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Eugene Frank Blaise was born November 21, 1878 in Memphis, Tennessee. He was the son of Ada Hainer Blaise and John Theodore Blaise, Memphis, Tennessee furniture merchant and ice plant operator.
The Blaise family came to America from Strasbourg, France (Alsace-Loraine). Blaise's maternal grandfather was Johann Baden of Baden-Baden, German.
Ada Hainer Blaise, who was born in Hungary, was the daughter of Hungarian Statesman Ignace Hainer and Etelka (Adelaide) Barthos Hainer. She was the brother of Eugene Hainer, U.S. Congressman, of Bayard T. Hainer, Oklahoma Territory U.S. Supreme Court Justice and of Julius Hainer, Iowa State University professor of physics and mathematics. She also had a brother, Victor Hainer, and four sisters, Laura, Norma, Vesta and Hermoine.
Ignace Hainer was a lawyer, journalist, adjutant-general and secretary to Hungarian Premier Lajos Battayani and Gov. Lajos Kossuth. He helped to write and see implemented the March Laws, granting freedom of the press to Hungarians and emancipation of the serfs (including the Jews). During the Hungarian Revolution for Independence, in which Hungarians sought independence from the Austrian Hapsburg Empire, Battayni was killed by the Austrians and Hainer was imprisoned. Five months later he was freed through the help of American President Zachary Taylor and other heads of state, who sided with the Hungarian cause. The Hainer family then came to America, settling in New Buda, Decatur County, Iowa, then known informally as "the Hungarian government in exile."
Eugene Frank Blaise's father died when he was three, and his mother returned to Iowa to live with her parents until her son, Eugene, completed his high schooling in New Buda, when she and her son settled in St. Louis near her sister, Vesta Hainer Chase, and Vesta's son Eugene Chase.
Blaise worked as a superintendent for the Koken Iron Works in St. Louis before settling in Oklahoma Territory around 1900, soon after his uncle, Judge Bayard T. Hainer, was appointed O.T. Supreme Court Justice by President McKinley. Blaise was appointed court reporter for the 4th District Court. He then began wildcatting with Charles J. Wrightsman, a prominent and well-connected attorney, originally from Pennsylvania. Blaise and Wrightsman were quite successful, as is documented by the University of Oklahoma Press publication, "The Greatest Gamblers," and were associated with Harry F. Sinclair and William Connelly in a partnership known as the Chaser Oil Company, forerunner of the Sinclair Oil Company.
Blaise was married twice. He married Greek Miller, daughter of George W. Miller, in 1905. They sired one son, Dudley Eugene Blaise, born November 24, 1908 in Tulsa. They divorced in 1911 and both remarried. Mr. Blaise married Marie Howard at Joplin, Missouri in 1924.
In 1908 Blaise became a principal owner and president of the Farmer's National Bank of Tulsa, forerunner of the Bank of Oklahoma, and of the Bank of Keifer.
In about 1920, Blaise and F. Martin Aiken organized the Inland Refinery and the United Producers Pipeline Company at Fort Worth, Texas, building the first pipeline from the heart of the Ranger oil fieldInland Refinery at Fort Worth, Texas to the Inland Refinery. They then built a refinery at Cushing, Oklahoma, known as the Inland Refining Co., of which Blaise was vice president, until it was reorganized as the Cushing Gasoline Company, with refineries in Drumright, Oklahoma, of which Blaise was first treasurer and then president.
Blaise also treasurer of the Queen Esther Mining Company and succeeded Aiken as president of the Admiralty Zinc Co., with mines scattered throughout the northeast Oklahoma area, then, according to the Tulsa Tribune, one of the largest mining concerns in the entire Southwest. The Depression years forced the sale of the Admiralty Zinc Co. by Blaise and his co-owners, the Biddles, Drexels and Stotesburys of Philadelphia.
Eugene Frank Blaise's son, Dudley E. Blaise, married Clara Olive Snyder, daughter of John Abbott Snyder and Mabel Mitchell Snyder of Joplin. Mr. Snyder had founded the Snyder Bus Company, a pioneer interstate bus line operating in Southwest Missouri and Arkansas.
Dudley E. Blaise was a mine superintendent of the Admiralty Zinc Co. Following the sale of the Admiralty Company, Dudley and his father organized the El Cedro Mining Company in Guanajuato, Mexico. Dudley and his wife, Clara Olive, settled in Guanajuato in 1937. Then in 1938, Mexican President Cardenas expropriated Standard Oil of Mexico from its American owners and encouraged a lengthy strike against El Cedro Mining Co., forcing the liquidation of El Cedro.
Dudley and Clara Olive sired two sons, Dudley E. Blaise Jr. (John) and Thomas M. Blaise. In 1949, Clara Olive was granted a divorce on grounds of desertion. Dudley had left Clara Olive, taking with him part of an inheritance she had received from her family and failing to her and their two sons. He was later discovered to be working as a mining engineer and in La Paz, Bolivia and living with another woman, by whom he had fathered a third son. Clara Olive then remarried to Charles M. Shepherd, treasurer of the Empire District Electric Company, based in Joplin.
Eugene Frank Blaise was one of the first members of the Tulsa Club. He was a 32nd Degree Mason. He died in October 1958 at his home, The Sophian Plaza, 1500 S. Frisco Ave., Tulsa.
Blaise's first wife, Greek, died in 1960, at her home in Los Angeles.
Blaise's second wife, Marie Howard Blaise, died in 1976 in Houston, Texas.
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