Jan “Jaś” Rączkowski (1861–1947) – illiterate master of deep drilling
Jaś Rączkowski becomes Mr Manager. Tycoon… Only he does not like signing notarial deeds. With utmost difficulty he can manage to write Jan Rąc… but he cannot make friends with this infernal “z” letter. So the whole Boryslav calls the director “Jan Rąc“.
Melchior Wańkowicz, Sztafeta. A book about the Polish economic progress (Książka o polskim pochodzie gospodarczym), Warsaw 1938.
Career progress from “Jaś” (meaning simply “Little Johnny”) to a tycoon
He was born in 1861 in Siary near Gorlice, in a peasant family, and died in Trzcinica near Jasło in 1947. He did not graduate from any school, he could not even affix his signature, but he was extremely diligent and gifted with infallible intuition in the field of oil exploration. You could say that his career proceeded from a rags to riches. In 1876, as a teenager, he was employed in Władysław Dembowski’s mine. Rączkowski, commonly called Jaś, started from the “bring, carry, sweep” type of work. He quickly became a skilled worker and at the age of 27 became a foreman. Then, in 1888, he got a job in the Wladyslaw Długosz’s mine. After four years of ineffective search for oil, Długosz’s company went bankrupt, and both gentlemen began to work for William McGarvey, the founder of the Machinery Factory and Refinery in Glinik Mariampolski (today: Gorlice district), who had just arrived in Galicia. The boss sent them to Boryslav, where they were tasked with searching for oil.
A breakthrough discovery in Boryslav
Drilling operations were carried out for four years, but to no avail, so McGarvey decided to stop exploration. And yet Rączkowski, in cooperation with Długosz , did not give up. After the owner and Długosz, who was to persuade the boss to continue drilling, left, Rączkowski bought two barns with his own money to be demolished for fire wood to feed the steam engine, talked the workers into working without remuneration and continued drilling. When the drill bit had been driven through over a twelve-meter layer of rock, at a depth of about 1000 meters very high quality oil gushed out. 40 tons of oil were obtained per day from one borehole. Thanks to this landmark discovery, the Galician oil fever came to Boryslav.
Jaś Rączkowski was recognised as the discoverer of Boryslav Basin. He recounted the events in the following way: “They filled up cans with oil and left for Vienna. It was deemed to be good paraffin oil, and once again they got overjoyed about it, and Boryslav flourished, and may the Lord bless it.”
An illiterate master of deep drilling
Since then, Rączkowski had become a grey eminence in the William McGarvey’s company, or the Galician-Carpathian Petroleum Company. It was mainly he who decided about the drilling sites. He gained widespread recognition as a technical expert in the field of bores over 1000 meters deep, and his intuition was simply legendary. His decisions also proved correct during various mechanical failures that happened at work. Since Jaś could not write, Długosz assigned him an educated assistant, Walenty Reński. The completed writings, who were drafted by his secretary, were simply stamped by Rączkowski with a stamp bearing his name.
Rączkowski was a well-known and extremely popular figure in Boryslav, he was eager to help others with advice, financially, and he was also socially active. He was active, among others, in the Sokół Gymnastic Society and in the Association of Polish Drilling and Petroleum Technicians. He was commemorated in poetry, caricature, Melchior Wańkowicz wrote about him. Thanks to his professional success, he won not only fame, but also a considerable fortune. In 1927, at the age of 66, he left for a well-deserved retirement and settled in Trzcinica near Jasło.
Inspirations:
- Bałda Waldemar, Analfabeta z podkarpackiej wsi. Geniusz polskiego nafciarstwa (An illiterate man from a Subcarpathian village. Genius of Polish oil industry),, in: Interia. Nowa Historia, 24 March 2014 [access: 17.10.2015].
- Pabis Tadeusz, Rączkowski Jan (1861-1947). Kierownik kopalni, współodkrywca wielkiej ropy w Boryslaviu i Tustanowicach (Mine manager, co-discoverer of great oil deposits in Boryslav and Tustanowice), in: Regionalna Fundacja Upowszechniania Historii Przemysłu Naftowego w Regionie Gorlicko-Bieckim [access: 17/10/2015].
- Pabis Tadeusz, Śladami gorlickich naftowców (Trails of Gorlice Oilmen), Nowy Korczyn 1996.
- Szlak Naftowy (Oil Route), in: Gorlice District [accessed: 17.10.2015]
- Ślawski Tadeusz, Początki i rozwój kopalnictwa naftowego na Podkarpaciu w historycznym zarysie (Beginnings and development of petroleum mining in the Podkarpacie region in a historical outline), Biecz 1997.
- Wańkowicz Melchior, Sztafeta (Relay), Pruszyński i S-ka,
Source of the photos: Muzeum Przemysłu Naftowego i Etnografii w Libuszy (Museum of Oil Industry and Ethnography in Libusza) (archive of Anna and Tadeusz Pabis)