Individual Details
Lou Della Thompson
(February 3, 1868 - March 28, 1954)
Lou Della Crim Marker Title: Lou Della Crim Home Address: 201 N. Longview St. City: Kilgore County: Gregg Year Marker Erected: 1981 Marker Text: This bungalow style residence was constructed in 1920 for Lou Della (Thompson) Crim (b. 1868), on the former site of the Hearne Hotel. The farm she owned at Laird Hill (4 mi. S) was part of an oil exploration project headed by her son Malcolm, later the first Kilgore mayor, and local financier Ed Bateman. Her property gained national attention on De c. 28, 1930, when the Bateman-Crim Wildcat Well No. 1, the discovery well for this area of the significant East Texas oil field, blew in there. Area Rangers, including the celebrated Capt. M. T. (Lone Wolf) Gonzaulla s, were housed here.
The easy-going rural life of East Texas changed drastically with the discovery of oil during 1930 and 1931, year of hardship, scorn, luck, and wealth which brought people, ideas, institutions and national attention to East Texas.
Oil fever began to mount with the test by Bateman Oil Company on the Lou Della Crim farm. On Sunday morning, December 27, 1930, while Mrs. Crim was attending church, the well blew in, flowing at 22,000 barrels a day. The well was only nine miles from Joiner's well, yet no one believed there was any connection between the two. No one reckoned for what was then a geological phenomenon: an incredible deposit of oil in the Woodbine formation that "pinched out" as it tilted upward against the Sabine Uplift.
Columbus Marion "Dad" Joiner, a seventy-year-old wildcatter, had already drilled two dry holes when in May 1929, he spudded a third hole on the Daisy Bradford farm in Rusk County. But it was not until October 3, 1930 that a production test was done, resulting in a gusher.
The easy-going rural life of East Texas changed drastically with the discovery of oil during 1930 and 1931, year of hardship, scorn, luck, and wealth which brought people, ideas, institutions and national attention to East Texas.
Oil fever began to mount with the test by Bateman Oil Company on the Lou Della Crim farm. On Sunday morning, December 27, 1930, while Mrs. Crim was attending church, the well blew in, flowing at 22,000 barrels a day. The well was only nine miles from Joiner's well, yet no one believed there was any connection between the two. No one reckoned for what was then a geological phenomenon: an incredible deposit of oil in the Woodbine formation that "pinched out" as it tilted upward against the Sabine Uplift.
Columbus Marion "Dad" Joiner, a seventy-year-old wildcatter, had already drilled two dry holes when in May 1929, he spudded a third hole on the Daisy Bradford farm in Rusk County. But it was not until October 3, 1930 that a production test was done, resulting in a gusher.
Events
| Birth | February 3, 1868 | Rusk County, Texas | |||
| Marriage | May 13, 1888 | Kilgore, Gregg County, Texas - William Robert Crim | |||
| Death | March 28, 1954 | Rusk County, Texas |
Families
| Spouse | William Robert Crim (1859 - 1918) |
| Child | John Thompson Crim (1893 - 1980) |
| Child | Maggie Lou Crim (1894 - 1968) |
| Child | Robert Lee Crim (1895 - 1918) |
| Child | Liggett Nicholas Crim (1900 - 1989) |
| Child | William Phillip Crim (1902 - 1917) |
| Child | Benjamin "Little Ben" Crim (1911 - 1911) |
| Father | John Martin Thompson (1829 - 1907) |
| Mother | Louisa Adaline "Lou" McCord (1832 - 1870) |
| Sibling | James Allen Thompson (1855 - ) |
| Sibling | Benjamin Franklin Thompson (1859 - ) |
| Sibling | John Anna Thompson (1861 - 1866) |
| Sibling | William Pressley Thompson (1865 - 1900) |
| Sibling | Jesse Mayfield Thompson (1866 - 1871) |