The American Association of Petroleum Geologists Foundation

Grants-in-Aid Program

John Teagle was born on March 10, 1907, on the Teagle family farm which was located in the city of Cleveland, Ohio. He was named for his paternal grandfather, John Teagle, who was a partner of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., in setting up the Standard Oil Company. The Teagles remained on their farm in Cleveland when the Rockefeller family moved to New York in the late 19th century. John’s uncle, Walter Teagle, representing the family interest, was President and Chief Executive Officer of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey for many years.

John was one of the earliest students at Hawken School in Cleveland, which began meeting in a rudimentary form in his grandfather’s barn. He graduated from Shaw High School in East Cleveland, Ohio, and from Cornell University in 1929 with a Bachelor of Science degree in geology. At Cornell he was a member of Alpha Delta Phi fraternity, and many other student organizations. He received a Master’s degree in geology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1933, and almost immediately went to work as a geologist for Humble Oil. Later in his career, he was an independent consulting geologist, a vocation which he pursued until the end of his life.

Like most exploration geologists, John’s life was one of travel, primarily in the Gulf Coastal Plain from the Rio Grande to the Florida Everglades. His field work, and there was plenty of it, consisted of the surface mapping for various outcrops, running core-drilling programs, sitting on wildcat wells, and correlating logs in the mapping of subsurface reservoirs within the limits of the Gulf Coast geosyncline.

John was married twice, first to Clara Roby in 1932, and later to Elizabeth Shallcross in 1950. He had a life-long fascination with all aspects of geology, especially petroleum geology. He died in San Antonio on July 17, 1982.

The John Teagle Memorial Grant is awarded annually to a deserving graduate student through the American Association of Petroleum Geologists Grants-in-Aid program, and is endowed through a generous bequest to the AAPG Foundation, from his widow, Elizabeth Teagle.