John Carven Overman in Mexico

Consular Registry for Tampico Mexico

While researching my grandfather John Carven Overman for an assignment in school, I came upon a digitized record from the U.S. Consular Registration in Tampico, Mexico. The year was 1910; my grandfather had been in the Federal census taken in Kansas earlier that year, but in October he was in Mexico. The document I found gave him permission to remain there until October of the following year. He wasn’t in the military, so his reasons for being there were a mystery. However, a few things about the document struck me as unusual; he was working as a tool dresser, he was unmarried, and a note along the inside edge of the document (it was in a book) gave instructions on who to contact if anything should happen to him. He had also signed it and this was the first time I had seen his signature. It was neat and crisp with the backward slant of one who is left-handed. If such things are inherited, I now know where I got it from.

I wondered why he would leave Kansas and go to work in Mexico? What was going on down in Tampico and why did they need his services? As it turned out the story is centered on oil, Edward Doheny, the United States Navy, and the Mexican Revolution. I don’t know for certain if John Overman became involved with any of the conflict that happened in Tampico, but a cousin has a photograph of him in uniform standing beside his horse. And John wasn’t in the 1915 census in Kansas – the only census he missed while he lived in Kansas.

John Carven Overman spent the better part of his life involved in the oil industry before moving to California. To a young man from a modest farming background, the promise of making a good living in Mexico was no doubt appealing.

More about the history of oil in Tampico can be found here.