The Life of CHARLES LOCKHART
CHARLES LOCKHART, who has been for a number of years president of the Standard Oil Company and of the Pittsburg Bank of Commerce, is one of the oil kings of Pennsylvania. Among the first to buy the crude product of petroleum, he was the first to introduce the oil into England, carrying it himself in cans. He was born at Cairn Heads, Wigtonshire, Scotland, August 2, 1818. His parents, John and Sarah (Walker) Lockhart, were natives of the same shire, the home of both families for many generations. John Lockhart, son of Charles Lockhart, a farmer living near Cairn Heads, was the eldest of his father's family. When he grew up, a farm was taken for him. He married a daughter of James Walker, who was a damask manufacturer of Wigton. In 1836, with his wife and six children, he emigrated to America, was in the grocery business in Allegheny for a number of years, and died in that city in 1861. His wife survived him about ten years. They were members of the Second United Presbyterian Church of Allegheny.
Charles Lockhart was educated in Scotland. There also he obtained his first ideas of business from an uncle with whom he lived for a while. For nineteen years after his arrival in Pittsburg he worked as clerk for James McCully, a wholesale grocer and a dealer in produce and flour on Wood Street. In 1855 he and William Frew, who also had been clerk in this establishment for a number of years, were taken into partnership by the proprietor, and the firm name was changed to James McCully & Co. This firm, which was in existence until 1865, had an extensive business, the trade in the war time being especially profitable.
In December, 1832, Isaac Huff brought down the river in a skiff three barrels of oil that were taken out of a salt well. After several ineffectual attempts to sell the commodity he found Mr. Lockhart at the warehouse of the grocery company, and disposed of it to him for thirty-one and one-fourth cents per gallon, agreeing at the same time to let him have all the well produced for five years at the same price. It seemed a doubtful speculation, for the purchaser did not know how or where it would sell; but he eventually made a bargain with Samuel M. Kier, the partner of the Hon. R. F. Jones, who agreed to purchase all the oil he would bring him in five years at sixty-two and one-half cents per gallon. Mr. Lockhart was the first to buy and sell oil ahead of its production. The oil well which yielded him such profit was one mile below Tarentum, on the south side. It was one of the first in the State. In 1853, with Mr. Kipp, who was his partner until September, 1896, he bought the well, Mr. Kipp paying for one quarter only; and until 1865 they continued to manufacture salt, selling the oil as fast as produced. In 1859, the year oil was discovered at Titusville, Messrs. Lockhart, Kipp, William Frew, John Vanausdall, and William Phillips joined interests under the firm name of Phillips, Frew & Co., and, leasing land on Oil Creek, set up machinery, and soon had a thriving plant in operation, their first well yielding forty-five barrels a day. The oil was distilled, not refined; and crude oil brought thirty-four cents a gallon. Samuel M. Kier was the first to distill oil.
Their product was the first Oil Creek oil to come down the Allegheny River. In May, 1860, Mr. Lockhart began to carry samples of crude and refined oil to Europe. He had a friend in Liverpool who introduced him to leading chemists, and by the following winter the oil was shipped in large quantities to coal oil distillers in Great Britain. In the fall of 1860 the company struck some very productive wells.
In 1861 Messrs. Lockhart and Frew bought out their partners, and built the Brilliant Refinery, the first important refinery erected. It had a capacity of seventy-eight thousand barrels of oil per week, all produced from their own wells. The supply seems inexhaustible, for the land, which was first opened in 1853, is still yielding oil. During all this time it bas belonged to Mr. Lockhart, who is the oldest oil producer living to-day. In 1865 Messrs. Lockhart and Frew and William G. Warden built the large Atlantic Refinery in Philadelphia, which now produces thirty-six thousand barrels per day. At first they did business under the firm name of Warden, Frew & Co. Afterward a stock company was formed, Mr. Lockhart added little by little to his holdings until he was the largest owner in this vicinity.
One of his early purchases was a large share in Clark & Sumner's refinery, now known as Standard No. 1. In 1874 the supply exceeded the demand, and rival companies by competition lowered the price. A meeting of the Cleveland, Ohio, and Pennsylvania men, to adjust matters on a more satisfactory basis, was held at Saratoga, the delegates being John D. Rockefeller, William G. Warden, Henry M. Flagler, and Charles Lockhart. The four combined laid the foundation of the Standard Oil Company, which was eventually incorporated under the laws of Ohio. The Atlantic Refinery, of which Mr. Lockhart had been President, was merged into the Standard Oil Company, and he was made of the first directors of this now famous corporation. When the Ohio law compelled them to divide their business, the Pennsylvania section was merged in the Atlantic Refinery of Philadelphia, in which Mr. Lockhart is still the largest Pennsylvania shareholder.
Mr. Lockhart is interested in a number of other financial enterprises. About twenty years ago he became a member of tbe firm of Hubbard, Bakewell & Co., saw, axe, and shovel manufacturers. When he became connected with them, they had two factories. Later they erected a large plant on Railroad Street, Pittsburg, which was subsequently burned. Messrs. Hubbard and Lockhart, after this catastrophe, purchased a nutmber of smaller plants of the same kind, and established an axe manufactory at Beaver Falls, moving the shovel department to Sharpsburg Bridge. The axe department was finally merged in the American Axe and Tool Company, which had the largest factory in the county. The shovel factory, which was burned in January, 1896, is again in operation, under a stock company, Mr. Lockhart owning within one share of half the capital stock. He is a director of the Pittsburg Locomotive Works; a stockholder of the Pittsburg Plate Glass Company; of the Jackson Lumber Company, which owns one hundred and thirty thousand acres of land in Alabama; and of a number of smaller enterprises. He is president of the Lockhart Iron and Steel Company, which gives employment to four hundred men; was one of the original directors of the Pittsburg Bank of Commerce, of which he is now president; and he is a director in several large silver and gold mining companies of Colorado and Idaho, having bought his first mining stock in 1865 in Idaho. A guiding rule of his life, from the days of his clerkship in the grocery store, has been never to contract a debt; and though the accumulation of his millions is, of course, due in a large degree to natural sagacity and forethought, his unvarying success is without doubt attributable to this principle.
On June 24, 1862, Mr. Lockhart was married to Miss Jane Walker, also a native of Scotland. They have five children, namely: James Henry and John Marshall, who are in business with their father; Janet W., the wife of John R. McCune, of Pittsburg; Martha Frew, the wife of Lee Mason, of Pittsburg; and Sarah Eleanor, who is yet with her parents. Mr. Lockhart cast his first vote with the Whigs in 1840, and has been a Republican since 1856. He belongs to one social organization, the Duquesne Club. He is a church member, connected for a great many years with the United Presbyterian Church of this city. Mr. Lockhart's family home for the past twenty years has been a palatial residence at the East End. [Highland Ave across from Hays St, East Liberty]
Biographical review; v. 24, containing life sketches of leading citizens of Pittsburg and the vicinity, Pennsylvania. Boston : Biographical review publishing co., 1897.