| THE HISTORY OF GEOPHYSICAL PROSPECTING |    |
| PART TEN - MARLAND AND MINTROP | |
Ernest Whitworth Marland was born May 8, 1874 and died October 3, 1941. Few lifetimes have been so crowded with excitement and adventure, with ups and downs, with pride and fear, with praise and ridicule, with enormous wealth balanced against a period when Marland walked to work to save carfare.
The beginnings were quiet enough. He was the third child of Alfred and Sara Marland. His father owned a working estate of some size at South Hills, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. At South Hills Alfred Marland built a twelve room house on top of a hilI called Mount Washington. The Marland residence became known as Mount Washington. The eIder Marland had made money in iron smelting and served in the state legislature before settling down to managing his estate. Mount Washington contained a sizable library and the three children, Ignatia, Charlotte and Ernest, found the novels of Dickens and Scott to their liking. This early reading may have prompted Ernest's far reching sympathy for those of his fellow men less fortunate than himself. Few industrialists were to do as much for their employees as did Marland.
Ernest Marland studied at two private schools, Arnold School and Park Institute. From there he went to the University of Michigan, receiving his law degree in June of 1893. After joining Sigma Chi at Ann Arbor, his chief diversion seems to have been drinking beer and playing poker. Poker was to remain one of the delights of his life; all-night poker games breaking up in the cool hours of early dawning were a frequent indulgence until the days of the Great Depression.
For the first two years out of law school, young Ernest divided his time between the practice of law and the promotion of various coal mines in the Ptttsburgh area. He was moderately successful at both. Always popular with young women, Marland waited until he was almost thirty to select a mate. On November 5, 1903, he was married to Mary Virginia Collins, a belle of Philadelphia.
Oil was Marland's game. From Pennsylvania coal he turned to West Virginia oil and it was the latter that was to make him a million dollars by 1907. The E. W. Marland and Company weIl on the Brenneman farm opened up the Congo oilfield in the autumn of 1906. In 1907 he struck a sizable gas reserve near the Ohio line and proceeded to make a contract with East Liverpool, Ohio, to supply that city with gas. Then came the Panic of 1907; credit dried up; the banks were not making loans on good oil properties or good gas properties; they were not making loans on much of anything. Marland was caught with $150,000 of unpaid bills on his desk. Creditors took the producing properties and they took almost everything else that Marland owned.
Ernest and Virginia lost the fine horne they had just bought and furnished in the Squirrel HilI section of Pittsburgh. Moving the furniture into storage, they took up residence on a small farm for a time, but later managed to return to Pittsburgh and a rented house. Sam Collins, his brother-in-law, moved in with the Marlands and helped pay the rent. Ernest and Sam walked to downtown Pittsburgh to save carfare. The fine horses and specially made carriages that had graced the prosperity of Squirrel HilI living, had also gone to pay debts. During this trying period E. W. did not have a nickel, yet he dressed weIl and kept up a prosperous appearance while hoping for an opportunity to get back into the oil business. Marland's friends advanced him the money to live on. If opportunity would not smile again in Pennsylvania, Marland finally decided to look to new territory for a chance to prosper.
Lieutenant Franklin Rockefeller Kenny, Marland's nephew, was stationed at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Kenny had struck up a friendship with George Miller and had visited periodically on the famous Miller Brothers' 101 Ranch, near Ponca City, in northern Oklahoma. Kenny wrote to his uncle that the Millers would lease certain of their lands for oil exploration, if E. W. Marland would come west and drill.
