Ida Belle Barry was no stranger to the oil business or oil men. This is because she was born on the "oil trail," as her father, John H. Barry, was an oil driller and operator, and moved the family around as he sought places to drill successful oil wells. Pretty much every place Ida's siblings were born was a place that John was drilling for oil. Ida was born in Bradford, PA; her sister Nellie was born in Warsaw, New York; sister Pearl was born in Manistee, Michigan. Brother John Cornelius Barry was born in Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania. Sister Florence was born in West Virginia. Brother Charles (who passed away at 1) and brother George were born in Wheeling, West Virginia, and sister Marie was born in Smithfield, West Virginia. It seemed like the longest they were in any place was eventually in Wheeling, as my research found that Ida was attending a Catholic School for girls in Wheeling. John Barry was working the giant oil field south of Wheeling. And sadly, it's where he met his demise in 1899. No one in the family knew much at all about him, but I found a newspaper article mentioning him as an "oil operator" who suffered a stroke on an oil rig, and was brought back to Wheeling for medical care. Apparently he died a few days later, never recovering. There was no death notice in the local papers, but I reached out to the big cemetery in town where he was buried, and they had a death date in the burial record, and it was just a few days after the article reported his stroke. 

There's always plenty of myths about those oil drillers who struck it rich, but reading the old newspapers of the era and the region, I'm struck by the sheer number of accidents and deaths occuring, and clearly there were a LOT of dry holes drilled. Yes, a lucky driller could strike it rich, but they could just as easily and quickly sink it into a dry hole and lose all their money in the blink of an eye. Or pour money into buying up leases in a promising area, finding no oil, and then having all their leases become worthless and impossible to sell. But it held America's imagination, especially in the latter half of the 19th century, when it appears that a lot of people were oil-crazy. Apparently, my ancestors were among them. John Barry was born in America, as far as I can tell, but was Irish by descent. His father, Cornelius Barry, was born in Ireland and came to the US, became a farmer, and lived a long life on his farm in rural Pennsylvania. I actually found several articles about Cornelius, who lived in the tiny hamlet of Cussewago in Crawford County. The articles were all about Cornelius turning 100 and later dying at 108 years old, though frankly, I'm very skeptical. Because pretty much every census record gives a slightly different age, and so while the newspapers made it sound like he was born in the 1790s, I think he was likely born in the 1810s. What I think is his naturalization record says he was born in 1812 (we're looking at a range from 1794 to 1814 ... that's a bit of a wide range, I would say) Back in those days, birthdays weren't that important, and so folks were often not quite sure what day or what year they were born. It's not like there was a lot of paperwork back then. I do wish I had more info on Cornelius, because I'm curious about him. He appears to have come from somewhere in County Cork, and likely came over to the US in 1825, according to a census record, though his naturalization record (or what I believe to be his, since I can't look at the original document, but instead I'm working with a WPA-compiled list) said he came over in 1836. So before the Famine ... which is interesting because it appears all my Irish ancestors came before or after the Famine. None were here because of it. I'd love to know why Cornelius came over. My guess is that he was in search of land, and may have gotten displaced in Ireland from Scottish laborers brought over by English landlords, or may have sought out religious freedom. I dunno, but those are common reasons for those who came over before the Famine. Either way, it looks like he brought property for a farm in 1843, and filed for naturalization for 1844. So where did he get the money? But he did own a farm, and at least according to an 1896 newspaper article, "he is erect, hale and hearty,reads the papers, and takes a lively interest in the affairs of his native country, Ireland." His obituary from 1901 noted "he had retained his faculties in a wonderful degree ... and within the last week had been up and around the house. He was of medium height, rather sturdy built, a typical hearty Irishman, and a man of fine character." Which frankly, is not a bad obituary. Though I still don't think he was 108 ... though possibly he was 89, still quite an old age back in that day. But apparently farm living agreed with him. Though his advanced age meant that he outlived his son John, who died two years before him. 

