William Henry McGarvey

William Henry McGarvey (November 1843 – November 1914) was a Canadian business magnate, entrepreneur and politician. McGarvey is best known for his exploits in Galicia, where he operated a highly successful petroleum company. In 1857, the McGarvey family moved to Wyoming, Ontario, where Edward established a general store that prospered with the arrival of the Great Western Railway and the development of the oil fields in Oil Springs and Petrolia. In 1861, McGarvey relocated to Petrolia and opened up a general store known locally as "The Mammoth Store." McGarvey also served on Petrolia's town council from 1868 to 1870, was elected mayor in 1876 and became warden of Lambton County in 1879. He ran unsuccessfully for provincial office in 1879. In 1876, the Geological Survey of Canada commissioned McGarvey to lead a survey of eastern Saskatchewan's mineral resources.

Petroleum magnate During his time at Petrolia, McGarvey invested in the petroleum industry, having stakes in eighteen oil properties, including the famous "Deluge" well struck in 1873 and a partnership in an oil refinery.

In 1879, McGarvey met British engineer and oil operator John Simeon Bergheim when he travelled to Petrolia to recruit men willing to drill in Europe. This venture resulted in limited success, and in 1882 McGarvey and Bergheim proceeded to Galicia and Romania. By the 1890s, the pair acquired mineral rights all over the province, and on July 4, 1895, McGarvey and Bergheim reorganized their company into a joint-stock company titled Galizische-Karpathen Petroleum Aktien-Gesellschaft. The company's headquarters was in Vienna, with a capital of 10 million crowns. In its first year of operations, the company produced nearly 35 million kilograms of crude oil, and employed roughly 2,400 workers by the end of the century. McGarvey's success had turned him into a multimillionaire, and he and his wife often socialized with European aristocrats.

In 1912, McGarvey was asked by the British Admiralty to consult on the conversion of its military ships from coal to oil power and in the search for oil in British overseas territory.

Marriage and children On July 10, 1867, McGarvey married Helena Jane Weslowski of Mount Clemens, Michigan, daughter of a Polish émigré who had been expelled from the Russian Empire for anti-government activity. , niece of John Simeon Bergheim. Mary "Mamie" McGarvey (1876–1961). She married Eberhard Friedrich Alexander Joseph Edward Graf von Zeppelin, a nephew of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in 1895 and divorced him in 1906. Sarah "Kate" McGarvey (1883–1934). She married Erik Jurié von Lavandal, an Austrian judge.

In 1883, Weslowki and his three living children left Petrolia to join him in Galicia. They lived in a home McGarvey built at Mariampol, Galica. McGarvey remarried in 1905 to Eleanor Hamilton, a British woman. The intruders also killed a servant, a guard, James' colleague Talbot Barnard and wounded a cook, before escaping with 100 pounds in cash. In the summer of 1914, Russia invaded Galicia, before being quickly pushed back by Germany and Austria-Hungary. In their retreat, the Russian army set fire to Galicia's oil wells and blew up the refineries, effectively destroying the oil industry in the region and McGarvey's company.