In the spirit of Horatio Alger, "Hen" Rogers, a child of working-class parents, amassed a fortune such that he was listed in a 1996 study as one of the 25 all-time most wealthy individuals in United States history.
As a youth, Hen Rogers was only an average student. He carried newspapers and he worked in his father's grocery store as a teenager. He was in the first graduating class of the local high school in 1857. He then hired on with the Old Colony Railroad as a brakeman, working for several years and saving his money.
In 1861, 21-year-old Henry pooled his savings of approximately $600 with a friend, Charles Ellis. They set out to western Pennsylvania and its newly discovered oil fields, where the young partners began their small Wamsutta Oil Refinery at McClintocksville near Oil City. The old Native American name "Wamsutta" was apparently selected in honor of their hometown area of New England, where Wamsutta Company in nearby New Bedford had opened in 1846, and was a major employer. The Wamsutta Company was the first of many textile mills that gradually came to supplant whaling as the principal employer in New Bedford.
Rogers and Ellis and their tiny refinery made $30,000 their first year. This amount was more than three entire whaling ship trips from back home could hope to earn during an average voyage of more than a years' duration. Of course, he was regarded as very successful when Rogers returned home to Fairhaven for a short vacation the next year.
Rogers conceived the idea of long pipe lines for transporting oil and natural gas. In 1881, the National Transit Company was formed by Standard Oil to own and operate Standard's pipelines. The National Transit Company remained one of Rogers' favorite projects throughout the rest of his life.
East Ohio Gas Company (EOG) was incorporated on September 8, 1898, as a marketing company for the National Transit Company, the natural gas arm of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. The company launched its business by selling to consumers in northeast Ohio gas produced by another National Transit subsidiary, Hope Natural Gas Company.
http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/henry-h-rogers/seeking-his-fortune.html
