Philip M. Shannon

Philip Martin Shannon was born in 1843 in Bradford, Pennsylvania and during his childhood he worked on the oil fields during the early Pennsylvania oil rush. He discovered the Shannon Oil fields, which were named in his honor, in the early 1880s and gained controlling oil interestes in Texas and Alabama oil fields.[1] In 1861 he enlisted into the 62nd Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, but was later honorably discharged in 1862 due to wounds he received from the Battle of Gaines's Mill. In 1874 he was elected as the Burgess of Millerstown and in 1876 ran for a seat in the Pennsylvania legislature, but did not receive the Republican nomination at the state convention. On June 18, 1881 he married Hattie M. McIntosh and in 1885 he was elected as mayor of Bradford.[2]

In 1884 he visited Wyoming and in 1889 he discovered oil in Wyoming at the Salt Creek Oil Field and later built an oil refinery in 1894.[3] In 1900 Harry Oscar Lordon, a veteran of the Spanish-American War, attempted to rob Shannon and was found underneath his bed in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel.[4] On November 22, 1915 he died in his Duquesne Club apartment in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[5]