Austin Glynn "A. G." Lee (1902-1976)

Austin Glynn "A. G." Lee was a school teacher, businessman, and even briefly Oil City mayor, who was active in efforts to improve education at the state and national level.

Shreveport Times 19-Apr-1959, Page 1-E

Originally from Cotton Valley, he attended Louisiana State Normal School (now Northwestern State University), majoring in rural education, and graduated from LSU's College of Agriculture in 1934. 

Austin Glynn Lee as a student at Louisiana State Normal School

Source: Louisiana State Normal School Potpourri (yearbook) 

He taught at Robeline and Logansport High Schools, and was a state-level advisor to the Future Farmers of America (FFA). He also held a state-wide post, having been elected as secretary of the agricultural section of the Louisiana Teachers Association.

The 1940 census shows he and family living in Minden with his occupation listed as district conservation superintendent - soil conservation. In the 1940s, they moved to Oil City where he was involved in the oil business and notably owned the local Ford dealership. He served as mayor from 1947-1948 , assuming the role from banker O. B. Roberts, a former mayor who had returned to the position when William S. Farquhar resigned in 1946. 

Source: Baton Rouge Morning Advocate 28-Oct-1947, Page 3-A

Being a former teacher, he advocated for improvements to education, and in October 1955 chaired a state-wide conference held in Natchitoches on the subject. The following month he participated in a similar White House-sponsored event held in Washington D. C., as part of the Louisiana delegation.  He was particularly concerned about the then new practice of state and local school boards accepting federal aid.

The family eventually moved to Dixie, LA. He and wife Jewell had a daughter, Glenda, who attended Oil City school for a few years and later graduated from Belcher High and LSU. She married  Lee Harrison of Baton Rouge, who became a dentist and practiced in Shreveport for many years.

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Hilma Mattson - A Woman Ahead Of Her Time

Hilma M. Mattson (1883-1952) was a lady truly ahead of her time for, as a single woman when women had limited opportunities, she became first a lawyer and later a business woman who founded and ran her own oil business.

Early Life and Family

Hilma's parents, Gustav and Cristena Mattson, immigrated from Sweden and were pioneer settlers of Big Springs, an unincorporated area southwest of Hawarden, IA. She and her siblings, a brother and three sisters, grew up on the family farm. In 1902 she graduated from Hawarden High School.

Career

Though not mentioned in her obituary, she apparently taught school immediately out of high school, as a January 1903 newspaper article references her closing her school in an adjacent community two weeks for vacation. 

Neither was there indication that she attended college, however she later passed the South Dakota bar exam and practiced law in Deadwood, SD, until 1915. An article about her father's death that year disclosed she planned to relocate to a new unnamed city. At some point, she moved to Shreveport and founded  the State Mutual Oil Company. A well named Mattson No. 1 was drilled in Oil City in 1920.  Using GPS coordinates provided on the Department of Natural Resources website to locate, it was southwest of the dead end of Angel Street in the Caddo area of Oil City.

In addition to Mattson No. 1, another well attributed to State Mutual Oil was Boisseau No. 1, drilled in 1921 and  identified as a wildcat well.  It was off of Thornapple Road approximately 1.3 miles west of Hwy 1. There were likely others however the DNR website does not contain a search by owner functionality, at least to the public.  

The 1922 American Oil Directory had the following listing:

State Mutual Oil Company

229 Market Street (Shreveport)

Pres & G.M. (President & General Manager) H. M. Mattson 

That is approximately at the corner of Market and Fannin, a Goodyear store parking lot across from the current U.S. District Court building.

Per a 1922 newspaper article, State Mutual Oil Company was approved by the Indiana Securities Commission to sell shares of its 103 acre oil lease in Caddo Parish. The offering of 2,700 shares at $50/share equaled $135,000 or $1.82 million in today's dollars. The article stated the company owned its own drilling machinery valued at $40,000.

