An American Family History

This story begins in 1812 with the birth of John M. Phipps, who had become a mysterious recluse in Shenandoah, Iowa, by age ninety-three. His neighbors assumed he had something to hide in his past. Because he was born in the same Virginia county as the father of J. D. Rockefeller, some Shenandoans thought they might be one and the same. It may have been that all he had to hide was that he joine...