Charles Pratt
Rogers met Charles Pratt a short time later. Pratt (1830-1891) had been born in Watertown, Massachusetts. In nearby Boston, he had joined a company specializing in paints and whale oil products. In 1850 or 1851, Pratt came to New York City, where he worked for a similar company handling paint and oil.
Charles Pratt had seen the same trend as Ellis and Rogers and became a pioneer of the natural oil (petroleum) industry. He established a kerosene refinery Astral Oil Works in Brooklyn, New York. Pratt's product later gave rise to the slogan, The holy lamps of Tibet are primed with Astral Oil.
In Pennsylvania in the mid 1860s, Pratt met Ellis and Rogers. Pratt had earlier bought whale-oil from Ellis in Fairhaven. The two young men agreed to sell the entire output of their small refinery to Pratt's company at a fixed price.
Ellis and Rogers had no wells and were dependent upon purchasing crude oil to refine and sell to Pratt. A few months later, crude oil prices suddenly increased due to manipulation by speculators. The young entrepreneurs struggled to try to live up to their contract with Pratt, but soon their surplus was wiped out. Before long, they were heavily in debt to Pratt.
Charles Ellis gave up, but in 1866, Rogers went to Pratt in New York City, and told him he would take personal responsibility for the entire debt. This so impressed Pratt that he hired 26 year-old Rogers immediately. In the next few year Rogers became, in the words of Elbert Hubbard, Pratt's "hands and feet and eyes and ears" (Little Journeys to the Homes, 1909). The following year, in 1867, Charles Pratt joined with his protégé Rogers to form Charles Pratt and Company.
Read more about this topic: Wamsutta Oil Refinery
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