Sketches in rude oil

vi“He cometh unto you with a tale which holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney-corner.”—SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

“What is writ is written, would it were better.”—SHAKESPEARE.

Life is too short to compile a book that would cover the subject fully, hence this work is not a detailed history of the great petroleum development. Nor is it a mere collection of dry facts and figures, set forth to show that the oil business is a pretty big enterprise. But it is a sincere endeavor to print something regarding petroleum, based largely upon personal observation, which may be worth saving from oblivion. The purpose is to give the busy outside world, by anecdote and incident and brief narration, a glimpse of the grandest industry of the ages and of the men chiefly responsible for its origin and growth. Many of the portraits and illustrations, nearly all of them now presented for the first time, will be valuable mementoes of individuals and localities that have passed from mortal sight forever. If the reader shall find that “within is more of relish than of cost” the writer of these “Sketches” will be amply satisfied.

The first edition of five-thousand copies having been exhausted, the second is now issued. The oil-development is progressive, hence numerous illustrations and much new matter are added. Hearty thanks are returned hosts of friends and the public generally for kindly appreciation of the work. Perhaps something not thanks may be due the lonely few who “care for none of these things.” This will likely end the pleasant task of reviewing petroleum’s wide field and “living the old days over again,” so it is fitting to pray, with Tiny Tim, “God bless us every one.”

viii“No man likes mustard by itself.”—BEN JONSON.

“He has carried every point who has mixed the useful with the agreeable.”—HORACE.

Petroleum in Ancient Times—Known from an Early Period in the World’s History—Mentioned in the Scriptures and by Primitive Writers—Solomon Sustained—Stumbling Upon the Greasy Staple in Various Lands—Incidents and Anecdotes of Different Sorts and Sizes—Over Asia, Africa and Europe for the Stuff.

“The morning star in all its splendor was rising in the East.”—Felix Dahn.

“Alone in the increasing darkness * * * it is a beacon light.”—Disraeli.

“It were all one that I should love a bright particular star.”—Shakespeare.

“The years that are gone roll before me with their deeds.”—Ossian.

“Oil out of the flinty rock.”—Deuteronomy xxxii: 13.

“And the rock poured me out rivers of oil.”—Job xxix: 6.

“Will the Lord be pleased with * * * ten-thousands of rivers of oil?”—Micah vi: 7.

“I have myself seen pitch drawn out of the lake and from water in Zacynthus.”—Herodotus.

“The people of Agrigentum save oil in pits and burn it in lamps.”—Dioscorides.

“Can ye not discern the signs of the times?”—St. Matthew xvi: 3.

Petroleum, a name to conjure with and weave romances around, helps out Solomon’s oft-misapplied declaration of “No new thing under the sun.” Possibly it filled no place in domestic economy when the race, if the Darwinian theory passes muster, sported as ring-tailed simians, yet the Scriptures and primitive writers mention the article repeatedly. Many intelligent persons, recalling the tallow-dip and lard-oil lamp of their youth, consider the entire petroleum-business of very recent date, whereas its history goes back to remotest antiquity. Naturally they are disappointed to find it, in various aspects, “the same thing over again.” Men and women in the prime of life have forgotten the flickering pine-knot, the sputtering candle or the smoky sconce hardly long enough to associate rock-oil with “the brave days of old.” This idea of newness the host of fresh industries created by oil-operations has tended to deepen in the popular mind. Enjoying the brilliant glow of a modern argand-burner, double-wicked, silk-shaded, onyx-mounted and altogether a genuine luxury, it seems hard to realize that the actual basis of this up-to-date elegance has existed from time immemorial. Of derricks, drilling-tools, tank-cars, refineries and pipe-lines our ancestors were blissfully ignorant; but petroleum itself, the foundation of the countless paraphernalia of the oil-trade of to-day, flourished “ere Noah’s flood had space to dry.” Although used to a limited extent in crude-form for thousands of years, it was reserved for the present age to introduce the grand illuminant to the world generally. After sixty centuries the game of “hide-and-seek” 2between Mother Earth and her children has terminated in favor of the latter. They have pierced nature’s internal laboratories, tapping the huge oil-tanks wherein the products of her quiet chemistry had accumulated “in bond,” and up came the unctuous fluid in volumes ample to fill all the lamps the universe could manufacture and to grease every axle on this revolving planet! The demon of darkness has been exorcised from the gloomy caverns of old to make room for the modern angel of light. Science, the rare alchemist which converts the tear of unpaid labor into a steam-giant that turns with tireless arm the countless wheels of toil, lays bare the deepest recesses of the past to bring forth treasures for the present.

The capital invested in petroleum in this country has increased from one-thousand dollars, raised in 1859 to drill the first well in Pennsylvania, to six-hundred-millions. It is just as easy to say six-hundred-million dollars as six-hundred-million grains of sand, but the possibilities of such a sum of money afford material for endless flights of the imagination. Thirty-thousand miles of pipe-lines handle the output most expeditiously, conveying it to the seaboard at less than teamsters used to receive for hauling it a half-mile. Ten-thousand tank-cars have been engaged in its transportation. Seventy-five bulk-steamers and fleets of sailing-vessels carry refined from Philadelphia and New York to the most distant ports in Europe, Africa and Asia. “Astral Oil” and “Standard White” have penetrated “wherever a wheel can roll or a camel’s foot be planted.” In Pennsylvania, South-eastern Ohio and West Virginia thirty-five-million barrels have been produced and eight-thousand wells drilled in a single year. Add to this the results of operations in North-eastern Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming and California, and it must be acknowledged that petroleum is entitled to the chief seat in the synagogue. Edward Bellamy may, perhaps, be imitated profitably and pleasantly in this connection by “Looking-Backward.”

Precisely how, why, when, where and by whom petroleum was first discovered and utilized nobody living can, and nobody dead will, tell anxious inquirers. The information has “gone where the woodbine twineth,” to join the dodo, the megatherium, the ichthyosaurus and the “lost arts” Wendell Phillips embalmed in fadeless prose. An erratic Joe-Millerite has traced the stuff to the Garden of Eden in a fashion akin to the chopping logic of the Deacon’s “Wonderful One-Horse Shay.” Hear him:

“Adam had a fall?”

“Sure as death and taxes.”

“Why did he fall with such neatness and dispatch?”

“Maybe he took a spring to fall.”

“Naw! Because everything was greased for the occasion! Unquestionably 3the only lubricant on this footstool just then was the petroleum brewed in God’s own subterranean stills. Therefore, petroleum figured in Eden, which was to be demonstrated according to Hoyle. See?”

There is no “irrepressible conflict” between this reasoning, the version of the Pentateuch and the idea of Peck’s Bad Boy that “Adam clumb a appul-tree to put coal-oil onto it to kill the insecks, an’ he sawed a snaik, an’ the oil made the tree slippy, an’ he fell bumpety-bump!” What a heap of trouble would have been avoided if that pippin had been soaked in crude-oil, that Eve might turn up her nose at it and give the serpent the marble heart! As Miss Haney expresses it:

Other wags attribute the longevity of antediluvian veterans to their unstinted use of petroleum for internal and external ailments! Had medical almanacs, patent nostrums and circus-bill testimonials been evolved at that interesting period, the oleum-vender would have hit the bull’s-eye plump in the center. Guess at the value of recommendations like these, with the latest accompaniment of “before-and-after” pictures in the newspapers:

Land of Nod, April 1, B. C. 5678.—This is to certify that I keep my strength up to blacksmith pitch by frequent applications of Petroleum Prophylactic and six big drinks of Benzine Bitters daily. Lifting an elephant, with one hand tied behind me, is my favorite trick.

Mt. Ararat, July 4, B. C. 4004.—Your medicine is out of sight in our family. It relieved papa of an overdose of fire-water, imbibed in honor of his boat distancing Dunraven’s barge on this glorious anniversary, and cured Ham of trichina yesterday. Mamma’s pug slid off the upper deck into the swim and was fished out in a comatose condition. A solitary whiff of your Pungent Petroleum Pastils revived him instantly, and he was able to howl all night.

Somewhere in Asia, Dec. 21, B. C. 4019.—Your incomparable Petroleum Prophylactic, which I first learned about from a college chum, is a daisy-cutter. Thanks to its superlative virtues, I have lived to be a trifle older than the youngest ballet-girl in the “Black Crook.” I celebrated my nine-hundred-and-sixty-ninth birth-day by walking umsteen miles before luncheon, playing left-tackle with the Y. M. C. A. Foot-ball Team in the afternoon and witnessing “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”—two Topsys, two Markses, two Evas, two donkeys and four Siberian Bloodhounds—in the evening. Next morning’s paper flung this ticket to the breeze:

By sticking faithfully and fearlessly to your unrivaled elixir I expect to round out my full thousand years and run for a second term. Refer silver-skeptics and gold-bug office-seekers to me for particulars as to the proper treatment.

Pleasant Valley, Oct. 30, B. C. 5555.—I just want to shout “Eureka,” “Excelsior,” “Hail Columbia,” “E Pluribus Unum,” and give three cheers for your Kill-em-off Kerosene! Both my mothers in-law, who had bossed me seventy decades, tried a can of it on a sick fire this morning. Their funeral is billed for four o’clock p. m. to-morrow. Send me ten gallons more at once.

Isles of Greece.—I defy the Jersey Lighting to knock me out while your Benzine Bitters are in the ring. “A good thing; push it along.”

Leaving the realm of conjecture, it is quite certain that the “pitch” which coated the ark and the “slime” of the builders of Babel were products of petroleum. Genesis affirms that “the vale of Siddim was full of slime-pits”—language too direct to be dismissed by hinting vaguely at “the mistakes of Moses.” Deuteronomy speaks of “oil out of the flinty rock” and Micah puts the pointed query: “Will the Lord be pleased with * * * ten thousands of 4rivers of oil?” To the three friends who condoled with him in his grievous visitation of boils the patriarch of Uz asserted: “And the rock poured me out rivers of oil.” Whatever his hearers might think of this apparent stretch of fancy, Job’s forecast of the oleaginous output was singularly felicitous. Evidently the Old-Testament writers, whose wise heads geology had not muddled, knew a good deal about the petroleum situation in their day.

A follower of Voltaire was accustomed to wind up his assaults on inspiration by criticising these oily quotations unmercifully. “Could anything be more absurd,” he would ask, “than to talk of ‘oil from a flinty rock’ and ‘rocks pouring forth rivers of oil?’ If anything were needed to prove the Bible a fool-book from start to finish, such utterances would settle the matter beyond dispute. Rocks yielding rivers of oil cap the climax of ridiculous nonsense! Next they’ll want folks to believe that Jonah swallowed the whale, hair and hide and breeches. Bah!”

Months and years passed away swiftly, as they have a habit of doing, and the sturdy agnostic continued arguing pluckily. At length tidings of oil-wells flowing thousands of barrels of crude reached him from William Penn’s broad heritage. He came, he saw and, unlike Julius Cæsar, he surrendered unconditionally. Remarking, “This beats the deuce!” the doubter doubted no more. He revised his opinions, humbly accepted the gospel and professed religion, openly and above-board. Hence the petroleum-development is entitled to the credit of one notable conversion, at least, and the balance is on the right side of the ledger, assuming that a human soul outweighs the terrestrial globe in the unerring scales of the Infinite.

Whether petroleum, which literally signifies “rock-oil,” be of mineral, vegetable or animal origin matters little to the producer or consumer, who views it from a commercial standpoint. In its natural state it is a variable mixture of numerous liquid hydro-carbons, holding in solution paraffine and solid bitumen, or asphaltum. The fountains of Is, on the Euphrates, were familiar to the founders of Babylon, who secured indestructible mortar for the walls of the city by pouring melted asphaltum between the blocks of stone. These famous springs attracted the attention of Alexander, Trajan and Julian. Even now asphaltum procured from them is sold in the adjacent villages. The commodity is skimmed off the saline and sulphurous waters and solidified by evaporation. The ancient Egyptians used another form of the same substance in preparing mummies, probably obtaining their supplies from a spring on the Island of Zante, described by Herodotus. It was flowing in his day, it is flowing to-day, and a citizen of Boston owns the property. Wells drilled near the Suez canal in 1885 found petroleum. So the gay world jogs on. Mummified Pharaohs are burned as fuel to drive locomotives over the Sahara, while the Zantean fount whose oil besmeared “the swathed and bandaged carcasses” is 5purchased by a Massachusetts bean-eater! Yet victims of “that tired feeling” turn to namby-pamby novels of the Laura-Jean-Libby brand for real romance!

Asphaltum is found in the Dead Sea, the supposed site of Sodom and Gomorrah, and on the surface of a chain of springs along its banks, far below the level of the ocean. Strabo referred to this remarkable feature two thousand years ago. The destruction of the two ill-fated cities may have been connected with, if not caused by, vast natural stores of this inflammable petroleum. The immense accumulations of hardened rock-oil in the center and on the banks of the sea were oxidized into rosin-like asphalt. Pieces picked up from the waters are frequently carved, in the convents of Jerusalem, into ornaments, which retain an oily flavor. Aristotle, Josephus and Pliny mention similar deposits at Albania, on the shores of the Adriatic. Dioscorides Pedanius, the Greek historian, tells how the citizens of Agrigentum, in Sicily, burned petroleum in rude lamps prior to the birth of Christ. For two centuries it lighted the streets of Genoa and Parma, in northern Italy. Plutarch describes a lake of blazing petroleum near Ecbatana. Persian wells have produced oil liberally for ages, under the name of “naphtha,” the descendants of Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes consuming the fluid for its light. The earliest records of China refer to petroleum and small quantities have been found in Thibet. An oil-fountain on one of the Ionian Islands has gushed steadily for over twenty centuries, without once going on a strike or taking a vacation. Austria and France likewise possess oil-springs of considerable importance. Thomas Shirley, in 1667, tested the contents of a shallow pit in Lancashire, England, which burned readily. Rev. John Clayton visited it and wrote in 1691:

“I saw a ditch where the water burned like brandy. Country-folk boil eggs and meat in it.”

Near Bitche, a small fort perched on the top of a peak, at the entrance of one of the defiles of Lorraine, opening into the Vosges Mountains-a fort which was of great embarrassment to the Prussians in their last French campaign—and in the valley guarded by this fortress stand the chateau and village of Walsbroun, so named from a strange spring in the forest behind it. In the middle ages this fountain was famous. Inscriptions, ancient coins and the relics of a Roman road attest that it had been celebrated even in earlier times. In the sixteenth century a basin and bath for sick people existed. No record of its abandonment has been preserved. In the last century it was rediscovered by a medical antiquarian, who found the naphtha, or white petroleum, almost exhausted.

Nine years ago Adolph Schreiner died in a Vienna hospital, destitute and alone. Yet he was the only son of a man known in Galicia as “the Petroleum King” and founder of the great industry of oil-refining. The father shared the lot of many inventors and benefactors, increasing the world’s wealth untold millions and poverty-stricken himself in his last days. Schreiner owned a piece of ground near Baryslaw from which he took a black, tarry muck the peasants used to heal wounds and grease cart-axles. He kneaded a ball from the slime, stuck a wick into it and a red flame burned until the substance exhausted. This was the first petroleum-lamp! Later Schreiner heard of distillation, filled a kettle with the black earth and placed it on the fire. The ooze boiled over and exploded, shivering the kettle and covering the zealous experimenter with deep scars. He improved his apparatus, produced the petroleum of commerce and sold bottles of the fluid to druggists in 1853. He drilled the first Galician oil-well in 1856 and built a real refinery, which fire destroyed in 1866. He rebuilt 6the works on a larger scale and fire blotted them out, ruining the owner. Gray hairs and feebleness had come, he ceased the struggle, drank to excess and died in misery. His son, from whom much was expected, failed as a merchant and peddled matches in Vienna from house to house, just as the aged brother of Signor Blitz, the world-famed conjuror, is doing in Harrisburg to-day. Dying at last in a public hospital, kindred nor friends followed the poor outcast to a pauper’s grave. “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.”

Around the volcanic isles of Cape Verde oil floats on the water and to the south of Vesuvius rises through the Mediterranean, exactly as when “the morning stars sang together.” Hanover, in Germany, boasts the most northerly of European “earth-oils.” The islands of the Ottoman Archipelago and Syria are richly endowed with the same product. Roumania is literally flowing with petroleum, which oozes from the Carpathians and pollutes the water-springs. Turkish domination has hindered the development of the Roumanian region. Southern Australia is blessed with bituminous shales, resembling those in Scotland, good for sixty gallons of petroleum to the ton. The New-Zealanders obtained a meager supply from the hill-sides, collecting carefully the droppings from the interior rocks, and several test-wells have resulted satisfactorily. The unsophisticated Sumatrans, whose straw-huts and squeaky music rendered the Javanese village at the Columbian Exposition a tip-top novelty, stick pipes in rocks and hills that trickle petroleum and let the liquid drop upon their heads until their bodies are sleek and slippery as an eel. Chauncey F. Lufkin, of Lima, Ohio, inventor of the “Disk Powers” that make oil-wells almost pump themselves, says it is funnier than a three-ringed circus to watch a group of half-clad girls and women, two-thirds of them carrying babies, taking turns at this operation. He has traveled through the oil-fields of Sumatra, India and Russia and his kodak has reproduced many odd scenes for the delectation of his friends. Two companies drilling in Java propose to find out all about its oil-resources as quickly as the tools can reach the decisive spot. Ultimately Java coffee may be tinged with an oily flavor that will tickle the palates of consumers and set them wondering how the new aroma escaped their notice so persistently. Verily, “no pent-up Utica confines” petroleum within the narrow compass of a nation or a continent. With John Wesley it may exultingly exclaim: “The whole earth is my parish,” or echo the Shakespearean refrain: “The world’s mine oyster.”

J. W. Stewart, of Clarion, has been in Africa drilling for oil. An English syndicate is behind the enterprise and test-wells are to be bored in the goldfields on the southern coast. Stewart, who returned lately, says it is amusing 7to see the monkeys climb up a derrick and watch the drillers at work. Just how amused they will be, if the Englishmen strike a spouter that drenches the monkeys and the derrick, each must diagram for himself until the result of carrying the petroleum-war into Africa is decided. C. E. Seavill, since 1874 mining-and-land agent at Kimberley, in the diamond-fields of South Africa, has organized a company with seventy-five-thousand dollars capital to operate at Ceres, eighty miles north of Cape Town. He has leased enormous tracts of land, which American experts pronounce likely to prove rich oil-territory, and the first well will be drilled at a spot selected by W. W. Van Ness, of New York, an authority on petroleum. Mr. Seavill spent years endeavoring to educate the people up to the notion that South Africa might be good for something besides gold and precious stones. A series of gushers in the Ceres district, big enough to discount yellow nuggets and sparkling gems, should be the fitting reward of his enterprise. Perhaps Heber’s missionary-hymn may yet start like this, when the Hottentots pose as oil-operators:

The Rangoon district of India long yielded four-hundred-thousand hogsheads annually, the Hindoos using the oil to heal diseases, to preserve timber and to cremate corpses. Birma has been supplied from this source for an unknown period. The liquid, which is of a greenish-brown color and resembles lubricating-oil in density, gathers in pits sunk twenty to ninety feet in beds of sandy clays, overlying slates and sandstones. Clumsy pots or buckets, operated by quaint windlasses, hoist the oil slowly to the mouth of the pits, whence it is often carried across the country in leathern bags, borne on men’s shoulders, or in earthern jars, packed into carts drawn by oxen. Major Michael Symes, ambassador to the Court of Ava in 1765, published a narrative of his sojourn, in which is this passage:

“We rode until two o’clock, at which hour we reached Yaynangheomn, or Petroleum Creek. * * * The smell of the oil is extremely offensive. It was nearly dark when we approached the pits. There seemed to be a great many pits within a small compass. Walking to the nearest, we found the aperture about four feet square and the sides lined, as far as we could see down, with timber. The oil is drawn up in an iron-pot, fastened to a rope passed over a wooden cylinder, which revolves on an axis supported by two upright posts. When the pot is filled, two men take hold of the rope by the end and run down a declivity, which is cut in the ground, to a distance equal to the depth of the well. When they reach the end of the track the pot is raised to its proper elevation; the contents, water and oil together, are discharged into a cistern, and the water is afterward drawn through a hole in the bottom. * * * When a pit yielded as much as came up to the waist of a man, it was deemed tolerably productive; if it reached his neck it was abundant, and that which reached no higher than his knee was accounted indifferent.”

Labor-saving machinery has not forged to the front to any great degree in 8the oil-fields of the East Indies. For the Burmese trade flat-boats ascend the Irrawaddy to Rainanghong, a town inhabited almost exclusively by the potters who make the earthen jars in which the oil is kept for this peculiar traffic. The methods of saving and handling the greasy staple have not changed one iota since John the Baptist wore his suit of camel’s-hair and curry-combed the Sadducees in the Judean wilderness. Progress cuts no ice beneath the shadows of the Himalayas, notwithstanding the missionary efforts of Xavier, Judson, Carey, Morrison and Duff.

Petroleum in India occurs in middle or lower tertiary rock. In the Rawalpindi district of the Panjab it is found at sixteen localities. At Gunda a well yielded eleven gallons a day for six months, from a boring eighty feet deep, and one two-hundred feet deep, at Makum, produced a hundred gallons an hour. The coast of Arakan and the adjacent islands have long been famed for mud-volcanoes caused by the eruption of hydrocarbon gases. Forty-thousand gallons a year of petroleum have been exported by the natives from Kyoukpyu. The oil is light and pure. In 1877 European enterprise was attracted to this industry and in 1879 work was undertaken by the Borongo Oil-Co. The company started on a large scale and in 1883 had twenty-four wells in operation, ranging from five-hundred to twelve-hundred feet in depth, one yielding for a few weeks one-thousand gallons daily. The total pumped from ten wells during the year was a quarter-million gallons; and in 1884 the company had to suspend payment. Large supplies of high-class petroleum might be obtained from this region, if suitable methods of working were employed.

Japan also takes a position in the oleiferous procession allied to that of the yellow dog under the band-wagon. At the base of Fuji-Yama, a mountain of respectable altitude, the thrifty subjects of the Mikado manage a cluster of oil-pits in the style practiced by their forefathers. The mirv holes, the creaking apparatus and the general surroundings are second editions of the Rangoon exhibits. Yum-Yum’s countrymen are clever students and they have much 9to learn concerning petroleum. Twenty-one years ago a Japanese nobleman inspected the Pennsylvania oil-fields, sent thither to report to the government all about the American system of operating the territory. His observations, embodied in an official statement, failed to amend the moss-grown processes of the Fuji-Yamans, who preferred to “fight it out on the old line if it took all summer.” Two others followed on a similar mission in 1897. Fifty wells, from one thousand to eighteen hundred feet deep, are producing in the Echigo province of Japan. The largest flowed five-hundred barrels the first day, declining to eight or ten, the customary average. The sand is white and the oil is of two grades, one amber of 38° gravity, the other much darker and of 310 gravity. The methods of refining and transporting are of the rudest, women carrying the crude from the wells on their backs as squaws in North America tote their papooses.

In 1874 S. G. Bayne, now president of the Seaboard Bank of New-York City, visited these oriental regions. The hard fate of the benighted heathen moved him to briny tears. They had never heard or read of “the annealed steel coupling,” “the Palm link,” the tubing, casing, engines and boilers the distinguished tourist had planted in every nook and corner of Oildom. With the spirit of a true philanthropist, Bayne determined to “set them on a higher plane.” His choicest Hindostanee persiflage was aired in detailing the advantages of the Pennsylvania plan of running the petroleum-machine. Tales of fortunes won on Oil Creek and the Allegheny River were garnished with scintillations of Irish wit that ought to have convulsed the listeners. Alas! the supine Asiatics were not built that way and the good seed fell upon barren soil. The story and, despite the finest lacquer and veneer embellishments, the experience were repeated in Japan. What better could be expected of pagans who wore skirts for full-dress, practiced hari-kari and knew not a syllable about Brian Boru? Their conduct was another convincing evidence of “the stern Calvinistic doctrine” of total depravity. The Japs voted to stay in their venerable rut and not monkey with the Yankee buzz-saw. “And the band played on.”

Years afterwards two cars of drilling-tools and well-machinery were shipped to Calcutta and a couple of complete rigs to Yeddo—“only this and nothing more.” The genial Bayne attempted to square the account by printing his eastern adventures and sending marked copies of translations to the Indo-Japanese 10press. Doubtless the waste-basket received what the office-cat spared of this unusual consignment. Mr. Bayne began his prosperous career as an oilman by striking a snug well in 1869, on Pine Creek, near Titusville. He has written a book on Astronomy which twinkles with gobs of astral science Copernicus, Herschell, Leverrier, Proctor or Maria Mitchell never dreamed of. His unique advertisements have spread his fame from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Digest these random samples of originality worthy of John J. Ingalls:

“We never make kite-track records; our speed takes in the full circle.”

“The graveyards of the enemy are the monuments of our success.”

“We never speak of our goods without glancing at the bust of George Washington which squats on the top of our annealed steel safe; a twenty-five cent plaster cast of George lends an atmosphere of veracity to a trade which in these days it sometimes needs.”

“Abdul Azis, the late Sultan of Morocco, bought a cheap boiler to drill a water-well. It bu’st and he is now Abdul Azwas.”

“We will never be buried with the ‘unknown dead’—we advertise.”

“Our patent coupling is the precipitated vapor of fermented progress.”

“The intellectual and æsthetic are provided for in consanguinity to their taste.”

“Our conversational soloists never descend to orthochromatic photography in their orphean flights; they hug the shore of plain Anglo-Saxon and scoop the doubting Thomas.”

“It will never do to shake a man because the lambrequins begin to appear on the bottom of his pants and he wears a ‘dickey’ with a sinker.”

“The Forget-me-nots of to-day are frequently found the Has-beens of to-morrow.”

“Credit is the flower that blooms in life’s buttonhole.”

“Many a man who now gives dinner-parties in a Queen-Anne front would be nibbling his Frankfurter in a Mary-Ann back had we not given him a helping hand at the right moment.”

