Item #1450 [Archive of Correspondence and Records Related to Speculative Claims on the Spindletop Estate]. Texas, Oil.

[Archive of Correspondence and Records Related to Speculative Claims on the Spindletop Estate]

[Various places, mostly Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia. 1931-1932]. Eighty-five typed and manuscript letters, including thirty mimeographed copies of a form response. Moderate chipping and wear to a few letters, most previously folded but otherwise in strong condition. Overall, good plus. Item #1450

A fascinating collection of correspondence relating to spurious Depression-era claims on the famed Beaumont estate of Pelham Humphries (1810?-1835?). In 1834, Humphries, a colonist in the disputed lands along the US border with Mexico, filed a claim for a league (some 4,428 acres) of land to the west of the Neches River, a few miles south of what is now Beaumont in Jefferson County, Texas. The land, a patchwork of swamp and grassland good only for grazing, was deemed valueless until oil was discovered there in 1901, by which time it had become known as Spindletop, and the area became the epicenter of the Texas oil boom.

No one made more money than William Perry Herring McFadden (1856-1935), a rancher who had bought Spindletop in 1883, but ownership of the land was in dispute when he made the purchase. Humphries had died in obscurity, possibly killed in a gunfight or perhaps hanged for stealing horses, and there was no clear transfer of title. The first suit over the Humphries Land Grant was filed in 1880. McFadden purchased the rights of both parties in the suit, but later claimants argued that neither had had a legitimate interest. When geologists stuck oil, hundreds of people discovered their fortunate genealogy, as a story swiftly spread that the heirs to the Humphries estate were due a share in the profits from the great companies that extracted oil from Spindletop. Numerous lawsuits followed, beginning shortly after the discovery and continuing through the 2010s, some extending over decades and involving thousands of claimants.

After one such suit entitled Anderson v. Lucas was settled in 1906, the Humphries story appears to have been forgotten for several decades, before it emerged again during the depths of the Great Depression. Humphries reportedly hailed originally from Tennessee, and in October 1931 the Knoxville Journal reported that members of the Humphreys family were gathering in Madisonville, Tennessee to discuss their options. In November, another meeting was held in Knoxville, drawing over 200 attendees. Responding to the growing number of inquiries sent to his office, W. T. Blackmon, the Jefferson County Clerk wrote to the Knoxville Journal to set the record straight – “the Humphreys have absolutely no chance of getting $40,000,000 worth of oil land,” the Journal summarized. “And so far as he is concerned, he had rather hear no more about it. … He informed the Journal that he had quit opening letters from the Tennessee Humphreys.” But Blackmon’s letter had no effect. The next day the paper ran a piece in which Oscar Humphrey, a stringer for the Associated Press, voiced his suspicion at the clerk’s response and urged people to fight for their millions.

The documents present here constitute Blackmon’s file of inquiries from various Humphries claimants and their representatives, all dated 1931 to 1932. A defiant letter here from Oscar Humphrey encloses clippings from the Knoxville Journal and informs Blackmon that, “You may rest assured that I am going to have these stories reproduced in other papers in several cities in Tennessee and Georgia.” The bulk of the archive consists of over fifty letters containing requests and claims from eleven states, including Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Texas, as well as the District of Columbia, suggest that Humphrey’s threat was not an idle one. Some of the letters are a few typed lines and comprise simple requests for information, while others are handwritten and run on for pages, with elaborate descriptions of the supplicant's claims and genealogy. Also present are carbon copies of general Blackmon’s response, which he adapted as a mimeographed form letter, as well as copies of two more personalized. To dissuade inquirers from further correspondence, his form letter notes that a full abstract of the survey of claims to Spindletop would cost “about $2500.00.” Additional material here suggests that this may have been side scam Blackmon had with Earl Singleton, the proprietor of the Jefferson County Abstract Company. At any rate, the fresh rounds of claims on Spindletop delineated here came to nothing, and Blackmon gave up his duties as County Clerk, and accepted a new position as tax assessor and collector for Jefferson County, the pursuit of tax delinquents perhaps seeming a restful occupation by comparison. An excellent collection of documents detailing one episode in the long saga concerning the rights to the Spindletop fortune.

Price: $1,450.00