| THE HISTORY OF GEOPHYSICAL PROSPECTING |    |
| PART FIVE - TWIN PEAKS OF EARTH SCINCE | |
The two Everettes started life a year apart in time. Wallace Everette Pratt was born in Phillipsburg, Kansas, on March 15, 1885; Everette Lee De Golyer in Greensburg, Kansas, on October 9, 1886. Greensburg is 150 miles due south of Phillipsburg, and when I say due south I mean 180 degrees due south. For these two geologic giants to have been born in the same state is concidence enough but here we must also be reconciled to the fact that they chose the same meridian of the earth. A short distance north of Phillipsburg, the first transcontinental railroad, the Union Pacific, had completed the line in 1869. Three years later the Santa Fe tracks had reached the Kansas-Colorado border, running across the state of Kansas only a few miles south of the town of Greensburg.
In this same year of 1872, 13 years before Wallace Pratt was born, the town of Phillipsburg, county seat of Phillips County, had been founded. A great wave of land-hungry men had swept over western Kansas. This was the initiation of twenty years of home-steading in Kansas and surrounding states, the last and greatest land boom in the whole history of the United States. Wild Bill Hickok was the law in Abilene, Kansas, and Bat Masterson kept the peace in Dodge City. Ten years prior to the birth of Wallace Pratt, General George Custer and the Seventh Cavalry were massacred at Little Big Horn by the Sioux. It was the west of the buffalo hunter, the sod house and the free range.
Kansas and earth science could not have been the site of a more striking worldly phenomenon than these two births of 1885 and 1886. It was a little like the Nemaha Ridge rising 15,000 feet in elevation to form twin peaks.
Wallace Pratt's father, vlilliam Henry Pratt, served with the 103rd New York Volunteers in the Civil War. Wounded and discharged in 1864, he was twenty years old at the time, he returned to his home in Westchester County, New York. Some years later, William Henry married a New York girl. His wife died giving birth to Jessie Pratt. Mr. Pratt and his infant daughter went west to Kansas City and joined a wagon train headed for the state of Oregon. When the wagon train arrived at what was destined to become Phillipsburg, everything looked so green, the settlers were tempted to go no farther. It was a beautiful country with streams full of fish and abounding in beaver. The whole wagon train agreed to settle right there instead of going to Oregon. Thus the town of Phillipsburg came into being. The first building contructed was a blockhouse. Within a year of its erection the white settlers gathered hastily inside. The Indians were on the loose, killing and burning. - William Henry Pratt commanded the garrison that fought off wave after wave of at tacking red-skins The blockhouse held, the Indians were beaten off with heavy losses. They took their departure, never to return.
Mr. Bosteller was the wagon master. William Henry Pratt and the Bostellers had adjoining homesteads, three miles from Phillipsburg. Mr. and Mrs. Bostellers had a pretty daughter and since she had just turned 18, Olive Bell Bosteller homesteaded 160 acres just like the other settiers. Olive Bell had gouwn fond of little Jessie Pratt while the wagon train was making its slow journey from Kansas City to Phillipsburg. From her adjoining farmhouse she continued to look out for little Jessie. By 1873 she had married William Henry Pratt and was soon engaged in taking care of a rapidly growing family.
Ten children were born to this marriage. Of the first five children, Charles, Effie, Frank, Pearl and Henry; all hut one, Frank, died in infancy.Of the last five children, Wallace, John, Benjamin, Marie and Eugenia, all are now living, the last three in the state of California. Frank was much older than the other surviving children and his growing up and going away to school happened when they were small. Wallace was closer to Frank in age than the others. A friendship grew up between them. Frank was a most unusual person and was destined to exert a profound influence on Wallace.
When Olive Bell Bosteller Pratt added her 160 acre homestead to her husband's 160 acres, the Pratt farm had grown to half a section, 320 acres. William Henry Pratt turned from farming and took up the practice of law. He studied hard in the office of a Phillipsburg attorney. He soon was able to pass the bar examination and set up his own law practice. In 1877 the Pratt family moved from the farm to a residence inside Phillipsburg. William Henry Pratt, three years later, ran for District Judge and was elected.
Mr. Pratt held court in each county four times a year. Since his district comprised ten counties he rode a lot of circuit from 1880 to 1886. Little wonder he was willing to settle down to private practice for the twenty year period from 1886 to 1906. In 1906 he again ran for District Judge and rode circuit again until 1910, at which time he returned to private practice for good. Wallace Pratt knew gentility, at least insofar as a frontier town could afford gentility. When Wallace Everette Pratt was born in 1885, his father was a weIl known attorney and a highly respected judge.
The De Golyers were also Kansas homesteaders. John William De Golyer and his wife, Narcissa Kagy Huddle De Golyer, moved from Illinois to a farm near Greensburg, Kansas, in 1885. John William De Golyer built a sod hut on the farm and in this sod house Everette Lee was born in 1886. He was the eldest of three children. Before Everette was a year old a tornado hit the house and demolished half the roof, although the portion of the dwelling where the mother and baby were huddled was not harmed.
