Butler County Genealogy Trails Kansas Charles Spencer Warren Bio

BUTLER COUNTY'S EIGHTY YEARS BIOS

CHARLES SPENCER WARREN

(Transcribed by Peg Luce)

Charles Spencer Warren, general superintendent of the Kansas Division of the great Empire Oil and Refining Company with headquarters in El Dorado and a skilled army of 1150 in its employ was born in Macon County, Alabama, on December 1, 1893. A resident of the Middle West and Southwest since 1919, he has been an outstanding figure, despite his comparative youth, in the development of this entire region and particularly in the El Dorado area. His work has made him among the most successful and widely known men of the Mid-Continent oil fields.

Mr. Warrren’s career is that of an ideal, active American, whose ability and courage have raised him to high position in an outstanding industry. His early training was that of a son of an old-established southern family. He attended the public schools in historic Montgomery, Alabama, heart of the “deep south” where the Confederacy was born and organized before the capital was removed to Richmond. Later he matriculated at the University o Alabama at Tuscaloosa, graduating with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1915. Following his graduation he began a specialized education in engineering at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute and was graduated in 1919 with the degree of Bachelor of Science in mining engineering. His fraternity is the Sigma Phi Epsilon.

During his pursuit of education he gained practical experience of engineering as inspector and engineer attached to the United States Army Engineering Corps. At various times between 1912 and 1918 he was employed at work of this kind, and upon his final graduation in 1919 he won a position with the Empire Oil and Refining Company, in developing various fields in Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas. His rise from one position of honor and responsibility to another has been steady, and today he is looked upon as one of the most valuable men in the entire Empire organization.

Mr. Warren’s first promotion came in 1923, after he had shown aptitude as a junior engineer. At that time he was made foreman on various leases in Oklahoma. Almost immediately afterward he was promoted to assistant district superintendent of all Empire oil interests in Oklahoma and the following year he was given a still higher executive position as superintendent of the division including the Texas Panhandle. In 1930 he was transferred to El Dorado as superintendent of the Kansas Division and now directs more than 700 expert workmen, sixty percent of whom are in Butler County, in the development of property worth millions of dollars – the approximate taxable valuation of the Empire holdings in Butler County alone is $10,000,000.

He contributes much to El Dorado’s general welfare and cooperates with all forward movements of this community and section. He is active in numerous civic enterprises, serving as vice president of the Rotary Club, as chairman of the publicity committee here for the Federal Housing Campaign, is vice president of the Country Club and prominent in several other activities.

The company he represents here is El Dorado’s biggest single asset, at this time dispensing a payroll of $100,000 monthly in the vicinity of El Dorado, with indications of increase as the era of better business advances. Mr. Warren is particularly gratified that the Empire organization remained virtually intact during the recent depression, dispensing with the services of only thirty-five men who were on special construction projects.

By ancestry as well as by birth and training, Mr. Warren is a fine example of the best Southern stock. Both his father, James S. Warren, who died in January, 1924, and his mother, Mrs. Mary (Jordan) Warren of Montgomery, Alabama, came from the finest stock of the old Colonies – the intrepid English who braved the hardly known Atlantic to find homes and adventures in the New World. Both lines of his ancestors were early settlers in the Carolinas, and the names of Warren and Jordan are large in the first records of those colonies.

One maternal ancestor of Mr. Warren served during the Revolutionary War under George Washington, braved the hardships and defeats of the early part of the struggle, helped with the later victories, and was one of the shabby but hard-fighting American army that stood triumphantly to attention when Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown in 1781.

For a number of generations Mr. Warren’s forbears were planters in the Carolinas, moving westward with the advance of American civilization to operate plantations in Georgia and, later, Alabama. Before the Civil War his family was a prosperous one, and even the downfall of the gallant “lost cause” of the Confederacy did not undo the work of generations of breeding and gentle upbringing.

Mr. Warren is a Mason and a Shriner. Also, as a born Southerner, he is a Democrat. His political views are of the conservative Underwood-Bankhead school of his native state, as distinguished from the Heflin-Bibb-Graves faction. And he is a progressive, valuable and loyal citizen of El Dorado in every particular.

Mr. Warren was married on January 3, 1935, to Miss Adda Mae Hookey, daughter of Mrs. William Ralph Hookey, of El Dorado.