An 11-year-old was given an allotment of 'undesirable' land. Beneath the surface was millions of dollars worth of oil.

• In the early 20th century, Sarah Rector was given 160 acres of land as part of a government treaty.
• 11-year-old Rector became incredibly wealthy when oil was discovered under her land.

When Sarah Rector was given 160 acres of land, she and her family assumed it had little value. The soil was barren and the land was considered undesirable. But they did not know the great source of wealth hidden underneath it.

Born in 1902, Rector grew up in a modest cabin near the all-Black town of Taft, Oklahoma, in what was then Indian Territory, according to Tonya Bolden, author of "Searching for Sarah Rector: The Richest Black Girl in America."

Rector's parents were Black descendants of the Muscogee Creek Nation, and were entitled to land allotments under an 1866 treaty that abolished slavery within tribal lands.

As part of the treaty, hundreds of Black children of Freedmen were each granted parcels of land. But the land given to them was typically inferior — rocky and unsuitable for farming.

Rector's father didn't think the $30 annual property tax on his daughter's land was worth paying, and, according to Bolden, sought to sell what he didn't realize held a secret source of unbelievable wealth for his family.

Striking oil

Luckily for the Rectors, the petition to sell the land was denied. To help cover the expenses, Rector's father leased Sarah's parcel of land to the Standard Oil Company in 1911.

In 1913, an oil speculator drilled a well on the land, producing a gusher that spewed out 2,500 barrels of oil every day — and about $300 a day, the equivalent of more than $7,000 today, for Rector.

Soon, news of the 11-year-old Rector and her newfound wealth spread, attracting both curiosity and scrutiny. Newspapers dubbed Rector "the world's richest Negro girl."

In 1914, a headline in the Washington Post read, "Oil made pickaninny rich" and inaccurately described Rector as "an orphan, crude, Black, and uneducated, yet worth more than $4,000,000."

Marriage proposals and suspected schemes

Rector received requests for loans and marriage proposals, even though she was still a pre-teen. Just like the Osage people who inherited oil rights around the same time, some children of Freedmen whose land allotments were found to contain oil were murdered in their sleep, the Washington Post reported.

Under the law at the time, Native Americans and Freedmen who possessed substantial wealth had to be assigned white guardians. Rector's parents chose T.J. Porter, who had been the family's benefactor for years, as their daughter's guardian.

When news of the guardianship spread, some people suspected that Porter was mismanaging her money. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and prominent figures like W.E.B. Du Bois even stepped in to investigate the claims.

"Is it not possible to have her cared for in a decent manner and by people of her own race, instead of by a member of a race which would deny her and her kind the treatment accorded a good yard dog?" James C. Waters, Jr., an attorney affiliated with the NAACP, wrote to Du Bois in 1914.

However, the investigation ultimately found the suspicions unwarranted.

Rector went on to live a comfortable life, throwing lavish parties and entertaining celebrities like Duke Ellington and Count Basie. She died in 1967 when she was 65 years old.