The classic ground of Petroleum is the little peninsula of Okestra, jutting into the Caspian Sea. Extraordinary indications of oil and gas extend over a strip of country twenty-five miles long by a half-mile wide, in porous sandstone. Springs of heavier petroleum flow from hills of volcanic rocks in the vicinity. Open wells, in which the oil settles as it oozes from the rocks, are dug sixteen to twenty feet deep. For countless generations the simple natives dipped up the sticky fluid and carried it great distances on their backs, to burn in its crude state, besides sending a large amount yearly to the Shah’s dominions. It is a forbidding spot-rocky, desolate, without a stream or a sign of vegetation. The unfruitful soil is saturated with oil, which exudes from the neighboring hills and sometimes filters into receptacles hewn in the rock at a prehistoric epoch. On gala days it was part of the program to pour the oil into the Caspian and set it ablaze, until the sea and land and sky appeared one unbroken mass of vivid, lurid, roaring flame. The “pillar of fire” which guided the wandering Israelites by night could scarcely have presented a grander spectacle. The sight might well convey to awe-stricken beholders intensely realistic notions of the place of punishment Col. Ingersoll and Henry Ward Beecher have sought by tongue and pen to abolish. “Old Nick,” however, at last advices was still doing a wholesale business at the old stand!

Near Belegan, six miles from the chief village of the Baku district, the grandest of these superb exhibitions was given in 1817. A column of flame, 11six-hundred yards in diameter, broke out naturally, hurling rocks for days together and raising a mound nine-hundred feet high. The roar of steaming brine was terrific. Oil and gas rise wherever a hole is bored. The sides of the mountain are black with dark exudations, while a spring of white oil issues from the foot. A clay-pipe or hollow reed, steeped in lime water and set upright in the floor of a dwelling, serves as a sufficient gas-pipe. No wonder such a land as Baku, where in the fissures of the earth and rock the naphtha-vapors flicker into flame, where a boiling lake is covered with flame devoid of sensible heat, where after the autumn showers the surrounding country seems wrapped in fire, where the October moon lights up with an azure tint the entire west and Mount Paradise dons a robe of fiery red, where innumerable jets envelope the plains on moonless nights, where all the phenomena of distillation and combustion can be studied, should have aroused the religious sentiment of oriental mystics. The adoring Parsee and the cold-blooded chemist might worship cheek-by-jowl. Amidst this devouring element men live and love, are born and die, plant onions and raise sheep, as in more prosaic regions.

At the southern extremity of the peninsula oil and gas shot upward in a huge pyramid of light. Here was “the eternal fire of Aaku,” burning two-thousand-years as when Zoroaster reverently beheld it and flame became the symbol of Deity to the entranced Parsees. Here the poor Gheber gathered the fuel to feed the sacred fire which burned perpetually upon his altar. Hither devout pilgrims journeyed even from far-off Cathay, to do homage and bear away a few drops of the precious oil, before the wolf had suckled Romulus or Nebuchadnezzar had been turned out to pasture. The “Eternal Fire,” unquenched for twenty-five centuries, the digging of wells that tapped its supply of fuel put out a generation ago. Modern greed, respecting neither ancient association nor religious sentiment, drew too lavishly upon the bountiful stock that fed throughout the ages the grandest flame in history. At Lourakhanel, not far from Baku, is a temple built by the fire-worshipers. The sea in places has such quantities of gas that it can be lighted and burned on the surface of the water until extinguished by a strong wind. Strange destiny of petroleum, first and last, to be the panderer of idolatry—fire-worship in the olden time, mammon-worship in this era of the “Almighty Dollar!”

Developments from Baku to the region north of the Black Sea, seven-hundred miles westward, have revealed vast deposits of petroleum. Hundreds of wells have been drilled, some flowing one-hundred-thousand barrels a day! Nobel Brothers’ No. 50, which commenced to spout in 1886, kept a stream rising four-hundred feet into the air for seventeen months, yielding three million barrels. This would fill a ditch five feet wide, six feet deep, and a hundred miles long. These monsters eject tons of sand daily, which piles up in high mounds. Stones weighing forty pounds have been thrown out. The common way of obtaining the oil is to raise it by means of long metal-cylinders with trap-bottoms. Pumps are impossible on account of the fine sand coming up with the oil. These cylinders, which will hold from one to four barrels, on being raised to the surface are discharged into pipes or ditches. Each trip of the bucket or cylinder takes a minute-and-a-half and the well is worked day and night. The average daily yield of a Russian well is about two-hundred barrels.

Pipe-lines, refineries and railroads have been provided and the three big companies operating the whole field consolidated in 1893. The Rothschilds combined with the Nobels and a prohibitory tariff prevents the importation of foreign oils. Tank-steamers ply the Caspian Sea and the Volga, many of the 12railways use the crude-oil for fuel and the supply is practically unlimited. The petroleum-products are carried in these steamers to a point at the mouth of the Volga River called Davit Foot, about four-hundred miles north of Baku and ninety miles from Astrakhan, and transferred into barges. These are towed by small tug-boats to the various distributing points on the Volga, where tanks have been constructed for railway-shipments. The chief distributing point upon the Volga is Tsaritzin, but there is also tankage at Saratof, Kazan, and Nijni-Novgorod. From these points it is distributed all over Russia in tank-cars. Some is exported to Germany and to Austria. Russian refined may not be as good an illuminant as the American, but it is made to burn well enough for all purposes and emits no disagreeable odor. After taking from crude thirty per-cent. illuminating distillate, about fifteen per-cent. is taken from the residuum. It is called “solar oil” and the lubricating-oil distillate is next taken off. From this distillate a very good lubricant is obtained, affected neither by intense heat nor cold. The lubricating oil is made in Baku, but great quantities of the distillate are shipped to England, France, Belgium and Germany and there purified.

Russian competition was for years the chief danger that confronted American producers. Three partial cargoes of petroleum were sent to the United States as an experiment, netting a snug profit. Heaven favors the hustler from Hustlerville, who hoes his own row and doesn’t squat on a stump expecting the cow will walk up to be milked, and American oilmen are not easily downed. They have perfected such improvements in handling, transporting, refining and marketing their product that the major portion of Europe and Asia, outside of the czar’s dominions, is their customer. Nailing their colors to the mast and keeping their powder dry, the oil-interests of this glorious climate don’t propose to quit barking until the last dog is dead!

The early Persians and Tartars burned crude-oil for light in stoneware jugs, with a spout on one side to hold the flax-wick, that answered the purpose of lamps. In 1851 a chemist of Polish Austria exhibited a small quantity of distilled petroleum at the World’s Fair in London. The Austrian Emperor rewarded this step towards refining crude-oil by making the chemist a prince.

All these things prove conclusively that petroleum is a veritable antique, always known and prized by millions of people in Asia, Africa and Europe, and not a mushroom upstart. Indeed, its pedigree sizes up to the most exacting Philadelphia requirement. Mineralogists think it was quietly distilling “underneath the ground” when the majestic fiat went forth: “Let there be light!” Happily “age does not wither nor custom stale the infinite variety” of its admirable qualities. Neither is it a hot-house exotic, adapted merely to a single clime or limited to one favored section of any country. It is scattered widely throughout the two hemispheres, its range of usefulness is extending constantly and it is not put up in retail packages, that exhaust speedily. Alike in the tropics and the zones, beneath cloudless Italian skies and the bleak Russian firmament, amid the flowery vales of Cashmere and the snow-crowned heights of the Caucasus, by the banks of the turbid Ganges and the shores of the limpid Danube, this priceless boon has ever contributed to the comfort and convenience of mankind.

The Star in the East was crowding into line as the full orb of day.

A ragged street-Arab, taken to Sunday-school by a kind teacher, heard for the first time the story of Christ’s boundless love and sufferings. Big tears coursed down his grimy cheeks, until he could no longer restrain his feelings. Springing upon the seat, the excited urchin threw his tattered cap to the ceiling and screamed “Hurrah for Jesus!” It was an honest, sincere, reverent tribute, which the Recording Angel must have been delighted to note. In like manner, considering its wondrous past, its glowing present and its prospective future, men, women and children everywhere, while profoundly grateful to the Divine Benefactor for the transcendent gift, may fittingly join in a universal “Hurrah for Petroleum!”

Numerous Indications of Oil on this Continent—Lake of Asphaltum—Petroleum Springs in New York and Pennsylvania—How History is Manufactured—Pioneers Dipping and Utilizing the Precious Fluid—Tombstone Literature—Pathetic Episode—Singular Strike—Geology Tries to Explain a Knotty Point.

“Thou who wouldst see where dawned the light at last must westward go.”—Edwin Arnold.

“America is the Lord’s darling.”—Dr. Talmage.

“Thee, hid the bowering vales amidst, I call.”—Euripides.

“A Mercury is not to be carved out of every wood.”—Latin Proverb.

“Never no duck wasn’t hatched by a drake.”—Hall Caine.

“Near the Niagara is an oil-spring known to the Indians.”—De la Roche D’Allion, A. D. 1629.

“There is a fountain at the head of the Ohio, the water of which is like oil, has a taste of iron and seems to appease pain.”—Captain de Joncaire, A. D. 1721.

“It is light bottled up for tens-of-thousands of years—light absorbed by plants and vegetables. * * * And now, after being buried long ages, that latent light is again brought forth and made to work for human purposes.”—Stephenson.

“It is not a farthing glim in a bedroom.”—Charles Reade.

“The west glimmers with some streaks of day.”—Shakespeare.

“Even the night shall be light about me.”—Psalms cxxxix: 11.

The Land Columbus ran against, by anticipating Horace Greeley’s advice to “Go West,” was not neglected in the unstinted distribution of petroleum. It abounds in South America, in the West Indies, the United States and Canada. The most extensive and phenomenal natural fountain of petroleum ever known is on the Island of Trinidad. Hot bitumen has filled a basin four miles in circumference, three-quarters of a mile from the sea, estimated to contain the equivalent of ten-millions of barrels of crude-oil. The liquid boils up continually, observing no holidays or Sundays, seething and foaming at the center of the lake, cooling and thickening as it recedes, and finally becoming solid asphaltum. The bubbling, hissing, steaming caldron emits a sulphurous odor, perceptible for ten or twelve miles and decidedly suggestive of the orthodox Hades. Humboldt in 1799 reported his impressions of this spontaneous marvel, in producing which the puny hand of man had no share. From it is derived the dark, tough, semi-elastic material, first utilized in Switzerland for this purpose, which paves the streets of scores of cities. Few stop to reflect, as they glide over the noiseless surface on whirling bicycles or behind prancing steeds, that the smooth asphaltum pavements and the clear “water-white” in the piano-lamp have a common 16parentage. Yet bloomers and pantaloons, twin-creations of the tailor, or diamonds and coal, twin-links of carbon, are not related more closely.

The earliest printed reference to petroleum in America is by Joseph de la Roche D’Allion, a Franciscan missionary who crossed the Niagara river from Canada in 1629 and wrote of oil, in what is now New York, known to the Indians and by them given a name signifying “plenty there.” Likely this was the petroleum occupying cavities in fossils at Black Rock, below Buffalo, in sufficient abundance to be an object of commerce. Concerning the celebrated oil-spring of the Seneca Indians near Cuba, N. Y., which D’Allion may also have seen, Prof. Benjamin Silliman in 1833 said:

“This is situated in the western part of the county of Alleghany, in the state of New York. This county is the third from Lake Erie on the south line of the state, the counties of Cattaraugus and Chautauqua lying west and forming the southwestern termination of the state of New York. The spring is very near the line which divides Alleghany and Cattaraugus. * * * The country is rather mountainous, but the road running between the ridges is very good and leads through a cultivated region rich in soil and picturesque in scenery. Its geographical formation is the same as that which is known to prevail in the western region; a silicious sandstone with shale, and in some places limestone, is the immediate basis of the country. * * * The oil-spring or fountain rises in the midst of a marshy ground. It is a muddy, dirty pool of about eighteen feet in diameter and is nearly circular in form. There is no outlet above ground, no stream flowing from it, and it is, of course, a stagnant water, with no other circulation than than which springs from the changes in temperature and from the gas and petroleum that are constantly rising through the pool.

“We are told that the odor of petroleum is perceived at a distance in approaching the spring. This may be true in particular states of the wind, but we did not distinguish any peculiar smell until we arrived on the edge of the fountain. Here its peculiar character became very obvious. The water is covered with a thin layer of petroleum or mineral oil, as if coated with dirty molasses, having a yellowish-brown color.

“They collect the petroleum by skimming it like cream from a milk-pan. For this purpose they use a broad, flat board, made thin at one edge like a knife; it is moved flat upon and just under the surface of the water and is soon covered by a coating of petroleum, which is so thick and adhesive that it does not fall off, but is removed by scraping the instrument upon the lip of a cup. It has then a very foul appearance, but it is purified by heating and straining it while hot through flannel. It is used by the people of the vicinity for sprains and rheumatism and for sores on their horses.”

The “muddy, dirty pool” was included in an Indian reservation, one mile square, leased in 1860 by Allen, Bradley & Co., who drove a pipe into the bog. At thirty feet oil began to spout to the tune of a-barrel-an-hour, a rhythm not unpleasing to the owners of the venture. The flow continued several weeks and then “stopped short, never to go again.” Other wells followed to a greater depth, none of them proving sufficiently large to give the field an orchestra-chair in the petroleum-arena.

It is told of a jolly Cuban, wearing a skull innocent of garbage as Uncle Ned’s, who “had no wool on the top of his head in the place where the wool ought to grow,” that he applied oil from the “dirty pool” to an ugly swelling on the apex of his bare cranium. The treatment lasted a month, by which time a crop of brand-new hair had begun to sprout. The welcome growth meant business and eventually thatched the roof of the happy subject with a luxuriant vegetation that would have turned Paderewski, Absalom, or the most ambitious foot-ball kicker green with envy! Tittlebat Titmouse, over whose excruciating experiences with the “Cyanochaitanthropopoion” that dyed his locks a bright emerald readers of “Ten-Thousand a Year” have laughed consumedly, was “not in it” compared with the transformed denizen of the pretty village nestling amid the hills of the Empire State. Those inclined to pronounce this a bald-headed fabrication may see for themselves the precise 17spot the mud-hole furnishing the oil occupied prior to the advent of the prosaic, unsentimental driving-pipe.

Captain de Joncaire, a French officer in colonial days, who had charge of military operations on the Upper Ohio and its tributaries in 1721, reported “a fountain at the head of a branch of the Ohio, the water of which is like oil.” Undoubtedly this was the same “fountain” referred to in the Massachusetts Magazine for July, 1791, as follows:

“In the northern part of Pennsylvania is a creek called Oil Creek, which empties into the Allegheny river. It issues from a spring on which floats an oil similar to that called Barbadoes tar, and from which one may gather several gallons a day. The troops sent to guard the western posts halted at this spring, collected some of the oil and bathed their joints with it. This gave them great relief from the rheumatism, with which they were afflicted.”

The history of petroleum in America commences with the use the pioneer settlers found the red-men made of it for medicine and for painting their dusky bodies. The settlers adopted its medicinal use and retained for various affluents of the Allegheny the Indian name of Oil Creek. Both natives and whites collected the oil by spreading blankets on the marshy pools along the edges of the bottom-lands at the foot of steep hill-sides or of mountain-walls that hem in the valleys supporting coal-measures above. The remains of ancient pits on Oil Creek-the Oil Creek ordained to become a household word—lined with timbers and provided with notched logs for ladders, show how for generations the aborigines had valued and stored the product. Some of these queer reservoirs, choked with leaves and dirt accumulated during hundreds of years, bore trees two centuries old. Many of them, circular, square, oblong and oval, sunk in the earth fifteen to twenty feet and strongly cribbed, have been excavated. Their number and systematic arrangement attest that petroleum was saved in liberal quantities by a race possessing in some degree the elements of civilization. The oil has preserved the timbers from the ravages of decay, “to point a moral or adorn a tale,” and they are as sound to-day as when cut down by hands that crumbled into dust ages ago.

Scientists worry and perspire over “the mound-builders” and talk glibly about “a superior race anterior to the Indians,” while ignoring the relics of a tribe smart enough to construct enduring storehouses for petroleum. People who did such work and filled such receptacles with oil were not slouches who would sell their souls for whiskey and their forest-heritage for a string of glass-beads. Did they penetrate the rock for their supply of oil, or skim it drop by drop from the waters of the stream? Who were they, whence came they and whither have they vanished? Surely these are conundrums to tax the ingenuity of imaginative solvers of perplexing riddles. Shall Macaulay’s New-Zealand voyager, after viewing the ruins of London and flying across the Atlantic, 18gaze upon the deserted oil-wells of Venango county a thousand years hence and wonder what strange creatures, in the dim and musty past, could have bored post-holes so deep and so promiscuously? Rip Van Winkle was right in his plaintive wail: “How soon are we forgotten!”

The renowned “spring” which may have supplied these remarkable vats was located in the middle of Oil Creek, on the McClintock farm, three miles above Oil City and a short distance below Rouseville. Oil would escape from the rocks and gravel beneath the creek, appearing like air-bubbles until it reached the surface and spread a thin film reflecting all the colors of the rainbow. From shallow holes, dug and walled sometimes in the bed of the stream, the oil was skimmed and husbanded jealously. The demand was limited and the enterprise to meet it was correspondingly modest. Nathanael Cary, the first tailor in Franklin and owner of the tract adjoining the McClintock, peddled it about the townships early in the century, when the population was sparse and every good housewife laid by a bottle of “Seneca Oil” in case of accident or sickness. Cary would sling two jars or kegs across a faithful horse, belonging to the class of Don Quixote’s “Rosinante” and too sedate to scare at anything short of a knickerbockered feminine astride a rubber-tired wheel. Mounting this willing steed, which transported him steadily as “Jess” carried the self-denying physician of “Beside the Bonnie Brier-Bush.” the tailor-peddler went his rounds at irregular intervals. Occasionally he took a ten-gallon cargo to Pittsburg, riding with it eighty miles on horseback and trading the oil for cloth and groceries. His memory should be cherished as the first “shipper” of petroleum to “the Smoky City,” then a mere cluster of log and frame buildings in a patch of cleared ground surrounding Fort Pitt. “Things are different now.”

The Augusts, a family living in Cherrytree township and remembered only by a handful of old residents, followed Cary’s example. Their stock was procured from springs farther up Oil Creek, especially one near Titusville, which achieved immortality as the real source of the petroleum-development that has astounded the civilized world. They sold the oil for “a quarter-dollar a gill” to the inhabitants of neighboring townships. The consumption was extremely moderate, a pint usually sufficing a household for a twelvemonth. Nature’s own remedy, it was absolutely pure and unadulterated, a panacea for “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to,” and positively refused to mix with water. If milk and water were equally unsocial, would not many a dispenser of the lacteal fluid train with Othello and “find his occupation gone?” Don’t “read the answer in the stars;” let the overworked pumps in thousands of barnyards reply!

No latter-day work on petroleum, no book, pamphlet, sketch or magazine article of any pretensions has failed to reproduce part of a letter purporting to 19have been sent in 1750 to General Montcalm, the French commander who perished at Quebec nine years later, by the commander of Fort Du Quesne, now Pittsburg. A sherry-cobbler minus the sherry would have been pronounced less insipid than any oil-publication omitting the favorite extract. It has been quoted as throwing light upon the religious character of the Indians and offered as evidence of their affinity with the fire-worshippers of the orient! Official reports printed and endorsed it, ministers embodied it in missionary sermons and it posed as infallible history. This is the paragraph:

“I would desire to assure you that this is a most delightful land. Some of the most astonishing natural wonders have been discovered by our people. While descending the Allegheny, fifteen leagues below the mouth of the Conewango and three above the Venango, we were invited by the chief of the Senecas to attend a religious ceremony of his tribe. We landed and drew up our canoes on a point where a small stream entered the river. The tribe appeared unusually solemn. We marched up the stream about half-a-league, where the company, a band, it appeared, had arrived some days before us. Gigantic hills begirt us on every side. The scene was really sublime. The great chief then recited the conquests and heroism of their ancestors. The surface of the stream was covered with a thick scum, which, upon applying a torch at a given signal, burst into a complete conflagration. At the sight of the flames the Indians gave forth the triumphant shout that made the hills and valleys re-echo again. Here, then, is revived the ancient fire-worship of the East; here, then, are the Children of the Sun.”

The style of this popular composition, in its adaptation to the occasion and circumstances, rivals Chatterton’s unsurpassed imitations of the antique. Montcalm was a gallant soldier who lost his life fighting the English under General Wolfe, the hero whose noble eulogy of the poet Gray—“I would rather be the author of the ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ than the captor of Quebec”—should alone crown him with unfading laurels. The commander of Fort Du Quesne also “lived and moved and had a being.” The Allegheny River meanders as of yore, the Conewango empties into it at Warren, the “Venango” is the French Creek which joins the Allegheny at Franklin. The “small stream” up which they marched “about half-a-league” was Oil Creek and the destination was the oil-spring of Joncaire and “Nat” Cary. The “gigantic hills” have not departed, although the “thick scum” is stored in iron tanks. But neither of the French commanders ever wrote or read or heard of the much-quoted correspondence, for the excellent reason that it had not been evolved during their sojourn on this mundane sphere!

Franklin, justly dubbed “The Nursery of Great Men,” gave birth to the pretty story. Sixty-six years ago a bright young man was admitted to the bar and opened a law-office in the attractive hamlet at the junction of the Allegheny River and French Creek. He soon ranked high in his profession and in 1839 was appointed judge of a special district-court, created to dispose of accumulated business in Venango, Crawford, Erie and Mercer counties. The same year a talented divinity-student was called to the pastorate of the Presbyterian church in Franklin. The youthful minister and the new judge became warm friends and cultivated their rare literary tastes by writing for the village-paper, a six-column weekly. Among others they prepared a series of fictitious articles, based upon the early settlement of Northwestern Pennsylvania, designed to whet the public appetite for historic and legendary lore. In one of these sketches the alleged letter to Montcalm was included. Average readers supposed the minute descriptions and bold narratives were rock-ribbed facts, an opinion the authors did not care to controvert, and at length the “French commander’s letter” began to be reprinted as actual, bona-fide, name-blown-in-the-bottle history!

One of the two writers who coined this interesting “fake” was Hon. 20James Thompson, the eminent jurist, who learned printing in Butler, practiced law in Venango county, served three terms—the last as speaker—in the Legislature and one in Congress, was district-judge six years and sat on the Supreme bench fifteen years, five of them as chief-justice of this state. Judge Thompson removed to Erie in 1842 and finally to Philadelphia. He married a daughter of Rev. Nathaniel R. Snowden, first pastor of the First Presbyterian church in Harrisburg, in 1794-1803, and afterwards master of a noted academy at Franklin. Mr. Snowden’s wife was the daughter of Dr. Gustine, a survivor of the frightful Wyoming massacre. Their son, an eminent Franklin physician of early times, was the father of the late Dr. S. Gustine Snowden and of Major-General George R. Snowden, of Philadelphia, commander of the National-Guard of Pennsylvania. The good minister died in Armstrong county, descending to the grave as a shock of wheat fully ripe for the harvest.

Judge Thompson’s literary co-worker was the Rev. Cyrus Dickson, D. D., who resigned his first charge in 1848, settled in the east and gained distinction in the pulpit and as a forcible writer. How thoroughly these kindred spirits, now happily reunited “beyond the smiling and the weeping,” must have enjoyed the overwhelming success of their ingenious plot and laughed at the easy credulity which accepted every line of their contributions as gospel-truth! They could not fail to relish the efforts, prompted mainly by their fanciful scene on Oil Creek, to identify as Children of the Sun the savage braves in buckskin and moccasins whose noblest conception of heaven was an eternal surfeit of dog-sausage!

Signs of petroleum in the Keystone State were not confined to Oil-Creek. Ten miles westward, in water-wells and in the bed and near the mouth of French Creek, the indications were numerous and unmistakable. The first white man to turn them to account was Marcus Hulings, of Franklin, the original Charon of Venango county. Each summer he would skim a quart or two of “earth-oil” from a tiny pond, formed by damming a bit of the creek, the fluid serving as a liniment and medicine. This was the small beginning of one whose relative and namesake, two generations later, was to rank as a leading oil-millionaire. Hulings “ferried” passengers across the unbridged stream in 21a bark-canoe and plied a keel-boat to Pittsburg, the round-trip frequently requiring four weeks. Passengers were “few and far between,” consequently a book-keeper and a treasurer were not engaged to take care of the receipts. The proprietor of the canoe-ferry cleared a number of acres, raised corn and potatoes and lived in a log-cabin, not far from the site of the brush-factory, which stood for fifty years after his death. Probably he was buried in the north-west corner of the old graveyard, beside his wife and son, of whom two sunken headstones record:

The once hallowed resting-place of many worthy pioneers sadly needs the kindly ministrations of some “Old Mortality” to replace broken slabs, restore illegible inscriptions and brush away the obnoxious weeds. Quaint spelling and lettering and curious epitaphs are not uncommon. Observe these examples:

Trains on the Lake-Shore Railroad thunder past the lower end of the quiet “God’s Acre,” close to the mounds of the McDowells, the Broadfoots, the Bowmans, the Hales and other early settlers, but the peaceful repose of the dead can be disturbed only by the blast of Gabriel’s trumpet on the resurrection morning.

The venerable William Whitman, familiarly called “Doctor,” over whose grave the snows of twenty-five long years have drifted, often told me how, when a youngster, he carried water to the masons building Colonel Alexander McDowell’s stone house, on Elk street. He hemmed in a pool on the edge of French Creek, soaked up the greasy scum with a piece of flannel, wrung out the cloth and filled several bottles with dark-looking oil. The masons would swallow doses of it, rub it on their bruised hands and declare it a sovereign internal and external remedy. In early manhood Mr. Whitman settled in Canal township, eleven miles northwest of Franklin, cultivated a farm and reared a large family. It was the dream of his old age to see oil taken from his own land. In 1866 two wells were drilled on the Williams tract, across the road from Whitman’s, with encouraging prospects. Depressed prices retarded operations and these wells remained idle. Four years later my uncle, George Buchanan, and myself drilled on the Whitman farm. The patriarch watched the 22progress of the work with feverish interest, spending hours daily about the rig. A string of driving-pipe, up to that time said to be the longest—153 feet—ever needed in an oil-well, had to be forced down. Three feet farther a vein of sparkling water, tinged with sulphur, spouted above the pipe and it has flowed uninterruptedly since. The heavy tools pierced the rock rapidly and the delight of the “Doctor” was unbounded. He felt confident a paying well would result and waited impatiently for the decisive test. A boy longing for Christmas or his first pair of boots could not be more keenly expectant. His fondest wish was not to be gratified. He took sick and died, after a very short illness, in 1870, four days before the well was through the sand and pumping at the rate of fifty barrels per diem!

