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