James C. Donnell was born on April 20, 1854 in County Armagh, Ireland. Very little is known about his early life and he seems to have dismissed questions concerning it by declaring that “he was not interested in the past at all”. His parents, James and Elizabeth (Boyd) Donnell, brought him to the United States as a child of two.
At the age of eighteen Donnell was working in the oil-fields of Titusville, Pennsylvania, hauling crude oil from field to refinery. Six years later he joined the rush to Bradford Field and took leases in the famous Foster Brook Valley near Red Rock and Derrick City. Here he remained for several years as producer and driller of wells.
During this time he also bought laud in the Richburg and Allentown Fields of New York state.
In 1886 he went to Ohio, attracted by the possibilities of the Lima field, and was one of the few drillers who made a success there.
In the following year, when the Standard Oil Company purchased the Ohio Oil Company, he became one of the board of directors and later vice-president.
At the same time he served the Standard interests in Indiana where he was in charge of drilling operations.
He next spent several months in Rouma-nia representing the Roumanian-American Oil Company and in 1907 he helped form the Standard Oil Company of California.
This took the form of operations in the new fields of Wyoming and also in Montana, New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Louisiana, as well as in Mexico.
In 1916 he made a survey of the Peruvian oil-fields which the Standard interests later took over.
Donnell looked upon his wells as living things, and on oil as something that should be conserved by storage in the ground until needed.
It has been said that sometimes while inspecting a field, he would take the driller’s place so that he could “turn screw” for a while.
His death removed the last of the “oil giants” with the exception of the senior Rockefeller, one of his closest friends.
Donnell was instrumental in the building of the Illinois Pipe Line Company. He drilled some 42, 000 wells, in every oil-producing section of the United States. He did much for his local community and won a popular love greater than that accorded most men. During the World War he became a member of the National Petroleum War Service Committee.
Quotes from others about the person
“He was a remarkable man and shared our confidence to the fullest extent. He will be greatly missed by a multitude who knew him and who [had] the highest honor and esteem for his noble qualities and charming personality. ” (Rockefeller)
Donnell was married twice: in 1882 he married Sadie Flinn who bore one son, and in 1890 Elizabeth Meeker.
