John H. Rebold. During
a residence of ten years at Okmulgee John H. Rebold has become very
influentially identified with the business and industrial history of
the city and surrounding country. He is an official and active in the
management of several oil and lumber companies, is president of the
Okmulgee Chamber of Commerce, and also a director in the First
National Bank of Okmulgee.
A Pennsylvanian by
birth, when only a boy he became familiar with the work and
activities of the eastern oil fields of the state, and it was his
experience as a practical oil operator and producer that led him into
Oklahoma when the fields about Tulsa had just come into prominent
notice.
He was born on the
Allegheny River at Mosgrove in Armstrong County, Pennsylvania,
September 2, 1872, a son of Henry and Margaret (Collar) Rebold. His
father was born in Bavaria, Germany, in 1848, and the mother in
Armstrong, Pennsylvania. The mother died there May 16, 1910, at the
age of fifty-five. Henry Rebold came to this country with his
parents, locating at Bradys Bend in Pennsylvania, where he assisted
his father in handling ore. Then with a brother John
he went to Oil City at the time of the inauguration of the oil
industry in that section of Western Pennsylvania, and secured a
contract to haul oil at $4.25 per barrel and to haul coal at $1.25
per bushel. Much of these products of the wells and mines in
Pennsylvania he rafted up and down the rivers and
hauled across rough country to market. Subsequently he bought a farm
in Pennsylvania and has lived a life of comparative quiet for many
years.
John H. Rebold is
the only one of six children living in the West. He grew up on his
father’s farm, acquired a country school education, but left his
studies at the age of fifteen. He then went into the oil country and
handled teams in contract work, and from the age of seventeen to
twenty was a tool dresser. He then bought a saw mill and engaged in
the lumber business, cutting timber for the Pennsylvania Railroad
Company for three years. Once more he engaged in the oil and gas
business, and his interests in this direction led him to come to
Oklahoma and he arrived at the new Town of Tulsa on November 10,
1905, and since 1906 has lived in Okmulgee. For a number of years he
has been a producer and contractor in the oil and gas district. While
in Pennsylvania he did some extensive drilling for the Philadelphia
Gas Company of Pittsburg, the American Natural Gas Company and the
People’s Gas Company. Since coming to Oklahoma he has operated on his
own account.
He is a director and
treasurer of the Pine Creek Oil Company and Bradys Bend Oil Company;
is director and treasurer of the Rebold Lumber Company. This company
has its own mills and retail lumber yards situated at Okmulgee,
Boynton and Morris. The source of lumber and the mills are in the
mountainous district of McCurtain and Pushmataha counties, there
being two mills and planing mill and cotton gin in those sections.
From forty to fifty men are employed in this important lumber
industry and Mr. Rebold also has the management of about the same
number in his work as a contractor and oil producer.
In 1914-15 Mr.
Rebold built one of the finest homes in Okmulgee County, at a cost of
about $75,000, situated a mile east of the Frisco Depot. He has been
president of the local Chamber of Commerce since it was organized and
in politics is a democrat.
On September 28,
1894, he married Miss Laura Cornman. She died in Pennsylvania May 25,
1910. The seven children of their marriage are: Grant O., Jesse,
Bryan, Annie, Joe, Harry and Catherine. On December 25, 1912, Mr.
Beboid married Anna Bricken.