Two years later when it appeared that the continuing drought would never come to an end, the De Golyer family put their meager belongings into a wagon and started east for Missouri. Everette Lee was in the habit of being rocked to sleep each night. Every evening the rocking chair was unstrapped from the wagon and mother and baby rocked away under the stars.
John William De Golyer headed for the lead and zinc mining district in the southwest corner of Missouri. The lead-zinc area is actually in three states, extending into the southeast corner of Kansas and the northeast corner of Oklahoma Territory. John De Golyer's interest in solid minerals may have been the beginning of young Everette De Golyer's enthusiasm for liquid minerals. John roamed the hills between Joplin, Missouri and Miami, Oklahoma, in search of a big zinc-lead strike. Mining and amateur geology were a hobby with John De Golyer. The De Golyer bread was made and earned in the family mill, which ground grains for the local farmers. The mill was situated on the banks of a stream in a rustic village not many miles from Joplin. The mill pond supplied the water power for running the mill and it also served as the 'oIe swimming hole' for Everette and his friends during the hot summer months. Not long after the family had settled in Missouri, Everette had a baby sister, Edith. When Everette was old enough he sometimes accompanied his father on his tramps through the hills and valleys . looking for indications in the outcrops that lead and zinc were underground. In 1892, second son, Homer L. De Golyer, was born.
In the middle of the l890s, John moved the De Golyer family to Joplin and opened "The German Restaurant" in partnership with a Mr. Henry J. Doll. Everette attended the last years in grammar school in Joplin. He was enrolled as a Freshman in Joplin High School during the school year 1900-1901. In 1901 the Kiova-Comanche lands in Oklahoma were divided by lottery. John De Golyer bid for and received an allotment near the town of Hobart, Oklahoma, He moved his family to this farm and was somewhat more successfull with his second venture into agriculture.
Everette Lee De Golyer and his mother were very close. She was a right cheerful and courageous woman of strong character. Hobart had no high school and Mrs. De Golyer encouraged Everette to journey to Oklahoma city so that he could continue his education. Young De Golyer spent the next two years getting a year of education in Central High School of Oklahoma city. He went to school three hours a day and then spent twelve hours a day working in a restaurant as a general helper. His salary was a dollar a day, most of which went into a fund for his further education.
Everette acquired two staunch friends in Oklahoma City; one was Jack xxxxon and the other a Mr. Vought. Vought was Superintendent of Schools. He encuraged the boy in his struggle for an education against considerable xxxx. Vought gave Everette his first book, a most prized possession. In one of their talks, Mr. Vought discovered that De Golyer had some interest in minng so he took Everette to Norman and prevailed upon Charles Newton Gould to give the boy a job dusting off specimens on the shelves of the geological department and in performing other janitorial duties.
Everette De Golyer spent the next two school years, 1903-1904 and 1904-1905 attending the University Preparatory School in Norman. He entered the University as a Freshman in the fall of 1905; was elected President of his class and joined a fraternity, Kappa Alpha. Everette's mother sent him some funds from Hobart but for the most xxxx his college education was financed by his savings from the restaurant job in Oklahoma City and from what he earned from his clean-up job for the Geology Department in Norman. To augment his income "De" spent his summer vacations working for the United States Geological Survey.
Meanwhile, back at the Jayhawker Corral, Wallace Everette Pratt was finding life in Lawrence at the University of Kansas difficult, yet infinite by rewarding. In exchange for his bed and board, Wallace served as night clerk in the Eldridge House. In the daytime he attended class at the Univerlty of Kansas. After finishing high school Pratt had laid out of school for two years. How he happened to arrive in Lawrence is quite a narrative. We will have to go back a few years to pick up the thread of our story.
Phillipsburg was situated on the North Fork of the Solomon River. There, was good reason for building a town near a creek or river. This was wheat country. To grind the wheat a mill was needed. To run a milI, water power was the universal answer. Phillipsburg was such an up and coming community, it had two mills, the stone mill and the frame mille. Peter Hanson ran the tone mille. His son, George Hanson, was in Wallace's graduating class in high school. George, Wallace and their friends used the Hanson mill pond for their swimming hole. The Rock Island Lines from Topeka to Denver ran through Phillipsburg, which became a division point on the railroad. The railroad yards and the round house had a fascination for the boys of the town, especially Wallace, who when he finished high school had given some consideration to applying for a job at the round house.
