Oil Field Camp Wives and Mothers
Grace Dobler of Greenwood County conducted interviews in 1981 with three women that lived in oil camps in Greenwood County. The following are highlights from those interviews. The three women interviewed were Verna Beeman, Essie Dunham and Alice Long.
The discovery of oil in the United State started in the 1850s in Pennsylvania and gradually spread westward until it came to Kansas. The first well in Kansas was drilled in 1860 in Miami County, but it was not until 1892 that the first producing well was drilled near Neodesha. When oil was discovered in Greenwood County oil companies leased land and provided housing on the leases for their workers in small settlements that oil field people called “camps.” These camps were important to those whose daily lives were related to the oil fields, for the camp’s cluster of company houses was home.
Oil field camps were not platted like regular towns. They were temporary and located on oil company leases of privately owned farm or pasture land. Five to fifteen houses usually made up a camp, with some camps having bunk and boarding houses for men without families. The Seeley camp located southwest of Madison, however, was large, having at one time sixty to seventy-five houses.
The typical company house was rather flimsy because it was not built for a permanent site. The walls were of single construction, rooms were arranged in a row, one after another from front to back, and outside and inside doors were centrally located. The name “shotgun” houses were given to these houses, as legend has it, someone said you could fire a shotgun in the front door and the shot would come out the back door.
Camps were usually ten or more miles from the nearest town. However, most settlements had a grocery store, and larger camps often had two besides other places of business. There was a schoolhouse in or near each camp, and usually a post office.
Through the work and conditions of oil field life, oil field people, as a group, were distinctive as were those of other occupational backgrounds. Oil field workers, roust-abouts, tool dresser, drillers, teamsters and pumpers, laboring in the oil fields in dirty, greasy, and often dangerous conditions, required many of the same admirable physical characteristics as the cowboy. Working in the oil field took strength, stamina and a toughness of mind and nerve. The wives, mothers, and daughters of these men needed matching qualities of fortitude, and they had it.
As a lot, the workers were generally considered by others as “tough,” in a derogatory sense. Alongside the tough element-the loudmouths, brawlers, and general troublemakers -were the dependable men who were responsible employees and good husbands and fathers. It was not uncommon to find boys of fifteen or sixteen years of age supporting themselves and some were likely to help financially pressed parents support the family.
The pumper, one who operated and maintained pumping units for transferring oil to storage tanks, usually lived outside the main camp. He earned a higher wage than the roustabout who worked on drilling rigs, and oil companies sometimes provided the pumper and his family with larger living quarters, perhaps a house of four or five rooms. An oil field wife had reason to be pleased and a little proud if her husband got to be a pumper. An employee in that position was likely to be a settled and dependable family man: in Greenwood County oil fields, a pumper and wife were often natives of the Greenwood and Butler County areas.
From the earliest oil boom years-beginning in 1915oil field communities were pretty much self-contained. Mostly isolated and in the early years lacking ready transportation, residents had to keep close to their camps and depended upon neighbors and friends for social life and help in emergencies.
Not every family owned a car in those first years, and when automobiles did become the usual mode of travel, breakdowns, flat tires, and bad roads had to be overcome. In wet weather, mud could be hub deep, with flooding and washouts.
During the winter months, heavy snows made the roads impassable, sometimes for days. Hot, droughty days of summer meant sweltering in the heat as one bumped along on washboard, dust-fogged roads. Going “to town” was not a casual undertaking if town was some distance. These same conditions were faced by the farming and ranching families living in Greenwood County.
