Minnehoma Oil Company

Minnehoma Oil Company’s founder, George F. Getty, was a lawyer from Minneapolis. In 1903 he visited the oil-rich Osage land in Indian Territory and then leased land and began drilling, becoming an oil investor.⁠[1][2]

He purchased oil leases in Oklahoma, formed Minnehoma Oil Company and struck oil on the land he had bought.⁠[2][3]

In 1904 George F. Getty moved with his wife, Sarah Risher Getty, and his son, J. Paul Getty, to what was then the Oklahoma territory to work in the oil business; as a teenager, J. Paul Getty spent summers working on his father’s rigs as a roustabout. Late in life, J. Paul Getty recalled that Bartlesville, compared with Minneapolis, was a frontier town: “It was a typical frontier town in 1903 and ’04.”⁠[4][5]

Minnehoma Oil Company’s investments in Oklahoma helped develop the Bartlesville, Cushing, Cleveland and Osage areas; at the same time, George F. Getty also made personal ventures into oil exploration.⁠[2]

In late 1914, after finishing college, J. Paul Getty entered his father’s business, buying and selling oil leases for Minnehoma Oil Company’s Tulsa office.⁠[2][6]

In 1915 J. Paul Getty decided to operate on his own and bought a half interest in an oil lease on the Nancy Taylor allotment northwest of Haskell. He operated independently of his father’s Minnehoma Oil Company, but his father’s loans and financial backing enabled him to buy and sell oil leases in Oklahoma’s red-bed area.⁠[2][4]

In May 1916, J. Paul Getty was given a seat on the board of directors of Minnehoma Oil Company.⁠[2]

During the 1920s, George F. Getty and J. Paul Getty continued both to drill their own wells and to buy and sell oil leases, and J. Paul Getty became more active in California than in Oklahoma.⁠[4]

Minnehoma Oil Company was later renamed George Getty Oil Company. After George F. Getty died in 1930, J. Paul Getty became president of the company, and through a series of agreements with his mother he later obtained the controlling interest in it.⁠[7][6][4]

In 1967 the companies controlled by J. Paul Getty were merged into Getty Oil Company. Late in life, speaking about the continuity of the company’s management, J. Paul Getty said: “We’ve had two presidents since 1903.”⁠[6][5]