Allen W. Hamill Interview - Allen W. Hamill Interview [part 1 of 4]

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  • PIONEERS IN TEXAS OIL Topic: Spindle top, the Lucas Gusher.Name: Hamill, Allen W. Interviewer: Owens, William A. Place: Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tape No.: 84 Date: Sept. 2, 1952 Restrictions: None regarding educational and historical use by the University of Texas. O.- Mr. Hamill, will you give me your full name and present address?
  • H.- Allen William Hamill, 1003 East 20th Street, Tulsa, Oklahoma.
  • O.- Where were you born?
  • H.- Born about five miles from the town of Ligonier In Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania.
  • O.- When?
  • H. - In- on September 8, 1776, so they tell me [laughter].
  • O.- Actually, 1876, I hope?
  • Who were your parents?
  • H.- Well, Graham D. Hamill and Ann Elizabeth Hamill.
  • O.- Yes. How did they happen to come to Texas then?
  • H.- Well, they came to Texas for my mother's health primarily.
  • My father had a half-brother that moved to-- close to Waco before the war, settled down there and my mother was more or less an invalid and he thought that perhaps that-- that dry, arid climate in those days would be beneficial for Mother's health.
  • So Father bundled we three kids up.
  • Course, I was the baby, six weeks old, when they started migrating to Texas with me.
  • O.- And where did you actually settle?
  • H.- Close to Waco, a few miles out of Waco.
  • O.- Yes, sir. And how long did you live there yourself?
  • H.- Well, I-- I was a- a little hook-wormed kid, I guess.
  • I was quite sickly.
  • I had what they called the ague in those days, chills and fever.
  • O.- Yes, sir.
  • H.- And I had a bad case of that and I guess I was a little old runt and my- course, my mother died when I was- before I was three years old.
  • Father married when I was about- remarried when I was about five, and this stepmother of mine thought I was gonna die, you see.
  • She didn't- I was just so- such a invalid, I guess, so my father wrote to my aunt who lived back in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania.
  • So she insisted that Father send me back there, which he did when I was about eight years old.
  • And, by the way, that change of climate absolutely cured me of those chills and fever.
  • I blossomed out to be a pretty husky kid along in a few years, but my aunt died when I was about ten and then my cousin lived there with this old uncle of mine then.
  • Well, she died when I was about eleven.
  • Well, then, the old uncle and I, we got along.
  • He had two farms there, what they called the Upper and Lower Farm and I was born on one of those farms.
  • So we got along best we could there until I was about- oh- fifteen, and my brother Jim, in the meantime, had gone to work on the artesian wells down there in Texas during the drilling campaign.
  • And- [he] started in as tool dresser, and had gotten up to be a driller.
  • And he heard about the condition back in Pennsylvania where I was working pretty hard and not getting any education and so he sent for me.
  • O.- How much education did you actually get?
  • H.- Well, I got up to the- wasn't grades in those days; it was readers.
  • I got up to the fifth reader.
  • O.- Yes, sir.
  • H.- As far as I got.
  • O.- Yes, sir.
  • H.- And then when Jim sent for me to come to Texas, why, I landed in Ft. Worth where he was working and he kept me there about a week or ten days and then he took me down to the old farm at Waco.
  • Surprised my father.
  • Father didn't know I was anywhere near.
  • Drove in there with me on a Sunday.
  • So I spent about a year on the farm there and then left home and, since that time, why, I've been here, there and yon, from worse-pillar to post until Jim and I hit- course, I worked on--with Jim as a tool dresser on water wells a little.
  • But, as I say there, when we went to Corsicana, I went as his tool dresser.
  • O.- Yes, sir.
  • H.- Since that time, why, that 55 years has been spent in the oil country, from one place to another.
  • O.- Yes, sir.
  • H.- Louisiana, Texas, and I spent four years in California, drilling out there, and then I came here.
  • I been here since 1916.
  • O.- All right, can you tell me what your work was like when you first went to Corsicana?
  • H.- Well, uh- I went to work as a tool dresser there for my brother for a dollar and a quarter a day as tool dresser, and twelve hours a day.
  • And a lot of days, when we'd run pipe or anything like that, why, the crew, full crew, would stay on, you see, and help each other.
  • Didn't have casing crews like you have today.
  • It wasn't bad work.
  • It was-- it was easy drilling.
  • You didn't have a lot of bits to dress because of shale formation.
  • Wasn't like where you was drilling in hard rock where you had to beat those bits out every time you pulled out.
