Los
Angeles County
Biographies
EDWARD LAURENCE DOHENY
Numbered among the largest producers
of petroleum in this country, Edward Laurence Doheny may well be termed one of
America’s “captains of industry,” for he belongs to that class of men who are
capable of controlling the forces of trade and commerce and directing them for
the benefit of the majority. He drilled
the first oil well in Los Angeles and has been one of the greatest individual
forces in the city’s upbuilding and prosperity.
For years a mining prospector and operator, he aided in the “winning of
the west” and has had many interesting and thrilling experiences foreign to the
lives of most men.
Mr. Doheny was born in Fond du Lac,
Wisconsin, August 10, 1856, a son of Patrick and Eleanor Elizabeth (Quigley)
Doheny, and is of Irish lineage. His
youthful environment was conducive to the development of a strong character,
for he was reared in a home equally removed from extreme poverty and from the
luxury of wealth, and attributes much of his success to the beneficial
influence which his mother exerted upon his life. He obtained his early education in his native
city, proving an apt pupil, for he was graduated from the Fond du Lac high school
at the age of fifteen. Mental arithmetic
was his favorite subject. Graduated from
high school in 1872, he almost immediately began a life of adventure and
strenuous outdoor activity. He spent so
many years in the open that he found it difficult to adapt himself to the
conventional steam heat and soft beds of modern civilization.
Joining a surveying party in 1872,
he went to Wichita, Kansas, to assist in surveying government land, and in 1873
had an interesting experience among the blanket Indians of what is now western
Oklahoma while aiding in subdividing the Kiowa and Comanche reservations. In 1874 he began prospecting and in 1876
joined an expedition to the mining district of the Black Hills. The federal government dispersed the party
and drove them out of the Indian Reservation.
Mr. Doheny was also frustrated in his next venture, an attempt to find a
fortune in the mining district of the San Juan country in southwestern
Colorado. From Silverton, Colorado, he
and his associates wandered into the southwest, arriving in Prescott, Arizona,
and during the next fourteen years he held his own among the keen and
resourceful gold prospectors in Arizona and New Mexico. He discovered and assisted in developing some
of the most promising claims in those two southwestern territories. Like Kipling’s character in “The Pioneer,”
his desire and vision were always “over the passes,” and once the interest of
discovery and newness wore off, the rewards of fortune held no charm to detain
him. It is said that several times he
was within reach of considerable wealth when he sold his claims and resumed the
more interesting role of prospector.
Mr. Doheny was one of the founders
of Kingston, New Mexico. During the ‘70s
and ‘80s he was always in contact with the raw and elemental factors of the
southwestern country. He fought Indians,
as well as wild animals, and accepted danger daily as a commonplace of his
work. In one encounter his hand was
mangled by a mountain lion. Due to a
fall in a mine, his legs were broken and while recuperating he applied himself
to the study of law. Readily mastering
the principles of jurisprudence, he qualified for practice in the territory of
New Mexico at the end of six months and opened an office in Silver City. For a year or so he contented himself with
the routine of a practicing attorney. By
similar study he also became conversant with the sciences of geology and
metallurgy, acquiring a knowledge surpassing that of many graduates of
technical colleges.
Among his friends Mr. Doheny is
widely known as an exemplar of the simple life.
He yielded nothing to his partners in willingness to accept hardship and
danger, but was free from practically all the vices possessed by many
westerners of the early days, and has never used alcoholic liquor or
tobacco. One of his prominent
associates, both in New Mexico and also in his early days in California, was C.
A. Canfield. They tried to develop a
gold mining claim in San Bernardino County, California, but finally abandoned
it.
