Henry Spears

The Weevil Oil Company Henry Spears

Shelby Tidwell's father spent the last years of his life raising cotton on rented land. A tenant farmer in post-Civil War Texas was as low on the economic scale as bird droppings on the bottom of a cage. If the good Lord saw fit to send just the right mix of sun and rain and brought forth a crop, late summer found the Tidwell family in the field picking cotton from finger-cutting bolls from can-to-can't hoping to eke out a living for another year. Early in his youth, Shelby decided it was as easy to be wealthy as poor. On January 10, 1901a drilling rig at Spindletop, Texas struck oil. The well came in at over 100,000 barrels a day and the Texas oil boom sprang to life producing overnight millionaires; he knew the direction he would take. Gifted with unusual analytical ability, the belief that any challenge can be overcome taken one step at a time, and no experience in the geology, exploration, drilling, or production of petroleum, Shelby set out to make his fortune in the oil patch.