Posted by
theoilpatchplug on Tuesday, September 25, 2007 3:07:23 PM
The Physic and the Oilman
by Robert L. Gaston
The discovery of oil in the Edwards formation of south-central Texas in the year '22 was the starting gun for a brand new trend of exploration and development. Credited with this trend is Edgar Byram Davis (1873 - 1951), who pioneered the Edwards, and to the many other prospectors who carried Edwards exploration from the Sabine to the Rio Grande. Later gas discoveries in the Edwards established substantial reserves and additional exploration opportunities until today.
The discovery of oil in the Edwards formation opened a chapter in the history of the oil business, which was as important to Central Texas as were the great discoveries at Spindletop for the Gulf Coast, Yates for West Texas, C. M. "Dad" Joiner's No. 3 Daisy Bradford well for East Texas. As in all the above cases, oil and gas discoveries in this province shot local lifestyles upward, from hard-scrabble farming in the country and subsistence living in local towns to more comfortable and professional lifestyles, that even broached, in some cases, luxury.
After the initial excesses of the boom days had subsided, cultural improvements and progress characterized local community life, and both the countryside and urban centers have continued to enjoy the benefits first introduced to the area by Mother Oil. As was the case throughout the oil patch, hundreds of ranchers were able to keep their land in the family and prosper through the risk-taking and efforts of these great wildcatting pioneers and their modern brethren, rather than suffer seeing their hard-earned assets disappear through foreclosure into the maws of banks and financiers during and after the Great Depression. The economic impact cannot be underestimated throughout the main productive trend, extending from Caldwell to Webb County, a distance of 165 miles and will continue way into the future, so long as politicos and other assorted rascals leave well enough alone.
The story of oils discovery in the Edwards, like all oil and gas plays, is laced with doubt, disappointment, dogged persistence, and fabulous success. It had its inception in the mind of a man guided by a firm "FAITH", as he would always insist it be spelled. Although this interesting man passed to his heavenly reward in October 1951, he attained the status of a legend. Even while living, his retiring attitude and deeply religious nature caused most to regard him as a man of mystery. This remarkable individual who first discovered oil in the Edwards was Edgar B. Davis, late "Citizen of Luling".
The saga of Edgar B. Davis should live because it stands out as a unique story in the annals of the oil industry. Unlike the typical oilpatch stories that commonly abound of swashbuckling promoters discovering oil by sheer luck, of "poorboy" wildcatters spending their last dollar to bring in an elusive gusher, Edgar B. Davis stands out as a contrast to the common rough and ready lot of the typical oilpatch. Davis was a member of an old New England family, reared with all the luxuries of the prosperous gay nineties. He had traveled the world, associated with royalty, played golf, excelled at bridge, loved music and art. Admitting to no church affiliation, he nevertheless considered himself "Steward of the Lord," ordained to improve the lot of his fellow man.
This extraordinary individual left a promising business career at 35 years of age as co-founder and sales executive of the Walkover Shoe Company of Brockton, Massachusetts, in an effort to improve his poor health on a world tour. In Singapore, he met a Dutch rubber plantation manager who induced him to interest the United States Rubber Company in cultivating rubber trees in Sumatra.
This proved to be a highly successful venture for Davis and resulted in his acquiring $4,000,000.00 in rubber company stocks and cash, a huge fortune in those days. Upon his return to New York he declined an attractive offer to become president of the United States Rubber Company, because he felt the job would confine his activities too much. Instead, he betook it upon himself, at the age of 50, to transplant himself from his luxurious New York lifestyle to the impoverished farming community of Luling, Texas. Without Eva Gabor. His immediate mission in doing so was to salvage whatever could be retrieved from a $75,000 investment in a shaky wildcat venture made by his elder brother and some associates. The record is hazy if the promoter was named Haney. Little did he realize where his decision to leave "the City" would lead.
A true entrepreneur, fascinated by the idea of prospecting for oil, and imbued with the impassioned desire to bring prosperity to the inhabitants of his newly adopted home community, he acquired the interests of his brother and associates and dedicated himself wholly to his newfound task of salvaging his wildcatting interests.
The first step led him to assume the lease obligations of the Texas Southern Oil and Lease Syndicate in the Luling area. This syndicate had assembled leases covering most of what are now the Salt Flat and Darst Creek fields as well as about 85 percent of the Luling field. Many of these leases had to be dropped for lack of finances, but the Luling block was retained on the basis of a fault exposed in the San Marcos River and the mapping of an inlier of lower Wilcox against it. The discovery of the fault is credited to Vernon E. Woolsey; and additional work by him, Carol E. Cook, Roy A. Dobbins and others resulted in definition of the lower Wilcox inlier on this up-to-the-coast fault. The Syndicate drilled its first well in 1920 on the Thompson lease in the George C. Kimball survey, Caldwell County. It was abandoned as a dry hole in the Buda Limestone, 150 feet above the Edwards, but shows of oil and gas in the Eagleford provided encouragement for additional drilling.