With John Barry's passing, it now fell upon his widow, Mary Catherine Logue Barry, to raise a family that ranged from 17-year old Ida Belle to 1-year old Marie. She had to be tough, and she had to be resourceful. Fortunately, she also was Irish, though born in Pennsylvania, in Butler County. But her father, Charles Logue, had been born in Ireland and came over at some point before the Famine. His father, Dennis Logue, had filed for naturalization and been naturalized in the mid 1840s, so there's a good chance they came over in the late 1830s. Again, not sure exactly where from, though there are hints here and there that they came from Donegal. They were among the earliest residents of Murrinsville (named after another Irish family that owned much of the land), and were among the first parishoners at the Catholic church built there for all the Irish Catholic farmers. From various old histories of Butler County that were published in the late 1800s and early 1900s and are available online, I found out that many of the families that settled in the county were from Donegal. Though of course, none of these mentioned WHY these folks settled the area. I'm sure the availability of land is a key thing that drew settlers there, but how did they hear about that area? What specificially brought them to that spot? I have a feeling that's a question I may never be able to answer. I don't know exactly when Dennis and Charles Logue came there, though Dennis did get naturalized in 1847. I also wasn't sure where they came from in Ireland initially; I suspected Donegal, because so many other families in the area were from Donegal, and there were other Logues in the area who possibly could be relatives as well, and apparently they were from Donegal. One thing that helped greately was that Dennis had another son, Cornelius, who apparently became a sailor at some point, and died in New Orleans in New Orleans of unknown causes. While digging to find anything about his experience in New Orleans, I did find that someone had compiled patient lists from one of the hospitals in New Orleans, and in the late 1850s, there was a patient listed named "Cornelius Logue" from Pennsylvania who was listed as born in Donegal. I feel strongly that it's the right Cornelius Logue, too. Though what is interesting is that my mother had written a document in college listing her family history, and she had down as her grandfather a sea captain named "Cornelius Grace," which wasn't actually correct, as her grandfathers were Richard Grace and John Barry. But I wondered if as a child, she heard mention of a man named Cornelius (possibly Cornelius Barry or Cornelius Logue), and heard something about them being a sailor ... though Richard Grace was briefly a boatman in New Ross, Ireland, and possibly captained his small boat, or perhaps it was the seafaring Cornelius Logue. Unfortunately, I can't ask her, so I don't think I'll ever know. 

But getting back to Mary Catherine Logue, she now had to move on with life and provide for her family. She moved out of Wheeling and down south a bit to Wallace, West Virginia. The town was experiencing an oil boom, and her brother John Logue lived in Wallace and was an oil driller. She acquired a large house next to him (though I'm not sure it was with her own money or with the financial help from her brother), and commenced to operate it as a boarding house/hotel. I even found newspaper accounts mentioning The "Barry Hotel" in Wallace. Business was likely brisk, because the town was chockablock full of oil-drilling rigs and likely more than quite a few oil men who were seeking oil, but also places to sleep. I truly believe that's how her daughter Ida Belle met a young oilman named John William Grace, freshly returned from Japan. We have some pictures of Ida Belle Barry as a young woman, and she was quite a beauty, with black hair and an intelligent face. And the only photos of John William show him as a very handsome man, so she may have been taken with him as he was likely taken with her. They were married on February 17, 1905. He was 28 (the wedding license he filled out said he was 26), and she was 22.

And they quickly turned to making children. Their first child, Richard William Grace, likely named after his grandfather, was born in 1905, 10 months after his parents married. He was followed by John Bernard Grace (always called "Bernard" in the family) in 1907, Eugene Patrick Grace in 1910 (perhaps named after JW's older brother Patrick?), Raymond Edward Grace in 1911, George Michael Grace in 1913, James Berry Grace in 1916 (who sadly passed away due to the Influenza epidemic in 1918), and Paul Lawrence Grace. The running joke in the family was that John William was always traveling for his oil work, and his occasional visits home coincided with Ida's pregnancies. It appears that the family primarily lived in Wheeling early on, but that Ida returned to her mother for each of her childbirths, as most of her children were born in Wallace. But that would make sense if Ida was giving birth without John present, and preferred the help of her mother for the birth and helping to take care of her and the baby after birth. It appears that by the 1910s or the late 1910s, that she may have relocated the family entirely to Wallace, which would make sense if John was rarely there, then she could rely on her mother for help, and also perhaps from her youngest siblings, who were also still in Wallace.

