Northrop Genealogy

George Ives Northrop B 1871 d 1923
Born 7/15/1871, Southport Died 11/5/1923, Southport

Estella Keeler Jennings born 6/19/1872 Died 1/7/1910

might be parsells, meekers and northrops

perhaps this is a before and after picture, the latter being after Stella's death?

George I. Northrop

When they were first married they lived a 3 Seymour Street, South Norwalk. He is the father of Alvin, Margaret and Mary Northrop.

Brother Winthrop Blaine Northrop Born Southport, Died at home in Southport

in 1910 George I age 39 , Stella age 37 , Alvin, Margaret & Mary were on Seymour Street in Norwalk. Dad always referred to it as South Norwalk. George lists his father George E as born in CT and mother Margaret Hannegan as born in New York. Adella Hall, 45 is a servant and Carry Weed, F age 50 is a Roomer

1910 census

George is living in Norwalk a couple of locks away from the Lockwood Mansion He is a clerk for the Standard Oil Company.

Perhaps this is 1911?? Norwalk census was done in April 1910 Note the ME church is sill active.

1920 George is living with his father in Southport with the children. Stella has died. George is working for the Telephone Office. He may have been a victim of downsizing with the break up of Standard Oil

The following is from Jackson, P., ‘Dard Hunter Stylized Octopus‘ (Accessed: 1st June 2009).

In 1910, John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company was battling efforts by the government to break up the huge organization, which contended that it was in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Although the trust itself had been previously dissolved, the many different affiliates of the company still retained a monopoly in the oil industry. No doubt sensing the opportunity for some business, Elbert Hubbard wrote a piece in “The Fra” that praised the work of Standard Oil and defended it from the many words of criticism that it had been receiving. Of course, a business Little Journey soon followed, with Standard Oil commissioning a reprint of the article. Dard Hunter designed a special cover for the pamphlet, with artwork that bore a strange resemblance to an octopus. Symbolic of the company’s monopolistic stranglehold on the nation’s economy, this animal was used to depict Standard Oil in many a critical article and cartoon. Whether done as a joke, or as a statement of the artist’s true feelings about the company, the illustration was supposedly caught by Hubbard before the booklet went to press. He allowed it to be printed though, saying that the Standard Oil people would never notice. Evidently they didn’t notice, but it made no difference, as the Supreme Court ruled against the company the following year. Printed by the Roycrofters in East Aurora, New York in 1910.

courtesy http://vulgararmy.com/post/390081817/in-1910-the-standard-oil-company-published-a

Calling the company a “marvelous organization” less than six months before its dissolution was ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court, Hubbard extolled the virtues of its founder, John D. Rockefeller, Sr., who, from humble beginnings, built Standard Oil into one of the Gilded Age’s great business enterprises. He pronounced confidently in the face of nearly uniformly negative contemporary public opinion that “the position of The Standard Oil Company in the commercial world is the result of competition” and suggested that “people who hate a monopoly should reverence The Standard Oil Company.”
History, of course, has been less kind to the man and the organization that found themselves at the center of one of the Sherman Act’s early test cases, in which the Court declared Standard Oil guilty of unlawful monopolization and defined for the first time the
4
difference between business combinations that represented unreasonable restraints of trade and those that did not.1 Even a mostly laudatory special edition of a Standard Oil Company of New Jersey periodical issued in 1957 to coincide with the celebration of the “75th Anniversary of Jersey Standard” does not attempt to dispute the arguments relied on by the Court in deciding to break the company up in 1911. It does, however, lament that “the decree had spelled the end of a remarkably efficient system of integrated operations, extending from wellhead to ultimate consumer” (The Lamp 1957, p. 21). Testimony as to the innovativeness and efficiency of Standard Oil’s petroleum gathering and refining operations appears throughout the popular and scholarly literature, both before and after the company’s court-ordered reorganization, including the writings of its most implacable critic, Ida Minerva Tarbell (1904). Indeed, although the Supreme Court seemed daunted by the case before it, mentioning the challenge of having to sift through a “jungle of conflicting testimony covering a period of forty years, a duty difficult to rightly perform”, the justices likewise were impressed by, but ultimately rejected, arguments that Standard Oil had achieved it dominant market position through pro-competitive means. What the Court characterized as a “powerful analysis of the facts” presented in Standard Oil’s defense insisted
that the origin and development of the vast business which the defendants control was but the result of lawful competitive methods, guided by economic genius of the highest order, sustained by courage, by a keen insight into commercial situations, resulting in the acquisition of great wealth, but at the same time serving to stimulate and increase production, to widely extend the distribution of the products of petroleum at a cost largely below that which would have otherwise prevailed, thus proving to be at one and the same time a benefaction to the general public as well as of enormous advantage to individuals.2
McGee (1958) agrees with that assessment, presenting a compelling case that economic efficiency and not predatory pricing was at the heart of

