E. H. Moore
E. H. Moore
“On the return from [vacations] Mr. Moore takes a springboard dive into his work. Thereafter he comes up only occasionally for air.”
Biography
E. H. (Ed) Moore was born in Missouri and borrowed $300 to attend his first year at Chillecothe Normal School. He worked as a janitor to the pay for tuition after that and studied law during the summer months. In September of 1889 he took a teaching position near Kansas City and attended evening courses at the Kansas City Law School (now the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law), where he graduated and was admitted to the bar in 1900. He opened a law practice and dabbled in land investments, some of which became valuable oil properties. In 1919, he ventured into the oil business as an independent operator and organized the Independent Oil and Gas Company, which was worth $50 million in its first decade and made a subsidiary of Phillips Petroleum Company in 1929. He won his first quest for public office at the age of 71 and was elected to the Oklahoma Senate in 1942. His private philanthropies were legendary and his generosity endowed scores of institutions, colleges, and churches.
Fun fact
Moore once chartered an entire Pullman car to take his company directors and their wives to a meeting in Los Angeles, then chartered them a boat that sailed down the Pacific Coast and around to New York, then by rail home to Tulsa – all paid by E.H. Moore.
Oklahoma connections
Moore came to Okmulgee, Indian Territory, as a lawyer in 1901.