  • It was pretty easy work, but we-- we worked there for- first went in and drilled for a man by the name of Hartly.
  • Then we went to work for Warren and Bryson who were contractors.
  • And they sold out in time and then we went in for ourselves, contracting for ourselves in 18- the fall of 1898.
  • O.- Well, I'd like to go back again and ask you to describe exactly how you dressed a bit.
  • H.- Well, in those days, of course, we had a bellows and a little forge set up on the derrick floor probably, or right beside the derrick. And you pump this bellows by hand, you see, with- fired their furnace with coal, what we call black-smith coal.
  • And, of course, we'd get it good and hot and throw it out on the anvil with a-- against a button post, as we called it, and just pick up some sledges and go to work on it.
  • Beat it out, you see, to guage and shape it up where it was in nice shape.
  • That's- that was the procedure, by golly. It was a good task, give you a strong muscle if you could stay with it.
  • O.- Yes, sir. That's the first description I've had of the actual work of a tool dresser.
  • H.- Well, we'd use about a twelve or fourteen pound sledge. Be about as heavy as any of us could use ordinarily.
  • O.- Did they call you toolie when you were doing that?
  • H.- Toolie, tool dresser, that was what we called them, tool dresser, toolie.
  • O.- Yes, sir. All right. I'd like for you to tell me about the first oil well you worked on if you would.
  • H.- Well, the first oil well was- that I worked on, was on the east side of the town of Corsicana on the Mills Farm, I think. It was on Post Oak Creek, the edge of Post Oak Creek.
  • And it came in a very nice little well, probably 25 or 30 barrel well, head up and flow. I've forgotten how long it took us to drill it, probably three weeks or something like that.
  • O.- You started drilling the wells with cable tools. How long did you continue using cable tools?
  • H.- We used cable tools up until 1900.
  • O.- When did rotary tools first come into the Corsicana field?
  • H.- Well, my recollection, they came- Mr. Boughton- [break]
  • H.- I recall that about the time that my brother Jim and I landed in Corsicana to work as cable tool driller and tool dresser, Mr. George A. Boughton moved a rotary drilling equipment from a water well project at Alvarado, Texas, to Corsicana and drilled a well to the top of the oil sand for Mr. Rod Oliver, a banker from Groesbeck, Texas.
  • This well was completed through the producing sand with cable tools. But on the second well Mr. Boughton drilled with his rotary, was fully completed by the rotary, or hydraulics method, as it was frequently called in those days.
  • In-- in view of this fact, I feel Mr. Boughton due all credit for the introduction of the rotary drilling in a practical way, of oil wells, in 1897, at Corsicana, Texas.
  • O.- Would you tell me some more about Mr. Boughton while you're talking about him?
  • H. - Well, un- Mr. Boughton- we called him in those days, Old Man Boughton, he was an elderly gentleman and, of course, I didn't know him too well, but he was- he was the father-in-law of Walter Sharp.
  • And, by the way, Mrs. W. B. Sharp now lives in Houston, Texas. [break]
  • O.- How long did you continue drilling at Corsicana, then?
  • H.- We drilled there from up until I did, up until the fall of 1900.
  • And my brother Jim stayed on until the Beaumont excitement came in.
  • He stayed there and looked after the remaining tools we had there while I and my brother Curt went to Beaumont in the fall of 1900.
  • O.- That was the Lucas Gusher?
  • H.- Yeah. Turned out to be the Lucas Gusher.
  • O.- Will you tell me how you got the contract for that well?
  • H. -Well, as I remember, along I think it was probably in August, we received a short letter from Mr. John Galey of Pittsburgh stating that they would have their man, A. F. Lucas, call on us in the near future
  • with the idea of getting our price and [to] see if we would move tools to a location near Beaumont, Texas, and drill a well for them, and that any trade we made with Mr. Lucas would be financed by Guffey and Galey.
  • Now that was about all that this letter said. It was very short. So we didn't hear anything more from till Mr. Lucas showed up. Well, Mr. Lucas showed up on a Sunday there and Jim was away someplace.
  • So he called and I took the old buckboard and the horse that we used to hustle around our tools and went down to the hotel and picked up Captain Lucas and took him around, showed him the oil field.
  • So the next day, why, he and Jim got together. Jim was our business manager, of course.
  • He and Jim got together and they discussed the plan or the idea of moving a rotary down to Beaumont.
  • So after much discussion, it was decided that one of us should go down and look the situation over.