John's work in this timeframe is still pretty much unknown. In his World War One draft registration papers, he indicated he was working for Hope Natural Gas, which was a Standard Oil subsidiary that drilled for natural gas and supplied it to customers in Ohio through the East Ohio Gas Company. In the 1920 Census, he listed his occupation as working for South Penn Oil, which was also a Standard Oil subsidiary, and focused more on petroleum than natural gas. But there's no accounts in any newspapers that I've found that mention him. Until 1923, when he's mentioned as dying of a heart attack while working on an oil rig in Alma, Arkansas. There are several articles from local papers, and the story was he was working for another oil man, and was starting to swing a 16-pound sledgehammer to dress a tool bit (which was really an entry-level job on a rig, and something that he would have done in his late teens, not his mid-40s), and dropped dead right on the rig floor. Apparently he had just arrived in town, and it was suggested he was called in for a special job. And here the family stories kick in. As the story goes, the death was suspicious ... he was in Arkansas, he died under mysterious circumstances, and perhaps "his partner" absconded with John's oil leases (and of course, the insinuation is that he ended up getting fabulously wealthy from these). Apparently Richard William Grace, who was 18 at the time, was sent down from Wheeling to recover John's tools, and found them all missing and likely stolen. More evidence of something fishy. 

I'm sorry, but I call bullshit on all that. Granted, I think some of my cousins (and my mom) may have heard this very tale from Ida herself, as she lived until 1974, and was a very common presence in their lives. But I'm going on the evidence I can find, and while she was alive during all this, she wasn't in Arkansas; she may not have even known he was down there, until she was contacted about his death. The articles I found made it all seem pretty clear. No one aside from the guy who brought him in seemed to know him or anything about him. He wasn't a partner in any venture, he was a hired hand for someone else, who actually was a fellow Pennsylvanian (whose wife was from Warren) and likely knew John William Grace. And that partner was apparently quite respected in the local community, judging by stories in the local papers. And John died, and the body was sent back to Wheeling for burial. And even JW's brother James knew he died of a heart attack on the rig, as he recounted in both his 1933 and 1950 hospital interviews, so at least in the immediate family, there was no conspiracy theory about JW's death, it apparently came later among his grandchildren. As for the missing tools, it's unsure why Richard would have been sent for them in the first place, but it's unsure what sort of tools they could have been, because a lot of the drilling tools were used for a job, and then often weren't in any shape for the next rig job. Some were, but what was an 18 year old going to do? Take up the trade? Who was going to teach him? Even if he found all of John's things and brought them back, they might have been able to sell them. But I really highly doubt that John had much of value at the time. The fact that he was brought into this project in the first place suggests he was down on his luck as a wildcatter, and needing to get some sort of money because he kept drilling dry holes. That was also a longtime family story, sometimes he'd be successful and there would literally be piles of cash in the family house, and other times he'd be hitting a dry spell, and Ida would have to borrow money from her mother to keep the children fed and clothed. It sounds like he may have been in one of those dry spells. One of my cousins says he still has some of John's oil leases that he got from Ida herself, but what I've seen in my research is that most oil leases of that era were for a very finite and short period, and the driller had to start drilling by a certain time, or they'd lose the lease, so it's a very good chance that any of those leases are useless and expired probably by the mid to late 1920s. I keep bugging him to scan them and send them to me, but no such luck so far. I'm also not sure why Richard would have been sent, instead of Ida reaching out to John William's brother Thomas, who lived in Oklahoma, and was an oil driller. If anyone knew what the tools were and their value, it would be him, and he was also closer. But I suspect as I've researched along, that the Grace family wasn't that close at all, and the siblings likely didn't keep in touch much, if at all. And so Ida may not have known Thomas personally, just his name. 

