Ida M. Tarbell
Born November 5, 1857 (Hatch Hollow, Pennsylvania)
Died January 6, 1944 (Bridgeport, Connecticut)
Journalist
As a child Ida M. Tarbell watched her father, an independent oilman, struggle unsuccessfully to compete in a field dominated by John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937; see entry) and his massive Standard Oil Company. Rockefeller's attempts to gain complete control over the oil industry led to the destruction of many small oil refineries, such as the one owned by Tarbell's father, and she grew to despise the wealthy industrialist. Decades later Tarbell became a successful investigative journalist whose publications helped bring about the fall of the powerful oil company, forever linking her name with that of the man she held responsible for much of her family's early troubles.
An Early Introduction to the Oil Business
Tarbell was born on November 5, 1857, in a log cabin in the tiny village of Hatch Hollow in Erie County, Pennsylvania. Her parents, Franklin Sumner Tarbell and Elizabeth McCullough Tarbell, had both been trained as teachers, but around the year of her birth Franklin bought a farm in Iowa. Tarbell and her Franklin returned to Pennsylvania the same year that the nation's first oil well—the Drake well—was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania, only thirty miles from Hatch Hollow.
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