home.olemiss.edu/~shughart/Standard_Oil.pdf - Similar

1911 Standard Oil Broken-(5/15/11) In the largest and most viable anti-trust case in American history to date, the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey was ordered to divest itself of its 37 interlocking firms. An appeal to the Supreme Court was turned down.

was there a connection through the Jennings side?

Witnesseth: I. It is intended that the parties to this agreement shall embrace three classes, to wit:

1st. All the stockholders and members of the following corporations and limited partnerships, to wit:

Acme Oil Company, New York; Acme Oil Company, Pennsylvania; Atlantic Refining Company of Philadelphia; Bush and Company (limited); Camden Consolidated Oil Company; Elizabethport Acid Works; Imperial Refining Company (limited); Charles Pratt and Company; Paine, Abbett and Company; Standard Oil Company, Ohio; Standard Oil Company, Pittsburg; Smith's Ferry Oil Transportation Company; Solar Oil Company (limited); Sone and Fleming Manufacturing Company (limited).

Also, all the stockholders and members of such other corporations and limited partnerships as may hereafter join in this agreement, at the request of the trustees herein provided for.

2d. The following individuals, to wit:

W. C. Andrews, John D. Archbold, Lide K. Alter, J. A. Bostwick, Benjamin Brewster, D. Bushnell, Thomas C. Bushnell, J. N. Camden, Henry L. Davis, H. M. Flagler, Mrs. H. M. Flagler, John Huntington, H. A. Hutchins, Charles F. G. Heye, A. B. Jennings, Charles Lockhart, A. M. McGregor, William H. Macy, William H. Macy, Jr., estate of Josiah Macy, William H. Macy, Jr., executor, O. H. Payne, A. J. Pouch, John D. Rockefeller, William Rockefeller, Henry H. Rogers, W. P. Thompson, J. J. Vandergrift, William T. Wardwell, W. G. Warden, Joseph L. Warden, Warden, Frew and Company, Louise C. Wheaton, H. M. Hanna and George W. Chapin, D. M. Harkness, D. M. Harkness, trustee, S. V. Harkness, O. H. Payne, trustee; Charles Pratt, Horace A. Pratt, C. M. Pratt, Julia H. York, George H. Vilas, M. R. Keith, trustees, George F. Chester.

OIL GENERAL

This is not a moral criticism of the early oil refining industry. The first five years of that industry, along with the crude production industry, from 1859 to 1864, were full of great achievements. It is almost impossible to overstate the dramatic and near-immediate positive effect of a group of scientists and businessmen discovering that “rock oil,” previously thought to be useless, could be refined to produce kerosene—the greatest, cheapest source of light known to man. In 1858, a year before the first oil well was drilled, only well-to-do families such as that of 11-year-old Henry Demarest Lloyd could afford sperm whale oil at three dollars per gallon to light their homes at night.13 For most, the day lasted only as long as did the daylight. But by 1864, just five years into the industry, a New York chemist observed:

Kerosene has, in one sense, increased the length of life among the agricultural population. Those who, on account of the dearness or inefficiency of whale oil, were accustomed to go to bed soon after the sunset and spend almost half their time in sleep, now occupy a portion of the night in reading and other amusements; and this is more particularly true of the winter seasons.14

from http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2008-summer/standard-oil-company.asp

