Oil driller known as a Münchausen-like teller of tall tales concerning his adventures
working in the oil fields. Containing large doses of exaggeration, Morgan’s humorous
tales are similar in spirit to those told about the mythical Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill.
Morgan was born in 1842 in Callensburg, Pennsylvania. In 1859, when Morgan was
seventeen years old, the first oil well in the United States was drilled in nearby Titusville.
After serving in the Union Army during the Civil War, Morgan got work in the rapidly
expanding Pennsylvania oil industry and later wandered the oil fields of the Eastern
United States as an itinerant oil driller. He retired in 1892 and, except for occasional
visits to family and friends, lived in branches of the National Home for Disabled Soldiers
in Indiana, Illinois, and Tennessee from 1894 until his death in 1909. Morgan’s stories
are tall tales in which he chronicles his fantastic exploits. Although some deal with his
prowess as a hunter, farmer, or fisher, most are about his work in the oil fields and
require some technical knowledge on the part of the listener. In one story, Morgan
claimed to have drilled a well whose oil rig was so big that it had to be hinged to allow
the moon to pass. Because it took tool dressers fourteen days to get to the top, he built
bunkhouses a day’s climb apart on the side of the derrick. Some tales concern Morgan’s
adventures drilling for oil in South America. There he found his pet, Strickie the Snake, a
boa constrictor so long that Morgan used him as a drilling cable. Another group of stories
describes Morgan’s exploits in the Fiji Islands, where he had been sent by a British
syndicate. While drilling there, Morgan encountered layers of buttermilk, champagne,
and sweet cream, but not the essence of peppermint he had been hired to find. He almost
made a fortune making ice cream out of the cream, but, by the time he had a factory set
up, the cream had soured. In Fiji, Morgan also met Big Toolie, a tool dresser so tall he
was able to grease the crown pulleys at the top of the derrick without lifting a foot off the
ground.
Many of Morgan’s stories are recastings of traditional tales and motifs. His stories are
clearly fantastic, although they rely on exaggeration rather than on their hero’s claim to
supernatural abilities, as sometimes happens in tales about Davy Crockett or other
American folk heroes. Morgan’s stories reflect the boom-or-bust culture of the early oil
industry in America in which the outsize was often close to the norm. His narrative
persona is linked to the folk stereotype of the oil driller, the man who supervised the rest
of the crew and who was known for his pride in his technical skills, his bravado, and his
indifference to the risks of his job. Although Morgan frequently satirized individuals of
whom he disapproved, his tales have more in common generically with the traditional tall
tale than with other forms of occupational narrative in which themes of conflict between
supervisor and subordinate are prominent.
During his lifetime, Morgan was well known as a raconteur. He often held court at a
local hotel bar or saloon, telling tales while his audience bought him drinks. His stories
were fluid, adaptable, and seemingly spontaneous. He is said to never have told the same
story the same way twice. Morgan’s fame was at its highest during the years before
World War I. After his death, many of the tales told by and about Morgan became
attached to Paul Bunyan, a figure well known in the oil fields as well as the forests.
Anne Burson-Tolpin
References
Boatright, Mody C.1945. Gib Morgan: Minstrel of the Oil Fields. Publications of the Texas
Folklore Society No. 20. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press.
——. 1963. Folklore of the Oil Industry. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, pp. 173–
192.
Botsford, Harry. 1949. Oilmen. In Pennsylvania Songs and Legends, ed. George Korson.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 412–422.
Dorson, Richard M. 1973. America in Legend: Folklore from the Colonial Period to the Present.
New York: Pantheon, pp. 214–226.