Uncle Lum

Columbus Marion ‘Dad’ Joiner

1860-1947

We Called Him ‘Uncle Lum’

Columbus Marion “Dad” Joiner, brother of John’s maternal grandmother, discovered the largest oil field in the world at that time (pre-Saudi Arabia) when against all odds he brought in a gusher in East Texas.

Sometime in the 1930s in the hardscrabble country of Western Oklahoma during the Great Depression, I began to hear my family talk about a fabled millionaire relative named “Uncle Lum.”

As I grew older I remember my mother, his niece, receiving a letter from Uncle Lum. He lived in Dallas and had made a fortune of undetermined size in the oil business. I seem to remember mom getting a letter saying he would be sending gifts but they never arrived. More likely it was just wishful thinking because we had so little and he allegedly had so much. But his supposed wealth then meant no more to me than hearing today about Bill Gates’ billions.

What I did not know for many years is that Uncle Lum was then and still is the greatest legend in America’s vast petroleum industry.

Today I have a substantial collection of newspaper and magazine articles, books and at least one major television documentary series about how he became such a legend in the U.S. petroleum industry.

The best source for me on the life and times of Columbus “Dad” Joiner, Uncle Lum, is a book called The Last Boom by Michael Halbouty and James A. Clark.

During my career in Washington, DC I represented the national association of geologists, based in Tulsa, and met Mike Halbouty at one of the group’s receptions. If my memory is correct, Mike at the time was President-elect Ronald Reagan’s top transition person for the U.S. Depart. of Energy, which earned him a great deal of celebrity in the capital. He and I chatted, he signed a copy of The Last Boom, but I really had no in depth conversation with a man who probably was the best living authority on Dad Joiner.

Although I have never visited it, the East Texas Oil Museum in Kilgore, Texas (http://www.easttexasoilmuseum.com) is another major source on Uncle Lum.

Uncle Lum and his sister, Amanda, were born on a farm in Center Star, Lauderville County, Alabama. When Uncle Lum and Amanda Joiner, my maternal grandmother, were very young children their father went off to war with the Confederate Army and was killed in the Battle of Jackson, MS. This left Uncle Lum, then about five years old, as the “man” of the house.

When he grew up, Uncle Lum moved to Tennessee where he practiced law and became a member of the State Legislature from 1889 to 1891. However, so far as I can recall I have never met anyone with knowledge of how my grandmother eventually ended up married to John Martin Hill, the pen name for my first novel, (www.thechristmashour.com), a man of Choctaw Indian heritage, in Terrell County, Texas.

In The Last Boom, Clark and Halbouty indicate my maternal grandparents were living in Indian Territory, now the State of Oklahoma, when Uncle Lum left Tennessee to live with his sister and brother-in-law in the Choctaw Tribe.

Uncle Lum became oil “wildcatter,” a person who drills for oil in places without any real geological evidence that there is a reasonable chance of success.

Today it may take millions to drill a well searching for oil. Back in the first half of the 20th Century it usually did not require that kind of investment. But it did take money that, when invested with a wildcatter, was not unlike taking your earnings to Las Vegas.

Eventually Uncle Lum arrived in the vicinity of Kilgore, TX, and started drilling with a “rig” that no respectable oil company would have allowed in its junkyard.

Moreover, there was no indication a great fortune in oil awaited anyone somewhere under the red dirt of that area.

Back in the 1930s, rumors played a major role in the oil business. Even a major oil company has limited resources for the high cost of drilling with the best equipment, but neither does a company then or now want to be caught not holding mineral rights (claim to valuable resources underground) when there is any chance Texas Gold will be discovered as in the classic film,Giant http://www.jamesdean.com/about/acting/film.htm.

And Dad Joiner and his ragtag drilling crew created many rumors about the possibility of finding oil in the Kilgore area.

These rumors would bring the boys from the big oil companies to the Kilgore area sniffing around for evidence the old man really was onto something. And each time they would shake their heads at the folly of Dad Joiner and his rig, and leave assured the old man was crazy as was sometimes true with more than one wildcatter.

One story relates that Uncle Lum broke off a bit where he was drilling on a farm owned by a widow named Daisy Bradford. He decided to move the antiquated old rig to a new location on the farm, but it broke down en route. Uncle Lum decided that since that was where his rig was, that was where he would drill.

During this time, Dad Joiner allegedly became one of the great con artists of those times. When he ran out of funds, he would go back to Dallas and print up more stock certificates for sale. Supposedly his major target for stock sales were rich widows in the Dallas area looking to enhance their wealth though a gusher brought in by a wildcatter.

After my mother died on July 4, 1975, among her belongings was found a stock certificate my father, James Burr Meek, had bought from Uncle Lum’s company. So at least mom and dad believed in him.

Working with Uncle Lum was a man named Doc Lloyd, who dressed like a cavalry soldier in riding pants and boots and passed himself off as a geologist. I don’t think anyone knows where Doc came from and what his real expertise was in geology. But he was a key member of the team.

Also on the team were Uncle Lum’s son, Verne and his wife, Hester.

When I left the University of Oklahoma in January, 1956, to start my journalism career as a reporter for the San Angelo, Texas, Standard-Times, my mother, the former Myrtle Mae Hill, wrote that Hester lived in San Angelo and I should get in touch with her. I did, and she invited my wife and me to dinner where I heard the story of Uncle Lum’s wildcatting days first hand. She had been the cook for the drilling crew.

To cut to the chase, on October 3, 1930, Uncle Lum and his ragtag crew did find oil. They not only found oil, they found what was then the largest oil field in the entire world.

For the little man who proved to be smarter than all the big boys in the U.S. oil industry, there apparently was no pot of gold at the end of the Daisy Bradford rainbow.

One story alleges Uncle Lum met with H.L. Hunt at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas, got drunk, and sold his interest for $1 million - still a major fortune at that time.

But for all the stock sold and others looking to get rich from the Daisy Bradford goldmine, law suits came from left and right and up and down. It is believed that when Uncle Lum died in 1947, there was little if any of his wealth remaining.

To my regret I do not know how well my parents actually knew Uncle Lum. I certainly don’t remember him visiting my grandparents on their little ranch in the Arbuckle Mountains near Ardmore, OK after he hit the Daisy Bradford. However, as the legend goes, Uncle Lum drilled and missed by the length of a football field what became the second largest oil field of the time near Cement, OK.

Within the context of the history of the U.S. oil industry it does not matter what Uncle Lum’s financial reward might have been for what he did. What matters is that against all odds and as an old wildcatter 70 years of age, he found the biggest oil field in the world. And that is not exactly a small thing.