Married to America’s wealthiest man, she “paddled her own canoe.”
Laura Spelman Rockefeller (1839-1915)
Her dark hair parted neatly down the center and waved softly over her ears, Laura Celestia Spelman took her place onstage at Cleveland, Ohio, Central High School and delivered the valedictory address. In her speech, titled “I Can Paddle My Own Canoe,” the not-quite-15-year-old daughter of one of Cleveland’s most prosperous businessmen made a strong case for the right of women to pursue cultural and independent thought. Among the members of the senior class present and listening attentively was her friend John D. Rockefeller.
Cettie—as she was called by family and friends—was the daughter of Harvey Buel Spelman and Lucy Henry Spelman, who had come to Ohio from Massachusetts. The second of their two daughters, Cettie, was born in Wadsworth, Ohio, on September 9, 1839. The Spelmans later moved to Akron, where Harvey prospered in the dry-goods business, and eventually settled in Cleveland. There, Harvey pursued his interests in religion, politics, and the abolition movement. He helped establish a Congregational church, was a member of the state legislature, and did what he could to help slaves fleeing to Canada. His wife was devoted to church work and the cause of temperance. His daughters, Lucy and Cettie, shared their mother’s interests.
Cettie was deeply religious and had a strong sense of propriety. She also was a young woman with a mind of her own—indeed, quite capable of paddling her own canoe.
Cettie and her sister wanted to be teachers. In 1857, their parents sent them east to finish school in Worchester, Massachusetts. When they returned to Cleveland in May 1859, Cettie tried, without success, to form music classes. Meanwhile, Lucy had taken a teaching job in the public schools. Cettie began to substitute-teach in early 1860 and found a permanent job teaching at the Hudson Street School, where her superiors found her a “splendid disciplinarian and a perfect teacher.” Two years later, 22-year-old Cettie was appointed assistant principal. She loved her work and enjoyed her freedom. “I shall not stop until I find something better to do,” she said. That same year, her former classmate began to call at the Spelman residence.
John D. Rockefeller was born on July 8, 1839, in Richford, New York, the second of six children of William Avery Rockefeller, a medicine peddler and trader, and the former Eliza Davison, who had married the handsome and flamboyant “Big Bill” against her father’s wishes. William’s work thrived best in new towns without physicians, so the family moved often and lived in a precarious balance between poverty and relative comfort.
John was quiet, serious, and industrious, with an instinct for thoroughness, all inherited from his mother. From his father, he acquired an ambition for greatness, and as a boy he often said, “When I grow up, I want to be worth $100,000. And I’m going to be, too.” The family eventually came to live in a hamlet outside Cleveland, and John was sent to stay in a boarding house while he attended Central High School.
John’s father saw no use in sending his eldest son to college—he wanted him to be a practical success—so John enrolled in a business course. It took him weeks of intensive searching to find his first job. On September 26, 1855, a day that later came to be celebrated with the same enthusiasm accorded to birthdays and anniversaries, John found a job as an assistant bookkeeper. His wages were about 50 cents a day, but on that he managed to meet expenses, save some money, and give some to the Baptist Church, in which he already was active. For three years, his salary increased nominally, but his knowledge increased enormously.
Then in 1859, he formed a partnership and became a commission merchant in grain, hay, and meat. Meanwhile, oil had been discovered in western Pennsylvania, and John added crude oil to his commodities, eventually deciding to go into the oil refining business. He was beginning to make money. During these years of hard work, John had neither time nor the inclination for romance. But in 1862, he began calling on Cettie Spelman, the serious schoolteacher who devoted her free time to the church and practicing piano.
Theirs was a simple courtship, as attested by the detailed ledgers in which John entered literally every penny he spent. There were entries for bouquets and for lectures, and, finally, in April 1864, for a diamond ring. The young couple never attended the theater, and Cettie considered dancing “unworthy and sinful.” Although John did not particularly enjoy books, they read novels and poetry together and played piano duets.
John and Laura, as he began to call her, were married on September 8, 1864, a day before her 25th birthday, and left on a wedding trip to Niagara Falls (where, the ledger notes, they purchased a souvenir pillow for $1.57), Canada and New England. Back in Cleveland, they bought a modest house next door to John’s parents, who had moved into town not long before. Their first child, Elizabeth, was born on August 23, 1866. The young Rockefellers were happy, healthy, and rapidly growing wealthy.
From the beginning of her marriage, Laura Rockefeller centered her life around her home, her family, and her church. Those interests never altered. She became a Baptist, like her husband, and the church provided the substance of their social life. The family increased: A second child, Alice, lived only 13 months; another daughter, Alta, was born in 1871; and a fourth, Edith, arrived a year later. Then, in January 1874, Laura gave birth to a son, whom they named John D. Rockefeller Jr.
A growing family required larger quarters, and in 1868, the Rockefellers moved to a larger brick house on Cleveland’s Euclid Avenue, which came to be known as “Millionaire’s Row.” Five years later, John acquired suburban property with a fine view of Lake Erie. He intended to establish a sanitarium there, but when this and subsequent plans to turn the huge white building into a club and hotel were both unsuccessful, the Rockefellers converted it into a summer home. They called it Forest Hill, and beginning in 1880, it became the center of their lives.
