Local History · From Chatham Township
Chatham was an oil boomtown, and almost nobody remembers
For about 40 years starting in 1894, Chatham Township was Medina County's oil town. The first well was drilled with a water-well rig powered by a horse. Most of the wells are capped and quiet now under the pastures.
Today, Chatham Township looks like farmland and pickup trucks. Between 1894 and the late 1930s, it looked like an oil field.
The first oil well in Medina County was drilled on the F.R. Shaw farm in Chatham Township in 1894. Shaw used a water-well drilling rig. The power source was a horse hitched to a mowing-machine gear.1
Once oil came up, Shaw built a pipeline from his farm to Lodi so he could get the oil onto rail cars headed for Cleveland refineries. Within three years, about 32 more wells were drilled on or near Shaw's property.2
In 1918, the township's largest oil rush hit. Nearly every lot had a pumping well going. A gusher on Tom McVickar's farm that year confirmed there was a large reservoir under Chatham. It was the second wave.3
The third wave came around 1937. This one used a technique called water flooding, where operators inject water into an old formation to push residual oil to the surface. It brought more production. It also polluted local water wells and streams. The MCDL genealogy record dryly notes that the community accepted this as "a price paid for prosperity."4
Production faded through the 1960s. Most Chatham wells are capped or abandoned now. They sit quietly under pastures and back lots. If you buy a piece of land in Chatham with a well cap poking out of the corner of a field, there's a decent chance you're standing on something Shaw or McVickar drilled a hundred years ago.
The Chatham General Store, built in 1834 and operating as a store since 1854, is still at 6403 Avon Lake Road. It saw the whole thing.5
Footnotes
- 1894 first well on F.R. Shaw farm, horse-drawn rig. Documented in Miranda Fein's Dec 2022 MCDL Genealogy Blog article “History of a Boomtown: Oil in Chatham Township,” which draws on the Chatham Sesquicentennial 1818-1968 booklet and the Hambley 2018 source. Reference frame: Ohio's first commercial oil well was Drake's, Titusville PA, August 27, 1859.
- Pipeline from Shaw farm to Lodi; roughly 32 more wells within 3 years. Same MCDL Genealogy Blog source.
- 1918 second oil rush; Tom McVickar farm gusher. Same source. Miranda Fein cites period Medina Gazette coverage.
- 1937 water-flooding boom; pollution accepted as “price paid for prosperity.” The direct quote is from the MCDL Genealogy Blog account. Water flooding is a documented secondary-recovery technique in petroleum engineering.
- Chatham General Store, 1834 build, 1854 store, still at 6403 Avon Lake Road. Documented on Ohio Traveler and the Chatham Township official site.
Sources
- Miranda Fein, “History of a Boomtown: Oil in Chatham Township,” MCDL Genealogy Blog, December 7, 2022. vwmfhcenter.blogspot.com
- Chatham Sesquicentennial 1818-1968 (Medina County District Library holdings; cited by Fein).
- Ohio Traveler, “Chatham General Store 1854.” ohiotraveler.com
- Chatham Township, official history page. chathamtwp.com
- Wikipedia, “Chatham Township, Medina County, Ohio.” en.wikipedia.org
F.R. Shaw's full first name is not confirmed in the online sources; the initials-only reference suggests county deed records or the MCDL local history collection would settle it. If you have property in Chatham with an old well cap on it, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources oil and gas division maintains records.