page_title: Rockefeller family
section_title: Politics
hierarchical_section_title: Rockefeller family / Politics
caption_attribution_description: English: The Population Council's logo and tagline. Requests for use: pubinfo@popcouncil.org
context_page_description: The Rockefeller family is an American industrial, political, and banking family that owns one of the world's largest fortunes. The fortune was made in the American petroleum industry during the late 19th and early 20th centuries by John D. Rockefeller and his brother William Rockefeller, primarily through Standard Oil. The family has had a long association with, and control of, Chase Manhattan Bank. As of 1977 the Rockefellers were considered one of the most powerful families in the history of the United States. The Rockefeller family originated in Rhineland in Germany and family members moved to the New World in the early 18th century, while through Eliza Davison, with family roots in Middlesex County, New Jersey, John D. Rockefeller and William Rockefeller Jr. and their descendants are also of Scotch-Irish ancestry.
context_section_description: Prominent banker and philanthropist David Rockefeller Sr. was the family patriarch until his death in 2017. In 1960, when his brother Nelson Rockefeller was governor of New York, David Sr. successfully pressed for a repeal of a New York state law that restricted Chase Manhattan Bank from operating outside the city. David Sr. was twice offered the post of Treasury secretary by President Richard M. Nixon, but declined on both occasions. In 1979, he used his high-level contacts to bring Mohammad Reza Shah of Iran, who had been overthrown in the Iranian Revolution and was in poor health, for medical treatment in the United States. In 1998, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton for his work on International Executive Service Corps.
caption: The Population Council, founded by the family in 1952.
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