Abbie G. Rogers - Whaling, Oil, Opportunity, Roughing IT in Pennsylvania

Whaling, Oil, Opportunity, Roughing It in Pennsylvania

Prior to the second half of the 19th century, whale oil was the primary source of fuel for lighting in the United States. The whaling industry was the mainstay for many New England coastal communities for over 200 years. Among these was Fairhaven, Massachusetts, founded on land purchased by English settlers of the Plymouth Colony from a friendly Native American tribal chief, Massasoit, and his son, who was named Wamsutta.

In 1854, natural oil (petroleum) was discovered in western Pennsylvania. In 1859, George Bissell and Edwin L. Drake made the first successful use of a drilling rig at Titusville, Pennsylvania. Production from this single well soon exceeded the entire cumulative oil output which had taken place in Europe since the 1650s. The principal product of the oil was kerosene. Another related product was natural gas. Kerosene and natural gas soon replaced whale oil in North America for illuminating purposes. In New England, whaling reached its peak in 1857, then gradually began a period of decline, partially due to Scandinavian competition. The situation was aggravated considerably by the American Civil War, as whaling vessels and crews were diverted to assist in blockading the Confederate coastal areas and ports. By 1900, the whaling industry had collapsed, due in part to the discovery and refining of petroleum from the western Pennsylvania oil fields.

Perhaps realizing both the trend and opportunity, in 1861, in Fairhaven, 21 year-old Henry H. Rogers pooled his savings of approximately $600 with a friend, Charles Ellis. They set out to western Pennsylvania and its newly discovered oil fields. The young partners began their small Wamsutta Oil Refinery at McClintocksville near Oil City, Pennsylvania.

The old Indian name "Wamsutta" was apparently selected in honor of their hometown area of New England. In nearby New Bedford, the Wamsutta Company had opened in 1846, the first of many textile mills that gradually came to supplant whaling as the principal employment activity in the area.

Rogers and Ellis, and their tiny Wamsutta Oil Refinery, made $30,000 their first year. This amount was more than 3 entire whaling ship trips from back home could hope to earn during an average voyage of more than a years' duration. Of course, he was regarded as very successful when Rogers returned home to Fairhaven for a short vacation the next year.

There, in 1862, Abbie Palmer Gifford married young Henry Rogers, her childhood sweetheart. She returned with him to the oil fields where they lived in a one-room shack along Oil Creek where her young husband and Ellis worked the Wamsutta Oil Refinery.

A short time later, Rogers met Charles Pratt. 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 moved to New York City, where he worked for a similar company handling paint and oil.

Charles Pratt saw 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, when Pratt and Rogers met, Pratt had earlier bought whale-oil from Ellis in Fairhaven, and they were already acquainted. The two young men agreed to sell the entire output of their small refinery to Pratt at a fixed price.

This went well at first. However, Ellis and Rogers had no wells of their own, 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, Henry 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 immediately hired him for his own organization.