Obituary for CHARLES LOCKHART

Charles Lockhart was born on August 2, 1818 at Cairn Heads, Wigtownshire, Scotland. His father, John, and his mother, Sarah (Walker)--the latter a daughter of a noted linen manufacturer in Sorbie--brought their seven children to the United States in 1836.

During the first nineteen years after his arrival to the United States Lockhart was in Pittsburgh as errand boy and later clerk for James McCully, a wholesale grocer and dealer in produce and flour, beginning at a wage of seventy-five cents a week and working fourteen hours a day. In 1855, however, he and William Frew, a fellow clerk, were taken into partnership under the firm name of James McCully & Company and during the Civil War the concern enjoyed unusual prosperity.

Lockhart's first interest in oil was awakened in 1852 upon meeting one Isaac Huff, who had come to Pittsburgh with three barrels of oil that had been taken out of his salt well near Tarentum, Pennsylvania. The latter could find no purchaser for this then little-used product, but Lockhart agreed, as a speculation, to take all that was produced during a period of five years at 311/4 cents per gallon. He then made a fortunate bargain to sell this oil to Samuel M. Kier during the same period at twice the amount. In the following year he bought the well, which was one of the first in the state, and assumed active direction.

In 1859, the year oil was discovered in Titusville, Lockhart and four associates organized a firm under the name of Phillips, Frew & Company, and leased the land on Oil Creek. The first well yielded forty-five barrels a day. In 1860, filling a couple of gallon oyster cans, one with crude and the other with distilled oil (refining was not yet generally practised), he took them to England, and lighted the first petroleum lamp. Upon the basis of these samples he was able to build up a considerable export trade in oil. Lockhart and Frew soon bought out their partners' interests and built the Brilliant refinery, the first important refinery erected. This was followed by the building of the Atlantic refinery in Philadelphia.

In 1872 he became a stockholder in the South Improvement Company, and in 1874, at a meeting with John D. Rockefeller, William G. Warden, and Henry M. Flagler, he helped to lay the foundation of the Standard Oil Trust, transferring his refineries to the Standard Oil Company and taking stock in return. He had agreed to absorb as rapidly as possible the other refineries in the neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and in 1874 he became president of a newly organized concern, called the Standard Oil Company of Pittsburgh, which began to lease or buy these refineries. In 1879, at the instigation of the Petroleum Producers' Union, he was indicted with other officials of the Standard Oil group, on the charge of conspiracy to effect various illegal ends. A compromise was achieved the following year, however, and the case did not come to trial. When the Standard Oil Trust was incorporated he became one of its directors, and at its dissolution in 1892 he became president of the Atlantic Refining Company.

He was also engaged in the manufacture of saws, axes, shovels, iron and steel, and locomotives, and had timber, farming, and gold mining interests in Colorado and Idaho. He retired from active direction of his interests in 1900 and died five years later. In his will he gave generously of his fortune to the four leading hospitals of Pittsburgh and to various welfare organizations.

Above life history credited to: https://prabook.com/web/charles.lockhart/3769612