NOTABLE ARKANSANS

He was born in 1876 in Houston. While still a small child, his father abandoned the family, so his mother moved them to Chidester (Ouachita County) where some of her relatives lived. When he was 8, his mother remarried and the family moved to a farm in Bernice, La. As a young teenager, he became interested in the sawmill business and left home to work in several mills across northern Louisiana.

By 1898, he was in Homer, La., where he owned a portable mill. He soon moved his successful operation to Junction City, just south of El Dorado in Union County. There he met and, in 1902, married Edna Sedalia Edwards. Three years later, he set up a much larger sawmill just north of Smackover. Through purchases and leases, he obtained a large area of land that stretched northward, across Smackover Creek and into Ouachita County, to enhance his timber business.

Oil was discovered in northern Louisiana in 1919. He realized, because of his timberland experience, the Louisiana oil field was similar in topography to his land around Smackover. In 1921, when oil was discovered 12 miles south in El Dorado, he and four Camden businessmen formed a venture group to drill a single well on his land near Smackover. It was a gusher and started a flurry of drilling activity that, a year later, resulted in more than a thousand working wells in the field, making him and his partners wealthy men.

In 1924, he built a large, beautiful home in Camden, and moved his family there. Today that home serves as a popular bed and breakfast and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In October, 1925, he made a business trip to Tupelo, Miss. On the return trip, near Victoria, Miss., his train derailed and plunged down a 40-foot embankment, killing 20 people. A relief train rushed him and the other severely injured survivors 30 miles to a Memphis hospital, where a week later, he died. He was 49. He is buried in Camden’s Oakland Cemetery. Who was this businessman and entrepreneur, known as the “Father of the Smackover Oil Field”?

Who was this businessman and entrepreneur, known as the “Father of the Smackover Oil Field”? Sidney Umsted