Edward L. Doheny died on this day in 1935. He was at one point the richest man in America and was known as the ‘Oil Baron of the South West’. The 2007 hit film, There Will be Blood is loosely based on his life. Edward L. Doheny was also the son of a penniless Tipperary migrant fleeing the famine.
Edward’s father Patrick seems to have come from Shangarry in the parish of Ballingarry but emigrated during or shortly after the famine. Patrick tried whaling after reaching Labrador in Canada. There he married Ellen Quigley from Newfoundland and shortly after the wedding, the pair moved to Wisconsin, where the Edward was born. In Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, Pat Doheny became a construction labourer and gardener.
As a young man, Edward worked all over the US as a mule driver, gold miner, fruit packer, singing waiter and gunslinger. In 1893, using a sharpened tree trunk as a drill, Doheny and a friend struck oil near Los Angeles, which earned Doheny enough money to start drilling for more oil in California and Mexico. In Mexico, Doheny’s company leased a million acres and became the largest oil company there. During the Mexican Revolution, Doheny hired his own private army to protect his oil fields, which by 1922 had earned him over $30 million. By 1925, Doheny’s net worth passed $100 million and he was richer than John D. Rockefeller.
From 1916 onwards, Doheny was prominent in Irish-American affairs and he became president of the American Association for the recognition of the Irish Republic, and also took a prominent role in fund-raising activities.
It was to Shangarry that Edward L. Doheny went when he was looking to trace his roots on a visit to Ireland in the early 1920s, by which time he was in his 60s and was a very wealthy man. Doheny was a relation of Young Ireland and Fenian leader, Michael Doheny, who was born at Brook Hill in Fethard.
Edward L. Doheny died on 8 September 1935 and left behind an $85 million fortune.
Sources:
https://tipperarystudies.ie/.../11.-Michael-Doheny-the...
https://en.geneastar.org/gene.../dohenyedwar/edward-l-doheny
https://westadamsheritage.org/read/472
