Recently, citizens of Oilton, Okla., and neighboring towns witnessed the most extensive oil fire that has ever occurred on the river since the field opened. It was one mile northeast of the town, on the Cimarron River, where the oil had formed a lake in the bend of the stream. It burned for hours, sending up a column of smoke and flame that was noticeable from towns twenty miles away.
William Murdoch, traffic manager of the Oil Belt Terminal Railroad, headed a squad of men who prevented a spread of flames, which would have been disastrous to the big railroad bridge.
He Helped to Found Republic of Texas.
J. W. Darlington, ninety-four years old, of Austin, Tex., is the only person now living who heard the sounds of the guns at the battle of San Jacinto, seventy-nine years ago.
Mr. Darlington was one of the band of Texans who met and defeated the Mexicans under Santa Anna, but was prevented from fighting in the battle itself by being detailed to look after the supply train.
Mr. Darlington came from Virginia to Austin in 1839, the year that Austin was laid off as a town, and the first capitol was built. He married Miss Eleanor J. Love in 1843, and has four daughters and one son living. He is an honorary member of the Daughters of the Republic,[Pg 59] and still takes an interest in affairs of the State. His chief delight seems to be recalling his life in Texas in the early forties.
In the battle of Plum Creek, in 1840, Mr. Darlington, at the head of about two hundred citizens, whipped the Comanche Indians so that they gave the early settlers no more trouble. He was also engaged in a battle at Plum Creek in 1842.
Mr. Darlington helped to plane the logs for the first capitol during Lamar’s administration, and also to build the fort around the capitol, to protect it from the Indians on one side and the Mexicans on the other. The capitol was then used not only for the sessions of Congress, but as a church, school, opera house, dance hall—in fact, for all public gatherings.
Rounded “The Horn.”
Vanburen Crompton, of Allen Dale, Ill., is one of the few men living who went to the California gold fields by way of “the Horn.” Most of the emigrants went overland by wagon, enduring many hardships. Mr. Crompton, then a young man, with two companions chose the water route. Taking a boat at New Orleans, they followed along the Mexican and South American coast, rounding Cape Horn, and then up the western coast, to San Francisco. The ships in that day were slow, and it required many weeks to make the journey. Thousands of men were called westward by the lure of gold, but only a comparatively small number found riches. Mr. Crompton was among the unlucky ones, and returned home after six years. He now lives on the farm on which he was born, and in one of the first frame houses erected in southern Illinois. In the early days there was a fort near the farm, a refuge from the Indians.