Oliver Jennings, Fairfield Connecticu

Jennings was a close friend of Rockefeller who was said to have partnered in the founding of Standard Oil. Fairield University, Conn. is on the former estate.
Submitted by fedup	2006-05-06 00:03:09
Published: May 31, 1998 Kimberly Jan Greene, the daughter of Carolyn Filiss of Seattle, was married yesterday to Brewster Prentice Jennings, the son of Mr. and Mrs. John P. Jennings of Mill Neck, N.Y. The Rev. Paul Gilbert performed the ceremony at St. John's of Lattingtown Episcopal Church in Locust Valley, N.Y. Mrs. Jennings, 30, was until January a model with Ford, the New York agency. Her mother is a registered nurse in Seattle. The bride's stepfather, Brian Filiss, is a project construction manager at Western Wireless, a communications services company in Issaquah, Wash. Mr. Jennings, 30, owns the Westwind Investment Corporation, a real estate development company in Durango, Colo. He graduated from Skidmore College. His father retired as the assistant to the president of Grumman Aerospace in Bethpage, N.Y. The bridegroom's great-grandfather Oliver Jennings was a founder of Standard Oil. The bridegroom's paternal grandfather, B. Brewster Jennings, was the chairman of the Socony Mobil Oil Company in New York, a Standard Oil successor that became Mobil Oil. The beginnings of Fairfield University Like the town of Fairfield, the beginnings of Fairfield University was also characterized by struggles - struggles of a very different nature. In the thirties, the Jesuits petitioned to establish a school in Hartford. But their requests were repeatedly unanswered until Connecticut's bishop Maurice McAuliffe, finally approved their plan in 1941. But he was concerned about locating the school in Hartford where there was a lot of tax exempt property. He suggested locating the new school in Bridgeport. After a thorough search, however, it became evident there was no suitable property in Bridgeport. So the search began in the town of Fairfield. It just so happened that a 76 acre estate along North Benson Road, part of an original long lot, was for sale. It was the 1907 Jennings mansion which was supported by walls from an earlier 1896 home. The owners, the family of Oliver Jennings, a 1889 Yale graduate, an entrepreneur, politician and friend of the Rockefellers. It is said that in 1909 he had two miles of lights strung down North Benson road to greet Alfred Vanderbilt and his traveling companions when he stopped off on his way to the Breakers. He made his money with Standard Oil. By this time his family were searching for buyers. They refused to deal directly with Jesuits, but would deal with an intermediary, a prominent citizen, Paul Daly, who arranged for the Jesuits to buy this 76 acres of prime land for $42,500.

Standard Oil Company, an Ohio corporation, was incorporated on 10 January 1870 with a capital of $1 million, the original stockholders being John D. Rockefeller, with 2,667 shares; William Rockefeller, with 1,333 shares; Henry M. Flagler, with 1,333 shares; Samuel Andrews, with 1,333 shares; Stephen V. Harkness, with 1,334 shares; O. B. Jennings, with 1,000 shares; and the firm of Rockefeller, Andrews and Flagler, with 1,000 shares. The company took the place of the previous firm of Rockefeller, Andrews and Flagler (formed 1867), whose refineries were the largest in Cleveland and probably the largest in the world at that time. The company immediately made important extensions. These refineries, superior efficiency, and the threat of the South Improvement Company led Standard Oil to swallow practically all rival refineries in the Cleveland area in 1872.

Coincidentally with the conquest of Cleveland, Standard Oil began reaching out to other cities. In 1872 it bought the oil transporting and refining firmof J. A. Bostwick and Company in New York; the Long Island Oil Company; and a controlling share of the Devoe Manufacturing Company on Long Island. In 1873 it bought pipelines, the largest refinery in the oil regions, and a half interest in a Louisville refinery. The acquisition of the principal refineries of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia was carried out in 1874–1876, while in 1877 Standard Oil defeated the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Empire Transportation Company in a major struggle, taking possession of the pipelines and refineries of the latter. Another war with the Tidewater Pipeline resulted in a working agreement that drastically limited the latter's operations. By 1879, special agreements with the railroads along with strategic use of pools allowed Standard Oil, with its subsidiary and associated companies, to control 90 to 95 percent of the refining capacity of the United States, immense pipeline and storage-tank systems, and powerful marketing organizations at home and abroad.