One thing that made me wonder is that when John's obituaries were run in the local Wheeling newspapers (back in the golden days when a city like Wheeling would have several newspapers), the obituaries weren't even accurate as to the number of siblings John had; the Wheeling Intelligencer said he had three sisters and two brothers ... it listed Margaret, but then it also listed two of Ida's sisters! It did correctly mention Thomas and James (and noted that James was in England). The Wheeling Register did run a longer obituary of John a later day that actually had accurate information, though it also was interesting for its omission; it noted that he was "one of a family of seven brothers and sisters only two of whom could be located" ... located. Frankly, it appears that only three of siblings were still alive at that point, but as Ida likely contributed that obituary because of the details in it, it would seem clear that she didn't actually know if they all were alive, which indicated to me that he didn't talk about his siblings much. She probably never met any of them except for Margaret, who according to census records, lived with the family briefly. Thomas was out on the oil trail west, and James was in Burma and then England. And the others were likely already deceased. But as I said, I don't think Ida was in touch with Thomas, or else it seems most plausible he should have been contacted to go down to Arkansas and find out what happened and collect John's tools, since he would know what to look for, and what was valuable. But it's a moot point, as the tools were gone (likely split up and shared by workers there). 

There was also a weird postscript, because an obituary was also put in the Oil City Derrick, a newspaper in Oil City, PA. Oil City was once the literal center of the petroleum industry, a Wall Street of the oil business, so to speak. Those days were long gone, but the Derrick appears to have remained a newspaper that was more for the oil business than just local news. But it's a weird obituary, because it's a mixture of fact and fantasy. It starts by calling him the "nephew of the renowned Captain Peter Grace, the discoverer and pioneer of more new oil and gas developments than any man that ever made the oil industry a business." I'm not sure where that came from, because I looked into Peter Grace. He WAS a very notable oil producer, particularly in Pennsylvania and West Virginia (and a captain by virtue of his Civil War experience, where he also won a Congressional Medal of Honor). But if he was a relative of John William's, it was very distant. He came over many years before John William and settled in Massachusetts, and I've never seen anything before that connects the two of them. Certainly if he was a relative, it would be feasible that he was the reason that the Grace brothers entered the business, and he might have facilitated that. But I researched him, and I just didn't find any connections. If anything, I wondered if John played up the last name and suggested he was related to Peter, to help get him jobs and leases. The Derrick obit also said he "knew and had operated in every country - producing oil and gas." Well, if you count the US and Japan as "ever country," then that's correct, but as far as family stories and research go, he didn't operate anywhere else. He didn't even seem to roam the rest of the US, as it appears that he mostly stuck to Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and had a foray into Texas after the big (and short-lasting) strike in the Desdemona field, which the Derrick obituary also noted (his Wheeling obituaries also note his presence in Texas, and also saying the family never moved because of educational opportunities for the children, which were few and far between in Texas). The Derrick obituary also said he "was persuaded to go in Alma, Arksansas, to clean out a very difficult fishing job. He arrived at the well and as he stapped on to the derrick floor, was stricken with heart trouble - fell to the floor and never spoke a word." Which doesn't actually match up with the stories in the Arksansas papers, which said he had taken a few swings with the hammer first, before dropping to the floor dead. And another odd point in the Derrick obituary was that it said he was 32 years old. He was actually 46! (the Wheeling obituaries said he was 45). So there's a lot to pick through, but I was astonished that I had found so much regarding his death. I'm not sure what I have is completely and entirely conclusive, but I'll go with what I found rather than family stories, given that I've been finding that not all of the family stories ring true, or even in a few cases, have a grain of truth to them. 

Though one family story that I have I find rather interesting, in that for the rest of her life, Ida always referred to John William as "Mr. Grace." All very formal. But then another interesting aspect of the story is that now she was in the same position as her mother had been in. A young widow with an oil driller husband who died in the line of work, leaving her to raise and provide for a large brood of children. And coincidentally, John William Grace was buried in the same Wheeling cemetery as her father, John Barry.

