Family’s With Incredibly Bad Luck

  The Rockefeller family originated in the Rhineland region in Germany and can be traced to the town Neuwied in the early 17th century. The American family branch is descended from Johann Peter Rockefeller, who migrated from the Rhineland to Philadelphia in the Province of Pennsylvania around 1723. In the US, he became a plantation owner and landholder in Somerville, and Amwell, New Jersey. One of the first members of the Rockefeller family in New York was businessman William A. Rockefeller Sr., who was born to a Protestant family in Granger, New York. He had six children with his first wife Eliza Davison, a daughter of a Scots-Irish farmer, the most prominent of which were oil tycoons John D. Rockefeller and William A. Rockefeller Jr., the co-founders of Standard Oil. John D. Rockefeller (known as "Senior", as opposed to his son John D. Rockefeller Jr., known as "Junior") was a devout Northern Baptist, and he supported many church-based institutions.