While Standard Oil of Ohio remained legally a small company with no manufacturing operations outside its state, it was the nucleus of an almost nationwide industrial organization, one of the richest and most powerful in the country. Its articles of incorporation had not authorized it to hold stock in other companies nor to be a partner in any firm. After trying a variety of other methods to skirt the company's articles of incorporation, Standard Oil finally overcame this restriction by acquiring stocks not in the name of Standard Oil of Ohio but in that of a prominent stockholder named as trustee. Flagler, William Rockefeller, Bostwick, and various others served from 1873 to 1879 as trustees. Then, in 1879, the situation was given more systematic treatment. All of the stocks acquired by Standard Oil and held by various trustees, and all of the properties outside Ohio in which Standard Oil had an interest, were transferred to three minor employees as trustees. They held the stocks and properties for the exclusive use and benefit of Standard Oil's stockholders and distributed dividends in specified proportions. But while this arrangement was satisfactory from a legal point of view, it did not provide sufficient administrative centralization. On 2 January 1882, therefore, a new arrangement, the Standard Oil Trust Agreement, set up the first monopoly trust in American history. All stock and properties, including that of the Standard Oil proper as well as of interests outside Ohio, were transferred to a board of nine trustees, consisting of the principal owners and managers, with John D. Rockefeller as head. For each share of stock of Standard Oil of Ohio, twenty trust certificates of a par value of $100 each were to be issued. The total of the trust certificates was therefore $70 million, considerably less than the actual value of the properties. Standard Oil's huge network of refineries, pipes, tanks, and marketing systems was thus given a secret, but for the time being satisfactory, legal organization, while administration was centralized in nine men, with John D. Rockefeller at their head. The new arrangement allowed Standard Oil Trust to integrate the industry horizontally by combining competing companies into one and vertically by controlling petroleum from its production to its sale.

Standard Oil's growth in wealth and power drew the awe of other corporations and the criticism of social critics, most notably muckraker Ida Tarbell, who wrote the scathing "History of the Standard Oil Company" in McClure's magazine in 1902. By the time of Tarbell's publication, social criticism was just one of many forces checking Standard Oil's power. The gusher at Spindletop in Texas in 1901 had prompted a flood of new oil companies along the Gulf coast, and they, along with new companies in California and the Plains states, reduced Standard Oil's dominance. Legal challenges beset Standard Oil as well. In 1892, as a result of a decree by the Ohio courts, the Standard Oil Trust dissolved, and the separate establishments and plants were reorganized into twenty constituent companies. But by informal arrangement, unity of action was maintained among these twenty corporations until 1899 when they were gathered into a holding company called Standard Oil of New Jersey. In 1906 the federal Bureau of Corporations filed a report on Standard Oil's operations in Kansas that led directly to a federal antitrust suit against Standard Oil in the U.S. Circuit Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. Three years later, the court ruled against Standard Oil, and in 1911 a decree of the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ruling. The historic 1911 decision broke up Rockefeller's company into six main entities: Standard Oil of New Jersey (Esso, now Exxon), Standard Oil of New York (Socony, now Mobil), Standard Oil of Ohio, Standard Oil of Indiana (now Amoco, part of BP), and Standard Oil of California (now Chevron). Rockefeller remained nominal head of Standard Oil until 1911, but by 1895 he had surrendered more and more of the actual authority to his associates.

Bibliography

Hidy, Ralph W. History of Standard Oil Company (New Jersey). New York: Arno Press, 1976.

Wall, Bennett H., et. al. Growth in a Changing Environment: A History of the Standard Oil Company (New Jersey),1950–1972 and Exxon Corporation, 1972–1975. New York: Harper and Row, 1988.

Williamson, Harold F. The American Petroleum Industry. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1959.

Yergin, Daniel. The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991.

from

http://www.answers.com/topic/standard-oil-company

lots of other good informaiton

 

This home on Pequot Avenue, Southport, Connecticut is a recently restored example of the Northrop Brothers fine carpentry and building in the Southport-Greeens Farms area.

Image Courtesy of David Parker Associates