Recollections and Connections Transcript

[Transcript of interview with Linda Chesebro, recorded as part of the Springfield-Greene County Library District's 2010 Big Read. For more information contact the Library at 417-883-5366 or visit us on the web.]

My name is John Rutherford and I am the host of the recollections and connections audio recording project at The Library Center. Today is Thursday, March 4, 2010 and today I am here with a guest who would like to share one of her memories. And your name is:

Linda Chesebro – My family’s legend is a story that my mother passed on to my brother and me. She was born in Joplin in February of 1901. She told us that her father, Perry Kraufman, (not sure of name) had drilled the first oil well in Okalahoma. As a small child I believed the story but as I grew older, I began to have my doubts. How could the tale be true if we were never rich and I had never heard of my grandfather’s name in connection with the oil industry? Eventually I just kind of let it go and didn’t think too much about it, until decades later when I got into genealogy and then I decided, for better or worse, to check out the old family legend. My travels took me to a library in Oklahoma and I began to read about the oil industry. Much to my surprise, I saw my grandfather’s name and ardently read the entire chapter telling of his drilling for oil.

Perry Kraufman was born in 1852 and died in 1932 in Joplin so neither my brother nor I ever knew him. He was by occupation a driller of water wells. He and his company drilled over 4,000 water wells in and around the Joplin area. He was nearly 50 years old when he decided to drill for oil. He was hired to drill an oil well near Red Fork, Oklahoma which is about four miles southwest of Tulsan City as it was called then. Today Red Fork is a neighborhood area within the city limits of Tulsa. Red Fork then was pretty much the economic center of the area due to the Frisco Railroad having its terminal there in town. Grandfather moved his equipment by rail, set up his rig and began drilling on May 10, 1901. Work continued for about five weeks but no oil had been discovered so Grandfather decided to go home for a few days to Joplin to see his wife and family. He left his son, Luther, in charge of the well and he told him and the night watchman that if the well came in while he was gone, not to tell anyone. Well, as fate would have it, the well did come in while he was gone. Some time after one a.m. on June 25th, the oil came in to the well bore from a depth of approximately 600 feet and spewed over the top of the derrick. That was Oklahoma’s first real gusher. Well now I don’t know if the night watchman told anybody in person or not, but in his exuberance, he rushed to the telegraph office and wired my grandfather in Joplin, saying and I quote “send packer – oil is spilling over the top of the derrick”. Well, the message was heard by every telegraph operator from Tulsa to Joplin. The secret was out, and the boom was on! The wire produced pandemonium. Newspapers across the state carried accounts of the discovery at Red Fork in large headlines. In bold type, the Tulsa Democrat proclaimed, A GEYSER OF OIL SPOUTS AT REDFORK, and the Kansas City Times headlined, OIL WELL GUSHER FIFTEEN FEET HIGH, although it was much higher. Calling the discovery a gusher, the Muskogee Weekly Phoenix reported that oilmen, who had seen every phenomenon in the oil world, say that this gusher is close to a well defined oil territory and that the strata of oil-bearing sand extends under thousands of acres of which Tulsa is the center. Newspaper coverage of the operations at Red Fork said there were stampedes to the area reminiscent of the gold rush in California. Within a short time, every route leading to the Red Fork community was crowded with horses and wagons carrying the curious and the ambitious as well as the assortment of shady characters, all wanting to get a share of the black wealth. Hundreds of visitors were there to see the well and the woods were full of people trying to get leases, reported one journalist. A never ending stream of wildly excited men were flocking into Redfork, the nearest point to the scene of the great gusher, wrote another. Trains brought legions of new recruits who quickly flooded the existing facilities of the little town creating a sprawling, overcrowded tent city. Lawyers came to the new oil field to offer their services in securing drilling leases. The majority of those are here, said one reporter, without money to invest, and have come merely through curiosity or looking for positions in the company. When Grandfather Kraufman returned to the drilling site, he found a “carnival territory”. He reported that Red Fork was, as he said, one of the vilest spots in the territory. He reported that one train brought in a special car loaded with gangsters, as he called them. And by early July, now mind you the oil came in on the 25th of June, but by early July more than 1,000 oilmen from other drilling companies were in the area. Petroleum speculation was rampant, dealers in fraudulent stock were in abundance, land promoters offered property at an inflated price, and in general, chaos ruled. Well, Grandfather Kraufman finished his work, got paid for his job of drilling, and went home to Joplin. He did move his family back to Oklahoma for about five years, but no other oil stories were ever passed down, though Mother did relate some other stories from having lived in Indian Territory. By the time Oklahoma became a state in 1907; its wells were producing more than 40 million barrels of oil.

Am I proud? You bet I am. Did my grandfather drill the first oil well in Oklahoma? No, that had been done in 1882, but he did drill the first well in a major oil field which produced the first commercially significant volume of oil, and that started the oil industry of Oklahoma.