Hugh Nixon Shaw

Hugh Nixon Shaw was born near Dublin, Ireland, in 1912.[3] At some point, Shaw emigrated to Canada West and operated a general store in Cooksville, before moving to Enniskillen Township sometime in the late 1850s or early 1860s.[3][4] Shaw became a successful oil producer, patenting a distilling process that made oil less volatile.[5][6] Shaw defined his process as applying heat and benzol to remove the impurities out of the oil.[5][6] Shaw operated a refinery until it burnt down in May 1862.[7]

On February 11th, 1863, Shaw died checking the status of one of his oil wells.[7][8] According to one of his employees, he asked two workers to lower him into his well to grab hold of a pipe that had gotten loose.[8] After fixing the pipe and calling out to be hauled back up, Shaw began coughing and fell backwards into the oil well.[8] An autopsy revealed that Shaw died of asphyxiation from the poisonous gases inside the well.[8]

Contemporary Historians and journalists often miscredit Hugh Nixon Shaw as the discoverer of Canada's first oil gusher.[1][2] The real founder was John Shaw, another oil producer in Enniskillen Township.[1][2] The confusion over who struck the gusher appears to have arisen from historian Robert Harkness, who claimed in his 1940 publication Makers of Oil History: 1850-1880 that a series of articles in the Toronto Globe credited Hugh Nixon Shaw with the discovery.[1][2] In fact, the articles Harkness cited were written months before the gusher was struck, and only discuss Hugh Nixon Shaw's distillation process.[1] When the Globe began reporting on the gusher in January 1862, they identified the discoverer as a "Mr. Shaw, lately of Port Huron, Michigan, a daugerrean artist, and formerly of Kingston West," a description that fits John Shaw, not Hugh Nixon Shaw.[1][2] Moreover, on February 5, 1862, the Globe directly credited John Shaw as the discoverer of the well.[1] Despite Harkness' error, his research had a significant impact on other historians and journalists, who began citing Hugh Nixon Shaw as the discoverer of the Shaw gusher.[1][2]