Metrology: When authors or “news” sources are discussing something I know, do they get it right? If yes, I’m willing to trust them on other matters, willing to ‘cantilever’ from the solid foundation. If no, I’m gone. No more attention.
I don’t mean facts in the usual Google or Wikipedia sense; I mean experiential knowledge of places, jobs, skills, or personality types.
I trusted the big McAlester book on houses because the authors got everything right in places and house types I knew. So I was willing to cantilever into unfamiliar areas and types.
Now I’ve bought one of their more specific books focusing on the western states. It still doesn’t include St Joseph; guess I’ll have to find another book by another author. This one does include my original hometown of Ponca, and it gets ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING right. Their writeup on the town and its spiritual founder EW Marland checks precisely with what I knew from living there several times between 1950 and 1975, and from talking to relatives and neighbors.
Marland’s first mansion on East Grand:
I drove or biked past this one often, so it’s thoroughly familiar.
Marland’s second mansion east of town:
This estate was owned by a convent when I lived there, always hidden behind locked gates. It was finally turned into a museum around 1980, and I visited and toured it later. It lived up to rumors and expectations.
Condensed from the McAlester book:
= = = = = START LONG QUOTE:
Ponca was founded in the 1893 Run as a small ag trade center on the Santa Fe. No important oil had been discovered in the area when EW Marland arrived in 1907. Unlike his rival Frank Phillips, a bond salesman, Marland was already experienced in the PA oil fields. He correctly surmised that the lands west of Ponca would prove productive, and by the early 20s had parlayed this insight into a fully integrated oil company with hundreds of service stations supplied from a massive Ponca refinery.
Marland was a complex man. Born to an English father who became a wealthy Pittsburgh industrialist, EW was treated as a young prince by the family. The father also believed in the rights of the common man and instilled this bedrock belief in his son. Pampered and privileged in youth, EW saw most of his father’s wealth lost in the stock crime of 1893. Determined to make his own fortune, he soon made his first million exploring for coal and oil in PA. He lost everything in the stock crime of 1907 and set off for Okla to seek another oil fortune.
Not only did he provide unusually generous benefits to his workers, he also began to indulge himself and his top employees with aristocratic English luxuries like polo games, fox hunts and game preserves. The second mansion originally sat on 2500 acres with five lakes, a nine-hole golf course, polo grounds, a large guest house, art studio and many other outbuildings and amenities.
The town’s principal architectural sites are also the products of Marland’s restless energy. His two homes are now museums, while a nearby neighborhood retains several fine dwellings built by some of his handsomely rewarded associates.
= = = = = END LONG QUOTE.
His English father verifies one of the stories told by natives, which was NOT echoed in the usual biographies. After reading the usuals, I assumed the British background was just a speculation turned into fact. Nope, it was fact.
The McAlester book agrees with what I know from real life, and DISAGREES WITH OTHER WRITTEN SOURCES. That’s the ultimate measurement!
EW’s generous regard for ordinary workers was visible everywhere in Ponca. Working class neighborhoods were much classier than similar neighborhoods in Enid or OKC.
Oddly, the few non-Marland houses mentioned in the book are not the best, and the neighborhood isn’t the most beautiful. There are better houses everywhere in Ponca, especially in a near northeast neighborhood centered on Viola Avenue.
Polistra's Mill 