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The Standard Oil families
When
one thinks about great wealth in relation to Standard Oil, the name of John
Davison Rockefeller imposes itself in such dominant way as to throw all the
other families who derived large fortunes from the oil trust into oblivion.
With his one quarter share, John D. Rockefeller was indeed by far the
largest Standard Oil shareholder, but he was not the only man to derive
great wealth from the trust and thus our analysis must not be limited to his
family. In 1879, Standard Oil had just 37 shareholders. If we consider only
the largest, as known to us, we derive the following list of families, with
estimates of their fortunes at the turn of the century :
Family Founder born died shares (1879) SO Share of capital ( % ) Fortune
1900 Original residence …
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