The first weIl loccation, staked near the "White House" as the ranch headquarters buildings were called, tested dry in February of 1909. The next seven wells struck gas but in no great volume. How Marland raised the money to meet the driller's payroll and the other expenses still remains a mystery. He borrowed money from one friend for his train fare. Later he hit up the same friend for an additional thousand dollars to pay off the drilling crew only to lose this fund in a poker game. McCaskey and Wentz put up a considerable portion of the early costs. Lew Wentz had come west with Marland from Pittsburgh and remained a partner in the Marland enterprises until 1920, when he split off to form his own oil company. The largest financial contributor was W. H. McFadden, a retired Carnegie Steel Company executive who had quit Pittsburgh and gone to Hot Springs, Arkansas, for his health. E. W. Marland and George Miller went to Hot Springs to talk McFadden into joining their quest for petroleum. They succeeded in their endeavor to everyone's benefit. Participation in the oil game perked up McFadden, who had been sent to Arkansas by his doctors to die. He completely regained his health.
Marland thought it was high time to move to another part of the area to test. He decided that he would use his practical knowledge of geology to make the best selection possible. He studied the region and decided that an elongated and isolated hilI near Bodark Creek offered the most promise; he thought the uplift was a geologieal high as weIl as a topographie high. He told George Miller that he would like to drill his next weIl on this hilI. George Miller shook his head dubiously about the new location; it appeared that the white man was faced with an ethnic problem with his red brother. Not only did the Ponca tribe of Indians have rights to this land but the crest of this very hilI contained the bodies of their dead warriors. The Ponca, like the Osage, had never buried their dead. The Ponca had bound their dead and laid them upon scaffolds, and these scaffolds occupied the high point of the hilI. Marland and the Millers went into conference with white Eagle, Chief of the Ponca, and emerged with permission to drill just down the slope from the crest of the hilI, toward Bodark Creek, away from the sacred ground occupied by the Poncan dead.
The weIl site near this last red resting plaee struck oil for the first paying weIl in the Ponca field. The rise of E. W. Marland and the Marland Refining Company was spectacular from this 1910 date. In 1925 there was a deal pending under which the Marland oil and gas interests would have been taken over by the Shell Oil Company for $59,000,000. Had Marland himself been running the Marland Oil Companies at this time, the deal might have been consummated but J. P. Morgan and Company was by that date in the driver's seat and the Morgans had no intention of selling the vast Marland Petroleum Empire to anyone.
The rise of the Marland Oil Companies to be the largest independent oil concern in the world will be related in a subsequent chapter as will be the many firsts in the petroleum industry that Marland's imagination and Marland's insight were to record. These firsts included priorities in both geology and geophysics. How Marland gradually was relieved of the leadership of his own company is a chapter in finance weIl worth the telling. If a good word is to be said for the venture of the bankers of the House of Morgan into the Marland oil kingdom, it is this: the 1929 Depression would have wiped out the financial dynasty of Marland, anyway. Morgan just hurried the job along. The factors which doomed Marland never to be in a position to weather a depression were threefold. First, he was generous in the extreme with friends, employees and the requests of countless charities. Second, he was the perpetual promoter; his schemes, some of them brilliant and some of them hair-brained, had to be carried out regardless of the cost and regardless of the financial climate. Third, he had no notion of how to curb outgo to conform to income.
In the era of World War One, when Marland was still several years away from his first major oilfield, Father Kemp of the Ponca City Catholic Church came into Marland's office and reminded E. W. of his promise to subscribe $10,000 to the building fund, when Kemp was ready to build a new church. Kemp told Marland that he had come to get the check. Marland excused himself and went to the office of his treasurer, Frank Lucas, and told him to draw up this check for $10,000, payable to the Catholic Church.
"We don't have $10,000 in the bank," said Mr. Lucas.
"Make it out anyway and I will have another session with Mr. Meek," came back Marland, referring to Mr. Marland's banker, with whom a loan of $10,000 had to be negotiated in order to make good the charity check.
