And the It was just before 8 a.m. on a day in early August 1855 when a boy who had just a month earlier celebrated his 16 birthday, stepped out of the boarding house where he was staying in Cleveland, and shut the door behind him.

He was tall and thin, with a very angular and serious face, even at his young age.

He had pale blue eyes that were said to look through people instead of at them.

The boy was wearing a dark suit, a white shirt with a high collar, and a black tie.

This boy, who came from a family of modest means,

made his way along the Cayahoga River,

walking toward a buzzing and bustling area

known as the flats.

Now this area of Cleveland called the flats

was, as author Ron Chernau states in his book Titan, a quote,

clanging, roaring landscape of lumber mills, iron foundries,

warehouses, and shipyards, end quote. And all this industrial action flanked the end of the Cayahoga River

as it flowed toward and joined Lake Erie which was crowded with steamboats and

schooners at this time.

The day would be, as this boy remembered later in life, brutally hot.

But that did not matter to him.

The boy was determined to somehow make his start in business, and no amount of heat or

walking would discourage him from accomplishing this goal.

The job hunt that started on that August morning in 1855 has become one of the most romanticized events of the entire Industrial Revolution.

And the boy who was walking along the river that day in his dark suit in the

dead heat of summer was the young John D Rockefeller.

Now I have briefly mentioned John D Rockefeller in a past episode which you may or may not recall.

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