Reminisce: Refinery pioneer’s time in Lima

The Standard Oil Company, the Allen County Democrat wrote, “are not of the class who allow a matter of a few thousand dollars to stand in the way of accomplishing a purpose.”

Standard Oil’s purpose, in the late summer of 1886, was buying 102 acres from farmer James Hover on which the company planned to build a refinery. “The thought of locating a refinery at any other point than Lima never once entered their head,” the Democrat wrote.

And so, “after weeks of parleying,” Standard Oil paid Hover $20,789 for the land as well as “a present of $2,500 as an evidence of their appreciation of his close adherence to his contracts.” Hover then paid the Trenton Rock Oil Company $5,000 to relinquish their mineral rights on the property. Trenton Rock, a group of local investors, had been leasing land around Lima since paper mill owner Benjamin Faurot struck oil while drilling, according to some accounts, for natural gas along the Ottawa River near North Street in May 1885.

Shortly after Standard struck a deal with Hover, the company sent John W. Van Dyke from Brooklyn, New York, to supervise the construction of what became known as the Solar Refinery.

The oil boom brought Lima pride, prosperity and some remarkable people, among them Van Dyke. When he died at the age of 89 in September 1939, the New York Herald Tribune wrote, “Mr. Van Dyke’s career of more than seventy years virtually spanned the history of the petroleum industry. He was a friend and one-time business associate of the late John D. Rockefeller and had made many contributions to the industry.”

Van Dyke spent more than 15 years of that career in Lima, leading the refinery from the fall of 1886 when the first few brick buildings sprouted from the muck of the former navy bean field until he left for Philadelphia early in 1903.

Born on Dec. 27, 1849, into a wealthy farm family in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, the young Van Dyke, his family had decided, would attend law school, followed by a period of study in the Detroit law office of an uncle. Van Dyke had a different plan.

At the age of 17 in 1867, Van Dyke and a cousin ran away to northwestern Pennsylvania, where oil had been discovered in 1859. Van Dyke began working in the oil fields of Venango County, Pennsylvania, starting as a store clerk before finding work as a driller and tool dresser.

He eventually purchased two leases in Venango County and became a small producer. In the mid-1870s, he was hired as engineer of Standard Oil’s Long Island, New York, refinery and, when Standard Oil purchased a refinery in Brooklyn, New York, Van Dyke was made plant manager there.

In 1886, Standard sent him to Lima to build and operate the Solar Refinery to utilize the newly discovered Lima crude.

It was not an easy job.

“That September and October were so rainy the workers claimed they grew three inches a day from the mud clinging to their boots as they trudged through the fields,” The Lima News wrote in a July 1998 article. “Two and three teams of horses were needed to pull the wagon-loads of equipment to the building site.”

The job, however, was not done with the completion of the refinery. Lima’s crude, with a high sulphur content, was cruder than most. Fortunately, Van Dyke’s work at Solar brought him into contact with men looking for a way to clean it up, chief among them a German chemist named Herman Frasch, who had been hired by Rockefeller.

Refiner Van Dyke’s invention of a hollow water-cooled drive shaft for a furnace used to remove the sulphur, paired with chemist Frasch’s process, made Lima crude commercially viable, not to mention a little less odorous. Among other innovations, Van Dyke would patent a design for a railroad tank car to transport the oil and pioneered the use of acid to improve the flow of oil wells.

In the fall of 1889, after three years in Lima, Van Dyke was married.

“John W. Van Dyke, superintendent of the Solar Refinery has returned to this city with his bride, who was Miss Emma J. Grimes, of Mayville, N.Y., to whom he was married last Monday,” the Lima Democratic Times reported Oct. 19, 1889.

While Van Dyke dabbled in real estate, collected art and artifacts and indulged his interests in horses and dogs, his wife entertained. In November 1904, the Allen County Republican-Gazette wrote, “Mrs. Van Dyke dispensed hospitality with a royal hand, and her house was a center of social activity,” noting she also “gave freely of effort to the work of establishing on a firm foundation, the Lima Hospital, and the Women’s Auxiliary of the Young Men’s Christian Association.”

In 1897, the Van Dykes moved into the rambling Victorian mansion at 642 W. Market St. that had been built four years earlier by Lima confectioner and candymaker Frank J. Banta.

“Extensive improvements were made,” the Republican-Gazette wrote in July 1915. “A ballroom was added on the third floor and a billiard room on the first floor. The residence became the scene of some of the most brilliant social functions in the history of the city.”

The Van Dykes lived in the home less than six years. (It would stand empty for a dozen years before being purchased by furniture store owner William Hoover in 1915. Today, it is part of the Allen County Museum.). In January 1903, it was announced Van Dyke and W.M. Irish, another early Solar official, would be leaving Lima.

“Lima’s loss will be Philadelphia’s gain for both Mr. Van Dyke and Mr. Irish will go to the Quaker city to assume new and important responsibilities in their relations with the Standard Oil Co.,” the Times-Democrat wrote in January 1903.

Although he left Lima, Van Dyke would remain connected with it for the rest of his life. After his wife died in November 1904, he married Lima native Edna Burton, the daughter of Enos and Emma Brown Burton, who was 31 years his junior.

“She aspired to be a great singer, and quickly became his protégé, with Van Dyke financing many of her concerts,” the News wrote in 1998.

Performing under the name Edna de Lima, a nod to her hometown, she performed in Europe and the U.S., including a 1917 performance at Memorial Hall. Van Dyke and Burton/de Lima divorced in 1921. She died in Mystic, Connecticut, in 1968.

Van Dyke’s connections to Lima continued in other ways as well. Between 1901 and 1939, he made many donations to the Allen County Historical Society. Among those donations were statues, bronze figures, an early American cradle and a replica of the German liner Kronprinzessin Cecilie, the vessel upon which he had spent his honeymoon with Edna. The replica, which today sits in a glass case in the Allen County Museum library, cost $10,000 and was intended as an anniversary gift to Edna, who, the story goes, refused it shortly before divorcing Van Dyke.

By the time of his death in 1939, Van Dyke had risen to chairman of the board of the Atlantic Refining Company and was a millionaire several times over. Van Dyke, who was childless, set aside $1.5 million for an education fund for children of Atlantic Refining employees. In his obituary, only his first wife, Emma, is mentioned.

John Van Dyke can be seen in his office in this photograph. He led Standard Oil’s Solar Refinery in Lima from its founding for more than 15 years.

Reach Greg Hoersten at [email protected]