JW

 It's kind of ironic that two of the Grace siblings that the family know mostly nothing about, I end up finding out more about them than the most important Grace, my great-grandfather John William Grace.  Though if it weren't for the hospital files, I wouldn't know as much about James and Margaret that I do. So I guess it's fortunate that Margaret was senile as she aged and James had issues due to his vices (alcoholism and going to brothels), as that led them to the hospital, whose records I was able to access.

No such luck with John William Grace (JW). But that's mostly because of the tragedy of his dying fairly young.  So very little of his story has filtered down to his descendants other than some family legends that may or may not be true. His children ranged in age from 5 to 18 when he died in 1923, and their memories of him may have been a bit hazy. Likely his oldest son Richard knew him the most, but if so, those stories haven't gotten spread to the various cousins. Richard and his children apparently were a bit aloof from the rest of the family and not as close, at least that's the feeling I got from my mom. Her father was one of JW's younger children, and was 10 when JW died, and if he had any particular memories of his father, he didn't appear to share them with my mom, or if he did, I never heard them from her.

The only stories I really heard was that he dropped dead while working on an oil rig somewhere down South, and there was some mystery about this, and a shady suspicion that his partner was somehow involved, and his oldest son Richard was sent down to pick up his tools, and they were missing. Apparently there were also something about leases on oil lands, and no one knew what happened to that. So it sounded like something sinister happened, with the feeling among family members that his partner killed him and absconded with all these fabulously wealthy oil leases.

Spoiler alert ... no.  I did actual research, and the story doesn't appear to be as dramatic as that. And while digging, I did find out a few things about JW, but frustratingly, not enough to suit me. He's still somewhat of a mystery in that there's long periods of his life that are just blanks.

What we do know is that he was born, like his siblings, in Ireland. While his oldest siblings were born in Kilkenny, he was built in Wexford, in Ballyanne, a little hamlet outside of New Ross. He came over to the US with the rest of the family in 1881, and settled into Clarendon, PA. I couldn't find anything about him at all from the days in Clarendon. The first time he was mentioned in any newspaper was 1899, when his stepmother, Ellen Leahy Grace died, and he was mentioned in the obituary as being in Sistersville, West Virginia, with brothers Mike and Thomas. There was a giant oil field in Sistersville, so the three were likely working the oil rigs there. I had found a newspaper account in 1898 of a tool dresser named "John Grace" who got injured on an oil rig in Stringtown, which was part of the giant oil field there in West Virginia that also encompassed Sistersville, so I do think that may have been him, and at the time, he was likely a tool dresser, and also a very lucky man, because the accident sounded fairly bad. 

 He doesn't show up in the 1900 census at all, nor did Thomas or Michael, either. But I actually found a passport application from him in 1901. It was filed in Pittsburgh.  In it, he claimed to have been born in Warren County, PA, which was false, but he may not have been naturalized, or wanted to not have to deal with any questions about his Irish ancestry for the passport, so instead he chose to claim that he is a native and loyal citizen of the United States. He also listed as his permanent address as Clarendon, though doesn’t give a street address, but it’s likely his father’s house, where James and Margaret also lived. 

He was 24 on his application, and listed his occupation as “Oil Well Driller.” His description was 6 feet tall, with a prominent forehead, dark blue eyes, medium nose, small mouth, medium chin, dark hair, a dark-to-sandy complexion (likely from spending time outdoors in the sun drilling oil wells), and a face with “regular features.” No destination is listed for the passport, but he requests that it be sent to The Forest Oil Company in Pittsburgh, PA. Some accounts list the Forest Oil Company as one of the larger oil producers in Pennsylvania with more than 3,700 wells on 25,000 acres of land. A number of historic sources indicate it actually was a subsidiary of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company which was quickly becoming one of the largest oil companies in the United States, though other sources mention that Forest Oil was only “allied” with Standard Oil, though it’s not clear how different than is from a subsidiary. An account from an oil industry journal in 1902 announced Forest Oil merging with South Penn Oil Company, and said both were now part of Standard Oil. 

