lif of it all
...n away for months at a time. Rockefeller was raised essentially by his mother. Eventually his father began a bigamous marriage with a teenage Canadian and left Rockefeller, the rest of the children and their mother. At an early age, it became apparent that young John was not quite like the other children. For instance, he constantly refused to play with other children unless he could choose the game. In almost every description of him as a child, he is said to be the "thinking" one. He married Laura Celestia Spelman, a girl very similar his mother, which is never a good sign. When he decided to go into business, he borrowed $1000 from his father (at ten percent interest of course). Rockefeller's father, in the end, cheated his own son. Rockefeller was apparently disturbed by his childhood, he absorbed his business techniques from his unlawful father, and at some point during his young age he probably began to develop his obsessive-compulsive disorder. Unfortunately, few records of his early life and family exist, so it is difficult to know. Rockefeller seemed to make his fortune with hardly any effort. After dropping out of high school and starting a clerical apprenticeship, Rockefeller went into business, forming a produce house with one partner with “$4,000 in capital” to share . In its first year its income was about $450,000. After gains through the Civil War boom, Rockefeller's company bought its first refinery. Rockefeller soon gave up this to concentrate on the oil business. In 1870, with more than one million dollars, Rockefeller switched his company to the Standard Oil Company of Ohio. Rockefeller soon managed to dominate the nationwide oil market. In 1879 Standard Oil controlled 95 percent of oil...