This Week in History

April 10, 1866 – Brothers patent Railroad Oil Tank Car

James and Amos Densmore of Meadville,
Pennsylvania, were granted a patent for their “Improved Car for
Transporting Petroleum,” the Railroad oil tank cars.

April 11, 1957 – Oklahoma Independent
Producer William G. Skelly dies

Founder of Skelly Oil Company, William Grove
Skelly, and one of Oklahoma’s great oilmen, died in Tulsa at the age of 78.
William was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, on June 10, 1878. He began his
petroleum career as a 15-year-old, $2.50-a-day tool dresser in Venango County
(tool dressers sharpened cable-tool bits among other duties on the floor of
wooden derricks).

April 14, 1865 – Failed Oilman turns Assassin

After failing as an oilman in the booming
Pennsylvania oilfields, John Wilkes Booth assassinates President Abraham
Lincoln. Just one year earlier, Booth had left the stage and drilled oil wells
in Venango County.

April 14, 1922 – Texans patent Blowout
Preventer

James Abercrombie and Harry Cameron file a
patent for a hydraulic ram-type blowout preventer to end dangerous and wasteful
oil gushers. Their revolutionary concept uses rams – hydrostatic pistons – to
close on the drill stem and form a seal against the well pressure.

April 14, 1933 – Museum opens in Texas
Panhandle

The Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum opens
in Canyon, Texas, on the campus of West Texas A&M University, about 15
miles southwest of Amarillo. Its Don D. Harrington Petroleum Wing – named for a

legendary Panhandle oilman – tells the story of the oil boom years in the Texas
Panhandle during the 1920s and 1930s. Two floors of exhibits educate visitors
about the oil and natural gas business.

April 15, 1897 – Birth of the Oklahoma
Petroleum Industry

A large crowd gathers at the Cudahy Oil
Company’s Nellie Johnstone No. 1 well near Bartlesville, in the Indian
Territory that will become Oklahoma.

George Keeler’s stepdaughter, Miss Jenni
Cass, drops a “go devil” down the well bore to set off a waiting
canister of nitroglycerin – producing a gusher that heralds the beginning of
Oklahoma’s oil and natural gas industry. As the discovery well for the giant
Bartlesville-Dewey Field, the Nellie Johnstone No.1 ushers in the oil era for
Oklahoma Territory. By the time of statehood in 1907, Oklahoma will lead the
world in oil production.

Source: American Oil & Gas Historical
Society, aoghs.org