William Rockefeller - Home and Family

Home and Family

In 1886, Rockefeller bought property along the Hudson River from General Lloyd Aspinwall, and turned it into a mansion named "Rockwood Hall". The property was subsequently located within the Rockefeller family estate of "Pocantico", in Westchester County, New York (see Kykuit).

Rockefeller married Almira Geraldine Goodsell in 1864. Her sister, Esther Judson Goodsell, was married to Oliver Burr Jennings, who became one of the original stockholders of Standard Oil. Their son William Goodsell Rockefeller married Elsie Stillman, daughter of National City Bank president James Stillman, and they were the parents of James Stillman Rockefeller. In 1906, the couple's vacation home on Jekyll Island was completed; nicknamed "Indian Mound", the 25-room "cottage" remained in the family until ordered evacuated in 1942 by the U.S. government; five years later the entire island was purchased by the state of Georgia, and decades later it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Rockefeller Cottage.

William Rockefeller died on June 24, 1922 in Tarrytown, New York. He was interred in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Sleepy Hollow, New York.

The New York Times, in discussing a trust he set up for his born and yet-to-be born great-grandchildren, states that "The original William left a gross estate of $102,000,000, which was reduced to $50,000,000 principally by $30,000,000 of debts and $18,600,000 of inheritance and estate taxes."