American Well & Prospecting Company
Corsicana, Navarro County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Organized in Kansas in 1890 by Horace Greeley Johnston (1851-1930) of Ohio and Pennsylvania native Charles Rittersbacher (1857-1919). This company began as a water well drilling business. In 1891 the partners moved to Texas and began drilling in Corsicana. In 1894, while drilling on S. 12th street, they struck crude oil, which led to the discovery of the Corsicana oil field. The firm began making and distributing rotary drilling equipment in 1900. Converted to a munitions plant in World War II, the business was sold to Bethlehem Steel and operated at this site until 1959. (1982)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in Kansas in 1890 by Horace Greeley Johnston and Charles Rittersbacher, this firm began as a water-well drilling business before the partners moved to Corsicana. In 1894, while drilling for water on South 12th Street, they struck crude oil—the accidental discovery of the Corsicana oil field. The company went on to manufacture rotary drilling equipment, converted to munitions work in World War II, and finally closed under Bethlehem Steel in 1959.
Why it matters
A chance strike while hunting for water launched one of Texas's first major oil fields and helped make rotary drilling standard across the industry.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early 1890s, Texas was mostly a land of cotton, cattle, and railroad towns. Corsicana, the seat of Navarro County, was a prosperous farm-trade town on the Blackland Prairie. Like many growing towns of the era, it wanted a better water supply, and that meant drilling.
Well drilling was a skilled trade that moved with demand, and outfits from the Midwest and the Northeast carried their equipment and know-how to wherever towns were growing. Oil was already big business in Pennsylvania and Ohio. In Texas, though, it was still more rumor than industry. Nobody yet knew what lay beneath the state's prairies.
That would change within a decade. Texas was on the edge of an oil age that would transform its economy, its cities, and its place in the nation, and Corsicana was where the first big chapter began.
People & events
Horace Greeley Johnston, an Ohio native, and Charles Rittersbacher, from Pennsylvania, founded the American Well & Prospecting Company in Kansas in 1890. They came from states that knew drilling well. They started out as water-well men, and in 1891 they moved their business to Corsicana to drill.
In 1894, drilling on South 12th Street, they hit something they had not been looking for: crude oil. It was not a gusher that made headlines around the world, but it was enough. The strike led directly to the development of the Corsicana oil field, and before long derricks were rising around the town. Corsicana became one of the first places in Texas where oil turned into an industry rather than a curiosity.
The partners did not just drill. Around 1900 the firm began making and selling rotary drilling equipment. Rotary rigs bore through soft, sandy formations better than the older cable-tool method, and the Gulf Coast was full of exactly that kind of ground. The company kept adapting through the decades: during World War II it was converted to munitions work, and it was later sold to Bethlehem Steel, which ran it on this site until 1959.
Its place in the American story
The Corsicana field is often called the opening act of the Texas oil story. It came before the famous Spindletop gusher near Beaumont in 1901, and it helped give Texas the workers, businesses, and early refining experience that the bigger booms would draw on. Much of the Spindletop story involves rotary drilling, and experience gained in Corsicana helped make that possible.
Rotary drilling became the standard method of the twentieth-century oil industry, and manufacturers like American Well & Prospecting helped spread it. The oil that rotary rigs reached fueled the automobile age, reshaped the American economy, and made Texas one of the most important energy producers in the world.
The company's later history mirrors the nation's too. Wartime conversion to munitions, like that of so many American factories in World War II, and eventual absorption into a steel giant show how a small partnership born in the drilling trade became part of the industrial machinery of modern America.
If you visit
Corsicana wears its history lightly but visibly. The marker's site is a good starting point for imagining the town in the 1890s: a quiet prairie town where a water-well crew suddenly found itself at the start of an industry. Walk the older streets nearby and picture derricks scattered among homes and businesses, as they were in the early boom years.
The downtown has a fine collection of historic commercial buildings, many built on the prosperity that oil and cotton brought. Take time to look up at the facades and cornices; they tell you how much money flowed through this town at its peak.
Corsicana sits conveniently along the route between Dallas and Houston, which makes it an easy and rewarding stop on a Texas road trip. For a longer oil-history journey, pair it with a visit to the Beaumont area and Spindletop, so you can see both the modest beginning and the explosive boom that followed.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Horace Greeley Johnston
- · Charles Rittersbacher
Related events
- · Discovery of the Corsicana oil field
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Early Texas Natural Gas Pipelines
Corsicana, TX
In 1902 the first public use of natural gas in Texas began on this Corsicana street, piping fuel to nearby homes and businesses. Navarro County became a cradle of the industry — the first gas meters appeared at Chatfield in 1905, and gas was first used to pump oil wells here in 1906. From these modest lines grew a network that within a generation spanned the state and, by the 1920s, launched the nation's first interstate natural gas pipelines.
Old Welding Shop of H. C. Nicol
Corsicana, TX
When the Navarro County oil fields opened in 1894, the young petroleum industry needed craftsmen who could join and repair metal in the field. H. C. Nicol answered that call around 1912, remembered as the first welder to work the county's oil patch in an era when a tradesman still had to mix his own welding chemicals by hand. He pushed the craft further, pioneering the welding of cast iron and aluminum in the area.
Joseph S. Cullinan, Pioneer in Texas Oil
Corsicana, TX
Joseph S. Cullinan learned the oil business the hard way, starting at fourteen as a laborer in the Pennsylvania fields. Drawn to Texas after the 1894 Corsicana discovery, he became a driving force in the young state's petroleum industry, organizing companies—including the enterprise that became Texaco—and integrating exploration, production, refining, and marketing. He also pressed for early conservation and anti-waste legislation as the industry exploded.
James Emerson Whiteselle
Corsicana, TX
Born in Tennessee in 1851, James Emerson Whiteselle came to Texas in 1870 to work in his uncle's lumber business and by 1875 had joined the Corsicana lumber company he would eventually own, later expanding into brick manufacturing. A prominent businessman and banker, he served as mayor of Corsicana from 1894 to 1898 — the very years oil was discovered there — and helped guide the field's early development. He died on his birthday in 1915.