This singular well merits a brief notice. From the first sand, not a trace of which was met in the two wells on the other side of the road, oil and gas arose through the water so freely that drilling was stopped and tubing inserted. In twenty-four hours the well yielded fifty-eight barrels of the blackest lubricant in America, 28° gravity, the hue of a stack of ebony cats and with plenty of gas to illuminate the neighborhood. Subsiding quickly, the tubing was drawn and the hole drilled in quest of the third sand, the rock which furnished the lighter petroleum on Oil Creek. Eight feet were found seven-hundred feet towards the antipodes, a torpedo was exploded, the tubing was put back and the well produced two barrels a day for a year, divided between the sands about equally, the green and black oils coming out of the pipe side-by-side and positively declining to merge into one. Other wells were drilled years afterwards close by, without finding the jugular. Mr. Whitman sleeps in the Baptist churchyard near Hannaville, the sleep that shall have no awakening until the Judgment Day. Mr. Buchanan, who operated at Rouseville, Scrubgrass, Franklin and Bradford, left the oil-regions nine years ago for the Black Hills and died in South Dakota on March twenty-eighth, 1897. He was a man of sterling attributes, nobly considerate and unselfish. No truer, braver heart e’er beat in human breast.

Excavating for the Franklin canal in 1832, on the north bank of French Creek, opposite “the infant industry” of Hulings forty years previously, the workmen were annoyed by a persistent seepage of petroleum, execrating it as a nuisance. A well dug on the flats ten years later, for water, encountered such a glut of oil that the disgusted wielder of the spade threw up his job and threw his besmeared clothes into the creek! When the oil-excitement invaded the county-seat the greasy well was drilled to the customary depth and proved hopelessly dry! At Slippery Rock, in Beaver county, oil exuded abundantly from the sandy banks and bed of the creek, failing to pan out when wells were put down. Something of the same sort occurred in portions of Lawrence county and on the banks of many streams in different sections of the country. 23A geological expert endeavors to make it as clear as mud in this manner:

“‘Surface shows’ have been the fascination of many. The places of most copious escape to the surface were regarded as the favored spots where ‘the drainage from the coal measures, in defiance of the laws of gravity and hydro-dynamics, had obligingly deposited itself. Such shows’ were always illusory. A great ‘surface show’ is a great waste; where nature plays the spendthrift she retains little treasure in her coffers. The production of petroleum in quantities of economical importance has always been from reservoirs in which nature has been hoarding it up, instead of making a superficial and deceptive display of her wealth.”

Applying this method, the place to find petroleum is where not a symptom of it is visible! An honest Hibernian, asked his opinion of a notorious falsifier, answered that “he must be chock-full ov truth, fur bedad he niver lets any ov it git out!” The above explanation is of this stripe. “Flee to the mountains of Hepsidam” rather than attempt to bore for oil in localities having “shows” of the very thing you are after! These dreadfully deceptive “shows” show that the oil has got out and emptied the “reservoirs in which nature had been hoarding it up!” This is a pretty rough joke on poor deluded nature! How could these “surface shows” have strayed off anyhow, unless connected with reservoirs of genuine petroleum at the outset? The first wells on Oil Creek and at Franklin were drilled beside “surface shows” which revealed the existence of petroleum and supplied Cary, August, McClintock and Hulings with the coveted oil. These wells produced petroleum “in quantities of economical importance,” demonstrating that “such shows were not always illusory.” Is nature buncoing petroleum-seekers by hanging out a Will-o’-the-Wisp signal where there is “little treasure in her coffers?” The failures at Slippery Rock and divers other places resulted from the fact that the seepages had traveled considerable distances to find breaks in the rocks that would permit of the “most copious escape.”

Central and South America are fairly stocked with petroleum-indications. In the early days of the Panama Railroad and during the construction of the ill-fated canal numerous efforts were made to explore the coal-regions of the Atlantic, in proximity to the ports of Colon and Panama. These researches led to the discovery of bituminous shales and lignite near the port of Boca del Toro, on the Caribbean Sea. The map of Colombia shows a great indenture on the Atlantic Coast of the department of Cauca, formed by the Gulfo de Uraba, or Darian del Nord. Into this gulf flow the Atrato, Arboletes, Punta de Piedra and many small streams. Explorations on the Gulf of Uraba and its tributaries disclosed extensive strata of “oil-rock” and “oil-springs” near the Rio Arboletes. The largest of forty of these springs has a twelve-inch crater, which gushes oil sufficient to fill a six-inch pipe. Near this Brobdignagian spring is a petroleum-pond sixty feet in diameter and from three to ten feet deep. The flow of these oil-springs deserves the attention of geologists and investors. They lie at a distance of one to three miles from the shores of the gulf. The oil is remarkably pure, passing through a bed of coral, which seems to act as a filter and refiner. A proper survey of the oil-region of the Uraba would be interesting from a scientific and an industrial standpoint. The proper development of its possibilities might result in the control of the petroleum-market of South America. The climate is too sultry for the display of seal sacques and fur-overcoats, a palm-hat constituting the ordinary garb of the average citizen. This providential dispensation eliminates dudes and tailor-made girls, stand-up collars and bifurcated skirts from the domestic economy of the happy Isthmians.

In the canton of Santa Elena, Ecuador, embracing the entire area of country between the hot springs of San Vicinte and the Pacific coast, petroleum is found 24in abundance. It is of a black color, its density varies, it is considered superior to the Pennsylvania product and is entirely free from offensive odor. Little has been done towards working these wells. The people are unacquainted with the proper method of sinking them and no well has exceeded a few feet in depth. Geologists think, when the strata of alumina and rock are pierced, reservoirs will be found in the huge cavities formed by volcanic convulsions of the Andes. Venezuela is in the same boat.

From the Chira to the Fumbes river, a desert waste one-hundred-and-eighty miles in length and fifteen miles in width, lying along the coast between the Pacific ocean and the Andes, the oil-field of Peru is believed to extend. For two centuries oil has been gathered in shallow pits and stored in vats, precisely as in Pennsylvania. The burning sun evaporated the lighter parts, leaving a glutinous substance, which was purified and thickened to the consistency of sealing-wax by boiling. It was shipped to southern ports in boxes and used as glazing for the inside of Aguardiente jars. The Spanish government monopolized the trade until 1830, when M. Lama purchased the land. In 1869 Blanchard C. Dean and Rollin Thorne, Americans, “denounced” the mine, won a lawsuit brought by Lama and drilled four wells two-hundred-and-thirty feet deep, a short distance from the beach. Each well yielded six to ten barrels a day, which deeper drilling in 1871-2 augmented largely. Frederic Prentice, the enterprising Pennsylvania operator, secured an enormous grant in 1870, bored several wells—one a thousand-barreler—erected a refinery, supplied the city of Lima with kerosene and exported considerable quantities to England and Australia. The war with Chili compelled a cessation of operations for some years. Dr. Tweddle, who had established a refinery at Franklin, tried to revive the Peruvian fields in 1887-8. He drilled a number of wells, refined the output, enlisted New-York capital and shipped cargoes of the product to San Francisco. Hon. Wallace L. Hardison, who represented Clarion in the Legislature and operated at Bradford and in California, is now exploring the Peruvian field for flowing oil-wells and gold-nuggets. Qualified judges have no doubt that, “in the sweet-bye-and-bye,” the oleaginous goose may hang altitudinum in Peru.

A larger percentage of the oil-product of the United States is sent abroad than of any other except cotton, while nearly every home in the land is blessed with petroleum’s beneficent light. America has toed the mark so grandly that the petroleum-industry is the one circus bigger inside the canvas than on the posters. Beginning with 1866, the exports of illuminating oils were doubled in 1868, again in 1871, again in 1877 and again in 1891. The average exports per week in 1894 were as much as for the entire year 1864. Not less impressive is the marvelous reduction in the price of refined, so that it has found a welcome everywhere. Export-oil averaged, in 1861, 61½ cents per gallon; in 1871, 23⅝ cents per gallon; in 1881, 8 cents per gallon; in 1891, 6⅞ cents per gallon; in 1892, 6 cents per gallon; in 1894, 5⅙ cents per gallon, or one-twentieth that in 1861. But this decrease, great as it is, does not represent the real reduction in the price of oil, as the cost of the barrel is included in these prices. A gallon of bulk-oil cost in 1861 not less than 58 cents; in 1894, not more than 3½ cents, or hardly one-seventeenth. In January, 1871, the price was 75 cents; in January, 1894, one-twenty-fifth that of thirty-three years before. Consumers have received the benefit of constant improvements and reductions in prices, while thirteen-hundred-million dollars have come from abroad to this country for petroleum.

The glimmer has broadened and deepened into noon-day brightness.

Salt-Water Helping Solve the Problem—Kier’s Important Experiments—Remarkable Shaft at Tarentum—West Virginia and Ohio to the Front—The Lantern Fiend—What an Old Map Showed—Kentucky Plays Trumps—The Father of Flowing Wells—Sundry Experiences and Observations at Various Points.

“Just now the golden-sandaled dawn.”—Sappho.

“The first dawnings open slowly, by little and little, into the full, clear light.”—Newton.

“Let there be light.”—Genesis i: 3.

“Come into the bright light beyond.”—Wilson Barrett.

“Watchman, what of the night? The morning cometh.”—Isaiah xxi: 11-12.

“The for’ard light’s shining bright and all’s well.”—Richard Harding Davis.

“A salt-well dug in 1814, to the depth of four-hundred feet, near Marietta, discharged oil periodically at intervals of two to four days.”—Dr. Hildreth, A. D. 1819.

“Nearly all the Kanawha salt-wells contained more or less petroleum.”—Dr. Hale, A. D. 1825.

“There are numerous springs of this mineral-oil in various regions of the West and South.”—Prof. B. Silliman, A. D. 1833.

“The morning star was turning golden-white, like cream in a violet sky.”—S. R. Crockett.

“Dawn on our darkness and lend us thine aid.”—Bishop Heber.

“As dawn and twilight meet in northern clime.”—Lowell.

“I waited underneath the dawning hills.”—Tennyson.

“She saw herself * * * cleaning the Kerosene-lamp.”—Tasma.

“Even the night shall be light about me.”—Psalms cxxxi: 11.

While cannel-coal in the western end of Pennsylvania and other sections of the country, bitumen and shales from the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Huron, chapapote or mineral pitch in Cuba and San Domingo, oozings in Peru and Ecuador, asphaltum in Canada and oil-springs in Columbia and a half-dozen states of the Union from California to New York denoted the presence of petroleum over the greater part of this hemisphere, wells bored for salt were leading factors in bringing about its full development. Scores of these wells pumped more or less oil long before it “entered into the mind of man” to utilize the unwelcome intruder. Indeed, so often were brine and petroleum found in the same geological formation that scientists ascribed to them a kindred origin. The first borings to establish this peculiarity were on the Kanawha River, in West Virginia, a state destined to play an important part in oleaginous affairs. Dr. J. P. Hale, a reputable authority, claims oil caused much annoyance in Ruffner Brothers’ salt-well, begun in 1806, bored sixty feet with an iron-rod and two-inch chisel-bit attached by a rope to a spring-pole, completed in 1808 and memorable as the first artesian-well on this continent. 28The fluid came from the territory once famous as the “Kanawha Salines,” reputed to produce an unsurpassed table-salt. Before the advent of the white man the Indians made salt from the saline springs a short distance above the site of Charleston. There Daniel Boone had a log-cabin and George Washington, as long ago as 1775, for military services was awarded lands containing a “burning spring.” Fired by the tidings of the saline springs, Joseph Ruffner sold his possessions in the Shenandoah Valley and journeyed beyond the mountains in 1794 to establish salt-works on the Kanawha. He leased the salt-interest to Elisha Brooks, who took brine from the shallow quicksands. Joseph Ruffner dying, his sons, Joseph and David, acquired his lands and salt-springs and resolved to try some better plan of procuring the brine. A section of a hollow sycamore-tree, sunk into the quicksands, suggested the idea of wooden casing and the wisdom of boring a little way from the spring. A piece of oak, bored from end to end as log-pumps used to be, was set in the hole. The ingenious brothers devised a chisel-like drill to pierce the rock, fastened it to a rope fixed to a spring-pole and bounced the tools briskly. To shut out the weak brine above from the strong brine beneath they put in tin-tubing, around which they tied a leather-bag filled with flax-seed. Thus, three generations ago, Joseph and David Ruffner, aided later by William Morris and his invention of “jars” in drilling-tools, stumbled upon the basis of casing, seed-bagging and boring oil-wells. All honor to the memory of these worthy pioneers, groping in the dark to clear the road for the great petroleum-boom! Dr. Hale continues:

“Nearly all the Kanawha salt-wells have contained more or less petroleum, and some of the deeper wells a considerable flow.flow. Many persons now think, trusting to their recollections, that some of the wells afforded as much as twenty-five to fifty barrels per day. This was allowed to flow over from the top of the salt-cisterns to the river, where, from its specific gravity, it spread over a large surface, and by its beautiful iridescent hues and not very savory odor could be traced for many miles down the stream. It was from this that the river received the nickname of ‘Old Greasy,’ by which it was long known by Kanawha boatmenboatmen and others.”

At the mouth of Hawkinberry Run, three miles north of Fairmount, in Marion county, a well for salt was put down in 1829 to the depth of six-hundred feet. “A stinking substance gave great trouble,” an owner reported, “forming three or four inches on the salt-water tank, which was four feet wide and sixteen feet long.” They discovered the stuff would burn, dipped it off with buckets and consumed it for fuel under the salt-pan. J. J. Burns in 1865 leased the farm, drilled the abandoned well deeper, stuck the tools in the hole and had to quit after penetrating sixty feet of “a fine grit oil-rock.” Mr. Burns wrote in 1871:

“The second well put down in this county was about the year 1835, on the West Fork River, just below what is now known as the Gaston mines. The well was sunk by a Mr. Hill, of Armstrong county, Pa., who found salt-water of the purest quality and in a great quantity, same as in the first well. He died just after the well was finished, so nothing was done with it. About the time this well was completed one was drilled in the Morgan settlement, just below Rivesville. Salt-water was found with great quantities of gas. Twenty-five years since the farmers on Little Bingamon Creek formed a company and drilled a well—I think to a depth of eight-hundred feet—in which they claimed to have found oil in paying quantities. You can go to it to-day and get oil out of it. The president told me he saw oil spout out of the tubing forty or fifty feet, just as they started the pump to test it. The company got to quarreling among themselves, some of the stockholders died and part of the stock got into the hands of minor heirs, so nothing more was done.”

Similar results attended other salt-wells in West Virginia. The first oil-speculators were Bosworth, Wells & Co., of Marietta, Ohio, who as early as 1843 bought shipments of two to five barrels of crude from Virginians who secured it on the Hughes River, a tributary of the Little Kanawha. This was sold for medical purposes in Pittsburg, Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia.

Notable instances of this kind occurred on the Allegheny River, opposite 29Tarentum, twenty miles above Pittsburg, as early as 1800. Wells sunk for brine to supply the salt-works were troubled with what the owners called “odd, mysterious grease.” Samuel M. Kier, a Pittsburg druggist, whose father worked some of these wells, conceived the idea of saving the “grease,” which for years had run waste, and in 1846 he bottled it as a medicine. He knew it had commercial and medicinal value and spared no exertions to introduce it widely. He believed implicitly in the greenish fluid taken from his salt-wells, at first as a healing agent and farther on as an illuminant. A bottle of the oil, corked and labeled by Kier’s own hands, lies on my desk at this moment, in a wrapper dingy with age and redolent of crude. A four-page circular inside recites the good qualities of the specific in gorgeous language P. T. Barnum himself would not have scorned to father. For example:

“Kier’s Petroleum, or Rock Oil, Celebrated for its Wonderful Curative Powers. A Natural Remedy! Procured from a Well in Allegheny Co., Pa., Four-Hundred Feet below the Earth’s Surface. Put up and Sold by Samuel M. Kier, 363 Liberty Street, Pittsburgh, Pa.

“The Petroleum has been fully tested! It was placed before the public as A Remedy of Wonderful Efficacy. Every one not acquainted with its virtues doubted its healing qualitiesqualities. The cry of humbug was raised against it. It had some friends—those who were cured through its wonderful agency. Those spoke in its favor. The lame through its instrumentality were made to walk—the blind to see. Those who had suffered for years under the torturing pains of Rheumatism, Gout and Neuralgia were restored to health and usefulness. Several who were blind were made to see. If you still have doubts, go and ask those who have been cured! * * * We have the witnesses, crowds of them, who will testify in terms stronger than we can write them to the efficacy of this remedy; cases abandoned by physicians of unquestionable celebrity have been made to exclaim, “This Is the Most Wonderful Remedy Yet Discovered!” * * * Its transcendent power to heal MUST and WILL become known and appreciated. * * * The Petroleum is a Natural Remedy; it is put up as it flows from the bosom of the earth, without anything being added to or taken from it. It gets its ingredients from the beds of substances which it passes over in its secret channel. They are blended together in such a way as to defy all human competition. * * * Petroleum will continue to be used and applied as a Remedy as long as man continues to be afflicted with disease. Its discovery is a new era in medicine.”

A host of certificates of astonishing cases of curable and incurable ailments, from blindness to colic, followed this preliminary announcement. The “remedy” was trundled about by agents in vehicles elaborately gilt and painted with representations of the Good Samaritan ministering to a wounded Hebrew writhing in agony under a palm-tree. Two barrels of oil a day were sold at fifty cents a half-pint. The expense of bottling and peddling it consumed the bulk of the profits. Kier experimented with it for light, about 1848, burning it at his wells and racking his fertile brain for some means to get rid of the offensive smoke and odor. To be entirely successful the oil must have some other than this crude form. The tireless experimenter went to Philadelphia to consult a chemist, who advised distillation, without a hint as to the necessary apparatus. Fitting a kettle with a cover and a worm, the first outcome of the embryo refiner’s one-barrel still was a dark substance little superior to the crude. Learning to manage the fires so as not to send the oil over too rapidly, by twice distilling he produced an article the color of cider, which had a horrible smell, as he knew nothing of the treatment with acids that has revolutionized the light of the world and brought petroleum to the front.

Slight changes in the camphene-lamp enabled him to burn the distillate without smoke. Improvements in the lamp, especially the addition of the “Virna burner,” and in the quality of the fluid brought the “carbon-oil,” as it 30was usually termed, to a goodly measure of perfection. One lot of oil used in these experiments was a purchase of three barrels in April, 1853, from Charles Lockhart, now an officer of the Standard Oil-Company in Pittsburg. It came from the Huff well, a mile down the river from Tarentum. “Carbon-oil” sold readily for a dollar-fifty per gallon and provided a market for all the petroleum the salt-wells in the vicinity could produce. The day was dawning and the great light of the nineteenth century had been foreshadowed in the broad commonwealth that was to send it forth on its shining mission to all mankind.

Samuel M. Kier slumbers in Allegheny cemetery, resting in peace “after life’s fitful fever.” He was the first to appreciate the value of petroleum and to purify it by ordinary refining. His product was in brisk demand for illuminating purposes. He invented a lamp with a four-pronged burner, arranged to admit air and give a steady light. If he failed to reap the highest advantage from his researches, to patent his process and to sink wells for petroleum alone, he paved the way for others, enlarged the field of the product’s usefulness and by his labors suggested its extensive development. Has not he earned a monument more enduring than brass or marble?

These operations at Tarentum and Pittsburg led to an extraordinary attempt to fathom the petroleum-basin by digging to the oil-bearing rock! Through Kier’s experiments the crude had become worth from fifty cents to one dollar a gallon. Among the owners of Tarentum’s salt-wells was Thomas Donnelly, who sold his well on the Humes farm to Peterson & Irwin. The senior partner, ex-Mayor Louis Peterson, of Allegheny, lived until recently to recount his interesting experiences with the coming light. He thought the Donnelly well, which produced salt-water only, if enlarged and pumped vigorously, would produce oil. Humes received twenty-thousand dollars for his farm. The hole was reamed out and yielded five barrels of petroleum a day. This was in 1856. A specimen sent to Baltimore was used successfully in oiling wool at the carding-mills and the total production was shipped to that city for eight years. Eastern capitalists bought the farm and well in 1864, organized “The Tarentum Salt-and-Oil-Company” and determined to dig a shaft down to the source of supply! The wells were four-hundred to five-hundred feet deep. The officers of the company argued that it was feasible to reach that far into the bowels of the earth with pick and shovel and discover a monstrous cave of brine and oil! They picked a spot twenty rods from the Donnelly well, sent to England for skilled miners and started a shaft about eight feet square. Over two years were employed and forty-thousand dollars spent in sinking this shaft. Heavy timbers walled the upper portion, the hard rock below needing none. The water was pumped 31through iron-pipes, nine men formed each shift and the work progressed merrily to the depth of four-hundred feet. Then the salt-water in the Donnelly well was affected by the fresh-water in the shaft, losing half its strength whenever the latter was let stand a few hours, showing their intimate connection by veins or crevices. Mr. Peterson said of it:

“The digging of the shaft was finally abandoned in the darkest period of the war, from the necessities of the time. A New Yorker named Ferris, and Wm. McKeown, of Pittsburg, bought the property, shaft and all. The daring piece of engineering was neglected and finally commenced to fill up with cinders and dirt, until at last it was level again with the surface of the ground. You may walk over it to-day and I could point it out to you if I was up there. Dig it out and you will find those iron pipes and timbers still there, just as they were originally put in.”

Dyed-in-the-wool Tarentumites insist that natural gas caused the suspension of work, flowing into the shaft at such a gait that the miners refused to risk the chances of a speedy trip to Kingdom Come by suffocation or the ignition of the subtile vapor. This was the case with two shafts at Tidioute and Petroleum Centre, neither of them nearly the depth of “the daring piece of engineering” which “set the pace” for enterprises of this novel brand. The New-York Enterprise-and-Mining-Company projected the former, intending to sink a shaft eight feet by twelve to the third sand and tunnel the rock for petroleum by wholesale. The shaft reached oil-producing sand at one-hundred-and-sixty feet. The miners worked in squads, eight-hour turns. Holes had been drilled into the rock at various angles and a lot of conglomerate brought to the surface. Once a short delay occurred in changing squads, during which the air-pump, employed to exhaust the gases from the pit and supply pure ozone from above, was let stand idle. Mr. Hart was seated on a timber across the shaft when the men were ready to go down. As was the custom, a man dropped a taper into the opening to test the air. Natural gas had filled the shaft and it ignited from the burning torch, causing a terrific explosion. The workmen were thrown in all directions and lay stunned and burned. When they regained consciousnessconsciousness Hart was nowhere to be seen and flames rose from the mouth of the pit to the tree-tops. Hart’s body was eventually recovered from the bottom of the shaft, horribly mangled and charred. Work was abandoned and the hole was partly filled up and covered, none caring to pry farther into the petroleum-secrets of nature. Were meddlers who seek to poke their noses into the secrets of other people dealt with thus summarily, what a thinning out of the population there would be!

Peterson & Irwin’s treatment of the Donnelly well brings out clearly that the sole object was to procure oil. This is important, in view of the claim that the first well drilled exclusively for petroleum was put down in 1859. Practically the two Pittsburgers anticipated this by three years, a circumstance to remember when considering the varied events which led up to the petroleum development.

“We do homage to the claims of the ancients and neglect those of later date.”

Charles Lockhart, still an honored resident of Pittsburg, may fairly claim to be the oldest oil-operator in the United States. His first transaction in petroleum was the purchase, in April of 1853, of three barrels of crude from Isaac Huff, who brought the stuff in a skiff from a salt-well at Tarentum. Huff sold the lot at thirty-two cents a gallon to his friend Lockhart, then connected with a leading mercantile house, and agreed to furnish him all the well produced during the year at the same price. The contract might seem like an elephant on his hands, but Lockhart’s faith in the new industry was not a plant too delicate to stand alone. Shrewd and far-seeing, the young dealer did not need a Lick telescope with a Peate lens to discern that this “mysterious grease” must soon 32be utilized for the general benefit. Believing a grand future was about to dawn upon petroleum, he disposed of the Huff oil and contract at a handsome profit to Samuel M. Kier, who had a small refinery on Seventh Avenue and the old Canal, and at once secured control of the Tarentum salt-works. From that date to the present—1853 to 1897—a period of forty-four years, Charles Lockhart has been an oil-producer, active in furthering the best interests of the business, a leader in improvements to foster its growth and never lacking the pluck and enterprise essential to the highest success.

In the fall of 1859 he formed a partnership with William Frew, William Phillips, John Vanausdall and A. V. Kipp to lease lands and put down oil-wells in Venango County. The five partners drilled on the Tarr Farm and the east bank of the Allegheny River. The Crystal Palace, an old keel-boat that cost them twenty-five dollars, horses towed to Oil City with their machinery and provisions. Accommodations were decidedly scarce in the settlement, just sprouting at the mouth of Oil Creek, and the boat served the workmen as a lodging and boarding-place. They cooked their own meals, of which pork and beans, coffee and molasses were prime constituents, washed their own clothes and not seldom carried flour three miles into the country to have a farmer’s wife bake it into digestible bread. The hardy fellows could navigate the Ohio or the Allegheny, brave the terrors of a Chilkoot Pass, punch a hole hundreds of feet into the rock, fry bacon to a turn and dish up a savory meal, but baking real loaves stumped them every time. The first well—the Albion, across the river—yielded forty barrels a day. From it, in March of 1860, the owners shipped sixty barrels of crude, per the steamboat Venango, Captain Reynolds commanding, the first oil boated to Pittsburg from the Pennsylvania oil-fields. It was hauled to the store of J. McCully & Co., on Wood street, near Liberty—Lockhart and Frew were junior members of the firm—and rolled upon the pavement. Much excitement followed the landing of the barrels, to which thick layers of Venago’s mud stuck wickedly. Hundreds of curious Pittsburgers viewed the importation with extreme interest, curling their noses upwards as the petroleum-aroma assailed them with an odor resembling liquid Limburger rather than brut wine. Bungs were taken out to let visitors inspect the fluid, inhale the unmixed odor and wonder what “in the name of Sam Hill” people wanted with “the nasty stuff.” A small refinery on the Fifth-Avenue extension of the city paid thirty-four cents a gallon for the oil. Such was the humble 33beginning of a traffic fated to outstrip coal, iron and cotton and give even breadstuffs a stiff run for first money.

