When all else fails I turn back to Google and junk hunt. This morning’s junk hunt turned up more information to ponder on George E Zuver, once wealthy, died poor, oil producer/farmer. It seems from first glance that the oil wells on George’s farm are still active.
At some point in time Weymouth Oil took over about 14 of the wells on the property and is operating them to this day. Witco Oil, producers of Kendall oil in Bradford Pennsylvania, owned one of the wells. That well is no longer in production and Kendall is no longer produced in Bradford.
So far I have turned up very little about the George Weymouth Oil company and I am not sure how to go about getting historical information, yet. I dug back through the paperwork that arrived with James W Zuver’s pension. National Transit Company, United Pipe Line Division, (Standard Oil organized National Transit in 1881 to own and operate pipelines, after 1910 the Standard Oil monopoly would be broken up by the government) had owned some of the wells on the Zuver farm. O.P Swisher was the agent for the company at the time of George’s application for Father’s Pension and had written an affidavit for George concerning the income yearly from the oil. The wells under National Transit did not pay George his 1/8 interest.
Another affidavit from R M Davidson states that is one of the owners of the Zuver Farm Lease and that George owns the royalty on 2 wells that he gets 1/8 interest on, these wells produce 3/4 to 7/8 of a barrel a day. He goes on to state that Susan Zuver, George’s late wife had owned the royalty on 4 wells that average 2 barrels a day and gets 1/8 interest on. Davidson was also the owner of judgments against George E Zuver and claims that if he forced payment would wipe out George’s current interest in Zuver farm.
I can now assume there were at least 14 wells on the property of which George was getting a 1/8 interest in only 6. The more I search, read and review the deeper into it poor George seems to have been. After further research it now looks like George was put out of business by Standard Oil and the monopoly that was being created for transporting oil to market. Large corporations were begining to squeeze the smaller producer out, controling transportation of goods and selling price of oil.