VOLGA – A 20th Century wooden wheeled ugly duckling is now a 21st Century object of historic beauty at the new Trygve A. Trooien Horse-Drawn Museum in Volga.
A late 1890s refurbished horse-drawn Standard Oil fuel wagon has been given to the Brookings County museum by Jim Martin of rural Brookings, who with his father Norman purchased the Standard Oil Company’s bulk oil business in Brookings in 1976.
Phil Wagner, president of the Brookings County Historical Society, said the museum’s governing board is grateful for the “wonderful gift that fits perfectly into the horse-drawn museum’s concept and really brightens up the collection of interesting farm equipment and horse-drawn conveyances.”
He noted that the new addition is “in wonderful condition.”
For decades, Standard Oil controlled the distribution in rural areas of kerosene, gasoline, lubricating oil, stove distillate for home heating and illuminate – and even for treatment of injury and illness on rare occasions.
In 1907, Standard Oil’s business agent in Brookings was Brookings County native Ole Jermstad, Jr.
Incidentally, his daughter, the late Mrs. Paul (Ruby) Merschon, was an early force in the establishment of a Brookings County Museum.
Her father managed the business that is still located on First Street South in Brookings. The original stucco building is still there, although with modern embellishments.
Jermstad managed the distribution by four two-horse wagons, each filled with about 600 gallons of various fuels for delivery throughout the county.
On good travel days over rough and often muddy and snow-covered roads, he and his three drivers delivered fuel for heat, light and energy to businesses, residential homes and farms in the Brookings area as well as the Bruce, Aurora, White, Volga and Bushnell areas.
By 1911, the automobile and early gas-powered tractors rumbled and roared on to the transportation scene, and gasoline gradually became the leading product for Jermstad.
In 1912, Standard Oil still held about 90 percent of the oil business throughout this area, and the local agency bought a chain-driven truck, known as a “Republic,” from a concern in Watertown. It was used for out-of-town deliveries while the rattling horse-drawn wagons plied the muddy and rutted fuel routes in Brookings and the immediate area.
Agent Jermstad knew the roads and the territory well. He was born in 1869 on the Jermstad homestead southwest of Brookings along the Sioux River.
He retired in June 1936 after nearly 29 years working in Brookings and Huron for Standard Oil and was praised by Standard Oil executives for his successes in growing the business in this area.
He not only operated one of the delivery wagons, but he became a traveling auditor and salesman for Standard Oil. Succeeding Jermstad in the Standard Oil bulk business, so far as is known, was Donald Holiday of Brookings. In about 1945, Norman Martin, an SDSU graduate who was hired as poultry Extension agent, left Extension work to take a job with the bulk oil firm.
In 1975, his son Jim, the museum’s fuel wagon benefactor, joined the business, and in 1976 they together purchased the business out-right from Standard Oil. The elder Martin retired a year later, and Jim managed the business until 2006, when it was sold to Alan Perry.
Howes Oil Company of Sioux Falls now owns the local bulk station.
Jim said he was pleased to donate the fuel wagon to the Brookings County Museum. He and his father purchased it years ago and often used it in local and area parades.
Beautifully restored, the wagon’s tank was painted Standard Oil blue by the Kruse Body Shop of Brookings. The tank is actually three separate tanks, each holding about 200 gallons that might be filled with fuel oil, lubricating oil, gasoline or kerosene depending on the season or the needs.
The wagon comes with original five-gallon buckets the wagon driver filled from spigots at the rear of the wagon. He then carried the heavy buckets to the storage tanks in homes and on farms.
The museum’s wagon also comes with a simple tabulator so the operator could keep track of the number of gallons he had unloaded at each stop at the 10-gallon (two buckets full) rate.
David Huebner, owner of Dakota Stoneware of Bushnell, did the fancy lettering advertising Standard Oil’s Polarine. That product was new in the late 1890s. Polarine was advertised by Standard Oil as burning cleanly, not thinning out at high speed or in heat, flowing smoothly in cold weather and forming a lasting film on moving parts.
County museum board members are currently moving its collection of rare horse-drawn machines and conveyances, plus other draft horse artifacts and photographs, into the new building that will be opened in the spring.
