Sketches in Crude-oil: Some accidents and incidents of the petroleum development in all parts of the globeMcLaurin, John J. (John James)
History
Sketches in Crude-oil: Some accidents and incidents of the petroleum development in all parts of the globe
McLaurin, John J. (John James)
Petroleum -- History; Petroleum industry and trade -- North America -- History
Hon. Charles Miller, president of the Galena Oil-Works, and Hon. Joseph
C. Sibley, president of the Signal Oil-Works, are brothers-in-law and
proprietors of the great stock-farms of Miller & Sibley. Mr. Miller is
of Huguenot ancestry, born in Alsace, France, in 1843. The family came
to this country in 1854, settling on a farm near Boston, Erie county,
New York. At thirteen Charles clerked one year in the village-store for
thirty-five dollars and board. He clerked in Buffalo at seventeen for
one-hundred-and-seventy-five dollars, without board. In 1861 he enlisted
in the New-York National Guard. In 1863 he was mustered into the United
States service and married at Springville, N. Y., to Miss Ann Adelaide
Sibley, eldest child of Dr. Joseph C. Sibley. In 1864 he commenced
business for himself, in the store in which he had first clerked, with
his own savings of two-hundred dollars and a loan of two-thousand from
Dr. Sibley. In 1866 he sold the store and removed to Franklin. Forming a
partnership with John Coon of Buffalo, the firm carried on a large
dry-goods house until 1869, when a patent for lubricating oil and a
refinery were purchased and the store was closed out at heavy loss. The
refinery burned down the next year, new partners were taken in and in
1878 the business was organized in its present form as “The Galena
Oil-Works, Limited.” The entire management was given Mr. Miller, who had
built up an immense trade and retained his interest in the works. He
deals directly with consumers. Since 1870 his business-trips have
averaged five days a week and fifty-thousand miles a year of travel. No
man has a wider acquaintance and more personal friends among
railroad-officials. His journeys cover the United States and Mexico.
Wherever he may be, in New Orleans or San Francisco, on the train or in
the hotel, conferring with a Vanderbilt or the humblest manager of an
obscure road, receiving huge orders or aiding a deserving cause, he is
always the same genial, magnetic, generous exemplar of practical belief
in “the universal fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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