Sinclair, Harry F., 1876-1956.

Harry Ford Sinclair (1876-1956) was born in Wheeling, West Virginia and spent his childhood in Independence, Kansas. Sinclair entered the oil business in 1901, working as a lease broker after oil was discovered in Kansas. Between 1903 and 1904, he married Elizabeth Farrell with whom he would have two children. Purchasing his first well in 1905, Sinclair continued to expand his petroleum investments, establishing and merging his various holdings, such as the Sinclair Oil and Refining Corporation (1916), Sinclair Gulf Corporation (1917), and Sinclair Consolidated Oil Corporation (1919). During the 1920s, Sinclair became embroiled in what became the Teapot Dome Scandal. The scandal began when U.S. Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall - whose papers are also housed at the Huntington - awarded non-competitive bids to Sinclair and Edward L. Doheny for the development of naval petroleum reserves in Wyoming and California. In 1922 Sinclair created a new corporate entity, Mammoth Oil Company, to execute operations at Teapot Dome.

The contracts became the focus of the Senate Committee on Public Lands and Surveys, established to conduct hearings into the conditions surrounding the contracts. After declaring that the leases had been illegally procured, the government initiated legal action against Sinclair and was finally successful when the Supreme Court invalidated his company's lease in 1927. Although he was acquitted of the charge of conspiracy to defraud the government, Sinclair was found guilty of contempt of court for tampering with the jury and refusing to testify before the Senate Committee on Public Lands and Surveys. In 1929 he was sentenced to six and one-half months in jail.Upon his release from prison, Sinclair returned to his position as head of the Sinclair Consolidated Oil Corporation. Throughout the 1930s, his company continued to acquire assets, such as those of the Pierce Petroleum Corporation, Prairie Oil & Gas Company, Rio Grande Oil Company, and the Richfield Oil Company of California. He remained active in the petroleum industry through World War II. In 1949 Sinclair retired and moved to Pasadena, California, where he died in 1956.

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