
In addition, at last count the Rockefellers owned seven huge ranches. Earlier this year 1975, Nelson
bought 18,000 empty Texas acres for -outdoor recreation.
It is doubtful if any of the Rockefeller women will ever have to spend the night at the YWCA. The four
of them have about 100 residences to choose from, including John D. III's spacious Beekman Place
apartment in Manhattan, Laurance's sumptuous resorts in Hawaii and Puerto Rico, Nelson's Venezuela
Finca, (large enough to swallow the entire city of New York), and David's Caribbean home.
eedless to say, it takes an army of underlings to operate these elegant pads. There are 500 full-time
domestics, gardeners, guards and chauffeurs at Pocantico Hills alone, 45 at the family's Seal Harbor,
Maine, retreat, and 15 in Nelson's Fifth Avenue apartment. All told, it has been estimated the
Rockefeller women have at their beck and call about 2,500 servants.
Because the Rockefellers are forever on the wing-in their private jet fleets-each residence is permanently
staffed, and nightly the sheets are turned down. One never knows when the boss might pop in.
Of the corporate holdings described by Dilworth, the largest, of course, is Exxon, the new name for
Standard Oil of New Jersey, one of the companies formed when John D. Rockefeller, Sr. was ordered to
de-monopolize the Standard Oil Company. The stock directly owned by the family (not counting that
held by such family controlled entities as banks and foundations ) amounts to $156,7 millions. Number
two on Dilwoth's list is Rockfeller mere $98 million. Anyone who accepts this estimate of the Center's
worth is probably negotiating to swap his life time savings for sole proprietorship in the Brooklyn
Bridge. The Los Angeles Times observed on September 30, 1974 :
* The Congressional hearings revealed that two houses in Washington "ostensibly owned by a
Rockefeller attorney" actually belong to Nelson.
obody but the stockholders (the four surviving Rockefeller brothers-Nelson, John D.III, David and
Laurance - their sister, Abby, and the heirs of their brother Winthrop, who died in 1973, and a handful o
Wall Street bankers) know its true value, but the educated guess of New York's real estate crowd is that
Rockefeller Center, land and buildings, is worth $1 billion.
ext in line in the family portfolio is $85-million worth of stock in Standard of California, followed by
$72.6 million worth of IBM. Companies in which the family holds $10 million or more in stock include
Chase Manhattan Bank, Mobil Oil Corp., Eastman Kodak, General Electric, Texas Instruments, and
Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing. Altogether the Rockefellers own a significant portion of some 50
major American companies.
So extensive are the family's holdings in securities that the Dilworth operation spreads over three entire
floors at Rockefeller Center, and requires 154 full-time employees to manage the security portfolios.
Working under Dilworth's supervision are fifteen top financial experts, who also double and triple in
rass by serving on the boards of directors of nearly 100 corporations with combined assets of some $70
billion.
When testifying before the judiciary Committee, Dilworth's main objective was to fortify Nelson's
statement that his family's reputed financial power was a - myth - concocted by evildoers. "If you're
thinking of colossal economic power, it doesn't exist. We have investments, but not control," claimed
Rocky.
"It should be stressed that both the famil
members and their investment advisers are totall
uninterested