  • Well, in a short time afterwards, why, Jim went down and met Mr. Lucas there and went over the situation and agreed on a price of two dollars a foot for a 1200 foot test, Guffey and Galey to furnish all the pipe.
  • We'd furnish everything else - derrick, and drilling equipment, and fuel and so on.
  • So in October, early in October, we loaded our rotary on at Corsicana and I went down and met with Captain Lucas and-- he met me at the train, rather.
  • We went to the lumber yard, the Beaumont Lumber Company, and we bought the bill of lumber for the derrick.
  • And then after that was attended to, why, then we had to see about fuel.
  • So they told us at the lumber company that we'd have to hunt up a young fellow name of Dane Price who had the rights of the--handle the slabs there for fuel over the town, you see.
  • Cut them up and- so we drove around , and, of course, the Captain had lived there a good while and he knew this young Dane Price, So we found him and we made a trade for slabs to be used for fuel out on the well.
  • So that attended to,
  • why, Captain told me that he had difficulties, A carload of pipe was in there but he couldn't get it unloaded,
  • so I suggested we go out and see about it. And we did.
  • We went out there in the afternoon and I come [sic] up on the darn car and unloaded the carload of pipe.
  • Captain- surprised the Captain very much. He couldn't think that- been led to believe that we'd have to have a hoist or something to do it, but we got it unloaded and Cap, he was quite busy rolling it out of the way, you see, as I rolled it off of the car.
  • Well, it's been a mystery to me since how I ever got the joint of ten-inch out of the darn car.
  • Got the eight-inch and the six-inch and the four-inch, of course, but I often wondered myself how I got that darn ten-inch out.
  • Pretty heavy. So that's how we got the pipe unloaded,
  • O.- He pitched right in and worked too?
  • H.- Oh, he rolled it off, you see, as I rolled it down- used four-inch pipe for skids and I'd roll it up, you see. The standards came in on the car, you see, and I used those for skids that rolled it back, then rolled it up on the skids, then out over the side of the car and rolled down, and he rolled it out of the way, to keep It out of the way.
  • O.- Well, where did you go from there?
  • H.- Well, we went-- went back to town and I got me a room at the hotel. Went back to town and wired Jim to send the other boys down. So they were all ready, of course, and I think possibly they caught the train either that night or the next night.
  • They came in and- that is Curt and Peck Byrd.
  • This fellow, McCloud, we had for driller, he-- he was a few days later after we got everything moved out, before Henry came.
  • So we went to work right away getting slabs out and everything ready and the slush pit dug and-- necessary to go to work and get teams to move our boiler over and so on, you know,
  • O. - Yes, sir. How did you get the location? How was that determined?
  • H. - Well, the location-- uh- was made in a way by Mr. Galey,
  • The story is - Captain Lucas told me this himself - that when Galey came down there, he came in unexpected to Captain Lucas and Captain Lucas was away so Mrs. Lucas took him out to this place where these springs were, you might say -- or it wasn't springs. It was just a rough box in this little lake there.
  • It had been put in by somebody. We never knew who. There was about five of them there, that the rainwater would collect there and this gas would boil up through and the water- the sulphur gas coming up through was stronger in some than the other ones and discolored them more.
  • It was used for medicinal purposes. And Mrs. Lucas took Galey to this spot.
  • So he decided, well, there was where we wanted to drill the well, any place there. So when we moved in there we just moved, set our derrick up where it was convenient right close to those rough boxes or what you might call springs
  • O.- Yes, sir. Did you build your own derrick?
  • H.- Yes. Yeah, we- it was rather a tough feat for us because we'd never built derricks.
  • Contractors up in Corsicana Field had derrick builders, you see, or the companies we drilled for would have the derricks built by experts, you see.
  • So we got down there. We tried to use this bill of lumber that a rig builder had given me, you see, dimensions and so on, to cut it to shape.
  • But we didn't seem to have much luck at that so we just strung the thing out on the ground and fit it to shape, you see, and then we'd cut our girders and braces and so on to fit.
  • And when we got it up, it was a mighty good looking job.
  • Anyway, it did the job of the well.
  • O.- I'd like for you to describe your first day drilling on that well.
  • H.- Well, [laughter] that- I don't know as I can recall exactly.
  • I- of course, our first thing was there- to drill us a little water well.
  • That's the first thing we did-- right beside the derrick.
  • And that water well was about twenty feet deep.
  • Got water. Put in a joint of pipe and, cussed thing, I got gas enough there that it would blow the water out of the pipe a little.
  • But It didn't - wasn't enough to flow the water.