Growing up under Laura’s watchful eye were four lively children, all of whom were expected to work. Each had a small plot in the vegetable garden. All pulled weeds from the lawn at the rate of a penny for 10 weeds. When John Jr. grew older, he was paid 15 cents an hour to chop wood. Once Laura totaled the gas bills for a year and promised Bessie she could have as spending money anything that could be saved on each month’s bill by seeing that no unnecessary lights were left burning. When the children were old enough to ride bicycles, John proposed buying one for each. “No,” said Laura firmly. “We will get only one. That will teach them to give up to one another.”
Life with the Rockefellers was simple, almost Spartan. The day began at 7:30 with family prayers, followed by readings at breakfast. Food was plain and wholesome. In addition to their studies and household chores, the children had to practice music. Outdoor activities and indoor games constituted their recreation. The church remained the focus of their family’s social life, and the children were taught to give from their own earnings. As children, they joined a temperance society and as teens, they signed pledges of abstinence.
During these years, John Rockefeller was in New York a great deal, often unable to spend important holidays with his family. But they kept in close touch through letters—his, brief and casual in spelling and punctuation but warm and affectionate; hers, longer, less hurried records of family events. Laura’s husband didn’t like being away from home—“Oh! For a home dinner, good cream and the quiet and peace of our table,” he once wrote—and eventually he solved the problem by taking Laura and the children to New York with him.
At first, they lived in hotels during the winter months, but in 1884, the Rockefellers bought a tall, narrow brownstone surrounded by large lawns at 4 West 54th Street. Laura and the children generally came east from Cleveland in mid-October and remained in New York through the winter and spring. Late in May, she packed them up again for a stay of several weeks at the Euclid Avenue house. Summers were spent at Forest Hill, always Laura’s favorite home, for she loved to be outdoors. Before returning to New York in the fall, the family would spend another two weeks in Cleveland.
During the 1880s, the Rockefellers also began to travel widely, taking trips as a family out West and to Europe. Wherever they went, they always managed to find a church where they attended Sunday services. Laura’s devotion to the church never flagged. She continued to teach Sunday school classes of young children and to stay with them until they left for college or work; then she started over with a new group. Many young people came to look on her as a confidante, almost a foster parent, and spent a great deal of time in her home.
Laura’s ties to her parents and sister remained close. Her sister Lucy had given up teaching and had come to live with them when they moved to Euclid Avenue. When Laura’s father died in 1881, her mother—a vigorous, well-read, and hard-working champion of temperance causes—joined the young family and stayed with them until her death in 1897.
Although John Jr. attended several schools, Laura’s daughters received their early education at home. Eventually, the children grew up and began to make lives of their own. Bessie graduated from Vassar College and in 1889 married Charles A. Strong, a philosophy professor. The Strongs spent a great deal of time in Europe, where he continued his studies. In 1895, Edith, the most artistic and unconventional of the children, married Harold Fowler McCormick, son of Cyrus McCormick, the inventor of the mechanical reaper.
There were two Rockefeller weddings in 1901. Alta had combined her father’s gift for organization and her mother’s interest in charitable work to found a settlement house in Cleveland and a sewing school in New York. That year, she married E. Parmalee Prentice, a lawyer who later turned to scientific agriculture. The same year, John D. Rockefeller Jr. married Abby Greene Aldrich, the daughter of Nelson W. Aldrich, at a large wedding attended by a thousand guests at the Aldrich home in Warwick, Rhode Island.
Then the grandchildren began to arrive. Two of the Rockefeller children lived close enough for Laura to enjoy the babies as they grew—John Jr., who developed Rockefeller Center, and Abby lived next door to the house on West 54th Street, and the Prentices lived a block south. There were 15 grandchildren in all, including Nelson, who became governor of New York and vice president during the Gerald Ford administration.
During this time, the Rockefellers acquired a fourth home, this one in Pocantico Hills, a few miles north of Manhattan. It was a rather homely house with splendid views of the Hudson River. When the house burned in 1902, John and Laura planned another, large enough to accommodate visiting children, grandchildren, and friends, and marked by elegant simplicity. It became Laura’s favorite retreat, almost as dear to her as Forest Hill.
Unfortunately, Laura’s health had begun to fail. From the beginning of the century, she was a semi-invalid, and by 1910, she was forced to spend most days in bed. Through her hours of pain, John was her faithful and thoughtful companion.
On September 8, 1914, John and Laura celebrated their golden wedding anniversary at Pocantico Hills. The children—all but Bessie Strong, who had died in France in 1906—and grandchildren gathered for the anniversary dinner. “I have had but one sweetheart,” John said, “and I am thankful to say that I still have her.” The next day was Laura’s 75th birthday.
Laura Spelman Rockefeller died the following spring. John was in Florida with his son and daughter-in-law when the telegram arrived on March 12, 1915, informing him that Laura had died that morning of a heart attack. The funeral, held three days later at Pocantico Hills, was simple, attended only by family and a few dear friends.
John D. Rockefeller, one of the wealthiest Americans of all time, lived for 22 more years, leaning more and more on his devoted son, but remaining vigorous and active to the end. He died on May 23, 1937, two months shy of his 98th birthday.
In 1929, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial was merged into the Rockefeller Foundation. Before the merger, the Memorial established the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fund in The New York Community Trust to support some of Laura’s charitable interests in New York City.