Either way, it’s important because Grace family legend has always had it that JW Grace worked for Standard Oil, and it appears he may have, though likely for subsidiary operations more than the main company. And his passport was actually for an adventure on behalf of Standard Oil, as he was going to Japan. This was a story long shared in the family. Not so much about what he did there, but just that he went to Japan for Standard Oil, and apparently a photo had existed showing him holding his arms out while diminutive Japanese men hung down from his arms. A number of my mom's cousins also remembered playing with the various Japanese clothes and artifacts he brought back from Japan that were in the family (where are they nowadays???? No one seems to know, which is annoying!!!). But no one really has any details about his Japanese trip, other than it was for Standard Oil.

So it's time for the professional historian to go to work. After some digging in period newspapers, and some secondary sources, I found that Standard Oil was interested in expanding its operations in other countries as well as the United States, and had drillers in a number of countries, trying to find oil, while the company was trying to duplicate its American strategy, by purchasing and merging existing companies, all while trying to sink new wells. In Japan, the company had to follow Japanese rules requiring that any foreign enterprises needed to have a percentage of Japanese ownership and so in 1901 it set up the International Oil Company as a subsidiary operation of Standard Oil, but including some Japanese directors, so that the company appeared to have some degree of local ownership, though the Capital Journal newspaper of November 22, 1907 reported that the company’s directors had been “well paid for nominal services.” It’s unknown how the company got its volunteers to go over to Japan, but it would make sense if it recruited workers from its own ranks from its various subsidiary operations. I'd love to know if he was recruited, or heard about it and volunteered, but that's one of those things lost to history. The International Oil Company had begun operations in Japan’s existing Echigo oil fields, in the Echigo region of Japan, mainly in the Niigata prefecture west of Tokyo, along the Sea of Japan, but apparently the area was encroached by several other oil companies, all owned by the Japanese, so the company sent its drillers north to Hokkaido.

And now my sleuthing in old newspapers also started paying off. The Wheeling Sunday Register on December 29, 1901 had an article that announced a group of “Local Drillers Left Last Evening for the Mikado Land, Where They Will Work for the Standard Oil Company.” The group left Wheeling the day before, headed for Cincinnati, at which point they would then go to New Orleans, and on to San Francisco, where they would sail for Japan on January 10, 1902. The article noted that everyone in the group signed a two- year contract with Standard Oil. John Grace from Warren, PA was listed among the 5 drillers heading to Japan, “where they will actively engage in their profession.” The group was mentioned again in the San Francisco Examiner on January 3, 1902, which noted that they were staying at the Palace Hotel, and that Standard Oil had reports of new oil wells “in the land of the Mikado” and ordered “a number of practical oil-well borers and engineers to go over there and make a report on the new discovery,” primarily in the area around Tokyo (written as “Tokio” by the paper). The article also announced that the group was leaving the following day, bound for Yokohama.

The trail of their journey is picked up on January 5, 1902 as the San Francisco Call and Post announced the departure of the Steamer America Maru, a steamship from the Toyo Kisen Kaisha line which specialized in America-Japan passages; the paper described the ship as “the crack flier of the Tokyo Kisen Kaisha Line and can reel off her thirteen knots day in and day out without any trouble.” The paper also listed the cabin passengers, which includes “J.W. Grace.”  His name pops up on January 11, 1902 in The Hawaiian Star, which lists him among the arriving passengers on the America Maru. A rival newspaper, the Honolulu Republican announced the ship’s arrival the next day, and also notes that the ship is carrying “a party of oil experts who are going to Yokohama in the interest of the Standard Oil Company.” It appears the America Maru wasn’t in Honolulu long, as the ship’s departure for points east (Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Yokohama) was announced the next day; in each of these articles, key passengers are listed, and they all include J.W. Grace.  

Can I just say how amazing it is that so many old newspapers have been digitized and can be searched in so easily? Half of my family research has been located through old newspapers, and I almost get mad now when I can't find anything in them! But these old papers allowed me to track JW's trip all the way to Japan, so while I didn't have a whole lot of details about what he was doing in Japan, I knew where he was almost to the day on his trip, which helped a little bit.