  • We put a jet in, a steam jet, in and flowed the water out we needed for boiler and our slush pit.
  • Of course, on the little old branch right- It wasn't a branch, just a water hole along there where we - time we moved in, was just about water enough to fire our boiler up and get going, not enough to do any drilling with or anything.
  • Well, after we got this water well, why, of course, we started in and set a joint of ten-inch.
  • I don't suppose we was very long doing that. I just don't remember about the time on that, but we made very good time till we got down to about 160 feet where we'd lose our returns.
  • Couldn't--we just tried and tried again and we'd get down there and the sand would heave out, you see, and run us out of the hole, you know.
  • So we-- then decided the thing to do would be to put in the eight-inch and run it as far as we could, pump it down to this point and then we'd drive it, just by main force and awkwardness, you might say.
  • I got that idea from drilling cable tools- from the cable tool work in Corsicana.
  • We used drive pipe up there and we'd drill as far as we could with our cable tools, until the hole would go to caving to prevent us going ahead, then we'd set in our string of drill pipe with a shoe on it.
  • We'd drill through that and in some cases the pipe would follow right along.
  • Other cases, we'd just have to rig up and just drive the heck out of it.
  • And by fighting that up there so long with cable tools, why, it occurred to me that we could drive that eight-inch down there by washing the sand out from within, which we did.
  • And we got along fairly well and I guess it proved quite a feat and quite a lot of work for we three because McCloud soon left about the time we got started at that.
  • He didn't think we'd ever finish the well or get anyplace much.
  • And he wasn't any too good a worker, anyway. Left Curt and Peck Byrd and myself.
  • And we went on and finished the well.
  • We landed that eight-inch in gumbo there right around 445 feet which is a pretty close measurement.
  • We didn't keep an accurate measurement like we do this day and time, but we just measured by joints.
  • We'd average up our joint as twenty feet and they average about that way.
  • But we hit this gumbo at, oh, 145 feet and then, after that, we got along all right until about six hundred and something when we had a little gas blowout.
  • It blew the water out of the hole and did some damage to our rotary by cutting the grip rings off, the sharp sand coming out just like a blast furnace.
  • And cut the collar on the drill pipe pretty badly, but no special damage, and soon subsided.
  • Well, after that happened, why, we were worried about maybe that might happen again and the thing to do was, when we had the pipe in the hole, to keep it rotating.
  • So to do that we agreed among ourselves.
  • Peck and Curt both worked fine. By golly, they certainly deserve a lot of credit and I've always given them credit for staying right there and pitching hay with me all the time.
  • So we agreed then that to do that, we'd have to keep the pump going and the rotary turning at night.
  • To do that, we put ourselves on eighteen hour towers.
  • That is, every third tower, you see.
  • So we'd come out and run the pump and keep the rotary turning and make what hole we could.
  • We were all drillers then, you see. We'd drill what we could when we was there by ourselves Curt and Peck also.
  • So we got along that way all right, and on this special night, why, it happened to be my night to get up at midnight.
  • We put up a length of drillpipe before the boys, other two boys, left that evening to go to- over to camp, which was about a half a mile away, our little old shack that we slept and ate in.
  • So I came on at midnight.
  • Whichever of the boys, one of the boys I relieved - whether it was Curt or Peck, I can't remember - but anyway, they hadn't made any hole hardly.
  • It'd been pretty hard.
  • Well, I thumped along there, you see, and along about three o'clock in the morning, the pump eased up and the rotary began to turn with ease and I commenced to let it down and go right along just as though there was nothing down there at all.
  • Kept letting it down. Wasn't long till I had the whole joint down.
  • The pump just run along as easy as could be.
  • So along toward daylight I dete-- detected a gassy odor but didn't think anything about it especially, 'cause we'd had little soft streaks before, you see.
  • But when daylight came, why, I could see on the slushpit here, the oil had come out in bubbles and bursts quite a little bit of frothy oil on the dish and quite a little on the pit.
  • So when the boys came out with my little bit of breakfast, why, we looked at it and sent Peck for- down to Captain Lucas.
  • He lived about a mile away. You've probably- don't know whether they showed you the house where he lived or not.
  • O.- The location, yes.
  • H.- So, anyway, Peck walked down there and Captain Lucas came up in a little while and wanted to know what it was and I told him it was oil.
  • So we discussed pro and con and he suggested then we put up another joint and see how much of the sand there was.
  • We did. Turned out to be about 35 feet of it.
  • Well, we didn't know what to do with It 'cause we didn't have the hole in shape to- we drilled through it, you see.
