A True Healdton Story Page: 4 of 8
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-4-
Shortly after acquiring his interest, Mr. Sinclair together
with a lawyer of questionable ethics, Thomas Norman, and a District
Judge of like character, W. F. Freeman, threw the Crystal Oil Company
in the hands of a receiver without notice. This proceeding, of course,
was in the District Court of Carter County. Mr. Lawrence Cruce was
appointed receiver and he immediately came to my office, which was
the office of the Secretary-Treasurer of the Crystal Oil Company, and
demanded that he take over. He said he knew nothing about the oil
business but he was the receiver until he knew something else to do.
We, of course, refused to turn anything over to him and proceeded
to try to supersede the judgment, the petition or the order of
the court that a receiver be appointed. Then a number of our good
friends came to our assistance,- L. H. Love, T. A. Thurmond, Denny
Fitzgerald, and others, and made a supersedeas bond for us and the
case was taken out of court.
There are so many interesting things which happened in the
early days that I shall attempt later on to pick up some of them
individually. For instance, about the Keck lease and the Mary Mc-
Clure lease, and the Schermerhorn leases particularly. The Scher-
merhorn lease turned out to be the foundation for many substantial
fortunes, among them Frank Merrick who drilled the first well on
the Schermerhorn farm. I had obtained the lease on the Schermer-
horn tract. Schermerhorn, by the way, was a brother of Mary McClure.
The lease was from his father who was then a Presbyterian Missionary
and had been given this 80 acre allotment by the Tribe. We did
not record our lease until we felt certain we could drill to com-
ply with provisions of certain of them.
After that time, however, Mr. Sinclair made it so em-
barrassing for us that we were forced to sell, and at the time we
sold, the oil that we had in tanks on top of the ground was
worth more at the present price than the total consideration Sinclair
paid to us. It was only a short time after our sale to Mr. Sinclair
that he sold the stock of the Crystal Oil Company to the Sinclair
Oil Company, a corporation he dominated, for I understand some five
times the amount he had paid us for the stock a few months previously.
In the meantime, however, Mr. Schermerhorn had to visit
his father in Hartshorn, Oklahoma, and convinced him that it would
be better protection for the family if he deeded his 80 acres to
him. Then this deed from father to son was recorded prior to our
having recorded our lease and, of course, then we had no lease. The
South 20 acres of the Schermerhorn lease was given by Schermerhorn
to Frank Merrick who drilled his first well in the area on that 20
acres. The Schermerhorn lease was subject to litigation later on
as other members of the family, including Mary McClure, insisted
that the brother who held the title held it only as Trustee for the
other members of the family. I do not know just what settlement
was made between them.
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A True Healdton Story, text, Date Unknown; (https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc1627631/m1/4/: accessed April 24, 2024), The Gateway to Oklahoma History, https://gateway.okhistory.org; crediting Ardmore Public Library.