In Erie County, Pennsylvania, on November 5, 1857, Ida Minerva Tarbell was born to "Esther Ann McCullough and Franklin Sumner Tarbell." He had a sister and two brothers, one of whom died of scarlet fever. “The Tarbells, born Presbyterians, joined the First Methodist congregation, the only church in town.” Tarbell's association with the church has impacted the choices and opportunities she and her family have had. After graduating from high school, Tomkins says Tarbell attended Alleghany College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, where she would major in biology. After Alleghany College, Tarbell realized that her dream of becoming a biologist could not be realized. There weren't many jobs for women, so she took a teaching job and quit after two years. However, Tomkins also states that for many years the Tarbells went to Methodist camps; this led her to the beginning of her career. She started out as the "editor's annotator of The Chautauquan." Tarbell after several years left The Chautauquan and followed his dream of attending the University of Paris, studying the French Revolution period, and focusing his attention on Madame Roland. Upon returning to America, he took a job at McClure's Magazine and eventually "wrote articles for The American Magazine." Just as the Methodist religion had a major impact on Tarbell's life, so did his father. He “decided to take a chance on the Titusville oil strike. . . Producers desperately needed oil storage facilities, and Tarbell quickly designed and built a wooden tank with a capacity of five hundred barrels of crude oil. As oil began to rise, so did monopolies, which in turn prompted Ida Tarbell to go muckraker and attack Joh's Standard Oil Company... middle of paper... the latest was Standard Oil vs. Politics. In this way he believed his answer "was government regulation of transportation as the first step in legal control, accompanied by a return to the pre-war American ideal similar to that extolled by his employer S.S. McClure." Works Cited Tomkins, Mary E. Ida M . New York: Twayne, 1974. Print."Tarbell, Ida." Encyclopedia of Women Social Reformers. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2001. Creed Reference. Network. March 31, 2014. Randolph, Josephine D. “A Remarkable Pennsylvanian: Ida M. Tarbell, 1857-1944.” Pennsylvania History 66.2 (1999): 215-41. Network. March 3, 2014. .Chalmers, David Mark. The social and political ideas of the Muckrakers. New York: Citadel, 1964. Print.