In an effort to continue sharing East Texas Oilfield and Texas History, the Kilgore College East Texas Oil Museum will showcase artwork by Charlotte Baker Montgomery, chronicling her time while living in the Kilgore area during the East Texas oil boom.
The exhibit, which will run through Oct. 28, is included with a general admission ticket to the museum.
“Charlotte Baker Montgomery created gorgeous works of art illustrating the landscape, bustling economy and everyday life,” said Olivia Moore, museum director. “We’re proud to present 30 of her original artworks that depict what she experienced in Kilgore from 1931 through 1935.”
The artwork is on loan from the Museum of East Texas in Lufkin.
The ETOM’s hours are Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Charlotte Baker Montgomery, an artist, author, poet, teacher, naturalist and humanitarian, was born Aug. 31, 1910, in Nacogdoches. She was the daughter of Thomas Ellis and Karle Wilson Baker. She attended Stephen F. Austin State University and graduated from Mills College in Oakland, Calif., in 1929. She obtained a master of arts degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1930. In 1950 she returned to Nacogdoches and became a full-time writer-illustrator. She published 21 books for animal lovers and children, numerous short stories, poems, instructional articles and play adaptations, and she illustrated many of her own books and three books written by her mother, Karle Wilson Baker.
“In the modern era, the first roller cone patent was for the rotary rock bit and was issued to American businessman and inventor Howard Hughes Sr. in 1909. It consisted of two interlocking cones. American businessman Walter Benona Sharp worked very closely with Hughes in developing the rock bit. The success of this bit led to the founding of the Sharp-Hughes Tool Company. In 1933 two Hughes engineers, one of whom was Ralph Neuhaus, invented the tricone bit, which has three cones. The Hughes patent for the tricone bit lasted until 1951, after which other companies made similar bits. However, Hughes still held 40% of the world’s drill bit market in 2000. The superior wear performance of PDC bits gradually eroded the dominance of roller cone bits and early in this century PDC drill bit revenues overtook those of roller cone bits. The technology of both bit types has advanced significantly to provide improved durability and rate of penetration of the rock. This has been driven by the economics of the industry, and by the change from the empirical approach of Hughes in the 1930s, to modern day domain Finite Element codes for both the hydraulic and cutter placement software.”