  • Didn't know, in those days, anything about cementing a string of pipe.
  • Didn't know anything about a strainer to strain the soft sand off with.
  • So Captain, he was pretty Scotch in a way.
  • He wanted to save the string of six-inch we had laying there for another well, you see.
  • He must have had the fear If we'd use it there, well, maybe Guffey and Galey wouldn't drill him another well.
  • Anyway, he decided the thing for us to do to save that six-inch- and we'd set a- hang our four-inch in there with a joint of six-inch on the bottom to the top of the sand, which we did, and waited then.
  • Of course, Cap went to town and wired immediately for Mr. Galey.
  • Well, it was three days before Mr. Galey could get there.
  • When he got there, we had everything ready.
  • We had our bailer and sandline, all equipment ready to bail it.
  • Well, the very first time we ran our bailer, we ran it down to bottom.
  • Pulled it out, why, the well made a little flow up a ways, heaved it up almost to the double-- the swivel board, about twenty feet up.
  • Well, when we ran back in we had quite a bit of sand in that bailer, of course.
  • Went back in again, the cussed thing stopped 300 feet up from bottom.
  • This sand, soft sand, had heaved right up there.
  • The pressure had brought it up and heaved it up on our fore wrench. Well, Mr. Galey had us run the bailer a few times, not very many times, and we could see that there wasn't any use going ahead in that condition.
  • So we -- we rigged up, gathered up a string of two-inch.
  • Went in and washed this well out to bottom. Washed a lot of sand and a lot of oil out, you see.
  • So we tried to bail it again with the same results, and we tried the third time.
  • Well, it was getting up pretty close to Christmas.
  • Mr, Galey could see that we couldn't make a success of it that way.
  • As I said before, we didn't- he nor none of us knew about a strainer to handle it-- the situation.
  • So he asked me, said, "Do you think you can pull that string of pipe?" I told him, 'I didn't know, Mr. Galey.'
  • "Well," he said, "I'll tell you what you do. You try to pull that pipe.
  • Can't do anything with it the way it is.
  • And set the six-inch through that and go on down and see if there's anything below."
  • And says, "If you can get-- when you get that done, well, shut down for Christmas."
  • Well, we had a pretty tough time pulling that pipe.
  • Old Providence was with us. It would never happen again, I don't think.
  • We managed to pull that string of four-inch out with that six-inch on the bottom, and set our six-inch and got our job in time so that Curt and I caught the train for Corsicana Christmas Eve.
  • We spent Christmas up there. [break]
  • H.- Curt and I left Corsicana on Christmas Eve for the works at Beaumont, landing down there January 1st and, course, everything was ready and we started to work to go on down to finish our contract which was 1200 feet.
  • And we made very good headway for probably three days.
  • Made a hundred and something feet, as I can. recall now.
  • And we got down to a 1000, about 1020 feet.
  • Then when we hit a crevice, seemingly a crevice, because if we'd turn the bit one way, it would go down five or six inches one way farther than the other. Turn a quarter turn, why, it'd start back up.
  • We fought that for a couple or two or three days and I wired my brother Jim to send me a new bit.
  • Our bits that we had used all down along the well were badly worn, just nubbins, you might say.
  • So I wired Jim for this bit and he sent it down and it arrived there on the morning of January 10th.
  • I met the train, took it out to the well, and we put it on and was [sic] running this string of drill pipe back in.
  • At about 700 feet or a little over in, why, the drilling mud commenced to boil up through the rotary, and it got higher and higher and higher up through the top of the derrick and with such pressure, why, the drill pipe commenced to move up.
  • It moved up and started to going out through the top of the derrick.
  • Took the elevators, travelling block and knocked the crown block off and fell over and didn't do much damage to the engine, but knocked the smokestack of our boiler down.
  • The pipe went up through the derrick, then would break off in sections of three and four lengths at a time and fall over.
  • Course, after that got out of the way, why, the rocks began to come out and gas to beat the cars.
  • It didn't last so awful long, but it died down very gradually.
  • Well, we three boys then sneaked back down to the well after it quieted down and surveyed the situation and I don't think I'm exaggerating to say that the mud was six inches deep on the derrick floor,
  • and I had turned around to get a shovel to start to clean up, you see, get some of that off the floor, and the- all of a sudden, a chunk of mud came out of the six-inch hole, full size, with an explosion just like a canon popping off, and that blew up with a little blue gas following it for a little bit and that-- and then it quieted down, ceased altogether again.