The quintette drilled numerous wells, one of them the largest on Oil Creek, and prospered greatly. Phillips, Vanausdall and Kipp sold out to their partners, who organized as Lockhart & Frew. It was an ideal union of capacity and capital, not a mismating of cut-glass aspiration with tin-cup attainment, and its wheel of fortune did not travel with a punctured tire. The new firm shipped extensively, built the Brilliant Refinery in 1861 and speedily stepped to the front in handling the greasy staple. In May of 1860 Mr. Lockhart went to Europe with samples of crude and refined-distillate to establish a market in England. These were the first samples of crude-petroleum and its products ever carried across the Atlantic. The mission was most successful, a large foreign demand springing up quickly. Lockhart & Frew exerted vast influence in the petroleum-trade, opened branch-agencies throughout the oil-regions and eventually combined with the Standard Oil-Company. Major Frew, a man of rare sagacity and broad ideas, died in March of 1880. He disliked ostentation, was quiet in his tastes and habits, managed the accounts and office-work of the firm with scrupulous exactness, was always kindly and genial, helped the needy, served as treasurer of the Christian Commission and left a fine estate. Time has dealt gently with Mr. Lockhart, who is young in heart and sympathy and good-fellowship. His compliments have the juiciness of the peach, his pleasant jokes are spiced with originality, his years sit upon him lightly and his old friends are not forgotten. He is happy in his social and business relations, in recalling the past and awaiting the future, in wealth gained worthily and enjoyed wisely and in a life crowded with usefulness and blessing.

The late Joseph Bates was closely associated with the early shippers of petroleum on the Allegheny River. He held the confidence of Lockhart & Frew and was esteemed everywhere for probity and enterprise. Coming to the oil-regions in the sixties, he resided at Oil City many years and operated in different sections of the field. With his friends he was ever jaunty, jolly and perfectly at home. Judging by the French standard, that a man is only as old as he feels, he had to the very end of his sixty years few juniors at Oil City, Parker, Petrolia or Pittsburg. He was never ill-natured nor uncompanionable, whether his wells proved unexpectedly large or disappointingly small. His sunny composition bore no “thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice” to repel and chill those with whom he came in contact. His steadfast friend, Samuel B. Harper, who has had charge of the books from about the commencement of Lockhart & Frew’s partnership, is in Mr. Lockhart’s office to-day. A record so honorable to all concerned, with its long performance of duty and unwavering appreciation, is deserving of special remark in these days of lightning-changes, impaired confidence and devil-may-care recklessness generally.

On an old map of the United States, printed in England in 1787, the word “petroleum” is marked twice, indicating that the “surface-shows” of oil had attracted the notice of the earliest explorers of Southern Ohio and Northwestern Pennsylvania a century ago. In one instance it is placed at the mouth of the stream since famed the world over as Oil Creek, where Oil City is situated; in the other on a stream represented as emptying into the Ohio River, close to the site of what is now the village of Macksburg. When that section of Ohio was first settled, various symptoms of greasiness were detected, thin films of oil 34floating on the waters of Duck Creek and its tributaries, globules rising in different springs and seepings occurring frequently in the same manner as in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Thirty miles north of Marietta, on Duck Creek, a salt-well sunk by Mr. McKee, in 1814, to the depth of four-hundred-and-seventy-five feet, discharged “periodically, at intervals of from two to four days and from three to six hours’ duration, thirty to sixty gallons of petroleum at each inception.” Eighteen years afterwards the discharges were less frequent and the yield of oil diminished to one barrel a week, finally ceasing altogether. Once thirty or forty barrels stored in a cistern took fire from the gas at the well having been ignited by a workman carrying a light. The burning oil ran into the creek, blazed to the tops of the trees and exhibited for hours to the amazed settlers the novelty of a rivulet on fire. Ten miles above McConnellsville, on the Muskingum River, results almost identical attended the boring of salt-wells in 1819. Dr. S. P. Hildreth, of Marietta, in an account of the region, written that year, says of the borings for salt-water:

“They have sunk two wells more than four-hundred feet; one of them affords a strong and pure water, but not in great quantity; the other discharges such vast quantities of petroleum, or as it is vulgarly called “Seneca Oil,” and besides is subject to such tremendous explosions of gas * * * that they make little or no salt. Nevertheless, the petroleum affords considerable profit and is beginning to be in demand for workshops and manufactories. It affords a clear, brisk light, when burned in this way, and will be a valuable article for lighting the street-lamps in the future cities of Ohio.”

The last sentence bears the force of a prophecy. Writing about the year 1832 the same observant author directs attention to another peculiar feature:

“Since the first settlement of the regions west of the Appalachian range the hunters and pioneers have been acquainted with this oil. Rising in a hidden and mysterious manner from the bowels of the earth, it soon arrested their attention and acquired great value in the eyes of the simple sons of the forest. * * * From its success in rheumatism, burns, coughs, sprains etc., it was justly entitled to its celebrity. * * * It is also well adapted to prevent friction in machinery, for, being free of gluten, so common to animal and vegetable oils, it preserves the parts to which it is applied for a long time in free motion; where a heavy vertical shaft runs in a socket it is preferable to all or any other articles. This oil rises in greater or less abundance in most of the salt-wells and, collecting where it rises, is removed from time to time with a ladle.”

Is it not strange that, with the sources of supply thus pointed out in different counties and states and the useful applications of petroleum fairly understood, its real value should have remained unappreciated and unrecognized for more than thirty years and be at last determined through experiments upon the distillation of bituminous shales and coals? Wells sunk hundreds of feet for salt water produced oil in abundance, yet it occurred to no one that, if bored expressly for petroleum, it could be found in paying quantity! Hamilton McClintock, owner of the “oil-spring” famed in history and romance, when somebody ventured to suggest that he should dig into the rock a short distance, instead of skimming the petroleum with a flannel-cloth, retorted hotly: “I’m no blanked fool to dig a hole for the oil to get away through the bottom!”

If West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio played trumps in the exciting game of Brine vs. Oil, Kentucky held the bowers. The home of James Harrod and Daniel Boone, Henry Clay and George D. Prentice was noted for other 35things besides backwoods fighters, statesmanship, sparkling journalism, thoroughbred horses, superb women and moonshine-whiskey. Off in the southeast corner of Wayne county, near the northeast corner of a six-thousand-acre tract of wild land, David Beatty bored a well for salt about the year 1818. The land extended four miles westward from the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River, its eastern boundary, and three miles down the Fork from Tennessee, its southern line. The well was located on a strip of flat ground between the stream and a rocky bluff, streaked with veins of coal and limestone. Five yards from the water a hole nine feet square was dug ten feet to the rock and timbered. The well, barely three inches in diameter, was punched one-hundred-and-seventy feet by manual labor, steam-engines not having penetrated the trackless forests of Wayne at that period. To the intense disgust of the workmen a black, sticky, viscid liquid persisted in coming up with the salt-water and a new location was chosen two miles farther down the creek. Extra care not to drill too deep averted an influx of the disagreeable fluid which spoiled the first venture. Salt-works were established and flourished for years, a simon-pure oasis in the interminable wilderness.

Beatty was elected to Congress, serving his constituents faithfully and illustrating the Mulberry-Sellers policy of “the old flag and an appropriation.” He secured a liberal grant for a road to his property on the South Fork and constructed a passable thoroughfare. Traces of deep cuttings, log-culverts and blasted rocks, still discernible amid the underbrush that well-nigh hides them from view, are convincing evidences of the magnitude and difficulty of the task. “The rocky road to Dublin” was a mere bagatelle in comparison with this long-deserted pathway. “Jordan is a hard road to travel,” says an old song, and the sentiment would fit equally well in this case. At one rugged point holes were cut in a rock as steep as the roof of a house, to afford footing for the mules engaged in drawing salt from the works! Considering the roughness of the country, the height of the hills, the depth of the chasms and the scanty facilities available, Beatty’s road was quite as remarkable a feat as Bonaparte’s passage across the Alps or Ben Butler’s “Dutch-Gap Canal.” Its spirited projector lived and died at Monticello, the county-seat, where his descendants resided until recently.

The abandoned well did not propose to be snuffed out unceremoniously or to enact the role of “Leah the Forsaken.” In its bright lexicon the word fail was not to be inserted merely because it was too fresh to participate in the salt-trade. Far from retiring permanently, it spouted petroleum at a NancyNancy-Hanks quickstep, filling the pit, running into the Fork and covering mile after mile of the water with a top-dressing of oil. Somehow the floating mass caught fire and mammoth pyrotechnics ensued. The stream blazed and boiled and sizzled from the well to the Cumberland River, thirty-five miles northward, calcining rocks and licking up babbling brooks on its fiery march! Trees on its banks burned and blistered and charred to their deepest roots. Iron-pans 36at the salt-wells got red-hot, shriveled, warped, twisted and joined the junk-pile! Was not that a sweet revenge for plucky No. 1, the well its owner “had no use for” and devoutly wished at the bottom of the sea?

The Chicago fire “couldn’t hold a candle” to this rural conflagration, which originated the expressive phrase of “hell with the lid off,” applied sixty years afterwards by James Parton to the flaming furnaces at Pittsburg. Unluckily, the region was populated so sparsely that few spectators had front seats at “the greatest show on earth.” The deluge of oil ceased eventually, the fire following suit. Anon the salt industry began to languish and the works were dismantled. No more the forest-road echoed the sharp crack of the teamster’s whip or heard his lusty oaths. The district along the South Fork was left as silent as “the harp that once through Tara’s halls the soul of music shed,” ready to be labeled “Ichabod,” and tradition alone preserved the name and record of the “Beatty Well,” the first oil-spouter in America!

Accompanied by Dr. W. G. Hunter, and a native as guide, it was my good fortune to visit this memorable locality in 1877. The start was from Burksville, Cumberland county, the doctor’s home and my headquarters for a twelvemonth. At Albany, Clinton county, sure-footed mules, the only animals that could be ridden safely through the rough country, took the place of our horses. Soon the last signs of civilization disappeared and we plunged into the thick woods, a crooked, tortuous trail pointing the way. Hills, rocks, ravines, fallen trees and mountain-streams by turns impeded our progress, as we rode in Indian file for thirty miles. Birds twittered and snakes hissed at the invasion of their solitudes. Several times the path touched the line of Beatty’s forgotten road and once a ruined cabin, with three grave-like mounds in a corner of the small clearing, met our gaze. The guide explained how, twenty years before, the poor family tenanting the wretched hovel had been poisoned by eating some kind of berries, the parents and their only child dying alone and unattended. No human eye beheld their struggles, no soft hand cooled the fevered brows of the sufferers whose lives went out in that desolate waste.

Provisions in our saddle-bags, a clear brook and evergreen boughs supplied us with food, drink and an open-air bed. Next morning we traversed a broad plateau, ending abruptly at the top of a precipitous bluff a hundred feet high. Beneath us lay a stretch of bottom-land, with the Big South Fork on its east side and the Cumberland Mountains rearing their bold crests five miles away. In the center of a patch of cleared ground stood a shanty, built of poles and roofed with split slabs of oak. From an open space in one end smoke escaped freely, showing that the place was inhabited. Tethering the mules and throwing the 37saddles upon the grass, we crawled down a slope formed by the collapse of a portion of the bluff. A shot from my revolver—everybody carried a pistol—shattered the atmosphere and brought the inmates to the side of the dwelling. The father, mother, a child in arms and two boys entering their teens watched our approach. As we drew nigh they scampered into the shanty and took refuge under a queer structure of rails, straw and blankets that did duty as a bed for the household! A blanket hung over the space cut for a door. Drawing this aside, the frightened family could be seen crouching on the bare soil, for the abode had neither door, window, floor nor chinking between the logs. It was quite unfit to shelter a decent porker. Not a chair, table, stove, looking-glass, bureau or any of the articles of furniture deemed necessary for modern comfort was in sight! A bench hewn out of timber with an axe, two metal-pots, some tin-dishes and knives and forks composed the domestic outfit! Yet it was “home” to the squalid beings huddled in the dark, damp, musty angle farthest from the intruders who had dropped in upon them as unexpectedly as a Peary meteor.

Calling them to come out and speak with us a moment, the woman appeared, bearing the inevitable baby. She was truly a revelation, with unkempt brindle-hair and sallow skin to match. Her raiment consisted of a single jean-garment, dirty and tattered beyond description, too narrow to encircle her waist and too short to reach within a dozen inches of her naked feet. Compared with the flimsy toilet of “a living picture,” this costume was simplicity itself. The poor creature smoked a cob-pipe viciously. A request to see her husband evoked the command: “Old man, I reckon you best git out hyer!” The “old man” heeded this summons and emerged from his hiding-place, trembling violently. His attire was in harmony with his wife’s, threadbare jean-pants and shirt comprising it. Head and feet were bare. His trembling ceased the instant he saw our guide, whom he knew and greeted cordially. Introductions followed and we asked if he could show us the way to the Beatty Well. He answered in perfect English, with the grace of a Chesterfield: “It will be the greatest pleasure I have known for many a day.”

A brisk walk brought us to the well. Dirt and leaves had filled the pit nearly level, forming a depression which one might pass without special notice. Scraping away the rubbish, blackened fragments of the timbered walls appeared. But not a drop of oil had issued from the veteran-well for scores of years. One man alone survived of those who had gazed upon the flow of petroleum previous to the fire which checked the greasian tide forever. He lived ten miles northwest and his short story was learned on the return-trip by another route. The scattered rustics were accustomed to go to the well once or twice a year and dip enough oil to medicate and lubricate whoever or whatever needed it. The fluid was dark and heavy and for years rose to within a few feet of the surface. At length the well clogged up and was almost obliterated. The dim eyes 38of the aged narrator sparkled as he recalled the big blaze, concluding with the emphatic words: “It jes’ looked ez if the devil had hitched up the hull bottomless pit fur a torch-light percession!”

Except the squatter on the tract of land, which Dr. Hunter and myself had secured the winter of our visit, the nearest settler lived five miles distant! The Cincinnati-Southern Railroad, now the Queen & Crescent route, had not crossed the meandering Kentucky River and the country was practically inaccessible. Men and women grew up without ever hearing of a church, a school, a book, a newspaper, a preacher, a doctor, a wheeled vehicle or a lucifer-match! The heathen of Bariaboola-Gha were as well informed concerning God and a future state. They herded in miserable cabins, lived on “corn-dodgers and sow-belly,” drank home-made whiskey and never wandered ten miles from their own fireside. Of the great outside world, of moral obligations, of religious conviction and of current events they were profoundly ignorant. Think of people fifty, sixty, seventy years old, born and reared in the United States, who never saw a loaf of wheat-bread, a wagon, a cart or a baby-carriage, to say nothing of a plum-pudding, railway-coach, a trolley-car or a tandem-bicycle! It seems incredible, in this advanced age and bang-up nation, that such conditions should be possible, yet they existed in Southeastern Kentucky. And the American eagle flaps his wings, while Americans boast of their culture and send barrels of cold cash to buy flannel-shirts for perspiring Hottentots and goody-goody tracts for jolly cannibals!

Small need of barbed-wire fences to shut out the cattle and chickens of neighbors five miles apart! Their children did not quarrel and sulk and yell “You can’t play in our yard!” Our host, who took us over the property and told us all he knew about it, had not seen a strange face for twenty-nine weary months! Then the neighbor five miles off had come in the vain search of a cruse of oil from the old well to rub on an afflicted hog! Three years had rolled by since his last expedition to the cross-roads, fourteen miles away, to trade “coon-skins” for jeans and groceries. Could isolation be more complete? Was Alexander Selkirk less blessed with companionship on his secluded island? Had Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, “on a wide, wide sea,” greater cause for an attack of the blues?

The steel-track and the iron-horse are prime civilizers and eighteen years have wrought a wondrous change in the section bordering upon the Cumberland Mountains. The schoolmaster has come in with the railroad and improvement is the prevailing order. Farmers have turned their forests into cultivated fields and bought the latest implements. Their boys read the papers, yearn for the city, smoke cigarettes, dabble in politics and dream of unbounded wealth. The girls, no longer content with homespun frocks and sunbonnets, dress in silk and velvet, wear stylish hats, devour French novels, sport high-heeled shoes and balloon-sleeves, play Beethoven and Chopin, waltz divinely and are altogether lovable!

An apparition muttering “I am thy father’s ghost” would not have surprised us so much as the politeness of our half-clad, barefooted, bareheaded pilot to the neglected well. His manners and his language were faultless. Not a coarse word or grammatical error marred his fluent speech. At noon he invited us to share his humble dinner, apologizing with royal dignity for the poverty of his surroundings. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I regret that parched corn and fat bacon are all I can offer, but I beg you to honor me with your 39presence at my table!” Remembering the cabin and its presiding divinity, we felt obliged to decline and requested him to lunch with us. It was a positive pleasure to see with what relish he ate the baked chicken, biscuit and good things Mrs. Hunter had packed in our saddle-bags. After the meal we prepared to depart. The end of a Louisville paper under the flap of my saddle attracted the old man’s attention.

“Is that a newspaper?” he inquired.

“Yes, do you want it?”

“Oh, thank you a thousand times! It is fifteen years since I have seen a paper and this will be such a treat!”

He seized the sheet eagerly, dropped upon the grass and glanced over the printed page. In an instant he jumped to his feet and tears coursed down his wrinkled cheeks.

“I did not mean to be rude,” he said earnestly, “but you cannot imagine how my feelings mastered me, after so many years of separation from the world, at sight of a paper from the city of my birth!”

The next moment the good-byes were uttered and we had left the hermit of South Fork, to meet no more this side of eternity. He stood peering after us until the woods shut us from his wistful gaze. Six years later death, the grim detective no vigilance can elude, claimed the guardian of the Beatty Well. His family removed to parts unknown. He rests in an unmarked grave, beneath a spreading oak, near the murmuring stream. The lonely exile has reached home at last!

Who on earth was this educated, courteous, gentlemanly personage, and how did he drift into such a place? This perplexing problem beat the fifteen-puzzle, “Pigs in Clover,” or the confusing dogma of Freewill and Predestination. Our guide enlightened us. The old man was reared in Louisville, graduated from college and entered an office to study law. In a bar-room row one night a young man, with whom he had some trouble, was stabbed fatally. Fearing he would be accused of the deed, the student fled to the woods. For years he shunned mankind, subsisting on game and fruit and sleeping in a cave. Every rustling leaf or snapping twig terrified him with the idea that officers were at his heels. Ultimately he gained courage and sought the acquaintance of the few settlers in his vicinity. Striving to forget the past, he cohabited with the woman he called his wife, erected a shanty and brought up three children. Fire destroyed his hut and its contents, leaving him destitute, and he located where we met him. The fear of arrest could not be shaken off and he supposed we had come to take him a prisoner, after twenty-five years of hiding, for a crime of which he was innocent. This explained his retreat under the bed and violent trembling. He carried his secret in his own bosom until 1873, when he was believed to be dying and disclosed it to a friend, our guide, with a sealed letter giving his true name. He recovered, the letter was handed back unopened and the fugitive’s identity was never revealed. What an existence for a man of refinement and collegiate training! What volumes of unwritten, unsuspected tragedies environ us, could we but pierce the outward mask and read the tablets of the heart!

Eight or ten years ago J. O. Marshall, a Pennsylvania oil-operator, cleaned out the Beatty Well and drilled another a half-mile north. Neither yielded any oil, although the second was put down nine-hundred feet. Mr. Marshall leased a great deal of land in Wayne and adjacent counties, expecting to operate extensively, but he died without seeing his purposes accomplished. He was a 40genial, enterprising, whole-souled fellow, whose faith in Kentucky as an oil-field never faltered.

Dr. Hunter, my esteemed associate on many a delightful trip, was practicing at Newcastle, Pa., when the civil war broke out. He sold his drug-store, offered his services to the Government and was placed in charge of a medical department, where he made a first-class record. He amputated the leg of General James A. Beaver, subsequently Governor of Pennsylvania. At the close of the war he settled in Cumberland county, married a prominent young lady, built up an immense practice and acquired a competence. He served with signal ability and credit in the Legislature and in Congress, elected time and again in a district overwhelmingly against his party. He was chairman of the Republican State-CommitteeState-Committee, and ought to be the successor of Blackburn in the United-States Senate.

Seventy years ago William Morris, a practical driller, whose name oilmen should perpetuate, invented the contrivance that culminated in “jars” for drilling-tools. This contrivance, which enabled the Ruffners and other salt-borers to go a thousand feet or more for brine, renders it possible to drill a mile for oil, if ambitious operators desire to get so far towards the antipodes. The manner in which the oil-resources of West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky were thrown away by the early pioneers is a surprising feature in the history of human affairs. Fifty years before Pennsylvania oil-wells had been heard of the Kanawha salt-seekers were drilling what to-day would be paying oil-wells. Instead of saving the oil, which is enriching West Virginia operators now, they wasted it and saved the salt-water. They wasted the natural gas, the best fuel of the century, and boiled their salt-water with wood, the most expensive and least satisfactory fuel of the valley. That is often the way humanity gropes in the dark. The men who rushed to California drove their ox-wagons past the big bonanzas of the Comstock lode, while the men who later went to the Comstock went past the rich carbonates of Leadville, just as later prospectors ran over the Cripple-Creek silver and gold-leads in the search for things farther distant and the crowds hurrying to Alaska ignored the teeming ledges of the Black Hills. The Kanawha salt-men scorned the oil, yet drilled the first oil-wells, and in doing it invented the methods which have come into use throughout the entire oil-territory. If Joseph and David Ruffner and William Morris had displayed half the wisdom in utilizing the oil they manifested in inventing tools to find salt-water, theirs would be the familiar names in Oildom down to the end of time.

“Fellow-citizens,” shouted a free-silver orator to a host of starving coal-miners three months after the last Presidential inauguration, “they tell us Major McKinley is the advance-agent of prosperity, but, if so, he seems to be a deuce of a way ahead of the show!” In like fashion the Ruffners were a long way ahead of the petroleum-development, but the show got there at last, heralded by salt-wells that pointed unerringly towards the dawn.

Writing of several Jesuits who, about 1642, penetrated the territory of the Eries, probablyprobably near what is now Cuba, N. Y., Charlevoix says:

“They found a thick, oily, stagnant matter which would burn like brandy.”

The map of the Missionaries Dollier and Galinèe, printed in 1670, has a hint of the presence of petroleum in the north-western part of New York. Near the spot which was to become the site of Cuba these words are marked:

“Fonteaine de Bitume.”

In 1700 the Earl of Bellmont, Governor of New York, thus instructed Engineer Wolfgang W. Romer to visit the Five Nations:

“You are to go and view a well or spring which is eight miles beyond the Seneks’ farthest castle, which they told me blazes up in a flame when a lighted coal or firebrand is put into it. You will do well to taste the said water and * * * bring with you some of it.”

Sir William Johnson, who visited Niagara in 1767, in his journal says with reference to the spring at Cuba:

“Arcushan came in with a quantity of curious oyl, taken at the top of the water of some very small lake near the village he belongs to.”

David Leisberger, the Moravian Missionary, went up the Allegheny River in 1767, established a mission near the mouth of Tionesta Creek and in 1770 removed to Butler county. His manuscript records:

“I have seen three kinds of oil-springs—such as have an outlet, such as have none and such as rise from the bottom of the creeks. From the first water and oil flow out together, the oil impregnating the grass and soil; in the second it gathers on the surface of the water to the depth of the thickness of a finger; from the third it rises to the surface and flows with the current of the creek. The Indians prefer wells without an outlet. From such they first dip the oil that has accumulated, then stir the well and, when the water has settled, fill their kettles with fresh oil, which they purify by boiling. It is used medicinally, as an ointment for toothache, headache, swellings, rheumatism and sprains. Sometimes it is taken internally. It is of a brown color and can also be used in lamps. It burns well.”

Dr. John David Schopf, a surgeon in the British service, visited Pittsburg in 1783 and in an account of his journey remarked:

“Petroleum was found at several places up the Allegheny, particularly at a spring and a creek, which were covered with this floating substance.”

General William Irvine, in a letter to John Dickinson, dated “Carlisle, August 17, 1785,” tells of exploring the western part of Pennsylvania. He says:

“Oil Creek takes its name from an oily or bituminous matter being found floating on its surface. Many cures are attributed to this oil. * * * It rises in the bed of the creek at very low water. In a dry season I am told it is found without any mixture of water and is pure oil. It rises when the creek is high from the bottom in small globules.”

George Henry Loskiel, in his “Geschichte der Mission der Evangelischen Bruder unter der Indianen in Nordamerika,” published in 1789, noted:

“One of the most favorite medicines used by the Indians is Fossil-oil exuding from the earth, commonly with water * * * This oil is of a brown color and smells like tar. * * * They use it chiefly in external complaints. Some take it inwardly and it has not been found to do harm. It will burn in a lamp. The Indians sometimes sell it to the white people at four guineas a quart.”

An officer of the United States Army, who descended the Ohio River in 1811, wrote a book of travels in which he remarks:

“Not far from the mouth of the Little Beaver a spring has been found, said to rise from the bottom of the river, from which issues an oil which is highly inflammable and is called Seneca oil. It resembles Barbadoes tar and is used as a remedy for rheumatic pains.”

Interesting Petroleum Developments in Kentucky and Tennessee—The Famous American Well—A Boston Company Takes Hold—Providential Escape—Regular Mountain Vendetta—A Sunday Lynching Party—Peculiar Phases of Piety—An Old Woman’s Welcome—Warm Reception—Stories of Rustic Simplicity.

“He who would search for pearls must dive below.”—Dryden.

“Often do the spirits of great events stride on before the events.”—Coleridge.

“Coming events cast their shadows before.”—Thomas Campbell.

“In Cumberland county, Kentucky, a run of pure oil was struck.”—Niles’ Register, A. D. 1829.