In 1890 Mr. Doheny located in Los
Angeles, first becoming a prospector for oil and later a producer of that
commodity. A few years ago he told the
story of the first well drilled in this oil field. In 1892 he and his fellow prospector observed
certain signs which convinced them of the presence of oil sand within the city
limits of Los Angeles. They had a
limited capital and practically no experience in oil well operations. Buying a small lot at the corner of West
State and Cotton streets, instead of a well, they began sinking a shaft in
November, 1892. They had laboriously
excavated to a depth of about fifty feet when they struck a small pocket of oil
and gas, and were nearly asphyxiated before they could reach the surface. They continued the slow process, but
eventually took into consideration the danger they ran and also procured better
machinery. At length the well was sunk
to a depth of six hundred feet and yielded forty-five barrels a day. That was the pioneer operation in the Los
Angeles oil field and the success of the venture attracted thousands to the
district. Even after becoming an oil
producer, Mr. Doheny’s career was not without
vicissitudes. In 1896, at the age of
forty, he was still a poor man. Then followed the development of the Fullerton oil district of California,
and later his operations in the Bakersfield district. From California he turned his attention to
Mexico and with his associates bought several thousand acres of land in the
vicinity of Tampico, near the gulf coast.
In 1900 they organized the Mexican Petroleum Company, which sunk the
wells and started the development that has made the Mexican petroleum field
probably the greatest in the world. Mr.
Doheny was elected president of the Mexican Petroleum Company, Limited, also
becoming the executive head of the Pan-American Petroleum and Transport
Company, owning the extensive pipelines and a large fleet of tank steamers,
through which, during the World War, a large part of the fuel oil used by the
British and allied navies was supplied, the Huasteca Petroleum Company and the
Petroleum Transport Company. Wisely,
able and successfully administering the affairs of these large corporations, he
became a dominant figure in the development of the oil industry and although
seventy-six years of age, is still actively engaged in the petroleum business
as a producer. In July, 1917, he was
named a member of the first committee on oil of the Council of National Defense
and in that capacity rendered valuable service to the nation at a most critical
time in its history.
On August 22, 1900, Mr. Doheny was
married in Los Angeles to Miss Carrie Estelle Betzold,
a native of Marshalltown, Iowa, whose sketch is published elsewhere in this
work. She is his second wife, his first
wife having died. His son, Edward
Laurence Doheny, Jr., was born in Los Angeles, November 6, 1893, and after
attending the Norwood Street grammar school and St. Vincent’s College was a
student at the University of Southern California, which awarded him the
Bachelor of Arts degree in 1916. As an
apprentice seaman he joined the Naval Militia in November, 1916, and in
January, 1917, was commissioned a lieutenant.
Assigned to duty on the cruiser Huntington, he was soon afterward
transferred to the office of the judge advocate general in Washington, D. C.,
and in September, 1918, received orders from Rear Admiral Philip A. Andrews to
report to Cardiff, Wales, but illness prevented his sailing. Upon recovery he was sent to the submarine
base at San Pedro, in Los Angeles Harbor, and was relieved of active duty on
January 24, 1919. On resuming the status
of a civilian he joined his father in the oil business, an association that was
continued until the son’s death on February 16, 1929. He served as a director and treasurer of the
following corporations: The Pan-American
Petroleum and Transport Company, the Mexican Petroleum Company, Limited, the
Mexican Petroleum Corporation of Louisiana, the Mexican Petroleum Corporation
and the Huasteca Petroleum Company. Socially he was well known as a member of the
Los Angeles, University, California, Los Angeles Athletic and Los Angeles
Country Clubs. On June 10, 1914, he was
married in Los Angeles to Miss Lucy Smith, a granddaughter of C. W. Smith, who
was one of the first vice presidents of the Santa Fe Railroad Company, and they
became the parents of five children:
Edward Laurence III, Lucy Estelle, William Henry, Patrick Anson and
Timothy Michael.
A Catholic in religious belief, Mr.
Doheny worships in St. Vincent’s Church of Los Angeles, and his political
support is given to the Republican Party.
He is a knight of the Grand Cross of the Equestrian Order of the Holy
Sepulcher and an Elk, identified with Los Angeles Lodge, No. 99. His name also appears on the membership rolls
of the Los Angeles Country, Los Angeles Athletic, Jonathan and California
Clubs, all of Los Angeles, and the Bohemian Club of San Francisco.
Transcribed by
V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: California of the South
Vol. IV, by John Steven McGroarty, Pages 431-435, Clarke Publ.,
Chicago, Los Angeles, Indianapolis. 1933.
© 2012 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
GOLDEN NUGGET'S
LOS ANGELES BIOGRAPHIES