Cooking oil of a different sort

Scott and Alpha Heywood drilled the famous Spindletop well near Beaumont that set off an oil rush along the Gulf Coast almost as frenzied as the California Gold Rush. They were hired to drill the first oil well in Louisiana when a rice grower in Jeff Davis Parish noticed flammable bubbles rising from his field.

The brothers chartered the Jennings Oil Company on April 29, 1901, and began drilling in June. Their first well was a dud but the second one gushed a four-inch stream of oil more than 100 feet into the air for seven hours before clogging with sand. That was the beginning of the Louisiana boom. The Evangeline field soon sported derricks for almost as far as the eye could see.

After finding all the oil they needed, the Heywoods turned their attention to finding something to do with it.  They owned and operated barges on the Mermentau River and built a pipeline from the oil fields to the railroad to get their oil to market, where it was bought almost exclusively by industrial clients who used steam power and needed a cheap and plentiful fuel for their boilers.

But by the fall of 1901 Alpha was also promoting the idea of using his oil in the home. He told a reporter he was convinced that "within the next few months or so a domestic burner, which will permit ... the use of crude petroleum for fuel in cook stoves, ranges, furnaces, etc., will be on the market."

He said there had been a "great need" for something like the oil burner for a good while and that he was convinced that "it will be very generally taken up by the public."

A manufacturer was looking at the possibility of making domestic burners that would be small versions of the ones used in industrial steam plants and also a new type of burner that Alpha believed to be "equally as good." In his estimation, he said, both of the burners "are good and the price in each case is ridiculously cheap."

"One of the burners may possibly be more acceptable than the other," he said, because "it is possible to change immediately from oil to coal or some other fuel."

Alpha had a vision of a delivery wagon - akin to the old ice wagons - going house-to-house to leave a barrel of oil at the doorstep.

"With these burners in use the bills for fuel for domestic purposes will be so [much] lower than those which customers are compelled to pay at present that there is no doubt that ... oil will take the place of coal and wood to a very large extent," he predicted.

"The cost will not be more than one cent per hour and a barrel of oil laid down at the door of the consumer at a cost of $1 will last for probably thirty days on an ordinary cook stove."

He didn't mention that a robust odor produced by the oil stove would overpower even the mouthwatering aroma of Grandma's pot roast slow cooking in the oven. But then, nothing's perfect.

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You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jhbradshaw@bellsouth.net or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.