“Indications of oil are plentiful at Chattanooga, Tennessee.”—Robert B. Roosevelt, A. D. 1863.

“Ever since the first settlement of the country oil has been gathered and used for medicinal purposes.”—Cattlesburg, Ky., Letter, A. D. 1884.

“Everythink has changed, everythink except human natur’.”—Eugene Field.

“To all appearance it was chiefly by Accident and the grace of Nature.”—Carlyle.

Interesting and unexpected results from borings for salt-water in Kentucky were not exhausted by the initial experiment on South Fork. Special peculiarities invest that venture with a romantic halo essentially its own, but “there are others.” Wayne county was not to monopolize the petroleum-feature of salt-wells by a large majority. “Westward the star of empire takes its way” affirmed Bishop Berkeley two-hundred years ago, with the instinct of a born prophet, and it was so with the petroleum-star of Kentucky, however it might be with brilliant Henri Watterson’s “star-eyed goddess of Reform.”

The storm-center next shifted to Cumberland county, the second west of Wayne, Clinton separating them. Hardy breadwinners, braving the hardships and privations of pioneer-life in the backwoods, early in this century settled much of the country along the Cumberland River. Upon one section of irregular shape, its southern end bordered by Tennessee, the state of Davy Crockett and Andrew Jackson, the name of the winding river intersecting it was appropriately bestowed. A central location, between the west bank of the Cumberland and the foot of a lordly hill, was selected for the county-seat and christened Burksville, in honor of a respected citizen who owned the site of the embryo hamlet. From a cross-roads tavern and blacksmith-shop the place expanded gradually into an inviting village of one-thousand population. It has fine stores, 44good churches and schools, a brick court-house, and for years it boasted the only college in Kentucky for the education of girls.

Burksville pursued “the even tenor of its way” slowly and surely. Forty miles from a railroad or a telegraph-wire, its principal outlet is the river during the season of navigation. The Cumberland retains the fashion of rising sixty to eighty feet above its summer-level when the winter rains set in and dwindling to a mere brooklet in the dry, hot months. Old-timers speak of “the flood of 1826” as the greatest in the history of the community. The rampant waters overflowed fields and streets, invaded the ground-floors of houses and did a lot of unpleasant things, the memory of which tradition has kept green. In January of 1877 the moist experience was repeated almost to high-water mark. Saw-logs floated into kitchens and parlors and improvised skiffs navigated back-yards and gardens. Seldom has the town cut a wide swath in the metropolitan press, because it avoided gross scandals and attended strictly to home-affairs. The chief dissipation is a trip by boat to Nashville or Point-Burnside, or a drive overland to Glasgow, the terminus of a branch of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad.

The first great event to stir the hearts of the good people of Cumberland county occurred in 1829. A half-mile from the mouth of Rennix Creek, a minor stream that empties into the Cumberland two miles north of the county-town, a well was sunk one-hundred-and-eighty feet for salt-water. Niles’ Register, published the same year, told the tale succinctly:

“Some months since, in the act of boring for salt-water on the land of Mr. Lemuel Stockton, situated in the county of Cumberland, Kentucky, a run of pure oil was struck, from which it is almost incredible what quantities of the substance issued. The discharges were by floods, at intervals of from two to five minutes, at each flow vomiting forth many barrels of pure oil. I witnessed myself, on a shaft that stood upright by the aperture in the rock from which it issued, marks of oil 25 or 30 feet perpendicularly above the rock. These floods continued for three or four weeks, when they subsided to a constant stream, affording many thousand gallons per day. This well is between a quarter and a half-mile from the bank of the Cumberland River, on a small rill (creek) down which it runs to the Cumberland. It was traced as far down the Cumberland as Gallatin, in Sumner county, Tennessee, nearly a hundred miles. For many miles it covered the whole surface of the river and its marks are now found on the rocks on each bank.

“About two miles below the point on which it touched the river, it was set on fire by a boy, and the effect was grand beyond description. An old gentleman who witnessed it says he has seen several cities on fire, but that he never beheld anything like the flames which rose from the bosom of the Cumberland to touch the very clouds.”

This was the beginning of what was afterwards known from the equator to the poles as the “American Well.” The flow of oil spoiled the well for salt and the owners quitted it in disgust, sinking another with better success in an adjacent field. For years it remained forsaken, an object of more or less curiosity to travelers who passed close by on their way to or from Burksville. It was very near the edge of the creek, on flat ground most of which has been washed away. Neighboring farmers dipped oil occasionally for medicine, for axle-grease and—“tell it not in Gath, publish it not in Askelon”—to kill vermin on swine!

Job Moses, a resident of Buffalo, N. Y., visited the locality about the year 1848. He had read of the oil-springs in New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia 45and Ohio and he decided that the hole on Rennix Creek ought to be a prize-package. His moderate offer for the well was accepted by the Bakers, into whose hands the Stockton tract had come. He drilled the well to four-hundred feet and erected a pumping-rig. The five or six barrels a day of greenish-amber fluid, 42° gravity, he put up in half-pint bottles, labeled “American Rock Oil” and sold at fifty cents, commending it as a specific for numberless complaints. He reaped a harvest for several years, until trade languished and the well was abandoned.

With the proceeds of his enterprise Moses bought a large block of land at Limestone, N. Y., adjoining the northern boundary of McKean county, Pa., and built a mansion big enough for a castle. He farmed extensively, raised herds of cattle, employed legions of laborers and dispensed a bountiful hospitality. In 1862-3 he drilled three wells near his dwelling, finding a trifling amount of gas and oil. Had he drilled deeper he would inevitably have opened up the phenomenal Bradford field a dozen years in advance of its actual development. Wells twelve-hundred to three-thousand feet deep had not been dreamt of in petroleum-philosophy at that date, else Job Moses might have diverted the whole current of oil-operations northward and postponed indefinitely the advent of the Clarion and Butler districts! Boring a four-inch hole a few hundred feet farther would have done it!

On what small causes great effects sometimes depend! Believing a snake-story induced our first parents to sample “the fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought sin into our world and all our woe.” Ambition to be a boss precipitated Lucifer “from the battlements of heaven to the nethermost abyss.” A dream released Joseph from prison to be “ruler over Egypt.” The smiles of a wanton plunged Greece into war and wiped Troy from the face of the earth. A prod on the heel slew Achilles, a nail—driven by a woman at that—finished Sisera and a pebble ended Goliath. The cackling of a goose saved Rome from the barbarous hordes of Brennus. A cobweb across the mouth of the cave secreting him preserved Mahomet from his pursuers and gave Arabia and Turkey a new religion. The scorching of a cake in a goatherd’s hut aroused King Alfred and restored the Saxon monarchy in England. The movements of a spider inspired Robert Bruce to renewed exertions and secured the independence of Scotland. An infected rag in a bundle of Asiatic goods scourged Europe with the plague. The fall of an apple from a tree resulted in Sir Isaac Newton’s sublime theory of gravitation. The vibrations of a tea-kettle lid suggested to the Marquis of Worcester the first conception of the steam-engine. A woman’s chance-remark led Eli Whitney to invent the cotton-gin. The twitching of a frog’s muscles revealed galvanism. A diamond-necklace hastened the French Revolution and consigned Marie Antoinette to the guillotine. Hacking a cherry-tree with a hatchet earned George Washington greater glory than the victory of Monmouth or the overthrow of Cornwallis. A headache helped cost Napoleon the battle of Waterloo and change the destiny of twenty kingdoms. An affront to an ambassador drove Germany to arms, exiled Louis Napoleon and made France a republic. Mrs. O’Leary’s kicking cow laid Chicago in ashes and burst up no end of insurance-companies. An alliterative phrase defeated James G. Blaine for President of the United States. An epigram, a couplet or a line has been known to confer immortality. A new bonnet has disrupted a sewing-society, split a congregation and put devout members on the toboggan in their hurry to backslide. An onion-breath has severed doting lovers, cheated parsons of their wedding-fees and played hob with Cupid’s calculations. Statistics 46fail to disclose the awful havoc wrought in millions of homes by such observations, on the part of thoughtless young husbands, as “this isn’t the way mother baked,” or “mother’s coffee didn’t taste like this!”

Moses lived to produce oil from his farms and to witness, five miles south of Limestone, the grandest petroleum-development of any age or nation. He was built on the broad-gauge plan, physically and mentally, and “the light went out” peacefully at last. The Kentucky well was never revived. The rig decayed and disappeared, a timber or two lingering until carried off by the flood in 1877.

In the autumn of 1876 Frederic Prentice, a leading operator, engaged me to go to Kentucky to lease and purchase lands for oil-purposes. Shortly before Christmas he wished me to meet him in New York and go from there to Boston, to give information to parties he expected to associate with him in his Kentucky projects. Together we journeyed to the city of culture and baked-beans and met the gentlemen in the office of the Union-Pacific Railroad-Company. The gathering was quite notable. Besides Mr. Prentice, who had long been prominent in petroleum affairs, Stephen Weld, Oliver Ames, Sen., Oliver Ames, Jun., Frederick Ames, F. Gordon Dexter and one or two others were present. Mr. Weld was the richest citizen of New England, his estate at his death inventorying twenty-two millions. The elder Oliver Ames, head of the giant shovel-manufacturing firm of Oliver Ames & Sons, was a brother of Oakes Ames, the creator of the Pacific Railroads, whom the Credit-Mobilier engulfed in its ruthless destruction of statesmen and politicians. His nephew and namesake was a son of Oakes Ames and Governor of Massachusetts in 1887-8-9. He began his career in the shovel-works, learning the trade as an employé, and at thirty-five had amassed a fortune of ten-millions. He occupied the finest house in Boston, entertained lavishly, spent immense sums for paintings and bric-a-brac and died in October of 1895. Frederick Ames, son of the senior Oliver, has inherited his father’s executive talent and he maintains the family’s reputation for sagacity and the acquisition of wealth. F. Gordon Dexter is a multi-millionaire, a power in the railroad-world and a resident of Beacon street, the swell avenue of the Hub.

Such were the men who heard the reports concerning Kentucky. They did not squirm and hesitate and wonder where they were at. Thirty-five minutes after entering the room the “Boston Oil Company” was organized, the capital was paid in, officers were elected, a lawyer had started to get the charter and authority was given me to draw at sight for whatever cash was needed up to one-hundred-thousand dollars! This record-breaking achievement was about as expeditious as the Chicago grocer, who closed his store one forenoon and pasted on the door a placard inscribed in bold characters: “At my wife’s funeral—back in twenty minutes!”

Oliver Ames, the future governor, invited the party to lunch at the Parker House, Boston’s noted hostelry. An hour sped quickly. My return-trip had been arranged by way of Buffalo and the Lake-Shore Road to Franklin. The 47time to start arrived, the sleigh to take me to the depot was at the door, the good-byes were said, the driver tucked in the robes and grasped the lines. At that instant Oliver Ames, Sen., called: “Please come into the hotel one moment; I want to jot down something you told us about the American Well.” The other gentlemen looked on, the explanation was penciled rapidly, my seat in the sleigh was resumed and Mr. Dexter jokingly said to the Jehu: “You’ll have to hustle, or your fare will miss his train!”

Through the narrow, twisted, crowded streets the horses trotted briskly. Rushing into the station, the train was pulling out and the ticket-examiner was shutting the iron-gates. He refused to let me attempt to catch the rear car and my disappointment was extreme. A train for New York and Pittsburg left in fifteen minutes. It bore me, an unwilling passenger, safely and satisfactorily to the “Smoky City.” There the news reached me of the frightful railway-disaster at Ashtabula, in which P. P. Bliss and fourscore fellow-mortals, filled with fond anticipations of New-Year reunions, perished in the icy waters ninety feet beneath the treacherous bridge that dropped them into the yawning chasm! The doomed train was the same that would have borne me to Ashtabula and—to death, had not Mr. Ames detained me to make the entry in his memorandum-book! Call it Providence, Luck, Chance, what you will, an incident of this stamp is apt to beget “a heap of tall thinking.”

Returning to Burksville in January, the work of leasing went ahead merrily. The lands around the American Well were taken at one-eighth royalty. Forty rods northeast of the American, in a small ravine, a well was drilled eight-hundred feet. At two-hundred feet some gas and oil appeared, but the well proved a failure. While it was under way the gas in a deserted salt-well twenty rods northwest of the American burst forth violently, sending frozen earth, water and pieces of rock high into the air. The derrick at the Boston Well, rising to the height of seventy-two feet, was a perennial delight to the natives. Youths, boys and old men ascended the ladder to the topmost round to enjoy the beautiful view. Pretty girls longed to try the experiment and it was whispered that six of them, one night when only the man in the moon was peeping, performed the perilous feat. Certain it is that a winsome teacher at the college, who climbed the celestial stair years ago, succeeded in the effort and wrecked her dress on the way back to solid ground. A dining-room girl at Petrolia, in 1873, stood on top of a derrick, to win a pair of shoes banteringly offered by a jovial oilman to the first fair maiden entitled to the prize. Lovely woman and Banquo’s ghost will not “down!”“down!”

Three miles northeast of the American Well, at the mouth of Crocus Creek, C. H. English drilled eight shallow wells in 1865. They were bunched closely and one flowed nine-hundred barrels a day. Transportation was lacking, the product could not be marketed and the promising field was deserted. Twelve years later the Boston Oil-Company drilled in the midst of English’s cluster, to 48discover the quality of the strata, and could not exhaust the surface-water by the most incessant pumping. The company also drilled on the Gilreath farm, across the Cumberland from Burksville, where Captain Phelps found heavy oil in paying quantity back in the sixties. The well produced nicely and would have paid handsomely had a railroad or a pipe-line been within reach. A well two miles west of the American, drilled in 1891, had plenty of sand and showed for a fifty-barreler.

Six miles south-west of Burksville, at Cloyd’s Landing, J. W. Sherman, of Oil-Creek celebrity, drilled a well in 1865 which spouted a thousand barrels of 40° gravity oil in twenty-four hours. He loaded a barge with oil in bulk, intending to ship it to Nashville. The ill-fated craft struck a rock in the river and the oil floated off on its own hook. Sherman threw up the sponge and returned to Pennsylvania. Three others on the Cloyd tract started finely, but the wonderful excitement at Pithole was breaking out and operations elsewhere received a cold chill. Dr. Hunter purchased the Cloyd farm and leased it in 1877 to Peter Christie, of Petrolia, who did not operate on any of the lands he secured in Kentucky and Tennessee. Micawber-like, Cumberland county is “waiting for something to turn up” in the shape of facilities for handling oil. When these are assured the music of the walking-beam will tickle the ears of expectant believers in Kentucky as the coming oil-field.

Wayne and Cumberland had been heard from and Clinton county was the third to have its inning. On the west bank of Otter Creek, a sparkling tributary of Beaver Creek, a well bored for salt fifty or more years ago yielded considerable oil. Instead of giving up the job, the owners pumped the water and oil into a tank, over the side of which the lighter fluid was permitted to empty at its leisure. The salt-works came to a full stop eventually and the well relapsed into “innocuous desuetude.” L. D. Carter, of Aurora, Ill., sojourning temporarily in Clinton for his health, saw the old well in 1864. He dipped a jugful of oil, took it to Aurora, tested it on the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, found it a good lubricant and concluded to give the well a square trial. The railroad-company agreed to buy the oil at a fair price. Carter pumped six or eight barrels a day, hauled it in wagons over the hills to the Cumberland River and saved money. He granted Mr. Prentice an option on the property in 1877. The day the option expired J. O. Marshall bought the well, farm and ten-thousand acres of leases conditionally, for a Butler operator who “didn’t have the price,” and the deal fell through.

The well stood idle until 1892, when J. Hovey, an ex-broker from New York and relative of a late Governor of Indiana, drilled a short distance down the creek. The result was a strike which produced twenty-four hundred barrels of dark, heavy, lubricating oil in fifty days. It was shut down for want of tankage and means to transport the product to market. The Carter again yielded nicely, as did three more wells in this neighborhood. In 1895 the Standard Oil-Company was given a refusal of the Hovey and surrounding interests, in order to test the territory fully and lay a pipe-line to Glasgow or Louisville, should the production warrant the expenditure. Wells have been sunk east of the Carter nearly to Monticello, eighteen miles off, finding gas and indications of oil. Every true Clintonite is positive an ocean of petroleum underlies his particular neck of woods, impatient to be relieved and burden landholders and operators alike with excessive wealth!

A hard-headed youth, out walking with his best girl in the dog-days, told her a fairy-story of the dire effects of ice-cream upon the feminine constitution. 49“I knew a girl,” he declared, “who ate six plates of the dreadful stuff and died next day!” The shrewd damsel exclaimed rapturously: “Oh, wouldn’t it be sweet to die that way? Let us begin on six plates now!” And wouldn’t it be nice to be loaded with riches, not gained by freezing out some other fellow, by looting a bank, by wedding an unloved bride, by grinding the poor, by manipulating stocks, by cornering grain or by practices that make the angels weep, but by bringing oil honestly from the bowels of the earth?

About the year 1839 a salt-well in Lincoln county, eight miles from the pretty town of Stanford, struck a vein of oil unexpectedly. The inflammable liquid gushed out with great force, took fire and burned furiously for weeks. The owner was a grim joker in his way and he aptly remarked, upon viewing the conflagration: “I reckon I’ve got a little hell of my own!” Four more wells were drilled farther up the stream, two getting a show of oil. One was plugged and the other, put down by the late Marcus Hulings, the wealthy Pennsylvania operator, proved dry. Surface indications in many quarters gave rise to the belief that oil would be found over a wide area, and in 1861 a well was bored at Glasgow, Barren county, one-hundred-and-ten miles below Louisville. It was a success and a hundred have followed since, most of which are producing moderately. Col. J. C. Adams, formerly of Tidioute, Pa., was the principal operator for twenty years. A suburban town, happily termed Oil City, is “flourishing like a green bay-horse.” The oil, dark and ill-flavored, smelling worse than “the thousand odors of Cologne,” is refined at Glasgow and Louisville. It can be deodorized and converted into respectable kerosene. Sixteen miles south of Glasgow, on Green River, four shallow wells were bored thirty years ago, one flowing at the rate of six-hundred barrels, so that Barren county is by no means barren of interest to the oil-fraternity.

At Bowling Green a well was sunk two-hundred feet, a few gallons of green-oil bowling to the surface. Torpedoing was unknown, or the fate of many Kentucky wells might have been reversed. John Jackson, of Mercer, Pa., in 1866 drilled a well in Edmonson county, twenty-five miles north-west of Glasgow. The tools dropped through a crevice of the Mammoth Cave, but neither eyeless fish nor slippery petroleum repaid the outlay of muscle and greenbacks. As if to add insult to injury, the well hatched a mammoth cave that buried the tools eight-hundred feet out of sight!

Loyal to his early training and hungry for appetizing slapjacks, Jackson once imported a sack of the flour from Louisville and asked the obliging landlady of his boarding-house to have buckwheat-cakes for breakfast. He was on hand in the morning, ready to do justice to the savory dish. The “cakes” were brought in smoking hot, baked into biscuit, heavy as lead and irredeemably unpalatable! The sack of flour went to fatten the denizens of a neighbor’s pig-pen. Jackson was a pioneer in the Bradford region, head of the firm of Jackson & Walker, clever and generous. The grass and the flowers have grown on his grave for ten years, “the insatiate archer” striking him down in the prime of vigorous manhood.

Sandy Valley, in the north-eastern section of the state, contributed its quota to the stock of Kentucky petroleum. From the first settlement of Boyd, Greenup, Carter, Johnson and Lawrence counties oil had been gathered for medical purposes by skimming it from the streams. About 1855 Cummings & Dixon collected a half-dozen barrels from Paint Creek and treated it at their coal-oil refinery in Cincinnati, with results similar to those attained by Kier in Pittsburg. They continued to collect oil from Paint Creek and Oil-Spring Fork 50until the war, at times saving a hundred barrels a month. In 1861 they drilled a well three-hundred feet on Mud Lick, a branch of Paint Creek, penetrating shale and sandstone and getting light shows of oil and gas. Surface-oil was found on the Big-Sandy River, from its source to its mouth, and in considerable quantities on Paint, Blaine, Abbott, Middle, John’s and Wolf Creeks. Large springs on Oil-Spring Fork, a feeder of Paint Creek, yielded a barrel a day. At the mouth of the Fork, in 1860, Lyon & Co. drilled a well two-hundred feet, tapping three veins of heavy oil and retiring from the scene when “the late unpleasantness” began to shake up the country. The same year a well was sunk one-hundred-and-seventy feet, on the headwaters of Licking River, near the Great Burning Spring. Gas and oil burst out for days, but the low price of crude and the impending conflict prevented further work. What an innumerable array of nice calculations this cruel war nipped in the bud!

J. Hinkley bored two-hundred feet in 1860, on Paint Creek, eight miles above Paintville, meeting a six-inch crevice of heavy-oil, for which there was no demand, and the capacity of the well was not tested. Salt-borers on a multitude of streams had much difficulty, fifty or sixty years ago, in getting rid of oil that persisted in coming to the surface. These old wells have been filled with dirt, although in some the oil works to the top and can be seen during the dry seasons. The Paint-Creek region had a severe attack of oil-fever in 1864-5. Hundreds of wells were drilled, boats were crowded, the hotels were thronged and the one subject of conversation was “oil—oil—oil!” Various causes, especially the extraordinary developments in Pennsylvania, compelled the plucky operators to abandon the district, notwithstanding encouraging symptoms of an important field. Indeed, so common was it to find petroleum in ten or fifteen counties of Kentucky that land-owners ran a serious risk in selling their farms before boring them full of holes, lest they should unawares part with prospective oil-territory at corn-fodder prices!

Tennessee did not draw a blank in the awards of petroleum-indications. Along Spring Creek many wells, located in 1864-5 because of “surface-shows,” responded nobly, at a depth comparatively shallow, to the magic touch of the drill. The product was lighter in color and gravity than the Kentucky brand. Twelve miles above Nashville, on the Cumberland River, wells have been pumped at a profit. Around Gallatin, Sumner county, decisive tests demonstrated the presence of petroleum in liberal measure. On Obey Creek, Fentress county, sufficient drilling has been done to justify the expectation of a rich district. Near Chattanooga, on the southern border of the state, oil seepages are “too numerous to mention.” The Lacy Well, eighteen miles south of the Beatty, drilled in 1893, is good for thirty barrels every day in the week. The oil is of superior quality, but the cost of marketing it is too great. A dozen wells are going down in Fentress, Overton, Scott and Putnam. Some fine day the tidal wave of 51development will sweep over the Cumberland-River region, with improved appliances and complete equipment, and give the country a rattling “show for its white alley!” Surely all these spouting-wells, oil-springs and greasy oozings mean something. To quote a practical oilman, who knows both states from a to z: “Twenty counties in Kentucky and Tennessee are sweating petroleum!”

Picking up a million acres of supposed oil-lands in the Blue-Grass and Volunteer States had its serio-comic features. The ignorant squatters in remote latitudes were suspicious of strangers, imagining them to be revenue-officers on the trail of “moonshiners,” as makers of untaxed whisky were generally called. More than one northern oilman narrowly escaped premature death on this conjecture. J. A. Satterfield, the successful Butler operator, went to Kentucky in the winter of 1877 to superintend the leasing of territory for his firm, between which and the Prentice combination a lively scramble had been inaugurated. Somebody thought he must be a Government agent and passed the word to the lawless mountaineers. The second night of his stay a shower of bullets riddled the window, two lodging in the bed in which Satterfield lay asleep! Daylight saw him galloping to the railroad at a pace eclipsing Sheridan’s ride to Winchester, eager to “get back to God’s country.” “Once was enough for him” to figure as the target of shooters who seldom failed to score “a hit, a palpable hit.” The grim archer didn’t miss him in 1894.

Arriving late one Saturday at Mt. Vernon, the county-seat of Rockcastle, the colored waiter on Sunday morning inquired: “Hes yo done gone an’ seen em?” Asking what he meant, he informed me that three men were dangling from a tree in the court-house yard, lynched by an infuriated mob during the night on suspicion of horse-stealing, “the unpardonable sin” in Kentucky. A party of citizens had started for the cabin of a notorious outlaw, observed skulking homeward under cover of darkness, intending to string him up. The desperado was alert. He fired one shot, which killed a man and stampeded the assailants. They returned to the village, broke into the jail, dragged out three cowering wretches and hanged them in short metre! The bodies swung in the air all day, a significant warning to whoever might think of “walkin’ off with a hoss critter.”

On that trip to Rockcastle county the train stopped at a wayside-station bearing the pretentious epithet of Chicago. A tall, gaunt, unshaven, uncombed man, with gnarled hands that appealed perpetually for soap and water, high cheekbones, imperfect teeth and homespun-clothes of the toughest description, stood on the platform in a pool of tobacco-juice. A rustic behind me stuck his head through the car-window and addressed the hard-looking citizen as “Jedge.” Honors are easy in Kentucky, where “colonels,” “majors” and “judges” are “thick as leaves in Vallambrosa,” but the title in this instance seemed too absurd to pass unheeded. When the train started, in reply to my question whether the man on the platform was a real judge, his friendly acquaintance 52took the pains to say: “Wal, I can’t swar es he’s zackly, but las’ year he wuz jedge ov a chicken-fight down ter Si Mason’s an’ we calls ’im jedge ever sence!”

Kentucky vendettas have often figured in thrilling narratives.narratives. Business took me to the upper end of Laurel county one week. Litigants, witnesses and hangers-on crowded the village, for a suit of unusual interest was pending before the “’squar.” The principals were farmers from the hilly region, whose fathers and grandfathers had been at loggerheads and transmitted the quarrel to their posterity. Blood had been shed and hatred reigned supreme. The important case was about to begin. Two shots rang out so closely together as to be almost simultaneous, followed by a regular fusilade. Everybody ran into the street, where four men lay dead, a fifth was gasping his last breath and two others had ugly wounds. The tragedy was soon explained. The two parties to the suit had met on their way to the justice’s house. Both were armed, both drew pistols and both dropped in their tracks, one a corpse and the second ready for the coroner in a few moments. Relatives and adherents continued the dreadful work and five lives paid the penalty of ungovernable passion. The dead were wrapped in horse-blankets and carted home. The case was not called. It had been “settled out of court.”

