Tapping Oil at the Roots of a Family Tree

Out of the mountains of North Carolina and the plains of Texas comes an intriguing tale of a black sheep, oil fortunes, and poor mountain families. The story begins with Pelham Humphries, who had been born out of wedlock in the Watauga Settlement area of North Carolina, which would later become part of Tennessee. His mother married a Gragg when he was just a boy, but his childhood must have been rough, and I imagine he was called many names. His adulthood seemed to be rocky, too, because he tended to be drawn into fights. 

Greene family members related to Pelham Humphries

Pelham married Sudie Bell, but got into a drunken brawl and stabbed a man. Thinking he had killed someone, Pelham took his wife and a friend, J. William Inglish, and fled to Texas using a flatboat on the Watauga River. He fought in the Mexican Army in 1829 in their war for Mexican independence and was given a land grant for 4,000 acres on the Nechos River in 1835, but Sudie Bell died of a fever not long after they were deeded the land. Later, Pelham was shot to death at a Jefferson County boarding house in a fight between him and Inglish. Pelham's family back in the Appalachian Mountains knew nothing about what had happened to him, and he and Sudie had no children. Information on exactly what happened in the ownership of the property becomes very muddled and confused at this point.

What we do know is that in 1901, long after Pelham's death, oil was discovered on this land. Ever heard of Spindletop, the first oil discovered in Texas and the biggest producer of oil for years? Spindletop got its name from the heat waves rising in swirls from the prairie that made a grove of trees look like spinning tops when viewed from a hill above them. From here, many of the big oil companies got their start -Texaco, Gulf, Sun Oil, and Mobil. Today its owned by Chevron.

To find out who got the money for Spindletop, the controversy and questions that still exist today, and what happened when the mountain relatives tried to file a claim in the 1980's, read Monday's blog. I found out about all this and some more interesting information in my family tree by being one of those distant descendants. Read Monday's blog for more details.

To be continued....

___________________________________________________________