After Marland did find his first major oilfield, in 1920, he waited only a year to purchase Mr. Edward Stotesbury's yacht, "The Georgina ll," which E. W. rechristened the "Whitemarsh." In the late 1920s, he sold this yacht for a song. In the interim it had served as a travel and entertainment base for a number of lucrative oil deals with Mexican and South American officials. In 1921, he docked the ship in Louisville for the Kentucky Derby, then dropped leisurely down the Mississippi to Memphis and New Orleans. The Menphis Commercial Appeal described the "Whitemarsh" as "the most magnificent floating home that has ever been seen in the local port.“
If the "Whitemarsh" was as much a necessity as a luxury, few other of the Marland extravagances could be so classified. The trip to the Kentucky Derby demonstrated a genuine and long standing interest of E. W. in horses and hunting. An Anglophile, proud of his ancestors from various localities in the British Isles, he liked sojourns in London and when he could afford it, he took up the transportation of English manners and pastimes to northern Oklahoma. He imported hunters from England and Ireland. He employed a Master of Hounds, Major Donald Henderson, to establish hunting in Kay County. Henderson growled that Oklahoma was not meant for fox hunting but that did not deter Mr. Marland. What neither of them realized was that the coyotes of Kay and Osage Counties had warned the foxes to leave and would not allow them to encroach on their domain.
When the field assembled for the first fox hunt, the red coats looked incongruous against the savage prairie of the Osage and the Ponca. The fox was let out of the fox car and the hounds were soon in hot pursuit, followed by the riders, bounding over the fences like veterans and sometimes outriding the hounds, much to Major Henderson's consternation. Then the hounds doubled back and were found baying at the fox car. There in the front seat was Mr. fox, blinking contentedly. He had circled back rather than to have his life endangered by meeting up with a coyote.
Marland had a large game preserve with a high fence to protect his pheasants, swans, geese, mallards and peacocks. He liked the setting so much that in time he decided to build a gray English manor house within the game xxxx, It was bigger and more ornate than the large house on Grand Avenue. E. W. hired an expert Japanese gardener named Hatashita to oversee the planting of exquisite flowers anq shrubs from far-away lands. His philantropies made Ponca City into a blessed community. He gave $100,000 to build a building which was used to house both the American Legion Post and the Alfred Marland Masonic Blue Lodge. After E. W.'s mother died, his father Alfred came to Ponca City to live.
Ernest Marland built a hospital for Ponca City. He paid for the construction of the high school athletic field, grandstand and clubhouse. He made large donations to nearly every church in town. He was the founder of the American Legion's Orphans Home. Always interested in young people, he provided clubhauses for the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, YMCA and YWCA. He xxxx the list of subscribers to build a student union and a stadium at the University of Oklahoma.
Naturally Marland had his own railroad car. Everybody who was anybody in the first three decades of the twentieth century had to have a private railway car. No doubt the Marland Polo Team was E. W.'s most expensive whim. Expert polo players became oil executives overnight. Vice Presidents were more than plentiful in the Marland organizations, while plush salaries were the rule, not the exception. His polo team could play any team in the country wth distinction and they won most of their games.
Ernest and Virginia Marland had no children of their own. In 1912 they brought two orphan children from Pennsylvania to live with them, Lydie Roberts and her brother, George Roberts. In 1916, the Marlands formally adopted the two children as their own. Virginia Collins Marland died in 1926, after a long illness. According to rumor, her husband gave her little empathy. Still darker rumors hinted that she had played a tragic role over and above her illness during the last years in the big house on Grand Avenue. In 1928 the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia changed the legal status of Lydie Roberts Marland back to Lydie Roberts. In July, 1928, Ernest Marland and Lydie Roberts were married at Flourtown, Pennsylvania. The English manor house in the game preserve in Ponca City, a regular palace, was finished and waiting for the newly wedded couple. The new home was furnished with expensive furniture and rare works of art.
Marland commissioned three sculptors to work on various projects for the new home; Jo Davidson, Jo Mora and Bryant Baker. In 1929, one of E. W.’s staunchest friends, John Alcorn, made the suggestion that Marland commission to Davidson to create a monument of giant size to the Vanishing American, a Ponca, Otoe or an Osage. Ernest thought about the suggestion for a time and then exclaimed in a pontifical manner:
"The Indian is not the vanishing American, the vanishing American is the pioneer woman.“
Once this art-creation was underway, it had to proceed in the grandiose manner. By this time Marland could ill-afford such an expenditure. Nevertheless twelve models of the pioneer woman were sent throughout America and the people voted on which one they liked best. The total cost of this project was $200,000. The favorite statue was then transformed into larger-then-life by Jo Davidson.
