[5] A few years later, the Phillips boy began his first occupational endeavor, hiring himself out to area farmers to dig potatoes for 10 cents a day (after completing his chores at home).

[6] At age 14, Phillips dropped out of school and persuaded a barber in nearby Creston, Iowa, to take him on as an apprentice.

This was later called Climax Shaving Parlor, which was located in the basement of the Creston National Bank Building.

[10] An account described how the elder Gibson promised not to get in the way of the pair's wedding if Phillips would give up barbering and join in the banking business.

Later they adopted two daughters, orphaned sisters whom they named Mary Francis and Sara Jane Phillips, where shortly after his wife died.

[12] The bank's president, John Gibson, had considered Phillips an up-and-coming entrepreneur for some time.

[13] During a stop in St. Louis en route back to Creston from Chicago in 1903, Phillips encountered C. B. Larabee, an old friend from Iowa who told him about the oil boom taking place in Oklahoma.

The area, which is now Osage County, Oklahoma, was rich in oil, and what proved to be a decades-long boom was just getting underway.

[14] Anchor opened an office in Bartlesville in 1905,[15] secured a driller and drilled its first wildcat well, the Holland No.

[12] The Anna Anderson, completed September 6, 1905, was a gusher, and the successful well enabled the brothers to raise $100,000 through the sale of stock.

[17] Also in 1905, Frank and L. E. Phillips formed the Lewcinda Oil Company, with brother Waite.

"[20] Frank Phillips led the company as its president until age 65, when in 1939 he named Kenneth S. "Boots" Adams to succeed him.

As Phillips turned over the presidency to Adams, he became the company's first chairman of the board, a position he held until he retired at the age of 76 in 1949, a year before his death.