George Hoffman’s 1900 census entry (external address omitted for offline reading) calls him a “Stillman Oil Refinery” and places his family at 36 West 23rd Street in Bayonne. His 1915 funeral entry (external address omitted for offline reading) still gives his occupation as “stillman.” That was not a surname or a vague synonym for labourer. It was a skilled operating job at the fiery heart of a refinery.
Crude oil was separated by distillation. A furnace heated a large still; different parts of the oil vaporized and condensed at different temperatures, producing streams such as naphtha, kerosene and heavier oils. A later but wonderfully concrete U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics description (external address omitted for offline reading) says stillmen watched each stream, took its temperature and gravity every hour, shifted it to the correct tank by opening valves, and told firemen how much heat was needed to keep it steady. Assistants watched for leaks and made sure the still held the proper charge before firing. George’s title therefore suggests responsibility, judgment and experience—not merely muscle.
It also meant danger. Oil vapour, open furnaces, hot metal, leaking valves and great storage tanks made fire and explosion constant possibilities. On 4 July 1900, the year George was enumerated, lightning ignited tanks at the Bayonne works; the fire burned for days. A historical investigation prepared for New Jersey’s environmental agency traces the Bayonne plant from its early batch stills and documents a landscape of stills, tanks, docks, boiler houses and contaminated ground (external address omitted for offline reading).
Exact 1900 pay for George has not been found. The best near-contemporary comparison comes from the 1915 strike: an official New Jersey account says the walkout began when Standard Oil’s still cleaners were refused a wage increase. A later labour-history account (unreliable mirror removed), drawing on contemporary reporting, puts still cleaners’ pay at roughly $2.00–$2.40 a day. Still cleaners did the more brutal work of entering cooled vessels and chipping away coke; they were not the same as stillmen. The comparison should show the industrial wage world around George, not assign him a pay rate.
The grievances erupted after his lifetime. In July 1915 and again in October 1916, immigrant refinery workers struck Standard Oil and Tidewater for higher wages and better treatment. Police and company gunmen met them with lethal violence. A detailed history of the Bayonne refinery strikes (external address omitted for offline reading) records fourteen deaths across the two conflicts. George died in February 1915, before the first strike. Yet the struggle reveals the world behind the two words in his records: skilled attention amid heat and fumes, in a plant powerful enough to shape an entire city.