Oil Field Camp Wives and Mothers
Women who never learned to drive a car-and there were a number well into the 1940s- depended on their husbands, and neighbors for leaving camp. In emergencies, there might be offers to take a sick child or injured husband to the doctor, but having a way to town for matters like shopping for a new hat or going to the beauty shop could mean waiting patiently-or impatiently.
Oil field wives, mothers, and daughters “made do” in those oil field communities. The women met the challenges of loneliness, sickness, cramped housing, and hard work by having close family ties and forming sincere friendships. Where they found a need for social and cultural activities, they organized clubs or extended hospitality in their small homes.Friendsandrelatives met for such entertainment as card games, homemade ice cream, or musical entertainment.
Oil field camp women organized groups which included the PTA, Home Demonstration units, study clubs, and Sunday school classes. Oil field districts had especially good school systems because of added tax revenues from oil production within the district. Typical of rural districts, the schoolhouse also was the social and cultural center. Monthly community meetings, featuring local talent, and the school programs for Christmas were some of the main entertainments for most families outside their homes.
“Suppers” at the schoolhouse were social gatherings for visiting and eating with friends. Most districts had a yearly pie and box supper, which was held on a monthly community meeting night. Women of the neighborhood brought home baked pies, cakes, and most important, hand-decorated boxes filled with good food from their kitchens to be “auctioned off for a worthy cause” to bashful boys and wellinstructed husbands.
Men enjoyed fishing and horseshoe pitching, and they participated in baseball games on Sunday afternoons. Groups gathered for ice cream socials, and in some camps, dances were held. At Seeley, dances were held during the thirties in the Birtciel Garage, which also was the place for a big Halloween party when people came in costume and masquerade. In the mid-1930s, Seeley people organized and held a three-day fair with exhibits from the surrounding towns and farms.
In 1981, eight women who lived in the oil camps shared their memories. Three of those women’s recollections are shared in the article. They were still living in Greenwood County when the interviews took place.
Essie Dunham, living in Madison at the time of her interview, came to Greenwood County when her father gave up farming about 1920 and “got on” with Cities Service at the Seeley camp about eight miles southwest of Madison. Essie’s mother began running a boardinghouse in their home, and Essie helped prepare three meals a day, usually serving ten to twelve men. Essie explained that the men lived in the bunkhouse and there was no where else to have their meals. Seeley had a gasoline plant and bunkhouses and the women fixed them breakfast and they went to work. Twice a week Essie and mother drove to Madison for groceries and then came back to fix dinner and supper.
In 1925 Essie was married to Jim Dunham, a Cities Service employee she had come to know and they moved to Burkett, a camp six miles southwest of Seeley, where Dunham worked as a pumper. Essie remembers the Burkett camp house: “They were little gray houses and ours had just two little rooms- a bedroom and a kitchen, and we had to haul water. We had two little ones after a while and I had to wash on the board. It was a chore and I rubbed a blister on my thumb and had two red streaks that went to my shoulder, and thought I would die here leaving two little ones to take care of.” She went to the doctor and he told her she would have to keep her hands out of the water to get well. She could not do that with two little ones and washing diapers on the board.
Essie remembers one Christmas they thought they would go have their pictures taken- for their Christmas gifts. They still lived in the small house and on the day they went, it was cold and stormy and they had a good fire going. They burned the raw gas, and they had a range to heat the house. When they got back home from town and opened the door, the heat poured out. It was the hottest place. The gold fish were dead in the fish bowl. The eggs were cooked in the shell. The bed was too hot to go to bed in. What kept it from burning down, Essie never knew.
Her husband eventually built a little back porch and they moved the stove out there to give them a little more room. After a few more years they moved an old building up to the side of the house to make more room. They decided to keep a couple of school teachers. The teachers needed a place to stay and they were close to Burkett school. The teachers knew them and wanted to stay. Mr. Knox from Piedmont and a lady from Quincy stayed there. The lady teacher slept on the divan in the living room and Mr. Knox slept in the back room with her son. They had a lot of fun in the evenings. Friends and good neighbors came over and played cards and croquet. The Dunhams had a large croquet ground, lighted by gas torches for playing after dark or having outdoor parties. The family lived just outside the main part of Burkett camp which Essie described: “We lived on the north end of the camp and it was right across the road from the schoolhouse and just a half mile down the road was a grocery store. There was a camp there of about eight houses, and then there were maybe six houses between the camp and our place by the schooljust strung out.”
She remembers when the first Burkett school burned down: “One cold morning I think it was January 7. I had got up to get breakfast for the schoolteachers and get their lunch packed and looked out and saw the schoolhouse burning down.” The new schoolhouse, built of brick, was torn down in the early 1970s. It had not been used after school consolidation in the 1960s. At peak attendance during the 1930s and 1940s, there had been about thirty students in the two-room school.