The spectators of this dreadful scene manifested no uncommon concern. “It’s what might be expected,” echoed the local oracle; “when them mountain fellers gets whiskey inside them they don’t care fur nuthin’!” Within an hour of the shooting a young man stopped me on the street-corner, where stood a wagon containing two bodies. “Kunnel,” he went on to say, “I’ve h’ard es yo’s th’ man es got our farm fur oil. Dad an’ Cousin Bill’s ’n that ar wagon, an’ I want yo ter giv’ me a job haulin’ wood agin yo starts work up our way.” He mounted the vehicle and drove off with his ghastly freight without a quiver of emotion.

At Crab Orchard, one beautiful Sunday, the clerk chatted with me on the hotel-porch. A stalwart individual approached and my companion ejaculated: “Thar’s a bigger man ’n Gen’ral Grant!” Next instant Col. Kennedy was added to my list of Kentucky acquaintances. He was very affable, wished oil-operations in the neighborhood success and, with characteristic Southern hospitality, invited me to visit him. After he left 53us the clerk, in answer to my desire to learn the basis of Kennedy’s greatness, naively said: “Why, he’s killed eight men!”

Politics and religion were staple wares, the susceptible negroes inclining strongly to the latter. Their spasms of piety were extremely inconvenient at times. News of a “bush meetin’” would be circulated and swarms of darkeys would flock to the appointed place, taking provisions for a protracted siege. No matter if it were the middle of harvest and rain threatening, they dropped everything and went to the meeting. “Doant ’magine dis niggah’s gwine ter lose his ’mo’tal soul fer no load uv cow-feed” was the conclusive rejoinder of a colored hand to his employer, who besought him to stay and finish the haying.

“In de Lawd’s gahden ebery cullud gentleman has got ter line his hoe.”

Rev. George O. Barnes, the gifted evangelist, who resigned a five-thousand-dollar Presbyterian pastorate in Chicago to assist Moody, was reared in Kentucky and lived near Stanford. He would traverse the country to hold revivals, staying three to six weeks in a place. His personal magnetism, rare eloquence, apostolic zeal, fine education, intense fervor and catholic spirit made him a wonderful power. Converts he numbered by thousands. He preferred Calvary to Sinai, the gentle pleadings of infinite mercy to the harsh threats of endless torment. His daughter Marie, with the voice of a Nilsson and the face of a Madonna, accompanied her father in his wanderings, singing gospel-hymns in a manner that distanced Sankey and Philip Phillips. Her rendering of “Too Late,” “Almost Persuaded,” and “Only a Step to Jesus,” electrified and thrilled the auditors as no stage-song could have done. Raymon Moore’s hackneyed verses had not been written, yet the boys called Miss Barnes “Sweet Marie” and thronged to the penitent-bench. The evangelist and his daughter tried to convert New York, but the Tammany stronghold refused to budge an inch. They invaded England and enrolled hosts of recruits for Zion. The Prince of Wales is said to have attended one of their meetings in the suburbs of London. Mr. Barnes finally proposed to cure diseases by “anointing with oil and laying on of hands.” His pink cottage became a refuge for cranks and cripples and patients, until a mortgage on the premises was foreclosed and the queer aggregation scattered to the winds.

Albany, the county-seat of Clinton, experienced a Barnes revival of the tip-top order. Business with Major Brentz, the company’s attorney, landed me in the cosy town on a bright March forenoon. Not a person was visible. Stores were shut and comer-loungers absent. What could have happened? Halting my team in front of the hotel, nobody appeared. Ringing the quaint, old-fashioned bell attached to a post near the pump, a lame, bent colored man shuffled out of the barn.

“Pow’ful glad ter see yer, Massa,” he mumbled, “a’l put up de hosses.”

“Where is the landlord?”

“Done gone ter meetin’.”

“Will dinner soon be ready?”

“Soon the folkses gits back frum meetin’.”

“All right, take good care of the horses and I’ll go over to the court-house.”court-house.”

“No good gwine dar, dey’s at the meetin’.”

It was true. Mr. Barnes was holding three services a day and the villagevillage emptied itself to get within sound of his voice. For five weeks this kept up. Lawyers quit their desks, merchants locked their stores, woman deserted their houses and young and old thought only of the meetings. Hardly a sinner was 54left to work upon, even the village-editor and the disciples of Blackstone joining the hallelujah band! No wonder Satan’s imps wailed sadly:sadly:

An African congregation at Stanford had a preacher black as the ace of spades and wholly illiterate, whom many whites liked to hear. “Brudders an’ sistahs, niggahs and white folks,” he closed an exhortation by saying, “dar’s no use ’temptin’ to sneak outen de wah ’tween de good Lawd an’ de black debbil, ’cos dar’s on’y two armies in dis worl’ an’ bofe am a-fitin’ eberlastingly! So ’list en de army ob light, ef yer want ter gib ole Satan er black eye an’ not roast fureber an’ eber in de burnin’ lake whar watah-millions on ice am nebber se’ved for dinnah!” Could the most astute theological hair-splitter have presented the issue more concisely and forcibly to the hearers of the sable Demosthenes?

The first and only circus that exhibited at Burksville produced an immense sensation. It was “Bartholomew’s Equescurriculum,” with gymnastics and ring exercises to round out the bill. Barns, shops and trees for miles bore gorgeous posters. Nast’s cartoons, which the most ignorant voters could understand, did more to overthrow Boss Tweed than the masterly editorials of the New-York Times. The flaming pictures aroused the Cumberlanders, hundreds of whom could not read, to the highest pitch of expectation. Monday was the day set for the show. On Saturday evening country-patrons began to camp in the woods outside the village. A couple from Overton county, Tennessee, and their four children rode twenty-eight miles on two mules, bringing food for three days and lodging under the trees! A Burksville character of the stripe Miss Ophelia styled “shiftless” sold his cooking-stove for four dollars to get funds to attend! “Alf,” the ebony-hued choreman at Alexander College, who built my fires and blacked my shoes, was worked up to fever-heat. “Befo’ de Lawd,” he sobbed, “dis chile’s er gone coon, ’less yer len’ er helpin’ han’! Mah wife’s axed her mudder an’ sister ter th’ ci’cus an’ dar’s no munny ter take ’em an’ mah sister!” Giving him the currency for admission dried the mourner’s tears and “pushed them clouds away.”

At noon on Sunday the circus arrived by boat from Nashville. Service was in progress in one church, when an unearthly sound startled the worshippers. The wail of a lost soul could not be more alarming. Simon Legree, scared out of his boots by the mocking shriek of the wind blowing through the bottle-neck Cassy fixed in the garret knot-hole, had numerous imitators. Again and again the ozone was rent and cracked and shivered. The congregation broke for the door, the minister jerking out a sawed-off benediction and retreating with the rest. A half-mile down the river a boat was rounding the bend. A steam-calliope, distracting, discordant and unlovely, belched forth a torrent of paralyzing notes. The whole population was on the bank by the time the boat stopped. The crowd watched the landing of the animals and belongings of the circus with unflinching eagerness. Few of the surging mass had seen a theatre, a circus, or a show of any sort except the Sunday-school Christmas performance. They 55were bound to take in every detail and that Sunday was badly splintered in the peaceful, orderly settlement.

With the earliest streak of dawn the excitement was renewed. Groups of adults and children, of all ages and sizes and complexions, were on hand to see the tents put up. By eleven o’clock the town was packed. A merry-go-round, the first Burksville ever saw, raked in a bushel of nickels. The college domestics skipped, leaving the breakfast-dishes on the table and the dinner to shift for itself. A party of friends went with me to enjoy the fun. Beside a gap in the fence, to let wagons into the field, sat “Alf,” the image of despair. Four weeping females—his wife, sister, mother-in-law and sister-in-law—crouched at his feet. As our party drew near he beckoned to us and unfolded his tale of woe. “Dem fool-wimmin,” he exclaimed bitterly, “hes done spended de free dollars yer guv me on de flyin’-hosses! Dey woodn’t stay off nohow an’ now dey caint see de ci’cus! Oh, Lawd! Oh, Lawd!” The purchase of tickets poured oil on the troubled waters. The Niobes wiped their eyes on their jean-aprons and “Richard was himself again.” How the antics of the clowns and the tricks of the ponies pleased the motley assemblage! Buck Fanshaw’s funeral did not arouse half the enthusiasm in Virginia City the first circus did in Burksville.

It was necessary for me to visit Williamsburg, the county-seat of Whitley, to record a stack of leases. Somerset was then the nearest railway-point and the trip of fifty miles on horseback required a guide. The arrival of a Northerner raised a regular commotion in the well-nigh inaccessible settlement of four-hundred population. The landlord of the public-house slaughtered his fattest chickens and set up a bed in the front parlor to be sure of my comfort. The jailer’s fair daughter, who was to be wedded that evening, kindly sent me an invitation to attend the nuptials. By nine o’clock at night nearly every business-man and official in the place had called to bid me welcome. Before noon next day seventeen farmers, whose lands had been leased, rode into town to greet me and learn when drilling would likely begin. Each insisted upon my staying with him a week, “or es much longer es yo kin,” and fourteen of them brought gallon-jugs of apple-jack, their own straight goods, for my acceptance! Such a reception a king might envy, because it was entirely unselfish, hearty and spontaneous. Williamsburg has got out of swaddling-clothes, the railway putting it in touch with the balance of creation.

Thirteen miles of land, in an unbroken line, on a meandering stream, had been tied-up, with the exception of a single farm. The owner was obdurate and refused to lease on any terms. Often lands not regarded favorably as oil territory were taken to secure the right-of-way for pipe-lines, as the leases conveyed this privilege. Driving past the stubborn farmer’s homestead one afternoon, he was chopping wood in the yard and strode to the gate to talk. His bright-eyed 56daughter of four summers endeavored to clamber into the buggy. Handing the cute fairy in coarse jeans a new silver-dollar, fresh from the Philadelphia mint, the father caught sight of the shining coin.

“Hev yo mo’ ov ’em ’ar dollars about yo?” he asked.

“Plenty more.”

“Make out leases fur my three farms an’ me an’ the old woman’ll sign ’em! I want three ov ’em kines, for they be th’ slickest Demmycratic money my eyes hes sot onto sence I fit with John Morgan!”

The documents were filled up, signed, sealed and delivered in fifteen minutes. The chain of leased lands along Fanny Creek was intact, with the “missing link” missing at last.

The simplicity of these dwellers in the wilderness was equaled only by their apathy to the world beyond and around them. Parents loved their children and husbands loved their wives in a quiet, unobtrusive fashion. “She wuz a hard-workin’ woman,” moaned a middle-aged widower in Fentress county, telling me of his deceased spouse, “an’ she allers wore a frock five year, an’ she bed ’leven chil’ren, an’ she died right in corn-shuckin’!” He was not stony-hearted, but twenty-five years of married companionship meant to him just so many days’ work, so many cheap frocks, child-bearing, corn-cake and bacon always ready on time. Among these people woman was a drudge, who knew nothing of the higher relations of life. Children were huddled into the hills to track game, to follow the plough or to drop corn over many a weary acre. Reading and writing were unknown accomplishments. Jackson, “the great tradition of the uninformed American mind,” and Lincoln, whose name the tumult of a mighty struggle had rendered familiar, were the only Presidents they had ever heard of. “Where ignorance is bliss ’tis folly to be wise” may be a sound poetical sentiment, but it was decidedly overdone in South-eastern Kentucky and North-eastern Tennessee so recently as the year of the Philadelphia Centennial.

Opposite the Hovey and Carter wells in Clinton county lives a portly farmer who “is a good man and weighs two-hundred-and-fifty pounds.” He is known far and wide as “Uncle John” and his wife, a pleasant-faced little matron, is affectionately called “Aunt Rachel.” A log-church a mile from “Uncle John’s” is situated on a pretty hill. There the young folks are married, the children are baptized and the dead are buried. The “June meetin’,” when services are held for a week, is the grand incident of the year to the people for a score of miles. In December of 1893 Dr. Phillips, of Monticello, drove me to the wells. We stopped at “Uncle John’s.” As we neared the house a dog barked and the hospitable farmer came out to meet us. Behind him walked a man who greeted the Doctor cordially. He glanced at me, recognition was mutual and we clasped hands warmly. He was Alfred Murray, formerly connected with the Pennsylvania-Consolidated Land-and-Petroleum-Company in Butler and at Bradford. Fourteen years had glided away since we met and there were many questions to ask and answer. He had been in the neighborhood a twelvemonth, keeping tab on oil movements and indications, hoping, longing and praying for the speedy advent of the petroleum-millenium. We pumped the Hovey Well one hour, rambled over the hills and talked until midnight about persons and things in Pennsylvania. Meeting in so dreary a place, under such circumstances, was as thorough a surprise as Stanley’s discovery of Livingstone in Darkest Africa. During our conversation regarding the roughest portion of the county, bleak, sterile and altogether repellant, selected by a hermit as his lonely retreat, my friend remarked: “I have heard that the poor devil 57was troubled with remorse and, as a sort of penance, vowed to live as near Sheol as possible until he died!”

The stage that bore me from Monticello to Point Burnside on my homeward journey stopped half-way to take up a countryman and an aged woman. Room was found inside for the latter, a stout, motherly old creature, into whose beaming face it did jaded mortals good to look. She said “howdy” to the three passengers, a local trader, a farmer’s young wife and myself, sat down solidly and fixed her gaze upon me intently. It was evident the dear soul was fairly bursting with impatience to find out about the stranger. Not a word was spoken until she could restrain her inquisitive impulse no longer.

“Yo don’t liv’ eroun’ these air parts?” she interrogated.

“No, madam, my home is in Pennsylvania.”

“Land sakes! Be yo one ov ’em air ile-fellers?”

“Yes.”

“Wal, I be orful glad ter see yo!” and she stretched out her hand and shook mine vigorously. “Hope yo’re right peart, but yo’ be a long way from home! Did yo see ’em wells over thar by Aunt Rachel’s?”

“Oh, yes, I saw the wells and stayed at Aunt Rachel’s all night.”

“I ain’t seed Aunt Rachel for nigh a year an’ a half. My old man bed roomatiz and we couldn’t get ter meetin’ this summer. He sez thar’s ile onto our farm. I be seventy-four an’ him on the ruf be my son’n-law. Yo see he married, Jess did, my darter Sally an’ tha moved ter a place tha call Kansas. Tha’s bin thar seventeen year an’ hes six chil’ren. Jess he cum back las’ week ter see his fokeses an’ he be takin’ me ter Kansas ter see Sally an’ the babies. I never seed ’em things Jess calls cyars, an’ he sez tha ain’t drord by no hoss nuther! I wuz bo’n eight mile down hyar an’ never wuz from home more’n eighteen mile, when we goes ter June meetin’. But I be ter Monticeller six times.”

Truly this was a natural specimen, bubbling over with kindness, unspoiled by fashion and envy and frivolity and superficial pretense. Here was the counterpart of Cowper’s humble heroine, who “knew, and knew no more, her Bible true.” The wheezy stage was brighter for her presence. She told of her family, her cows, her pigs, her spinning and her neighbors. She lived four miles from the Cumberland River, yet never went to see a steamboat! When we alighted at the Burnside station and the train dashed up she looked sorely perplexed. “Jess” helped her up the steps and the “cyars” started. The whistle screeched, daylight vanished and the train had entered the tunnel below the depot. A fearful scream pierced the ears of the passengers. The good woman seventy-four years old, who “never seed ’em things” before, was terribly frightened. We tried to reassure her, but she begged to be let off. How “Jess” managed to get her to Kansas safely may be imagined. But what a story she would have to tell about the “cyars” 58and “Sally an’ the babies” when she returned to her quiet home after such a trip! Bless her old heart!

Although the broad hills and sweeping streams which grouped many sweet panoramas might be dull and meaningless to the average Kentuckian of former days, through some brains glowing visions flitted. Two miles south of Columbia, Adair county, on the road to Burksville, a heap of stones and pieces of rotting timber may still be seen. Fifty-five years ago the man who owned the farm constructed a huge wheel, loaded with rocks of different weights on its strong arms. Neighbors jeered and ridiculed, just as scoffers laughed at Noah’s ark and thought it wouldn’t be much of a shower anyway. The hour to start the wheel arrived and its builder stood by. A rock on an arm of the structure slipped off and struck him a fatal blow, felling him lifeless to the earth! He was a victim of the craze to solve the problem of Perpetual Motion. Who can tell what dreams and plans and fancies and struggles beset this obscure genius, cut off at the moment he anticipated a triumph? The wheel was permitted to crumble and decay, no human hand touching it more. The heap of stones is a pathetic memento of a sad tragedy. Not far from the spot Mark Twain was born and John Fitch whittled out the rough model of the first steamboat.

Riding in Scott county, Tennessee, at full gallop on a rainy afternoon, a cadaverous man emerged from a miserable hut and hailed me. The dialogue was not prolonged unduly.

“Gen’ral,” he queried, “air yo th’ oilman frum Pennsylvany?”

“Yes, what can I do for you?”

“I jes’ wanted ter ax ef yo know’d my cousin Jim!”

“Who is your cousin Jim?”

“Law, Jim Sickles!Sickles! I tho’t ez how ev’rybody know’d Jim! He went up No’th arter th’ wah an’ ain’t cum back yit. Ef yo see ’im tell ’im yo seed me!”

A promise to look out for “Jim” satisfied the verdant backwoodsman, who probably had never been ten miles from his shanty and deemed “up No’th” a place about the size of a Tennessee hunting-ground!

The South-Penn and the Forest Oil-Companies, branches of the Standard, have drilled considerably in Kentucky and Tennessee, sometimes finding oil in regular strata and occasionally encountering irregular formations. More operating is required to determine precisely what place to assign these pebbles on the beach as sources of oil-production.

The First Well Drilled for Petroleum—The Men Who Started Oil on Its Triumphant March—Colonel Drake’s Operations—Setting History Right—How Titusville was Boomed and a Giant Industry Originated—Modest Beginning of the Greatest Enterprise on Earth—Side Droppings that throw Light on an Important Subject.

“Was it not time that Cromwell should come?”—Edwin Paxton Hood.

“He who would get at the kernel must crack the shell.”—Plautus.

“We should at least do something to show that we have lived.”—Cicero.

“I have tapped the mine.”—E. L. Drake.

“Petroleum has come to be King.”—W. D. Gunning.

“It is our mission to illuminate all creation.”—Robert Bonner.

“Tell the truth or trump, but take the trick.”—Mark Twain.

“How far that little candle throws his beams!”—Shakespeare.

“Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth.”—St. James iii:5.

“Judge of the size of the statue of Hercules from that of the foot.”—Latin Proverb.

Nature certainly spared no effort to bring petroleum into general notice ages before James Young manufactured paraffine-oil in Scotland or Samuel M. Kier fired-up his miniature refinery at Pittsburg. North and south, east and west the presence of the greasy staple was manifested positively and extensively. The hump of a dromedary, the kick of a mule or the ruby blossom on a toper’s nose could not be more apparent. It bubbled in fountains, floated on rivulets, escaped from crevices, collected in pools, blazed on the plains, gurgled down the mountains, clogged the ozone with vapor, smelled and sputtered, trickled and seeped for thousands of years in vain attempts to divert attention towards the source of this prodigal display. Mankind accepted it as a liniment and lubricant, gulped it down, rubbed it in, smeared it on and never thought of seeking whence it came or how much of it might be procured. Even after salt-wells had produced the stuff none stopped to reflect that the golden grease must be imprisoned far beneath the earth’s surface, only awaiting release to bless the dullards callous to the strongest hints respecting its headquarters. The dunce who heard Sydney Smith’s side-splitting story and sat as solemn as the sphinx, because he couldn’t see any point until the next day and then got it heels over head, was less obtuse. Puck was right in his little pleasantry: “What fools these mortals be!”

Dr. Abraham Gesner obtained oil from coal in 1846 and in 1854 patented an illuminator styled “Kerosene,” which the North American Kerosene Gaslight Company of New York manufactured at its works on Long Island. The excellence 62of the new light—the smoke and odor were eliminated gradually—caused a brisk demand that froze the marrow of the animal-oil industry. Capitalists invested largely in Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri coal-lands, saving the expense of transporting the “raw material” by erecting oil-works at the mines. Exactly in the ratio that mining coal was cheaper than catching whales mineral-oil had the advantage in competing for a market. Realizing this, men owning fish-oil works preserved them from extinction by manufacturing the mineral-product Young and Gesner had introduced. Thus Samuel Downer’s half-million-dollar works near Boston and colossal plant at Portland were utilized. Downer had expanded ideas and remarked with characteristic emphasis, in reply to a friend who criticised him for the risk he ran in putting up an enormous refinery at Corry, as the oil-production might exhaust: “The Almighty never does a picayune business!” Fifty or sixty of these works were turning out oil from bituminous shales in 1859, when the influx of petroleum compelled their conversion into refineries to avert overwhelming loss. Maine had one, Massachusetts five, New York five, Pennsylvania eight, Ohio twenty-five, Kentucky six, Virginia eight, Missouri one and one was starting in McKean county, near Kinzua village. The Carbon Oil-Company, 184 Water street, New York City, was the chief dealer in the illuminant. The entire petroleum-traffic in 1858 was barely eleven-hundred barrels, most of it obtained from Tarentum. A shipment of twelve barrels to New York in November, 1857, may be considered the beginning of the history of petroleum as an illuminator. How the baby has grown!

The price of “kerosene” or “carbon-oil,” always high, advanced to two dollars a gallon! Nowadays people grudge ten cents a gallon for oil vastly clearer, purer, better and safer! One good result of the high prices was an exhaustive scrutiny by the foremost scientific authorities into all the varieties of coal and bitumen, out of which comparisons with petroleum developed incidentally. Belief in its identity with coal-oil prompted the investigations which finally determined the economic value of petroleum. Professor B. Silliman, Jun., Professor of Chemistry in Yale College, in the spring of 1855 concluded a thorough analysis of petroleum from a “spring” on Oil Creek, nearly two miles south of Titusville, where traces of pits cribbed with rough timber still remained and the sticky fluid had been skimmed for two generations. In the course of his report Professor Silliman observed:

“It is understood and represented that this product exists in great abundance on the property; that it can be gathered wherever a well is sunk, over a great number of acres, and that it is unfailing in its yield from year to year. The question naturally arises, Of what value is it in the arts and for what uses can it be employed? * * * The Crude-Oil was tried as a means of illumination. For this purpose a weighed quantity was decomposed by passing it through a wrought-iron retort filled with carbon and ignited to redness. It produced nearly pure carburetted hydrogen gas, the most highly illuminating of all carbon gases. In fact, the oil may be regarded as chemically identical with illuminating gas in a liquid form. It burned with an intense flame. * * * The light from the rectified Naphtha is pure and white, without odor, and the rate of consumption less than half that of Camphene or Rosin-Oil. * * * Compared with Gas, the Rock-Oil gave more light than any burner, except the costly Argand, consuming two feet of gas per hour. These photometric experiments have given the Oil a much higher value as an illuminator than I had dared to hope. * * * As this oil does not gum or become acid or rancid by exposure, it possesses in that, as well as in its wonderful resistance to extreme cold, important qualities for a lubricator. * * * It is worthy of note that my experiments prove that nearly the whole of the raw product may be manufactured without waste, solely by one of the most simple of all chemical processes.”

Notwithstanding these researches, which he spent five months in prosecuting, the idea of artesian-boring for petroleum—naturally suggested by the oil in the salines of the Muskingum, Kanawha, Cumberland and Allegheny—never occurred 63to the learned Professor of Chemistry in Yale! If he had been the Yale football, with Hickok swatting it five-hundred pounds to the square inch, the idea might have been pummeled into the man of crucibles and pigments! Once more was nature frustrated in the endeavor to “bring out” a favorite child. The faithful dog that attempted to drag a fat man by the seat of his pants to the rescue of a drowning master, or Diogenes in his protracted quest for an honest Athenian, had an easier task. The “spring” which furnished the material for Silliman’s experiments was on the Willard farm, part of the lands of Brewer, Watson & Co.—Ebenezer Brewer and James Rynd, Pittsburg, Jonathan Watson, Rexford Pierce and Elijah Newberry, Titusville—extensive lumbermen on Oil Creek. They ran a sawmill on an island near the east bank of the creek, at a bend in the stream, a few rods south of the boundary-line between Venango and Crawford counties. Close to the mill was the rusty-looking “spring” from which the oil to burn in rude lamps, smoky and chimneyless, and to lubricate the circular saw was derived. The following document explains the first action retarding the care and development of the “spring.”

“Agreed this fourth day of July, A.D. 1853, with J. D. Angier, of Cherrytree Township, in the County of Venango, Pa., that he shall repair up and keep in order the old oil-spring on land in said Cherrytree township, or dig and make new springs, and the expenses to be deducted out of the proceeds of the oil and the balance, if any, to be equally divided, the one-half to J. D. Angier and the other half to Brewer, Watson & Co., for the full term of five years from this date, if profitable.”

All parties signed this agreement, pursuant to which Angier, for many years a resident of Titusville, dug trenches centering in a basin from which a pump connected with the sawmill raised the water into shallow troughs that sloped to the ground. Small skimmers, nicely adjusted to skim the oil, collected three or four gallons a day, but the experiment did not pay and it was dropped. In the summer of 1854 Dr. F. B. Brewer, son of the senior member of the firm owning the mill and “spring,” visited relatives at Hanover, New Hampshire, carrying with him a bottle of the oil as a gift to Professor Crosby, of Dartmouth College. Shortly after George H. Bissell, a graduate of the college, practicing law in New York with Jonathan G. Eveleth, while on a visit to Hanover called to see Professor Crosby, who showed him the bottle of petroleum. Crosby’s son induced Bissell to pay the expenses of a trip to inspect the “spring” and to agree, in case of a satisfactory report, to organize a company with a capital of a quarter-million dollars to purchase lands and erect such machinery as might be required to collect all the oil in the vicinity.

