Historic Midland

J. C. WILLIAMSON
J.C. Williamson came to Midland in June
1937, when oil was bringing 90 cents per
barrel. He had a job with Phillips Petroleum,
on the seventh floor of the Petroleum
Building, and he stayed at Mrs. Roundtree’s
Boarding House, where everyone was young
and eager to work.
“Every company had a scout or two, and
they would bribe the tool pusher, the driller,
the crews, just to get information.
Everybody was looking for oil.”
Williamson worked for Phillips six years.
When he quit in April 1945, he was earning
$450 per month as district geologist. By the
end of that year, he had made $27,000 as an
independent.
He bought his first successful investment
in minerals under the Dollarhide Ranch. A
wildcat well came in on this ranch as a great
producer of oil. It was just the beginning for
the consummate oilpatch gambler, who
throughout the years has drilled or caused
to be drilled more than 1,800 wells in the
Permian Basin area.
He said he has never lost his love for the
oil business, and has always reinvested his
oilfield income in the oil business, sometimes
in minerals, sometimes in exploration.
“When you’re an oilman, you have to put
it back into the ground,” he said.
His wife, Jerry, came in the summer of
1937 and is the fiscally conservative member
of the family, and the love of his life. “I
don’t see how Jerry took it. She’s still taking
it. She’s the one who keeps me going,
though,” he said.
Williamson is now located five floors
above the office where he went to work for
Phillips 61 years ago, in the Petroleum
Building.
In a business where people commonly
come and go, they have never lived anywhere
but Midland since arriving here.
“We still enjoy the town,” Williamson says.
And needless to say, they still enjoy the oil
business.
124 ✦ HISTORIC MIDLAND