sentences:  He invested money from his billiard equipment corporation in the petroleum industry in California.Spinks described himself as a director of an oil company at the 1900 census.While Spinks was not known to have been operating a farm in 1900, the W. A. Spinks Ranch was a large enough operation by 1909 to employ a staff of farmhands, and included land in Bradbury Canyon, near Duarte, California, where Spinks resided at the time.