Charles Pratt

Charles Pratt was an American businessman and a pioneer of the United States petroleum industry. In the 1860s he built the Astral Oil Works, a kerosene refinery on Newtown Creek in Brooklyn, New York, and in 1869 trademarked its product as Pratt's Astral Oil, prized for being a safer, higher quality kerosene than most of its competitors. In 1867 he formed Charles Pratt and Company with his partner Henry H. Rogers, and in 1874 the two men brought the firm into John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil organization, folding one of the era's leading independent refineries into the growing trust.