Spanning Time: How Rockefeller, Bowers built a fortune in Broome County

I dare say there are probably only a few of the readers of this column who have not heard the name John D. Rockefeller.

Just the name Rockefeller conjures up images of wealth and power. Everything from Rockefeller Center in New York City to the well-known photograph of Nelson Rockefeller, former governor of New York and appointed vice president under President Gerald Ford, giving a rather rude finger gesture to a protesting student from what is now Binghamton University.

The Rockefeller name has had a long relationship with this region. Much of that dates to the year 1839, when John Davison Rockefeller was born in the Town of Richford on Michigan Hill in Tioga County in a simple house as the second of six children to Eliza Davison Rockefeller and, as quoted from Wikipedia, con artist father William A. Rockefeller, Sr.

Their home was the subject of an earlier column as to its current location after it was disassembled in the 20th century.

John D. Rockefeller’s father got involved in a series of get rich schemes that left a vagabond type existence with John having several half siblings by his father’s mistress. The result was John’s mother being a devout Baptist who kept things in order and John, as he later stated, was “taught to work, to save, and to give.”

More: Spanning Time: The ill-fated story of a Newark Valley factory

The family moved from Richford to Moravia, and then to Owego where John attended Owego Academy in 1851.

The family moved to Ohio in 1853 near Cleveland where John received both regular and business training. This training served him well as he began working as a bookkeeper and then two partnerships, of which the latter revolved around the oil refining business by the end of the Civil War.

Oil had become king in terms of the needs of the burgeoning industrial society, and Rockefeller was there to evolve into the world’s richest man, with refineries and the creation of Standard Oil of Ohio in 1870. The building of pipelines to move the company’s oil throughout the Northeast resulted in one pumphouse operation in Candor, New York – not far from his boyhood homes. This pipeline was to avoid railroad fees and made Rockefeller even wealthier.

His wealth spread into several areas, including silver mines in Colorado, a huge fleet of ships on the Great Lakes and an iron company. All these enterprises required someone to maintain and grow them, and Rockefeller found this in Lamont Montgomery Bowers, who had been born in the Town of Maine in Broome County.

Despite being born just a few miles away from Rockefeller in 1847, the two met in Nebraska and Rockefeller saw great potential in Bowers. This grew to the point that Bowers was considered a lieutenant in the entire organization.

It brought wealth to both Rockefeller and Bowers. Lamont left his boyhood home at Bowers Corners and built a beautiful mansion on Main Street in Binghamton in the early 1900s for his family, while maintaining the family homestead where son Clement lived.

Rockefeller built a mansion in Westchester County along the Hudson and during the last 50 years of his life, he would travel back through Broome County and into Tioga County to visit his childhood homes.

While Bowers left employment with Rockefeller about 1920, they remained close friends with visits while Rockefeller was en route to stops at the Ahwaga Hotel in Owego and nearby locations. There is a glass-plate image allegedly of John D. Rockefeller holding a baby taken by the artist Frank Taylor Bowers, son of Lamont Bowers before Frank’s death in 1932.

Two men, both made wealthy by oil and other products at a time when the country was growing. Lamont Bowers died at age 94 on June 2, 1941, with an estate worth several million. John D. Rockefeller, Sr., died on May 23, 1937, at the age of 97 while in Florida.

Two friends, two rich men, although if one calculates the worth of John D. Rockefeller in today’s money, he would be the richest man in the world — larger than Elon Musk and Bill Gates.

Not a bad accomplishment for two originally poor boys from the Southern Tier who “done good.”

This article originally appeared on Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin: Spanning Time: How Rockefeller, Bowers built a fortune in Broome County