He later made millions of dollars in the oil industry and became a trustee and significant benefactor to the university and its athletic department.

His parents, Isaac and Lucy Johnston Trees, later operated the mills and, as a youth, Joe worked in them.

Documents discovered a half-century later showed that on November 21, 1892, Pudge Heffelfinger, an all-American guard from Yale, was paid $500 (US dollars) to play for Allegheny against the rival Pittsburgh Athletic Club.

The couple had two sons, both of whom were killed: Joseph Graham Trees as an aviator during World War I and the other, Merle, died at age 10 in a traffic accident in Pittsburgh.

He and his partner Mike Benedum, decided to buy a lease in Pleasants County, West Virginia, and this was the start of their career together.

Benedum and Trees developed a dozen other rich pools in West Virginia with varying success up to 1900.

In one instance, a blind farmer once told them he had envisioned oil gushing out of a hill on his farm and shooting up over a tree.

Another time the two men heard of a natural rock-formation arrow which legend said pointed to treasure.

Trees and Benedum also founded wells in Illinois, West Texas, Florida (with Clem S. Clarke of Shreveport, Louisiana), Mexico, Colombia, and throughout South America.

On May 19, 1943 while talking to his partner Mike Benedum in their company headquarters at the Benedum-Trees Building, Trees suddenly slumped forward in his chair and died of a heart attack.