Davis named his new enterprise, organized March 18, 1921, the "United North and South Oil Company, Inc.", as a Yankee gesture of friendship toward the unrepentant parochial planters of this Southern community. After taking over the holdings of Texas Southern Oil and Lease Syndicate, he spudded a well on the Cartwright farm, about a quarter mile closer to the surface fault trace than the Syndicate's Thompson dry hole. It had a small show of oil in the Edwards, as did the No. 2 Cartwright drilled about 500 feet up dip, although both were plugged as dry holes. On May 5, 1921 the No. 3 Cartwright was spudded and was plugged as a dry hole on June 16. The Cartwright No. 4 soon followed at a nearby location and was also dry. Adding to the injury, the No. 2 Thompson proved to be a failure as well.
At this point, a desperate Davis sought out the great clairvoyant Edgar Cayce. In a trance, Cayce described the underground geological structure in detail for Davis. The resulting discovery, made on the basis of Cayce's revelation, also flew in the face of accepted geological wisdom of the time. As Humble's (now Exxon-Mobil) chief geologist, Wallace E. Pratt, a skeptic when it came to looking for oil around faults, put it,
"the hazards of exploration in faulted territory are already widely appreciated."
But, then, Pratt had not consulted Edgar Cayce!
On the basis of Cayce's advice, Davis made a seventh location on the Rafael Rios 126 acre farm in the John Henry survey. The well was spudded June 19, 1922 and, on the hot afternoon of August 9, 1922, a depressed if not totally discouraged group of three United North and South people, Edgar Davis, Agnes Manford and W. F. Peale, sat watching the hypnotic rotary grinding away at 2,100 feet. Just as Peale, at the wheel of their car, was about to drive away, Miss Manford is reported to have pointed and shouted (in a most undignified way): "Look, Boys, Look!"
A black column was rising from Rafael Rios No. 1; the crew was scattering. The column was rising higher, higher, like an aroused giant black snake. Miss Manford and Peale quickly piled out of the car as the black column rose higher, rising above the crown block and began to spray the black, greasy stuff of which dreams were made (and of which environmental lawsuits are made today).
Peale and Miss Manford were a bit hysterical. For the charming bachelor who had furnished so many pleasant evenings at cards or talk; for the employer of Peale who had never looked back, never faltered, never lost his beatific smile; for the strange man who seemed half of the present material world and half of the heavenly world to come, they were overjoyed.
And Davis himself? That gentle smile grew a bit more expansive perhaps; he was quieter, if anything, and he retained that ever-present dignity. Yes, the foreordained had come to pass, the Lord, through the instrument of Edgar B. Davis, had achieved another objective, and in the end Davis, drenched with oil, reminded his employees that he must go to town.
To Luling went the oil-spattered trio and when the giant Davis was asked if he wanted to go to the hotel to change clothes.
He said, "No, first to Mackey's Drug Store."
At Mackey's, they called for J. R. Mackey, who had been sure Davis was chasing a "will-o'-the-wisp" and had said so publicly many times. Mackey came out, stared, threw up his hand and said with awe,
"The drinks are on me. Anything you want. Anything!"
Thus the story of Luling is, in a way, the story of Edgar B. Davis, who would walk into a fiery furnace if his Lord ordered, yet belonged to no church, who is Luling's godfather, but who, at age 77 had never married; the Yankee who had walked with princes and kings, but who spent his happiest years among the descendants of Rebels who loved him.
On August 10, 1922, the Luling boom began, gaining momentum slowly at first, because oilmen were skeptical of Edwards production. Magnolia Petroleum Company (later Mobil and today Exxon-Mobil) came forward with an offer to buy 1,000,000 barrels of oil in the ground at 50 cents a barrel. Davis and his associates accepted quickly and used the $500,000 to finance early development of the Luling field. Extension of the discovery area 1.6 miles northeast was established on March 13, 1923, by the Caldwell Oil Company No. 1 Hardeman, which made gas. In May 1923, Royal Oil Company completed a well for over 1000 barrels a day on their 40 acre W. H. Tabor lease, later acquired by Grayburg Oil Company. This extended the field 2 ½ miles northeast of the Rios No. 1 discovery well. The rate of drilling increased after these extensions, and many wells were completed with initial production of 1000 barrels a day or more.
By December 1924, the field had 391 producing wells, and by the end of 1926, the total number of wells had increased to 502.