Her obituary states she lived in Oil City for approximately 25 years before her death. Social columns in her hometown Hawarden (IA) Independent newspaper over the years reveal she continued to frequently travel to and stay in both Iowa and South Dakota for weeks or months at a time. At various times she was listed as being from Shreveport and other times from Oil City.

Death

Hilma died in the Vivian hospital after a sudden week-long illness on 13-Jun-1952. A service was held the next day in Oil City at an unnamed site. Her body was accompanied by local ladies, Francis Boyd and Polly Elkins, to Hawarden for a second service the following Tuesday in the Big Springs Baptist Church, where she'd been a member in her youth. She was then interred in the family's plot.

She never married (nor did her brother and two of her sisters) and was the last of her immediate family, having no direct heirs or even nieces or nephews.

Settlement of Estate

Hilma's will was admitted into probate in July 1953, which included a provision for continued care of two Boston terriers by a caretaker residing in Hawarden . The district court was asked to rule on the validity of the clause. Its review revealed the will was created in 1936 and the dogs had died years earlier. This along with another vague provision for a donation to charity, with no specific one named, caused the court to set aside both and award the entire estate, valued between $25,000 and $30,000 ( $218,000 to $264,000 in 2014 dollars), to distant relatives.

This was a real life case of that dream people have of a long-lost relative leaving them something.


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Oil City's "American Trilogy"

My hometown of Oil City, Louisiana has its own "American Trilogy". Remember the song by Mickey Newbury and sung by Elvis Presley that represented the parties involved in the Civil War? It is actually an arrangement combining parts of earlier songs "Dixie", "Battle Hymn of the Republic", and "All My Trials", representing the Confederacy, the Union, and the American slave respectively. Interestingly, the town has former residents representing each component of the trilogy.

Texas Seymour Magee (1845-1933) Private, CSA, Company A, 27th Texas Partisan Rangers of Dismounted Cavalry. This term refers to troops that traveled by horseback, but fought on foot. Company A was known as the "Texas Invincibles" and recruited from the Daingerfield area. The 27th (known as Whitfield's Legion and itself part of the larger Ross Cavalry Brigade) fought in northern Georgia, Tennessee, and Mississippi, including notably at Vicksburg and in the Atlanta campaign. Not much is known about his later life other than that he lived in Bossier City (1930) shortly before his death. He is buried locally in Evans Cemetery.

Schuyler B. Nichols (1846-1925) Private, USA, 1st New York Veteran Cavalry, Company B. Initially based in Washington , D.C., the 1st NY Vets fought primarily in Virginia and West Virginia. After the war, he had a long career as a railroad engineer around the midwest and south, before eventually moving to Oil City and becoming an oil man in the early 1900s. Mr. Nichols died and is buried in Palacios, Texas.

Schuler B. Nichols in undated photo

Ist New York Veteran Cavalry Banner

Robert "Uncle Bob" Ledbetter (1859-1942) was born a slave and lived in the area all his life. The uncle of famous songster Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter as well as local bluesman Noah Moore, Uncle Bob is notable for being interviewed and recorded for the Smithsonian in 1940 by John Lomax, a University of Texas professor and folklorist who, during the 1930s and 1940s toured the country recording local songs and stories of related cultural life he saw was about to go away with homogenization brought on by mass media. Lomax had earlier discovered Lead Belly (who also lived in Oil City for a short time) while visiting Louisiana State Prison in Angola. He recorded both Uncle Bob and Noah in Oil City in 1940; the former talking of his life and singing in his deep, gentle, baritone voice accompanied by the former, as well as Noah playing and singing his repertoire separately.

"Uncle Bob" Ledbetter in 1940

Here is the 1940 interview of Uncle Bob by John Lomax, preserved in the Smithsonian Institution.

There are surely others in OC's past that fall into one of these groups, but these individuals are the ones identified so far. Texas and Schuyler have been added to the Remembering OC's Veterans page.

In tribute to all is Mickey Newbury performing his musical arrangement, American Trilogy.

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