 

But the newspapers DID help me fill in a least a tiny blank in his Japan experience, because in my searching, I found that his name came up later in a newspaper article in the Washington (PA) Reporter from June 21, 1902; the article, titled “Bear Hunting in Far Japan” is a story based on an article from a Japanese newspaper in March 1902 about three “local boys” from the area who were in Japan, developing oil resources; among the three was “J.W. Grace.” (though he really wasn't from Washington PA, but had lived nearby across the border in West Virginia). The article mentions that the three were working the International Oil Company, so I knew I had the right oil men. The newspaper said that the original article was from Sapporo, Japan (on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido), and I knew John William Grace was in Sapporo, because the family has a photo of a young, bearded JW Grace taken in the photo studio of Mishima Tokiwa in Sapporo, Japan (who was one of the earliest photographers in Japan).

 

The article describes how JW and another employee accompany the superintendent of the Hokkaido branch of the company on a trip 100 miles north of Sapporo, to locate a well on one of the company’s leases. The trio explored around and found the location of the well lease, and JW’s colleague felt it would be a good location for a well because “it isn’t worth a blank for anything else.” After a picnic lunch, JW suggested that the group try a little trout fishing in a nearby creek, which their escorts agreed that the fish were plentiful in the stream, so the three headed up the creek, and the article noted that the trio were also armed, the superintendent carrying a .38 Colt pistol, JW carrying a double-barrel shotgun, and the superintendent a .44 Winchester. JW was in the lead. Accompanied by their escorts, who also had a dog, the party stopped short because the dog started barking; JW immediately stopped the group, sensing that something was up ahead that was upsetting the dog. The three moved forward slowly, and then Grace pointed to a large elm tree in a stand of bamboo, where the others could see a bear in the tree, with a cub just above it. It was suggested that the superintendent try to scare the bear out of the tree as he had the gun with the longest range, and he took a shot that knocked some bark away. The other two men also fired, and that brought the bear out of the tree, apparently unharmed. But then the three realized they now had an angry mama bear on the ground, who was now heading their way, and they opened fire as it charged at them, before JW stopped the bear in its tracks with his shotgun, and then his coworker finished off the bear at close range. The coworker claimed the baby bear as a pet, and named it Grover. The Japanese escorts took the mama bear’s body, had it skinned for the superintendent, and they kept the meat for themselves. The article noted at the end that JW didn’t get his trout, but was hoping to come back, perhaps accompanied by a cannon. 

 

I don’t know if JW remained in Japan beyond his two-year contract (though when Richard died in 1903, his will noted that John was still in Japan, but the will was likely written months before his death, so John may have been at that time)
, but I found an article in several American newspapers from 1905 (it might have been a newswire story that others picked up) that recounted the experience of several drillers from Japan who had returned to the US. The article said that the men were among the original nine in 1901 who were picked and went over (and were likely colleagues of J.W. Grace). The men indicated that the International Oil Company was actually reducing the number of American workers employed, because over the past few years the Japanese were proving to be very competent at drilling and refining oil, and that “there is nothing there to attract a man who desires to work there.” The man quoted in the article said that of the nine men who went out in 1901 from Pittsburgh, most had already returned to the United States; he estimated that maybe there were only two left. He also pointed out the discrepancy in what the Japanese workers were willing to accept as pay versus an American; the Japanese workers were willing to work for $12 a month, while the Americans were used to getting $6 a day, and since Japanese rules prevented anyone from going into business as an independent operator, it wasn’t worth it for Americans to work in Japan. The man did say that after four years in Japan, he knew the language well enough to not need an interpreter, and he got to go all over Japan, so J.W. Grace likely also got to explore Japan and learn some of the language during his stay there. In 1907, Standard Oil essentially ended its drilling and exploring operations in Japan, selling or leasing its lands and resources to Nippon Oil, a Japanese company. But by then, John was long gone, back in the United States.

 

I know for a fact he was back in the US by 1905, because that's when he married my great-grandmother, Ida Belle Barry.

JW Grace in Sapporo, Japan