When Wallace was thirteen years old, he fell gravely ill of rheumatic fever. His joints would swell and as the fever mounted higher and higher, he would become incoherent and babbling in his speech. In the hope that a change of scene and air might speed his recovery, Wallace was sent to stay with his half-sister, Jessie, who was now Mrs. Ethridge. Jessie lived in McCook, Redwillow County, Nebraska, some 75 miles to the northwest. The Ethridges were very kind to the boy and in time his rheumatic fever attacks ceased. Wallace enjoyed his visit which lasted from September to the following June. Jessie was a graduate of the Emporia Kansas State Normal College. She had taught Wallace his ABCs when he was small and was particularly attached to him. Jessie was the best of housekeepers and the whole Ethridge establishment ran on a business-like schedule. Wallace did the dishes, mowed the lawn and helped with the sweeping. Sometimes he cared for little Marian the Ethridge baby.
Back home in June, how happy he was to be once more with his parents and his little brothers and sisters. The joy of home-coming was short lived. Wallace had appreciated the ship-shape Ethridge household; by contrast his own home appeared rather disorganized. Wallace was experiencing a certain uneasiness and a vague rebellion. He did some fishing in the Solomon River but more often than not he simply wandered along the riverbank deep in thought. On the far bank of the Solomon River there rose precipitous Cretaceous outcrops. These ramparts were known locally as Twin Mounds and Blue Rock. These were a source of wonder for Wallace. Young Pratt communed with Nature and he communed with God; to his sensitive mind the two were one and the same. What manner of boy was this, who could formulate his own religious beliefs at such a tender age? Many years later he was to give expression to his nature beliefs in his beautiful "Sermons in Stone.“
During childhood, Wallace had attended the Baptist Sunday School. When he returned to Phillipsburg from McCook, he was a lad of fourteen and deemed by his family to be ready to go to church. Fire and brimstone were not for him. Mrs. Pratt talked to Wallace about becoming a member of the church. He listened politely but made no move to attend, much less to join the church. Wallace Pratt was a little in awe of his male parent. He called him Father never Dad. When Mr. Pratt was enlisted to bring orthodox religion to Wallace's life, he delivered a lang lecture to the boy. Wallace tried to explain to his father the tenets of his own religious beliefs. Seeing the amazed look in his parent's face, Wallace quit talking. The subject of religion was allowed to drop; there was no meeting of minds.
Graduation from high school came at last; it was May of 1901. Phillipsburg had reported a population of 1500 the year before. Wallace followed the wheat harvest that summer and saved a good deal of the two dollars a day he was paid for the back breaking labor. He returned to Phillipsburg in September, brown with health and tough of muscIe. Was this the same sickly lad of only a few years back?
William Henry Pratt had another serious talk with his son, this time about economics. His father wanted to know what Wallace wanted to make of himself in life and Wallace replied truthfully that he had no idea what he wanted to do. Somewhat irritated by this shiftless attitude, Mr. Pratt reminded Wallace:
"With younger children coming on, we cannot take care of young men, and you are now a man.“
Wallace was 16 when he went to work in his father's law office. His first law book was Blackstone. His father told him that as soon as he had read Blackstone from cover to cover, he would give him five dollars. Wallace started to read with alacrity, for he wanted that five dollars. The pace slowed in a few days and soon he was crawling along in the book. Reward or no reward, he simply could not finish Blackstone and shortly thereafter gave up all pretence of reading law. There followed another heart-to-heart talk between father and son. Mr. Pratt was beginning to despair of his son ever amounting to anything.
"Does any work appeal to you?“
"Why yes, I would like to do mechanical work at the railroad roundhouse.“
Mr. Pratt seemed to think that work at the roundhouse was too dangerous, so Wallace set to work learning the skills of a legal secretary. He became rather good at shorthand and other stenographic work. Before long he was out of the law office and doing stenographic work in the bank which was on the first floor under the Pratt law office.
Brother Frank was nine years older than Wallace. Frank always seemed to know what he wanted out of life and how to go about getting it. He had worked in a canning factory to earn enough money to go to the state university. He went to Lawrence in 1895 and by 1899 had finished an A. B. Frank obtained his LLB from the University of Kansas in 1901. You would think this would be enough education for one young man. A good many years later, Frank decided he wanted to be a physician. Before long he had his M. D. degree and made a wonderful doctor. Frank could do anything, he was a super salesman. A few months after graduation from law school, Frank was making $6,000 a year selling materials to western newspapers. His head office was Boston and his ployer the Western Newspaper Alliance.
In 1903, Frank arrived in Phillipsburg driving a four wheel buggy with rubber tires, pulled by a fine horse. To Wallace this rig looked awesomely beautiful alongside the family two wheel cart. Frank and Wallace had a talk. Frank asked him what he was doing in Phillipsburg.
"Wasting my time."
"Why do you not go to college?"
"With what?"
"You can work your way through. I will give you a small amount of money and ship you enough of my old clothes to get you going.“
At last there appeared a goal in life. Wallace worked through the harvest again that summer. In September of 1903, he caught a train for Lawrence and the University of Kansas. After he had purchased his ticket he had $140.00. He was going to learn to be some kind of a scientist. He was going to be successful and he was going to ride in his own four wheeled buggy with rubber tires, by golly!