The Carl Kurz Family
Children of Carl Kurz (1855-1940) and Auguste Kurz:Louise Kurz Schmidt (died in 1910)
A.A. Kurz
Gus W. Kurz (Gustav W. Kurz)
Mary Kurz Kay
Walter Kurz
Paul Kurz
Galloway C. Kurz.
Carl Kurz was a founder, with A.M. Pyron, of the First Town Site Company which sold lots to create Somerset. A.A. Kurx and Paul Kurz were involved
in selling and repairing cars in Somerset in block number 37 which included the Old Bank and later the Post
Office . Walter Kurz was the Somerset Postmaster in that Old Bank Building. Walter Kurz is listed on a 1929
Bexar county transaction as a Trustee of the Somerset First State Bank in which parts of lots in Somerset block 40 were deeded from
The Somerset Masonic Lodge to the bank. The Masonic Lodge was represented by Garland Owens,Lee Knight and H.W. Caruthers.
Page 18 of San Antonio Express , February 29, 1936 "Garland Owens indicted by a Bexar County Grand Jury."
Page 19 of San Antonio Light , August 2, 1936," Garland Owens placed under $55,000 bond following the filing of a federal charge of embezzlement."
Page 10 of San Antonio Express , October 14, 1936, "Garland Owens former Somerset State Bank officer charged with embezzlement."
Carl Kurz discovered oil on his land which led to the Somerset Oil Field. On http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset,_Texas
They claim that "The present site was named Somerset when the First Townsite Company was formed on the Artesian Belt Railroad right-of-way on May 25, 1909, by A. M. Pyron, Carl Kurz, and Jonas A. Kerr. In 1913, while drilling for artesian water, Kurz discovered oil."
"Jonas" A. Kerr is probably John A. Kerr. On a February 25, 1913 online Bexar county Clerk's land transactions, involving release of oil leases, the President of the Somerset Oil and Gas Co is Jno A. Kerr. But on a September 20, 1917 document the President of the Somerset Oil and Gas Co is listed as John A. Kerr. This 1917 document is also about releasing land owners from oil leases. The abbreviation "Jno" may have been thought to be Jonas.
http://books.google.com/books?id=7pgtAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA114&lpg=PA114&dq=history+of+the+Somerset+Oil+Field&source=bl&ots=Qv2UHwj_qp&sig=MBLvav03FVtZTLdIAkXD3WSp8_4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=hfLZUNrhL4HLqgHPxoCYDg&ved=0CEcQ6AEwAzgK#v=onepage&q=history%20of%20the%20Somerset%20Oil%20Field&f=false
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.
W.B. Kilborn is likely the father of Ernest Kilborn, Elgin and a third Kilborn, all of whom were lawmen. Ernest Kilborn married Mother's Sister, Betsy Moote, my aunt. A Kilborn house could be seen from the Pyron Homestead tract in the forties. It was to the SE, and apparently not far from the Carl Kurz home, so probably W.B. Kilborn, being a neighbor of Carl Kurz and A.M. Pyron, knew both of them.
In a Bexar county transaction of August 1915 John A. Kerr was president of the Somerset Oil and Gas Company.
John A. Kerr worked with A.M. Pyron and others in the Somerset Oil and Gas Company, and was once its president. But I have seen no evidence that John A. Kerr was also president, at one time of the First Townsite Company. The plat map which was used to create the town of Somerset, Texas was drawn up on May 25, 1909 for C. Kurz. Carl Kurz was President of the First Townsite Company in 1909. In 1912 A.M. Pyron was President as shown on
a November 2, 1912 deed from the First Townsite Company to W. Kenney. Then, on an April 16, 1914 deed involving the First Town Site Company its president was Jas. G. Boles. I have found no other president of that company in those early years of the teens and twenties.
There are questions about the Carl Kurz discovery of oil, other than exactly when it happened. Billie Kurz McCord, grand-daughter of Carl Kurz said in early 2013 on the phone that the first oil well, which in oil field lingo would be Kurz Number One, was near the home of her grandfather which is the place that her family occupied and where she lived while in the Somerset area.
There is also a segment of the William Pyron (Billy Kinney) 1988 Institute For Texas Cultures interview which deals with the Carl Kurz discovery of oil.
Here is the section of the transcript where Billy Kenney talks about the discovery of oil in Somerset
http://digital.utsa.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15125coll4/id/1663/rec/19
THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM
INTERVIEW WITH: Mr. Kenney
PLACE: Somerset, Texas
INTERVIEWERS: Sarah and Hardy Cannon
SC: Mr. Kenney, when were you born?
KENNEY: 1904.
SC: Here in Somerset?
KENNEY:: No, mam, Bexar
.
"SC: Now, Kurtz, wasn't Carl Kurtz diggin'
for water?
KENNEY
That's right. The way I understand it, he and my
grandfather, of course, - there was just a road separatin'
them.
HC: That's grandfather Pyron.
KENNEY: Grandfather put in with him to dig a thousand foot
well.
SC: Water well.
KENNEY:: See if they could get some water. That would be good
for irrigating, see?
HC: Yeah.
KENNEY:: 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)
HC: That's what happened when Walter Drake dug up in
Pennsylvania. He was diggin' a water well and got oil.
KENNEY:: They'd shut that end and get a little gas pressure ,
good gas pressure.
SC: Yes.
KENNEY:: But they'd shut it down over night, say 24 hours and
then get these suckers (men from San Antonio) out here next
day to open that thing up and they'd blow oil up there about
30, 40 feet. And man, they sold that stuff 'til the world
looked level.
SC: Well, how did they, did they cap it like they do now
and put it in a big container or did they ••• how did they
• • • ?
KENNEY:: They was just selling there. They had a big earthern
KENNEY:: tank and caught the oil that blowed out and pump it
into a tank."
Since Billy Kenney was born in 1904, he would have been about seven if Carl Kurz hit oil in 1911, or about eight it it was in 1912.
There is a good change that a San Antonio newspaper article was written about Carl Kurz's discovery of
oil at the time it happened, or by some other Texas newspaper. But I have not been able to find such an
article online, nor even the name Carl Kurz in indexes for old Texas newspapers.
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