

Portrait of American industrialist John D. Rockefeller, ca. 1910. Rockefeller was born in New York in 1839, but his family settled in northeast Ohio in the early 1850s. Rockefeller eventually became the first American billionaire after the massive success of his Standard Oil Company in the mid- to late-1800s. His wealth and interest in philanthropy led to the creation of The Rockefeller Foundation in 1913