In the spring of 1926, display advertisements appeared on the financial pages of several well-known newspapers stating that the Luling Field properties of the United North and South Oil Company were for sale. It is reported that several major oil companies considered the deal and made offers, but probably because the production was from limestone, and the fact that many of the fabulous Mexican fields of the same type were suddenly beginning to make salt water, no trade was immediately consummated. The Magnolia Petroleum Company, having bought the first production from the field and with pipeline facilities in place, eventually met the advertised price of $12,100,000. The deal was consummated on June 11, 1926, on a basis of half cash and half in oil as produced.
That should have been the end of the saga of Edgar B. Davis. The man, at age 56, had more money than any man would ever need. But the strange New Englander recognized something that not many men do, an obligation to those who help them make fortunes. And the benevolent, unusual visionary went about it in a most unusual way. First he announced a barbecue to which Luling, Caldwell County, Guadalupe County, former employees, friends over the world and well…. practically everyone… were invited. He bought a herd of beeves, all the soft drinks in central Texas, imported entertainers from New York and purchased and cleared 100 acres of land white with cotton at harvest time for the jubilee.
"Come one, come all", advertised Davis. And pretty near everyone did, or so it seemed.
The most conservative estimates placed the crowd at 15,000 while others looking at the sea of faces, swore not less than 40,000 were there. And the 15,000 or 40,000 were not only fed but also electrified with excitement.
Every employee drew a bonus. Those who had been with him one year drew 25 percent of total salaries paid them to date; two years brought 50 percent; and four years, 100 percent. Five men on his firm's management committee received checks for $200,000 each.
A couple of million was the conservative cost to Luling's benefactor for bonuses alone. But there was more to come: A $50,000 golf course later built on that $150,000 cleared cotton patch, a $50,000 black athletic clubhouse, a $150,000 total endowment for upkeep of both.
Something bigger was on the mind of the town's benefactor who later put into writing approximately what he said that day and which reveals the magnificent obsession of the man.
"Believing that the kind and generous Providence, who guides the destinies of all humanity, directed me in the search for oil…" he wrote, and believing that the wealth which has resulted has not come through any virtue or ability of mine, but has been given to me in trust; and desiring to discharge in some measure the trust which has reposed in me; and in consideration of the opportunity which the resources of Texas gave me; and of my interest in the welfare of the citizens of the City of Luling, Caldwell, Guadalupe and Gonzales Counties;… and realizing the evils of the one-crop system ; and the hope through experimental work in diversified crops of aiding the tillers of the land to secure a larger return for their labor…" With such a promise the man who had something of the ethereal in him proceeded to establish the Luling Foundation for the benefit of agriculture with $1,000,000.
Much has been written about Edgar B. Davis and far more could be written if the man of mystery had left written records or if he had communicated more freely with his associates.
One regrets to reveal that Fate proved cruel in the end by removing the great man from the scene, on October 10 1951, before the United North and South Development Company was able to realize the second vast fortune Edgar B. Davis had dreamed about. His complete saga when it is written will reveal a depth of "FAITH" totally undeterred by difficulty.
*"FAITH"
The use of "FAITH" is in deference to Edgar B. Davis who always capitalized the word in his writing.
Addendum:
In writing the story of Edgar B Davis, the old Wanderer unwittingly perpetuated two myths that now need to be corrected. Some of us write without letting the facts stand in the way of a good story.
The first concerns Davis consulting the great clairvoyant Edgar Cayce.
From Riley Froh’s book “Edgar B. Davis: Wildcatter Extraordinary”, is this about Cayce:
Some time in 1921 a singular oil exploration crew arrived in Luling composed of a young businessman, David Kahn and his “clairvoyant” friend
Edgar Cayce. To locate oil, Cayce went into a trance; spoke in detail of the underground oil structure, while Khan took notes. In this manner they supposedly located first Luling and then the Oil reservoir. With three thousand acres under lease, the pair entered upon frustrating drilling operations that depleted their funds.
David Khan met Davis shortly thereafter in Fort Worth or New York, where Khan related his psychic information to Davis.
That Davis put much stock in such chance conversations is doubtful, but he was interested in psychic phenomena. In 1929 he was attempting to get in touch with Cayce, and he did meet the clairvoyant in the thirties and had several interpretations of his life related while the seer was in a trance.
The second concerns The Rios No. 1 discovery well, blowing out and spraying Davis and his group with oil. This happened not at the Rios well but at Merriweather No. 2, where oil blew out over the top of the derrick and sprayed Davis’ group and their car.
Now it seems the story is more truthful although less sensational.
Editors Note:
I watched my father chase the Cayce Myths in San Saba ,County spending over 3 million dollars in the early 70's to drill wells through granite searching for the elusive Rocky Creek field where Cayce believed the "Mothers of All Fields" was located. To date no commercial production has been found in San Saba.