Kurz Number One, When Carl Kurz Struck Oil And Began the Somerset Oil Field

Kurz Number One, When Carl Kurz Struck Oil And Began the Somerset Oil Field
Bernard Pyron

I have looked for San Antonio Newspaper articles on the discovery of oil on the Carl Kurz place. I would like to find a newspaper article written at the time Carl Kurz found that he had hit oil instead of artesian water which he was drilling for. I would like to find out exactly when grandfather Kurz discovered oil and whether or not it was a gusher, as Billy Kenney implies in his interview for the Institute of Texan Cultures. In oil field lingo, the well that Carl Kurz drilled for artesian water which struck oil would be called Kurz Number One. But I have never found an online newspaper article on the discovery of oil on the Carl Kurz land.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset,_Texas

"In 1913, while drilling for artesian water, Kurz discovered oil. A boom followed. The Somerset oilfield extended from Somerset to below Pleasanton and was the largest known shallow field in the world at that time. Two oil refineries in the field and a pipeline into San Antonio handled the high-gravity crude."

http://books.google.com/books?id=7pgtAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA114...

The Oil Weekly, January 21, 1922

"The Somerset, Texas shallow oil pool completed its tenth year with the close of 1921 without a single dry hole in proven territory since the discovery of the field........the field had only eight or ten very small wells and development did not really start until three years ago...the older wells finished around 900 feet with from one to four barrels production."

If ten years went by up to the end of 1921, then the beginning of the Somerset Oil Field would have been in 1912, so the date in the above wikipedia article saying Carl Kurz hit oil in 1913 is too late a date.

This Oil Weekly information on the ten years at the end of 1921 from the start of the Somerset Oil Field supports the earlier date of the discovery of oil by Carl Kurz according to the oil leases that A.M. Pyron contracted in 1912 for the Somerset Oil & Gas Co, seen in online Bexar county land transaction records. These records show that A.M. Pyron contracted 17 oil leases in 1912-1913. The list of land owners in a Bexar county transaction on June 9, 1913 that A.M. Pyron as the Trustee for the Somerset Oil and Gas Company signed leases with include R.B. Touchstone, 133 acres, C. Kurz, 129 acres, S.S. Wildman 286 acres, Aug. F. Ernst 480 acres, John Eastwood, 234 acres, C.H. Long, 111 acres, W.B. Kilborn, 78 acres. The oil and gas leases were signed from November 12, 1912 to January 6, 1913.

Again, the 1913 date for the discovery of oil by Carl Kurz is not consistent with the online Bexar county transactions showing A.M. Pyron contracted oil and gas leases as early as November of 1912.

Billie Kurz McCord in a phone call of December of 2012 said that the original well was near the Carl Kurz house, which became the Gus Kurz house on Payne Road. Billie said there was a small house over the oil well.

Billy Kenney On the First Carl Kurz Oil Well In His Interview For the Oral History Collection, Institute For Texan Cultures in 1988: Billy Kenney was born in February of 1904, so in about 1912 he would have been only about eight.

HC: "At one time Somerset was the largest shallow well in
the country, wasn't it?
K: Largest shallow oil field in the world.
HC: In the world? Now, Kurtz, wasn't Carl Kurtz diggin'
for water?
KENNEY 10
K: That's right. The way I understand it, he and my
grandfather, of course, - ther e was just a road separatin'
them.
HC: That's grandfather Pyron.
K: Grandfather put in with him to dig a thousand foot
well.
SC: Water well.
K: See if they could get some water. That would be good
for irrigating, see?
HC: Yeah.
K: And they got that oil and they was the maddest ole men.
I remember that day they were really put out. They didn't
want no damned oil, they wanted a water well. (laughter)."