The statue of the Pioneer Woman was unveiled and turned over to the state of Oklahoma on April 22, 1930. Governor W. J. Holloway declared the day a legal holiday. Resplendent in top hat and cutaway, Marland an the Governor made striking figures at the ceremony. The date was the 41st anniversary of the 1889 "Oklahoma Run" which marked the beginning of the Oklahoma Territory. Will Rogers had been brought from California to take part. Patriek Hurley, Secretary of War in the Hoover Cabinet, was scheduled to be the principal speaker but he could not make it. Ernest Marland winced as Will Rogers got up to speak in Hurley's place. Mariand believed in decorum and propriety. His worst fears were realized when Will Rogers started out by saying that he had "come all the way from California to undress a woman." Marland reddened but the crowd roared its approval, for they loved Will Rogers.
A year later the English manor house became the Marland Estate Inc., which was auctioned off to the highest bidder on August 11, 1931, to satisfy a Marland note that had fallen due. His old partner, W. H. McFadden, was the high bidder and McFadden turned the property back to Marland, so he and Lydie did not lose their home.
In the summer of 1932, Ernest Marland became a candidate for United States Congressman from the Eighth Congressional District. The Pennsylvania Republican had become an Oklahoma Democrat. Marland won the nomination and then bested the Republican candidate, Congressman M. C. Garber, of Enid. Ernie Marland's popularity in northern Oklahoma was considerable. This, combined with the fact that he was backing Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the presidency, assured his victory in November. Marland's record in Congress was excellent. His speeches in Washington were weIl received and generously applauded.
Marland was expected to use the Congressional forum to blast the Big Bankers and he did not disappoint his public:
"I have had intimate, personal contact with many of our smaller investment banking houses over the years, and finally with the banking house of J. P. Morgan and Company, which latter experience lasted over aperiod of five years and until I was forced by them out of control of the company I had spent my lifetime in building."
"The amendment I will offer to this bill is that hereafter it shall be unlawful for any person to act as a director of any corporation which is selling securities in interstate and foreign commerce who shall be a partner of or financially interested in any banking concern buying and selling the securities of such a corporation for profit.“
E. W. Marland decided not to run for reelection. Instead he became a candidate for Governor of the State of Oklahoma. After securing the nomination as the Democratie candidate, he had little difficulty in defeating ex-Senator William B. Pine. Marland was inaugurated on January 15, 1935. Soon thereafter he came out with a strong program to augment and fulfill his campaign pledge that "Poverty must be wiped out." The drastieally increased taxation program to implement this early war on poverty met with opposition from the taxpayers and from the business leaders. Marland obtained from the legislature only a small portion of what he had requested. He did, however, succeed in the establishment of the Interstate Oil Compact, a fine monument" to his memory.
Halfway through his term as Governor, Marland ran for the Senate, in 1936. The Democratic nomination went to Josh Lee, the Fifth District Congressman, instead of to Marland. Marland had nothing better to do than spend the full four years as Governor of Oklahoma. Again he ran for the Senate but this time he was turned back by the incumbent, Senator Elmer Thomas. Mariand relinquished the governor's chair to Leon C. Phillips on January 15, 1939, and retired to Ponca City. Retirement was not to his liking; Marland was restless and his health was declining. Before long he became gravely ill. He passed away in the fall of 1941.
The grey-stoned English mansion in Ponca City, that had cost Marland millions, was sold shortly before his death to the Carmelite Friars. Ernest and Lydie had moved to smaller quarters.
A few years after her husband's death, Lydie Marland vanished from Ponca City and went into seclusion somewhere. To this day, her friends in Tulsa say she is alive. The newspapers carried many columns about her life and disappearance. Repeated efforts to locate her whereabouts have been futile.