Henry Huttleston Rogers - Seeking His Fortune

Seeking His Fortune

In 1861, 21-year-old Henry pooled his savings of approximately US$600 with a friend, Charles P. Ellis. They set out to western Pennsylvania and its newly discovered oil fields. Borrowing another US$600, the young partners began a small refinery at McClintocksville near Oil City. They named their new enterprise Wamsutta Oil Refinery.

The old Native American name "Wamsutta" was apparently selected in honor of their hometown area of New England, where Wamsutta Company in nearby New Bedford had opened in 1846, and was a major employer. The Wamsutta Company was the first of many textile mills that gradually came to supplant whaling as the principal employer in New Bedford.

Rogers and Ellis and their refinery made US$30,000 their first year. This amount was more than the earnings of three whaling ship trips during an average voyage of more than a year's duration. When Rogers returned home to Fairhaven for a short vacation the next year, he was greeted as a success.

Read more about this topic:  Henry Huttleston Rogers

Famous quotes containing the words seeking and/or fortune:

    The child begins life as a pleasure-seeking animal; his infantile personality is organized around his own appetites and his own body. In the course of his rearing the goal of exclusive pleasure seeking must be modified drastically, the fundamental urges must be subject to the dictates of conscience and society, urges must be capable of postponement and in some instances of renunciation completely.
    Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)

    We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground.
    Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)