VERA AND ELSA LUND – PIONEERING WOMEN IN THE PETROLEUM INDUSTRY

During WWI, women started working as petroleum geologists to replace men who were enlisting or drafted into the war effort. The women who worked in Tulsa, Oklahoma became known as the pioneering women petroleum geologists, and became the first women members in the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG). However, other women who worked elsewhere in the United States did not receive the same recognition, since they worked outside of the then center of the petroleum universe: Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The sisters Vera and Elsa Lund are two examples of the pioneer women working in the petroleum industry elsewhere in the U.S. during WWI. Prior to the war, Vera and Elsa Lund were recent graduates of the University of Chicago. Through their connections with other women from the University of Chicago who were working in the petroleum industry, they were hired by Roxana Oil, the U.S. subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell. Vera and Elsa Lund were assigned to the Cheyenne, Wyoming office of Roxana Oil. Vera Lund, due to her background in sciences, was assigned to be an office geologist, which involved compiling plane table structure-contour maps that were used to find anticlinal oil-and-gas traps in the subsurface. Her sister, Elsa Lund, with her background in English and the humanities, was assigned to be a stenographer and eventually became the monthly correspondent to the internal company magazine, Roxoleum.

After the Cheyenne office was closed in 1920, the sisters moved back to Chicago and went to work for their father, who was an architect. With the drafting skills Vera learned as an office geologist, her father employed her as an architectural draftsman. Eventually, Vera took over the architectural firm, working as an architect for the rest of her professional life. Elsa was employed by her father to be the office secretary. Elsa eventually married and became the private secretary for her husband’s plumbing supply business. The lives of Vera and Elsa Lund demonstrate there were other women working successfully outside of Oklahoma and Texas in the petroleum industry during WWI and had professional success beyond their time in the petroleum industry.