Complications and misunderstandings retarded matters. Everything was adjusted at last. Brewer, Watson & Co. conveyed in fee-simple to George H. Bissell and Jonathan G. Eveleth one-hundred-and-five acres of land in Cherrytree township, embracing the island at the junction of Pine Creek and Oil Creek, on which the mill of the firm and the Angier ditches were situated. The deed was formally executed on January first, 1855. Eveleth and Bissell gave their own notes for the purchase-money—five-thousand dollars—less five-hundred dollars paid in cash. The consideration mentioned in the deed was twenty-five-thousand dollars, five times the actual sum, in order not to appear such a small fraction of the total capital—two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars—as to injure the sale of stock. On December thirtieth, 1854, articles of incorporation of The Pennsylvania Rock-Oil-Company were filed in New York and Albany. The stock did not sell, owing to the prostration of the money-market and the fact that the company had been organized in New York, by the laws of which state 64each shareholder in a joint-stock company was liable for its debts to the amount of the par value of the stock he held. New-Haven parties agreed to subscribe for large blocks of stock if the company were reorganized under the laws of Connecticut. A new company was formed with a nominal capital of three-hundred-thousand dollars, to take the name and property of the one to be dissolved and levy an assessment to develop the island “by trenching” on a wholesale plan.

Eveleth & Bissell retained a controlling interest and Ashael Pierpont, James M. Townsend and William A. Ives were three of the New-Haven stockholders. Bissell visited Titusville to complete the transfer. On January sixteenth he and his partner had given a deed, which was not recorded, to the trustees of the original company. At Titusville he learned that lands of corporations organized outside of Pennsylvania would be forfeited to the state. The new company was notified of this law and to avoid trouble, on September twentieth, 1855, Eveleth & Bissell executed a deed to Pierpont and Ives, who gave a bond for the value of the property and leased it for ninety-nine years to a company formed two days before under certain articles of association. It really seemed that something definite would be done. The first oil-company in the history of nations had been organized. Pierpont, an eminent mechanic, was sent to examine the “spring,” with a view to improve Angier’s machinery. Silliman’s reports had a stimulating effect and the Professor was president of the company. But the monkey-and-parrot time was renewed. Dissensions broke out, Angier was fired and the enterprise looked to be “as dead as Julius Cæsar,” ready to bury “a hundred fathoms deep.”

One scorching day in the summer of 1856 Mr. Bissell, standing beneath the awning of a Broadway drug-store for a moment’s shade, noticed a bottle of Kier’s Petroleum and a queer show-bill, or label, in the window. It struck him as rather odd that a four-hundred-dollar bill—such it appeared—should be displayed in that manner. A second glance proved that it was an advertisement of a substance that concerned him deeply. He stepped inside and requested permission to scan the label. The druggist told him to “take it along.” For an instant he gazed at the derricks and the figures—four-hundred feet! A thought flashed upon him—bore artesian wells for oil! Artesian wells! Artesian wells! rang 65in his ears like the Trinity chimes down the street, the bells of London telling “Dick” Whittington to return or the pibroch of the Highlanders at Lucknow.Lucknow. The idea that meant so much was born at last. Patient nature must have felt in the mood to turn somersaults, blow a tin-horn and dance the fandango. It was a simple thought—merely to bore a hole in the rock—with no frills and furbelows and fustian, but pregnant with astounding consequences. It has added untold millions to the wealth of the country and conferred incalculable benefits upon humanity. To-day refined petroleum lights more dwellings in America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia than all other agencies combined.

To put the idea to the test was the next wrinkle. Mr. Eveleth agreed with Bissell’s theory. Their first impulse was to bore a well themselves. Reflection cooled their ardor, as this course would involve the loss of their practice for an uncertainty. Mr. Havens, a Wall-street broker, whom they consulted, offered them five-hundred dollars for a lease from the Pennsylvania Rock-Oil Company. A contract with Havens, by the terms of which he was to pay “twelve cents a gallon for all oil raised for fifteen years,” financial reverses prevented his carrying out. The idea of artesian boring was too fascinating to lie dormant. Mr. Townsend, president of the company, Silliman having resigned, employed Edwin L. Drake, to whom in the darker days of its existence he had sold two-hundred-dollars’ worth of his own stock, to visit the property and report his impressions. Mrs. Brewer and Mrs. Rynd had not joined in the power-of-attorney by which the agent conveyed the Brewer-Watson lands to the company, hence they would be entitled to dower in case the husbands died. Drake was instructed to return by way of Pittsburg and procure their signatures. Illness had forced him to quit work—he was conductor on the New-York & New-Haven Railroad—for some months and the opportunity for change of air and scene was embraced gladly. Shrewd, far-seeing Townsend, who still lives in New Haven and has been credited with “the discovery” of petroleum, addressed legal documents and letters to “Colonel” Drake, no doubt supposing this would enhance the importance of his representative in the eyes of the Oil-Creek backwoodsmen. The military title stuck to the diffident civilian whose name is interwoven with the great events of the nineteenth century.

Stopping on his way from New Haven to view the salt-wells at Syracuse, about the middle of December, 1857, Colonel Drake was trundled into Titusville—named from Jonathan Titus—on the mail-wagon from Erie. The villagers received him cordially. He lodged at the American Hotel, the home-like inn “Billy” Robinson, the first boniface, and Major Mills, king of landlords, rendered famous by their bountiful hospitality. The old caravansary was torn down in 1880 to furnish a site for the Oil Exchange. Drake stayed a few days to transact legal business, to examine the lands and the indications of oil and to become familiar with the general details. Proceeding to Pittsburg, he visited the salt-wells at Tarentum, the picture of which on Kier’s label suggested boring for oil, and hastened back to Connecticut to conclude a scheme of operating the property. On December thirtieth the three New-Haven directors executed a 66lease to Edwin E. Bowditch and Edwin L. Drake, who were to pay the Pennsylvania Rock-Oil-Company “five-and-a-half cents a gallon for the oil raised for fifteen years.” Eight days later, at the annual meeting of the directors, the lease was ratified, George H. Bissell and Jonathan Watson, representing two-thirds of the stock, protesting. Thereupon the consideration was placed at “one-eighth of all oil, salt or paint produced.” The lease was sent to Franklin and recorded in Deed Book P, page 357. A supplemental lease, extending the time to forty-five years on the conditions of the grant to Havens, was recorded, and on March twenty-third, 1858, the Seneca Oil-Company was organized, with Colonel Drake as president and owner of one-fortieth of the “stock.” No stock was issued, for the company was in reality a partnership working under the laws governing joint-stock associations.

Provided with a fund of one-thousand dollars as a starter, Drake was engaged at one-thousand dollars a year to begin operations. Early in May, 1858, he and his family arrived in Titusville and were quartered at the American Hotel, which boarded the Colonel, Mrs. Drake, two children and a horse for six-dollars-and-a-half per week! Money was scarce, provisions were cheap and the quiet village put on no extravagant airs. Not a pick or shovel was to be had in any store short of Meadville, whither Drake was obliged to send for these useful tools! Behold, then, “the man who was to revolutionize the light of the world,” his mind full of a grand purpose and his pockets full of cash, snugly ensconced in the comfortable hostelry. Surely the curtain would soon rise and the drama of “A Petroleum-Hunt” proceed without further vexatious delays.

Drake’s first step was to repair and start up Angier’s system of trenches, 67troughs and skimmers. By the end of June he had dug a shallow well on the island and was saving ten gallons of oil a day. He found it difficult to get a practical “borer” to sink an artesian-well. In August he shipped two barrels of oil to New Haven and bargained for a steam-engine to furnish power for drilling. The engine was not furnished as agreed, the “borer” Dr. Brewer hired at Pittsburg had another contract and operations were suspended for the winter. In February, 1859, Drake went to Tarentum and engaged a driller to come in March. The driller failed to materialize and Drake drove to Tarentum in a sleigh to lasso another. F. N. Humes, who was cleaning out salt-wells for Peterson, informed him that the tools were made by William A. Smith, whom he might be able to secure for the job. Smith accepted the offer to manufacture tools and bore the well. Kim Hibbard, favorably known in Franklin, was dispatched with his team, when the tools were completed, for Smith, his two sons and the outfit. On May twentieth the men and tools were at the spot selected for the hole. A “pump-house” had been framed and a derrick built. A room for “boarding the hands” almost joined the rig and the sawmill. The accompanying illustration shows the well as it was at first, with the original derrick enclosed to the top, the “grasshopper walking-beam,” the “boarding-house” and part of the mill-shed. “Uncle Billy” Smith is seated on a wheelbarrow in the foreground. His sons, James and William, are standing on either side of the “pump-house” entrance. Back of James his two young sisters are sitting on a board. Elbridge Lock stands to the right of the Smiths. “Uncle Billy’s” brother is leaning on a plank at the corner of the derrick and his wife may be discerned in the doorway of the “boarding-house.” This interesting and historic picture has never been printed until now. The one with which the world is acquainted depicts the second rig, with Peter Wilson, a Titusville druggist, facing Drake. In like manner, the portrait of Colonel Drake in this volume is from the first photograph for which he ever sat. The well and the portrait are the work of John A. Mather, the veteran artist and Drake’s bosom-friend, who ought to receive a pension and no end of gratitude for preserving “counterfeit presentments” of a host of petroleum-scenes and personages that have passed from mortal sight.

Delays and tribulations had not retreated from the field. In artesian-boring it is necessary to drill in rock. Mrs. Glasse’s old-time cook-book gained celebrity by starting a recipe for rabbit-pie: “First catch your hare.” The principle applies to artesian-drilling: “First catch your rock.” The ordinary rule was to dig a pit or well-hole to the rock and crib it with timber. The Smiths dug a few feet, but the hole filled with water and caved-in persistently. It was a fight-to-a-finish between three men and what Stow of Girard—he was Barnum’s hot-stuff advance agent—wittily termed “the cussedness of inanimate things.” The latter won and a council of war was summoned, at which Drake recommended driving an iron-tube through the clay and quicksand to the rock. This was effectual. Colonel Drake should have patented the process, which was his exclusive device and decidedly valuable. The pipe was driven thirty-six feet to hard-pan and the drill started on August fourteenth. The workmen averaged three feet a day, resting at night and on Sundays. Indications of oil were met as the tools pierced the rock. Everybody figured that the well would be down to the Tarentum level in time to celebrate Christmas. The company, tired of repeated postponements, did not deluge Drake with money. Losing speculations and sickness had drained his own meagre savings. R. D. Fletcher, the well-known Titusville merchant, and Peter Wilson endorsed his paper for six-hundred 68dollars to tide over the crisis. The tools pursued the downward road with the eagerness of a sinner headed for perdition, while expectation stood on tiptoe to watch the progress of events.

On Saturday afternoon, August twenty-eighth, 1859, the well had reached the depth of sixty-nine feet, in a coarse sand. Smith and his sons concluded to “lay off” until Monday morning. As they were about to quit the drill dropped six inches into a crevice such as was common in salt-wells. Nothing was thought of this circumstance, the tools were drawn out and all hands adjourned to Titusville. Mr. Smith went to the well on Sunday afternoon to see if it had moved away or been purloined during the night. Peering into the hole he saw fluid within eight or ten feet. A piece of tin-spouting was lying outside. He plugged one end of the spout, let it down by a string and pulled it up. Muddy water? No! It was filled with PETROLEUM!

“The fisherman, unassisted by destiny, could not catch fish in the Tigris.”

That was the proudest hour in “Uncle Billy” Smith’s forty-seven years’ pilgrimage. Not daring to leave the spot, he ran the spout again and again, each time bringing it to the surface full of oil. A straggler out for a stroll approached, heard the story, sniffed the oil and bore the tidings to the village. Darkness was setting in, but the Smith boys sprinted to the scene. When Colonel Drake came down, bright and early next morning, they and their father were guarding three barrels of the precious liquid. The pumping apparatus was adjusted and by noon the well commenced producing at the rate of twenty barrels a day! The problem of the ages was solved, the agony ended and petroleum fairly launched upon its astonishing career.

The news flew like a Dakota cyclone. Villagers and country-folk flocked to the wonderful well. Smith wrote to Peterson, his former employer: “Come quick, there’s oceans of oil!” Jonathan Watson jumped on a horse and galloped down the creek to lease the McClintock farm, where Nathanael Cary dipped oil and a timbered crib had been constructed. Henry Potter, still a citizen of Titusville, tied up the lands for miles along the stream, hoping to interest New York capital. William Barnsdall secured the farm north of the Willard. George H. Bissell, who had arranged to be posted by telegraph, bought all the Pennsylvania Rock-Oil stock he could find and in four days was at the well. He leased farm after farm on Oil Creek and the Allegheny River, regardless of surface-indications or the admonition of meddling wiseacres.

The rush for property resembled the wild scramble of the children when the Pied Piper of Hamelin blew his fatal reed. Titusville was in a whirlpool of excitement. Buildings arose as if by magic, the hamlet became a borough and the borough a city of fifteen-thousand inhabitants. Maxwell Titus sold lots at two-hundred dollars, people acquired homes that doubled in value and speculation held undisputed sway. Jonathan Titus, from whom it was named, lived to witness the farm he cleared transformed into “The Queen City,” noted for its tasteful residences, excellent schools, manufactories, refineries and active population. One of his neighbors in the bush was Samuel Kerr, whose son Michael went to Congress and served as Speaker of the House. Many enterprising men settled in Titusville for the sake of their families. They paved the streets, planted shade-trees, fostered local industries, promoted culture and believed in public improvements. When Christine Nilsson enraptured sixteen-hundred well-dressed, appreciative listeners in the Parshall Opera-House, the peerless songstress could not refrain from saying that she never saw an audience so keen to note the finer points of her performance and so discriminating in its applause. 69“Praise from Sir Hubert is praise indeed” and the compliment of the Swedish Nightingale compressed a whole encyclopedia into a sentence. Titusville has had its ups and downs, but there is no more desirable place in the State.

Matches are supposed to be made in Heaven and the inspiration that led to the choice of such a site for the future city must have been derived from the same source. Healthfulness and beauty of location attest the wisdom of the selection. Folks don’t have to climb precipitous hills or risk life and limb crossing railway-tracks whenever they wish to exercise their fast nags. Driving is a favorite pastime in fine weather, the leading thoroughfares often reminding strangers of Central Park on a coaching-day. Main, Walnut and Perry streets are lined with trees and residences worthy of Philadelphia or Baltimore. Comfortable homes are the crowning glory of a community and in this respect Titusville does not require to take a back-seat. Near the lower end of Main street is Ex-Mayor Caldwell’s elegant mansion, built by Jonathan Watson in the days of his prosperity. Farther up are John Fertig’s, the late Marcus Brownson’s, Mrs. David Emery’s and Mrs. A. N. Perrin’s. Franklin S. Tarbell, a former resident of Rouseville, occupies an attractive house. Joseph Seep, who has not changed an iota since the halcyon period of Parker and Foxburg, shows his faith in the town by building a home that would adorn Cleveland’s aristocratic Euclid Avenue. The host is the cordial Seep of yore, quick to make a point and not a bit backward in helping a friend. David McKelvy, whom everybody knew in the lower oil-fields, remodeled the Chase homestead, a symphony in red brick. Close by is W. T. Scheide’s natty dwelling, finished in a style befitting the ex-superintendent of the National-Transit Pipe-Lines. Byron D. Benson—he died in 1889—nine times elected president of the Tidewater Pipe-Line-Company, lived on the corner of Oak and Perry streets. Opposite is John L. McKinney’s luxurious residence, a credit to the liberal owner and the city. J. C. McKinney’s is “one of the finest.” James Parshall, W. B. Sterrett, O. D. Harrington, 70J. P. Thomas, W. W. Thompson, Charles Archbold and hundreds more erected dwellings that belong to the palatial tribe. Dr. Roberts—he’s in the cemetery—had a spacious place on Washington street, with the costliest stable in seventeen counties. E. O. Emerson’s house and grounds are the admiration of visitors. The grand fountain, velvet lawns, smooth walks, tropical plants, profusion of flowers, mammoth conservatory and Marechal-Niel rose-bushes bewilder the novice whose knowledge of floral affairs stops at button-hole bouquets. George K. Anderson—dead, too—constructed this delightful retreat. Col. J. J. Carter, whose record as a military officer, merchant, railroad-president and oil-operator will stand inspection, has an ideal home, purchased from John D. Archbold and refitted throughout. It was built and furnished extravagantly by Daniel Cady, once a leading spirit in the business and social life of Titusville. He was a man of imposing presence and indomitable pluck, the confidant of Jay Gould and “Jim” Fisk, dashing, speculative and popular. For years whatever he touched seemed to turn into gold and he computed his dollars by hundreds of thousands. Days of adversity overtook him, the splendid home was sacrificed and he died poor. To men of the stamp of Watson, Anderson, Abbott, Emery, Fertig and Cady Titusville owes its real start in the direction of greatness. Much of the froth and fume of former days is missing, but the baser elements have been eliminated, trade is on a solid basis and important manufactures have been established. There are big refineries, Holly water-works, a race-track, ball-grounds, top-notch hotels, live newspapers, inviting churches and a lovely cemetery in which to plant good citizens when they pass in their checks. Pilgrims who expect to find Titusville dead or dying will be as badly fooled as the lover whose girl eloped with the other fellow.

Unluckily for himself, Colonel Drake took a narrow view of affairs. Complacently assuming that he had “tapped the mine”—to quote his own phrase—and that paying territory would not be found outside the company’s lease, he pumped the well serenely, told funny stories and secured not one foot of ground! Had he possessed a particle of the prophetic instinct, had he grasped the magnitude of the issues at stake, had he appreciated the importance of petroleum as a commercial product, had he been able to “see an inch beyond his nose,” he would have gone forth that August morning and become “Master of the Oil Country!” “The world was all before him where to choose,” he was literally “monarch of all he surveyed,” but he didn’t move a peg! Money was not needed, the promise of one-eighth or one-quarter royalty satisfying the easy-going farmers, consequently he might have gathered in any quantity of land. Friends urged him to “get into the game;” he rejected their counsel and never realized his mistake until other wells sent prices skyward and it was everlastingly too late for his short pole to knock the persimmons. Yet this is the man whom numerous writers have proclaimed “the discoverer of petroleum!” Times without number it has been said and written and printed that he was “the first man to advise boring for oil,” that “his was the first mind to conceive the idea of penetrating the rock in search of a larger deposit of oil than was dreamed of by 71any one,” that “he alone unlocked one of nature’s vast storehouses” and “had visions of a revolution in light and lubrication.” Considering what Kier, Peterson, Bissell and Watson had done years before Drake ever saw—perhaps ever heard of—a drop of petroleum, the absurdity of these claims is “so plain that he who runs may read.” Couple with this his incredible failure to secure lands after the well was drilled—wholly inexcusable if he supposed oil-operations would ever be important—and the man who thinks Colonel Drake was “the first man with a clear conception of the future of petroleum” could swallow the fish that swallowed Jonah!

Above all else history should be truthful and “hew to the line, let chips fall where they may.” Mindful that “the agent is but the instrument of the principal,” why should Colonel Drake wear the laurels in this instance? Paid a salary to carry out Bissell’s plan of boring an artesian-well, he spent sixteen months getting the hole down seventy feet. For a man who “had visions” and “a clear conception” his movements were inexplicably slow. He encountered obstacles, but salt-wells had been drilled hundreds of feet without either a steam-engine or professional “borer.” The credit of suggesting the driving-pipe to overcome the quicksand is justly his due. Quite as justly the credit of suggesting the boring of the well belongs to George H. Bissell. The company hired Drake, Drake hired Smith, Smith did the work. Back of the man who possessed the skill to fashion the tools and sink the hole, back of the man who acted for the company and disbursed its money, back of the company itself is the originator of the idea these were the means employed to put into effect. Was George Stephenson, or the foreman of the shop where the “Rocket” was built, the inventor of the locomotive? Was Columbus, or the man whose name it bears, the discoverer of America? In a conversation on the subject Mr. Bissell remarked: “Let Colonel Drake enjoy the pleasure of giving the well his name; history will set us all right.” So it will and this is a step in that direction. If the long-talked-of monument to commemorate the advent of the petroleum-era ever be erected, it should bear in boldest capitals the names of Samuel M. Kier and George H. Bissell.

Edwin L. Drake, who is linked inseparably with the first oil-well in Pennsylvania, was born on March eleventh, 1819, at Greenville, Greene county, New York. His father, a farmer, moved to Vermont in 1825. At eighteen Edwin left home to begin the struggle with the world. He was night-clerk of a boat running between Buffalo and Detroit, worked one year on a farm in the Wolverine state, clerked two years in a Michigan hotel, returned east and clerked in a dry-goods store at New Haven, clerked and married in New York, removed to Massachusetts, was express-agent on the Boston & Albany railroad and resigned in 1849 to become conductor on the New-York & New-Haven. His younger brother died in the west and his wife at New Haven, in 1854, leaving one child. While boarding at a hotel in New Haven he met James M. Townsend, who persuaded him to draw his savings of two-hundred dollars from the bank and buy stock of the Pennsylvania Rock-Oil-Company, his first connection with the business that was to make him famous. Early in 1857 he married Miss Laura Dow, sickness in the summer compelled him to cease punching tickets and his memorable visit to Titusville followed in December. In 1860 he was elected justice-of-the-peace, an office worth twenty-five-hundred dollars that year, because of the enormous number of property-transfers to prepare and acknowledge. Buying oil on commission for Shefflin Brothers, New York, swelled his income to five-thousand dollars for a year or two. He also bought twenty-five acres of 72land from Jonathan Watson, east of Martin street and through the center of which Drake street now runs, for two-thousand dollars. Unable to meet the mortgage given for part of the payment, he sold the block in 1863 to Dr. A. D. Atkinson for twelve-thousand dollars. Forty times this sum would not have bought it in 1867! With the profits of this transaction and his savings for five years, in all about sixteen-thousand dollars, in the summer of 1863 Colonel Drake left the oil-regions forever.

Entering into partnership with a Wall-street broker, he wrecked his small fortune speculating in oil-stocks, his health broke down and he removed to Vermont. Physicians ordered him to the seaside as the only remedy for his disease, neuralgic affection of the spine, which threatened paralysis of the limbs and caused intense suffering. Near Long Branch, in a cottage offered by a friend, Mr. and Mrs. Drake drank the bitter cup to the dregs. Their funds were exhausted, the patient needed constant attention and helpless children cried for bread. The devoted wife and mother attempted to earn a pittance with her needle, but could not keep the wolf of hunger from the door. Medicine for the sick man was out of the question. All this time men in the region the Drake well had opened to the world were piling up millions of dollars! One day in 1869, with eighty cents to pay his fare, Colonel Drake struggled into New York to seek a place for his twelve-year-old boy. The errand was fruitless. The distressed father was walking painfully on the street to the railway-station, to board the train for home, when he met “Zeb” Martin of Titusville, afterwards proprietor of the Hotel Brunswick. Mr. Martin noted his forlorn condition, inquired as to his circumstances, learned the sad story of actual privation, procured dinner, gave the poor fellow twenty dollars and cheered him with the assurance that he would raise a fund for his relief. The promise was redeemed.

At a meeting in Titusville the case was stated and forty-two hundred dollars were subscribed. The money was forwarded to Mrs. Drake, who husbanded it carefully. The terrible recital aroused such a feeling that the Legislature, in 1873, granted Colonel Drake an annuity of fifteen-hundred dollars during his life and his heroic wife’s. California had set a good example by giving Colonel Sutter, the discoverer of gold in the mill-race, thirty-five-hundred dollars a year. The late Thaddeus Stevens, “the Great Commoner,” hearing that Drake was actually in want, prepared a bill, found among his papers after his death, intending to present it before Congress for an appropriation of two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars for Colonel Drake. In 1870 the family removed to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Years of suffering, borne with sublime resignation, closed on the evening of November ninth, 1881, with the release of Edwin L. Drake from this vale of tears. A faithful wife and four children survived the petroleum-pioneer. They lived at Bethlehem until the spring of 1895 and then moved to New England. Colonel Drake was a man of pronounced individuality, affable, genial and kindly. He had few superiors as a story-teller, neither caroused nor swore, and was of unblemished character. He wore a full beard, dressed well, liked a good horse, looked every man straight in the face and his dark eyes sparkled when he talked. Gladly he laid down the heavy burden of a checkered life, with its afflictions and vicissitudes, for the peaceful rest of the grave.

George H. Bissell, honorably identified with the petroleum-development from its inception, was a New-Hampshire boy. Thrown upon his own resources 73at twelve, by the death of his father, he gained education and fortune unaided. At school and college he supported himself by teaching and writing for magazines. Graduating from Dartmouth College in 1845, he was professor of Greek and Latin in Norwich University a short time, went to Washington and Cuba, did editorial work for the New Orleans Delta and was chosen superintendent of the public schools. Impaired health forced him to return north in 1853, when his connection with petroleum began. From 1859 to 1863 he resided at Franklin, Venango county, to be near his oil-interests. He operated largely on Oil Creek, on the Allegheny river and at Franklin, where he erected a barrel-factory. He removed to New York in 1863, established the Bissell Bank at Petroleum Centre in 1866, developed oil-lands in Peru and was prominent in financial circles. His wife died in 1867 and long since he followed her to the tomb. Mr. Bissell was a brilliant, scholarly man, positive in his convictions and sure to make his influence felt in any community. His son and daughter reside in New York.

William A. Smith, born in Butler county in 1812, at the age of twelve was apprenticed at Freeport to learn blacksmithing. In 1827 he went to Pittsburg and in 1842 opened a blacksmith-shop at Salina, below Tarentum. Samuel M. Kier employed him to drill salt-wells and manufacture drilling-tools. After finishing the Drake well, he drilled in various sections of the oil-regions, retiring to his farm in Butler a few years prior to his death, on October twenty-third, 1890. “Uncle Billy,” as the boys affectionately called him, was no small factor in giving to mankind the illuminator that enlightens every quarter of the globe. The farm he owned in 1859 and on which he died proved good territory.

Dr. Francis B. Brewer was born in New Hampshire, studied medicine in Philadelphia and practiced in Vermont. His father in 1840 purchased several thousand acres of land on Oil Creek for lumbering, and the firm of Brewer, Watson & Co. was promptly organized. Oil from the “spring” on the island at the mouth of Pine Creek was sent to the young physician in 1848 and used in his practice. He visited the locality in 1850 and was admitted to the firm. Upon the completion of the Drake well he devoted his time to the extensive oil-operations of the partnership for four years. In 1864 Brewer, Watson & Co. sold the bulk of their oil-territory and the doctor, who had settled at Westfield, Chautauqua county, N. Y., instituted the First National Bank, of which he was chosen president. A man of solid worth and solid wealth, he has served as a Member of Assembly and is deservedly respected for integrity and benevolence.

