L. C. Heydrick Collection

L.C. Heydrick's father, J.A. Heydrick, was very successful in the petroleum business in Pennsylvania. Along with his brother, he was able to make a profit from 55 of the 60 well sunk. Living in Butler, Pennsylvania, the brothers lived comfortably. John S. Wick, another oil man who in lived in Butler persuaded J.A. Heydrick to team up with him to do some oil speculation in the Indian Territory (in present-day Oklahoma). At the time, J.A. Heydrick was unaware of the trouble that he was getting himself into. After finding oil at Red Fork (near present-day Tulsa), Heydrick watched in amazement thousands of oil speculators swarm into Indian Territory with the hope of getting rich very quickly. Quite frankly, Heydrick was disappointed with the output of this misconceived well. He tried to sell the land but to no avail. The stockholders of his company would do no such thing when there was so much interest in the land surrounding the well. Besides the financial burden that J.A. Heydrick was faced with, he also had to contend with the Department of the Interior of the United States of America. The Secretary of the Interior, Allen Hitchcock, thought that Heydrick and Wick had no right trespassing on Indian lands. Moreover, after the initial discovery, Heydrick and Wick were put up against two doctors who claimed that they were responsible for the Red Fork discovery.