Episode 25: Immigrant Oilmen and the "Standard Squeeze"

Cleveland shot to the forefront of the American oil refining industry after the Civil War. The city's lead in oil was largely due to the enterprise of John D. Rockefeller, who quickly jumped on the opportunities presented when oil was discovered in Titusville PA in 1859. But Grasselli Chemical Works, Sherwin Williams, and Glidden Paints also helped to put Cleveland on the oil industry map in the late 1860s. A few of the city's oil pioneers had Irish roots. Brothers John and James Corrigan, sons of an Irish immigrant, became involved in shipping oil products from Cleveland to their native Canada in the late 1860s. By 1870, they were both living in Cleveland and engaged in kerosene refining. (James Corrigan later shifted his attention to shipping iron and founded the Corrigan McKinney Steel Company in 1894.) Jeremiah Murphy, another son of an Irish immigrant, founded the Ohio Oil Company in 1881. Unable to compete with Rockefeller's ruthless business practices, Murphy had to fold Ohio Oil in 1885, but was able to gather the resources to start Phoenix Oil Company in 1890 and found success as the maker of Murphy's Oil Soap.