page_title: Walter Fondren Sr.
section_title: Career and philanthropy
hierarchical_section_title: Walter Fondren Sr. / Career and philanthropy
caption_attribution_description: English: Fondren Library on the campus of Rice University
context_page_description: Walter William Fondren Sr. was an American oil industry businessperson and philanthropist in Texas. He co-founded Humble Oil Company, an antecedent to ExxonMobil.
context_section_description: By the time Fondren was twenty, he translated his knowledge of drilling water wells on farms to the oilfields of Corsicana, Texas. Within a few years he was an expert oil worker and struck out on his own to extract oil from Spindletop.  
  He was involved with the Texas Oil Boom period.
  In 1911, Fondren, with Ross S. Sterling and others, founded Humble Oil.  It was later acquired by ExxonMobil.
caption: View of the Fondren Library portico (Rice University)
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Roxio PhotoSuite", "Image DateTime": "2012:11:10 13:25:56", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "376", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5700", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2012:11:10 13:25:56", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "49505148", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "13/5", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4685", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2635"}