Gilbert “Gib” Morgan is a mythical oil well driller from American folklore who was the protagonist of many stories and tall tales. Also known as Kemp or Gid Morgan, he was the oil industry equivalent in terms of heroic deeds and exaggerated tales to what Davy Crockett was for frontiersmen mythology, John Henry and Casey Jones for railroading, Pecos Bill for cattle herding, and Paul Bunyan for lumberjacking.
Still, as astounding and inflated as his tales may sound, Gib Morgan was a mundane hero who dealt with common people’s problems. His stories tell us about the late nineteenth-century ordinary worker’s life, a world of corn crops, rusty pipes, smelly saloons, filthy boardinghouses, and greasy tools. Most of his tales depict him as a practical and somewhat pedestrian hero, mostly involved with solving common working problems of oil drillers’ everyday lives and fixing technical issues with ingenious gadgets. Even if he was unnaturally able to fix all machinery without effort and find all kinds of fanciful and imaginative solutions for otherwise unsolvable problems, he always did that with just his tools of the trade, often inventing new mechanisms and devices from simple everyday items. For example, in a story where he found himself stranded in the jungle, he taught his fellow workers how to use a boa constrictor as a bull shaft cable and used the snake’s shed skin as a pipe to drill deeper into the well. In another story, to build a chariot big enough for his gigantic horse Torpedo, he screwed some lengths of chasing together as shafts and used a pair of bull wheels instead of just ordinary wooden wheels.
Gib Morgan stories are not just genuinely born from everyday people’s tales. Rather they are all pseudo-folklore stories made up by Morgan himself, who was a naturally gifted storyteller from a young age. He kept inventing tall tales about himself and his exaggerated efforts while he traveled through the country, and although he was quite a brilliant narrator, he never was a rich man, a successful rig builder, nor the amazing oilman who was able to smell oil underground as he claimed to be in his tales.
The real Gib Morgan was born on July 14, 1842, in Callensburg, Pennsylvania. His family later moved to Emlenton in 1848, a town just forty miles away from Titusville, the city where Colonel Drake drilled the first oil well in 1859 when Gib was just seventeen. During the Civil War he served as a private in the Tenth Pennsylvania Infantry from 1861 to 1864. He knew the horrors of war when his company fought at Antietam and Gettysburg and understood the importance of camaraderie during the months of entrenchment caused by the overall poor organization of the army. As soon as the war was over, Morgan returned to Emlenton in 1864, and here he married Mary Ritchey who gave birth to his three children: Ed, Charles, and Warren. He started his career as a tool dresser, roustabout, and pipeline laborer until 1872, when his young wife died, and he left his sons for adoption. He started wandering around the country as an oil driller and lived roaming around looking for oil fields and telling incredible tales until his death in 1909.
The oil field crewman’s life was a dangerous and exhausting one. Oil workers had to risk their very lives manning unstable equipment or dropping nitroglycerin into unproductive wells to make them explode and were exposed to all kind of hazards like gas leaks and unexpected fires. They were hardy people who wrangled their everyday living, breaking their backs with heavy iron wrenches in their hands and sturdy boots on their feet, and Gib knew well that a cold beer and a well-told story at the end of the day was everything they needed to bolster their spirits.
The oil drillers themselves were central figures in the oilfields during the nineteenth century. They were responsible for the most important role in the oil industry: they had to find the oil and get it out of the well. Their ability to decide when and where to drill and their commanding presence as squad leaders who shared with their comrades the same hardships they had to feel and endure, caused them to become the material for many American legends and folklore. The “Minstrel of the Oil Fields,” as Morgan was often called, took advantage of this position to build up a fictional character to entertain his peers with his incredible stories. He never showed fear in the face of danger; he always had the promptest solution to all kinds of problems; he was the sturdiest, the hardiest, and wisest of them all.
When a hoe handle that a nearby farmer was leaning on suddenly snaps and he falls from a cliff, Morgan shows his wits and lightning reflexes by catching the farmer with his fishing string before he hits the ground. He is able to heal a crewmate who gets stung by a bee by mixing up a poultice from seven different tree leaves, but when he later finds that a knot on the cable keeps it from going through the pulley, he uses the same poultice to heal its swelling and start drilling again.
Drilling oil wells was all these people knew in their lives, and thus drilling was the solution to all everyday problems. In one tale Morgan and his crew have to drill a well deep inside the jungle in the Fiji Islands, but their job is hampered by mosquitoes that keep them from sleeping and may infect them all with malaria. Gib’s solution is quite simple; he “geologizes around” for a bit, and then finds a quinine vein he uses for medicinal purposes instead of just selling it to a commercial producer.
Genuine creativity and hard labor are always the only answers required to solve every problem he and his crew may encounter, and the overall tone of his stories is always light, ironic, or sometimes even downright humorous. Gib’s tales are full of positive messages and often show an educational intent for less cultured folks. Many of his tales are clearly satirical, aimed at leading people to skepticism about fake tales told to justify scams and rip-offs, such as in 1877 when a dry oil well was salted with kerosene to prevent the producer from abandoning it.
Maybe because his real life’s past experiences of war were all obviously negative, Gib Morgan never finds violence as a solution during his tales. The only battle he ever fights during his adventures is not even fully described. When he needs to bring back under control an undisciplined man who is part of his crew and battles with him on a river, they just disappear under the water, leaving all the people who were spectators to the quarrel guessing who could win it. And even on this occasion, the altercation stops when they just realize they are too hungry to keep going on, so they end eating together, resting, and being friendly to each other, thus calling the fight off.
Claudio Butticè
See also Captain Alfred Bulltop Stormalong; Fakelore; Febold Feboldson; Joe Magarac; John Henry; Jones, Casey; Paul Bunyan; Tall Tales
Further Reading
Boatright, Mody Coggin. 1945. Gib Morgan, Minstrel of the Oil Fields. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press.
Brunvand, Jan Harold, ed. 1996. American Folklore: An Encyclopedia. London: Taylor & Francis.
Dorson, Richard Mercer, 1986. Handbook of American Folklore. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Felton, Harold W. 1972. Gib Morgan, Oil Driller. New York: Dodd, Mead.
Glassie, Henry, and Edward D. Ives. 1971. Folksongs and Their Makers. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green Popular Press.