Jonathan Watson, whose connection with petroleum goes back to the beginning of developments, arrived at Titusville in 1845 to manage the lumbering and mercantile business of his firm. The hamlet contained ten families and three stores. Deer and wild-turkeys abounded in the woods, John Robinson was postmaster and Rev. George O. Hampson the only minister. Mr. Watson’s views of petroleum were of the broadest and his transactions the boldest. He hastened to secure lands when oil appeared in the Drake well. At eight o’clock on that historic Monday morning he stood at Hamilton McClintock’s door, resolved to buy or lease his three-hundred-acre farm. A lease was taken and others along the stream followed during the day. Brewer, Watson & Co. operated on a wholesale scale until 1864, after which Watson continued alone. Riches poured upon him. He erected the finest residence in Titusville, lavished 74money on the grounds and stocked a fifty-thousand dollar conservatory with choicest plants and flowers. A million dollars in gold he is credited with “putting by for a rainy day.” He went miles ahead, bought huge blocks of land and drilled scores of test-wells. In this way he barely missed opening the Bradford field and the Bullion district years before these productive sections were brought into line. His well on the Dalzell farm, Petroleum Centre, in 1869, renewed interest in that quarter long after it was supposed to be sucked dry. An Oil-City clairvoyant indicated the spot to sink the hole, promising a three-hundred-barrel strike. Crude was six dollars a barrel and Watson readily proffered the woman the first day’s production for her services. A check for two-thousand dollars was her reward, as the well yielded three-hundred-and-thirty-three barrels the first twenty-four hours. Mrs. Watson was an ardent medium and her husband humored her by consulting the “spirits” occasionally. She became a lecturer and removed to California long since. The tide of Watson’s prosperity ebbed. Bad investments and dry-holes ate into his splendid fortune. The gold-reserve was drawn upon and spent. The beautiful home went to satisfy creditors. In old age the brave, hardy, indefatigable oil-pioneer, who had led the way for others to acquire wealth, was stripped of his possessions. Hope and courage remained. He operated at Warren and revived some of the old wells around the Drake, which afforded him subsistence. Advanced years and anxiety enfeebled the stalwart fame. His steps faltered, and in 1893 protracted sickness closed the busy, eventful life of the man who, more than any other, fostered and developed the petroleum-industry.

The Drake well declined almost imperceptibly, yielding twelve barrels a day by the close of the year. It stood idle on Sundays and for a week in December. Smith had a light near a tank of oil, the gas from which caught fire and burned the entire rig. This was the first “oil-fire” in Pennsylvania, but it was destined to have many successors. Possibly it brought back vividly to Colonel Drake the remembrance of his childish dream, in which he and his brother had set a heap of stubble ablaze and could not extinguish the flames. His mother interpreted it: “My son, you have set the world on fire.”

The total output of the well in 1859 was under eighteen-hundred barrels. One-third of the oil was sold at sixty-five cents a gallon for shipment to Pittsburg. George M. Mowbray, the accomplished chemist, who came to Titusville in 1860 and played a prominent part in early refining, disposed of a thousand barrels in New York. The well produced moderately for two or three years from the first sand, until shut down by low prices, which made it ruinous to pay the royalty of twelve-and-a-half cents a gallon. A compromise was effected in 1860, by which the Seneca Oil-Company retained a part of the land as fee and surrendered the lease to the Pennsylvania Rock-Oil-Company. Mr. Bissell purchased the stock of the other shareholders in the latter company for fifty-thousand dollars. He drilled ten wells, six of which for months yielded eighty barrels a day, on the tract known thenceforth as the Bissell farm, selling it eventually to the Original Petroleum-Company. The Drake was deepened to five-hundred feet and two others, drilled beneath the roof of the sawmill in 1862, were pumped by water.

The Drake machinery was stolen or scattered piecemeal. In 1876 J. J. Ashbaugh, of St. Petersburg, and Thomas O’Donnell, of Foxburg, conveyed the 75neglected derrick and engine-house to the Centennial at Philadelphia, believing crowds would wish to look at the mementoes. The exhibition was a fizzle and the lumber was carted off as rubbish. Ex-Senator Emery saved the drilling-tools and he has them in his private museum at Bradford. They are pigmies compared with the giants of to-day. A man could walk away with them as readily as Samson skipped with the gates of Gaza. Sandow and Cyril Cyr done up in a single package couldn’t do that with a modern set. The late David Emery, a man of heart and brain, contemplated reviving the old well—the land had come into his possession—and bottling the oil in tiny vials, the proceeds to be applied to a Drake monument. He put up a temporary rig and pumped a half-barrel a week. Death interrupted his generous purpose. Except that the trees and the saw-mill have disappeared, the neighborhood of the Drake well is substantially the same as in the days when lumbering was at its height and the two-hundred honest denizens of Titusville slept without locking their doors. There is nothing to suggest to strangers or travelers that the spot deserves to be remembered. How transitory is human achievement!

William Barnsdall, Boone Meade and Henry R. Rouse started the second well in the vicinity, on the James Parker farm, formerly the Kerr tract and now the home of Ex-Mayor J. H. Caldwell. The location was north and within a stone’s throw of the Drake. In November, at the depth of eighty feet, the well was pumped three days, yielding only five barrels of oil. The outlook had an indigo-tinge and operations ceased for a week or two. Resuming work in December, at one-hundred-and-sixty feet indications were satisfactory. Tubing was put in on February nineteenth, 1860, and the well responded at the rate of fifty barrels a day! In the language of a Hoosier dialect-poet: “Things wuz gettin’ inter-restin’!” William H. Abbott, a gentleman of wealth, reached Titusville on February ninth and bought an interest in the Parker tract the same month. David Crossley’s well, a short distance south of the Drake and the third finished on Oil Creek, began pumping sixty barrels a day on March fourth. Local dealers, overwhelmed by an “embarrassment of riches,” could not handle such a glut of oil. Schefflin Brothers arranged to market it in New York. Fifty-six-thousand gallons from the Barnsdall well were sold for seventeen-thousand dollars by June first, 1860. J. D. Angier contracted to “stamp down a hole” for Brewer, Watson & Co., in a pit fourteen feet deep, dug and cribbed to garner oil dipped from the “spring” on the Hamilton-McClintock farm. Piercing the rock by “hand-power” was a tedious process. December of 1860 76dawned without a symptom of greasiness in the well, from which wondrous results were anticipated on account of the “spring.” One day’s hand-pumping produced twelve barrels of oil and so much water that an engine was required to pump steadily. By January twentieth, 1861, the engine was puffing and the well producing moderately, the influx of water diminishing the yield of oil. These four, with two getting under way on the Buchanan farm, north of the McClintock, and one on the J. W. McClintock tract, the site of Petroleum Centre, summed up all the wells actually begun on Oil Creek in 1859.

Three of the four were “kicked down” by the aid of spring-poles, as were hundreds later in shallow territory. This method afforded a mode of development to men of limited means, with heavy muscles and light purses, although totally inadequate for deep drilling. An elastic pole of ash or hickory, twelve to twenty feet long, was fastened at one end to work over a fulcrum. To the other end stirrups were attached, or a tilting platform was secured by which two or three men produced a jerking motion that drew down the pole, its elasticity pulling it back with sufficient force, when the men slackened their hold, to raise the tools a few inches. The principle resembled that of the treadle-board of a sewing-machine, operating which moves the needle up and down. The tools were swung in the driving-pipe or the “conductor”—a wooden tube eight or ten inches square, placed endwise in a hole dug to the rock—and fixed by a rope to the spring-pole two or three feet from the workmen. The strokes were rapid and a sand-pump—a spout three inches in diameter, with a hinged bottom opening inward and a valve working on a sliding-rod, somewhat in the manner of a syringe—removed the borings mainly by sucking them into the spout as it was drawn out quickly. Horse-power, in its general features precisely the kind still used with threshing-machines, was the next step forward. Steam-engines, employed for drilling at Tidioute in September of 1860, reduced labor and expedited work. The first pole-derricks, twenty-five to thirty-five feet high, have been superseded by structures that tower seventy-two to ninety feet.

Drilling-tools, the chief novelty of which are the “jars”—a pair of sliding-bars 77moving within each other—have increased from two-hundred pounds to three-thousand in weight. George Smith, at Rouseville, forged the first steel-lined jars in 1866, for H. Leo Nelson, but the steel could not be welded firmly. Nelson also adopted the “Pleasantville Rig” on the Meade lease, Rouseville, in 1866, discarding the “Grasshopper.” In the former the walking-beam is fastened in the centre to the “samson-post,” with one end attached to the rods in the well and the other to the band-wheel crank, exactly as in side-wheel steamboats. George Koch, of East Sandy, Pa., patented numerous improvements on pumping-rigs, drilling-tools and gas-rigs; for which he asked no remuneration. Primitive wells had a bore of three or four inches, half the present size. To exclude surface-water a “seed-bag”—a leather-bag the diameter of the hole—was tied tightly to the tubing, filled with flax-seed and let down to the proper depth. The top was left open and in a few hours the flax swelled so that the space between the tubing and the walls of the well was impervious to water. Drilling “wet holes” was slow and uncertain, as the tools were apt to break and the chances of a paying well could not be decided until the pump exhausted the water. It is surprising that over five-thousand wells were sunk with the rude appliances in vogue up to 1868, when “casing”—a larger pipe inserted usually to the top of the first sand—was introduced. This was the greatest improvement ever devised in oil-developments and drilling has reached such perfection that holes can be put down five-thousand feet safely and expeditiously. Devices multiplied as experience was gained.

The tools that drilled the Barnsdall, Crossley and Watson wells were the handiwork of Jonathan Lock, a Titusville blacksmith. Mr. Lock attained his eighty-third year, died at Bradford in March of 1895 and was buried at Titusville, the city in which he passed much of his active life. He was a worthy type of the intelligent, industrious American mechanics, a class of men to whom civilization is indebted for unnumbered comforts and conveniences. John Bryan, who built the first steam-engine in Warren county, started the first foundry and Machine-shop in Oildom and organized the firm of Bryan, Dillingham & Co., began the manufacture of drilling-tools in Titusville in 1860.

Of the partners in the second well William Barnsdall survives. He has lived in Titusville sixty-four years, served as mayor and operated extensively. His son Theodore, who pumped wells on the Parker and Weed farms, adjoining the Barnsdall homestead, is among the largest and wealthiest producers. Crossley’s sons rebuilt the rig at their father’s well in 1873, drilled the hole deeper and obtained considerable oil. Other wells around the Drake were treated similarly, paying a fair profit. In 1875 this spasmodic revival of the earliest territory died out—Machinery was removed and the derricks rotted. Jonathan Watson, in 1889, drilled shallow wells, cleaned out several of the old ones and awakened brief interest in the cradle of developments. Gas burning and wells pumping, thirty years after the first strike, seemed indeed strange. Not a trace of these repeated operations remains. The Parker and neighboring farms north-west and north of Titusville proved disappointing, owing to the absence of the third sand, 78which a hole drilled two-thousand feet by Jonathan Watson failed to reveal. The Parker-Farm Petroleum Company of Philadelphia bought the land in 1863 and in 1870 twelve wells were producing moderately. West and south-west the Octave Oil-CompanyOil-Company has operated profitably for twenty years and Church Run has produced generously. Probably two-hundred wells were sunk above Titusville, at Hydetown, Clappville, Tryonville, Centerville, Riceville, Lincolnville and to Oil-Creek Lake, in vain attempts to discover juicy territory.

Ex-Mayor William Barnsdall is the oldest living pioneer of Titusville. Not only has he seen the town grow from a few houses to its present proportions, but he is one of its most esteemed citizens. Born at Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, England, on February sixth, 1810, he lived there until 1831, when he came to America. In 1832 he arrived at what is known as the English Settlement, seven miles north of Titusville. The Barnsdalls founded the settlement, Joseph, a brother of William, clearing a farm in the wilderness that then covered the country. Remaining in the settlement a year, in 1833 William Barnsdall came to the hamlet of Titusville, where he has ever since resided. He established a small shop to manufacture boots and shoes, continuing at the business until the discovery of oil in 1859. Immediately after the completion of the Drake strike he began drilling the second well on Oil Creek. Before this well produced oil, in February of 1860, he sold a part interest to William H. Abbott for ten-thousand dollars. He associated himself with Abbott and James Parker and, early in 1860, commenced the first oil-refinery on Oil Creek. It was sold to Jonathan Watson for twenty-five-thousand dollars. From those early days to the present Mr. Barnsdall has been identified with the production of petroleum. At the ripe age of eighty-seven years, respected as few men are in any community and enjoying an unusual measure of mental and physical strength, he calmly awaits “the inevitable hour.”

Hon. David Emery, the last owner of the Drake well, was for many years a successful oil-operator. At Pioneer he drilled a number of prime wells, following the course of developments along Oil Creek. He organized the Octave Oil-Company and was its chief officer. Removing to Titusville, he erected a fine residence and took a prominent part in public affairs. His purse was ever open to forward a good cause. Had the Republican party, of which he was an active member, been properly alive to the interests of the Commonwealth, he would have been Auditor-General of Pennsylvania. In all the relations and duties of life David Emery was a model citizen. Called hence in the vigor of stalwart manhood, multitudes of attached friends cherish his memory as that “of one who loved his fellow-men.”

Born in England in 1818, David Crossley ran away from home and came to America as a stowaway in 1828. He found relatives at Paterson, N.J., and lived with them until about 1835, when he bound himself out to learn blacksmithing. On March seventeenth, 1839, he married Jane Alston and in the winter of 1841-2 walked from New York to Titusville, walking back in the spring. The following autumn he brought his family to Titusville. For a few years he tried farming, but gave it up and went back to his trade until 1859, when he formed a partnership with William Barnsdall, William H. Abbott and P. T. Witherop, under the firm-name of Crossley, Witherop & Co., and began drilling the third well put down on Oil Creek. The well was completed on March tenth, 1860, having been drilled one-hundred-and-forty feet with a spring-pole. It produced at the rate of seventy-five barrels per day for a short time. The next autumn the property was abandoned on account of decline in production. 79In 1865 Crossley bought out his partners and drilled the well to a depth of five-hundred-and-fifty feet, but again abandoned it because of water. In 1872 he and his sons drilled other wells upon the same property and in a short time had so reduced the water that the investment became a paying one. In 1873 he and William Barnsdall and others drilled the first producing well in the Bradford oil-field. His health failed in 1875 and he died on October eleventh, 1880, esteemed by all for his manliness and integrity.

Z. Martin, who befriended Drake in his sad extremity, landed at Titusville in March of 1860 and pumped the Barnsdall, Mead & Rouse well on Parker’s flat, the first well in Crawford county that produced oil. In 1861 he went to the Clapp farm, above Oil City, as superintendent of the Boston Rock-Oil-Company, only three of whose eighteen wells were paying ventures. The Company quitting, Martin bought and shipped crude to Pittsburg for Brewer, Burke & Co., traveling to the wells on horseback to secure oil for his boats. He bought the Eagle Hotel at Titusville in 1862, conducted it two years and sold the building to C. V. Culver for bank-purposes.bank-purposes. Mr. Martin resided at Titusville many years and was widely known as the capable landlord of the palatial Hotel Brunswick. He was the intimate friend of Colonel Drake, Jonathan Watson, George H. Bissell and the pioneer operators on Oil Creek. His son, L. L. Martin, is running the Commercial Hotel at Meadville, where the father makes his home, young in everything but years and always pleased to greet his oil-region acquaintances.

Thus dawned the petroleum-day that could not be hidden under myriads of bushels. The report of the Drake well traveled “from Greenland’s icy mountains” to “India’s coral strands,” causing unlimited guessing as to the possible outcome. Crude-petroleum was useful for various things, but a farmer who visited the newest wonder hit a fresh lead. Begging a jug of oil, he paralyzed Colonel Drake by observing as he strode off: “This’ll be durned good tew spread onto buckwheat-cakes!”

Bishop Simpson once delivered his lecture on “American Progress,” in which he did not mention petroleum, before an immense Washington audience. President Lincoln heard it and said, as he and the eloquent speaker came out of the hall: “Bishop, you didn’t ‘strike ile’!”

When the Barnsdall well, on the Parker farm, produced hardly any oil from the first sand, the coming Mayor of Titusville quietly clinched the argument in favor of drilling it deeper by remarking: “It’s a long way from the bottom of that hole to China and I’m bound to bore for tea-leaves if we don’t get the grease sooner!”

“De Lawd thinks heaps ob Pennsylvany,” said a colored exhorter in Pittsburg, “fur jes’ ez whales iz gettin’ sca’ce he pints outen de way fur Kunnel Drake ter ’scoveh petroleum!” A solemn preacher in Crawford county held a different opinion. One day he tramped into Titusville to relieve his burdened mind. He cornered Drake on the street and warned him to quit taking oil from the ground. “Do you know,” he hissed, “that you’re interfering with the Almighty Creator of the universe? God put that oil in the bowels of the earth 80to burn the world at the last day and you, poor worm of the dust, are trying to thwart His plans!” No wonder the loud check in the Colonel’s barred pantaloons wilted at this unexpected outburst, which Drake often recounted with extreme gusto.

The night “Uncle Billy” Smith’s lantern ignited the tanks at the Drake well the blaze and smoke of the first oil-fire in Pennsylvania ascended high. A loud-mouthed professor of religion, whose piety was of the brand that needed close watching in a horse-trade, saw the sight and scampered to the hills shouting: “It’s the day of judgment!” How he proposed to dodge the reckoning, had his surmise been correct, the terrified victim could not explain when his fright subsided and friends rallied him on the scare.

The Drake well blazed the path in the wilderness that set petroleum on its triumphant march. This nation, already the most enlightened, was to be the most enlightening under the sun. An Atlantic of oil lay beneath its feet. America, its young, plump sister, could laugh at lean Europe. War raged and the old world sought to drain the republic of its gold. The United States exported mineral-fat and kept the yellow dross at home. Petroleum was crowned king, dethroning cotton and yielding a revenue, within four years of Drake’s modest strike, exceeding that from coal and iron combined! Talk of California’s gold-fever, Colorado’s silver-furore and Barney Barnato’s Caffir-mania.

American petroleum is a leading article of commerce, requiring hundreds of vessels to transport it to distant lands. Its refined product is known all over the civilized world. It has found its way to every part of Europe and the remotest portions of Asia. It shines on the western prairie, burns in the homes of New England and illumines miles of princely warehouses in the great cities of America. Everywhere is it to be met with, in the Levant and the Orient, in the hovel of the Russian peasant and the harem of the Turkish pasha. It is the one article imported from the United States and sold in the bazaars of Bagdad, the “City of the Thousand-and-One-Nights.” It lights the dwellings, the temples and the mosques amid the ruins of Babylon and Nineveh. It is the light of Abraham’s birthplace and of the hoary city of Damascus. It burns in the Grotto of the Nativity at Bethlehem, in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, on the Acropolis of Athens and the plains of Troy, in cottage and palace along the banks of the Bosphorus, the Euphrates, the Tigris and the Golden Horn. It has penetrated China and Japan, invaded the fastnesses of Tartary, reached the wilds of Australia and shed its radiance over African wastes. Pennsylvania petroleum is the true cosmopolite, omnipresent and omnipotent in fulfilling its mission of illuminating the universe! A product of nature that is such a controlling influence in the affairs of men may well challenge attention to its origin, its history and its economic uses.

All this from a three-inch hole seventy feet in the ground!

Colonel Drake used the first driving pipe.

Adolph Schreiner, of Austria, made the first petroleum-lamp.

The first oil-well drilled by steam power was opposite Tidioute, in 1860.

Jonathan Watson put down the first deep well on Oil Creek—2,130 feet—in 1866.

William Phillips boated the first cargo of oil down the Allegheny to Pittsburg in March, 1860.

The Chinese were the first to drill with tools attached to ropes, which they twisted from rattan.

The Liverpool Lamp, devised by an unknown Englishman, was the first to have a glass-chimney and do away with smoke.

The first tubing in oil-wells was manufactured at Pittsburg, with brass screw-joints soldered on the pipe, the same as at Tarentum salt-wells.

The first steamboat reached the mouth of Oil Creek in 1828, with a load of Pittsburgers. The first train crossed Oil Creek into Oil City on a track on the ice.

William A. Smith, who drilled the Drake well, made the first rimmer. While enlarging a well with a bit the point broke off, after which greater progress was noted. The accident suggested the rimmer.

The first white settler in the Pennsylvania oil-regions was John Frazier, who built a cabin at Wenango—Franklin—in 1745, kept a gun-shop and traded with the Indians until driven off by the French in 1753, the year of George Washington’s visit.

Jonathan Titus located at Titusville in 1797, on land made famous by the Drake well. In that year the first oil skimmed from Oil Creek to be marketed was sold at Pittsburg, then a collection of log-cabins, at sixteen dollars a gallon! Now people kick at half that many cents for the refined article.

Early well-owners found the tools and fuel, paid all expenses but labor and paid three-dollars-and-fifty-cents per foot to the contractor, yet so many contractors failed that a lien-law was passed. George Koch, in November of 1873, took out a patent on fluted drills, which did away with the rimmer, reduced the time of drilling a well from sixty days to twenty and reduced the price from three dollars per foot to fifty cents.cents.

Sam Taft was the first to use a line to control the engine from the derrick, at a well near McClintockville, in 1867. Henry Webber was the first to regulate the motion of the engine from the derrick. He drilled a well near Smoky City, on the Porter farm, in 1863, with a rod from the derrick to the throttle-valve. He also dressed the tools, with the forge in the derrick, perhaps the first time this was done. He drilled this well six-hundred feet with no help. Near this well was the first plank-derrick in the oil-country.

The first derricks were of poles, twelve feet base and twenty-eight to thirty feet high. The ladder was made by putting pins through a corner of a leg of the derrick. The Samson-post was mortised in the ground. The band-wheel was hung in a frame like a grindstone. A single bull-wheel, made out of about a thousand feet of lumber, placed on the side of the derrick next to the band-wheel, with a rope or old rubber-belt for a brake, was used. When the tools were let down the former would burn and smoke, the latter would smell like ancient codfish.

A Glance at a Pretty Settlement—Evans and His Wonderful Well—Heavy Oil at Franklin to Grease all the Wheels in Creation—Origin of a Popular Phrase—Operations on French Creek—Excitement at Fever Heat—Galena and Signal Oil-Works—Rise and Progress of a Great Industry—Crumbs Swept Up.

“The race was on, the souls of the racers were in it.”—Gen. Lew Wallace.

“Wild rumors are afloat in Jericho.”—J. L. Barlow.

“Carthage has crossed the Alps; Rome, the sea.”—Victor Hugo.

“There shall be no Alps.”—Napoleon.

“Gained the lead, and kept it, and steered his journey free.”—Will Carleton.

“A cargo of petroleum may cross the ocean in a vessel propelled by steam it has generated, acting upon an engine it lubricates and directed by an engineer who may grease his hair, limber his joints, and freshen his liver with the same article.”—Petrolia, A.D. 1870.

“Friction, not motion, is the great destroyer of machinery.”—Engineering Journal.

“Here was * * * a battle of Marengo to be gained.”—Balzac.

Cheap and abundant light the island-well on Oil Creek assured the nations sitting in darkness. If there are “tongues in trees” and “sermons in stones” the trickling stream of greenish liquid murmured: “Bring on your lamps—we can fill them!” The second oil-well in Pennsylvania, eighteen miles from Col. Drake’s, changed the strain to: “Bring on your wheels—we can grease them!” America was to be the world’s illuminator and lubricator—not merely to dispel gloom and chase hobgoblins, but to increase the power of machinery by decreasing the impediments to easy motion. Friction has cost enough for extra wear and stoppages and breakages “to buy every darkey forty acres and a mule.” The first coal-oil for sale in this country was manufactured at Waltham, Mass., in 1852, by Luther Atwood, who called it “Coup Oil,” from the recent coup of Louis Napoleon. Although highly esteemed as a lubricator, its offensive odor and poor quality would render it unmerchantable to-day. Samuel Downer’s hydro-carbon oils in 1856 were marked improvements, yet they would cut a sorry figure beside the unrivaled lubricant produced from the wells at Franklin, 84the county-seat of Venango. It is a coincidence that the petroleum era should have introduced light and lubrication almost simultaneously, one on Oil Creek, the other on French Creek, and both in a region comparatively isolated. “Misfortunes never come singly,” said the astounded father of twins, in a paroxysm of bewilderment; but happily blessings often come treading closely on each other’s heels.

Pleasantly situated on French Creek and the Allegheny River, Franklin is an interesting town, with a history dating from the middle of the eighteenth century. John Frazer, a gunsmith, occupied a hut and traded with the Indians in 1747. Four forts, one French, one British and two American, were erected in 1754, 1760, 1787 and 1796. Captain Joncaire commanded the French forces. George Washington, a British lieutenant, with no premonition of fathering a great country, visited the spot in 1753. The north-west was a wilderness and Pittsburg had not been laid out. Franklin was surveyed in 1795, created a borough in 1829 and a city in 1869, deriving its chief importance from petroleum. Lofty hills and winding streams are conspicuous. Spring-water is abundant, the air is invigorating and healthfulness is proverbial. James Johnston, a negro-farmer of Frenchcreek township, stuck it out for one-hundred-and-nine summers, lamenting that death got around six months too soon for him to attend the Philadelphia Centennial. Angus McKenzie, of Sugarcreek, whose strong-box served as a bank in early days, reached one-hundred-and-eight. Mrs. McDowell, a pioneer, was bright and nimble three years beyond the century-mark. Galbraith McMullen, of Waterloo, touched par. John Morrison, the first court-crier, rounded out ninety-eight. A successor, Robert Lytle, was summoned at eighty-seven, his widow living to celebrate her ninety-fourth birthday. David Smith succumbed at ninety-nine and WilliamWilliam Raymond at ninety-three. Mr. Raymond was straight as an arrow, walked smartly and in youth was the close friend of John J. Pearson, who began to practice law at Franklin and was President Judge of Dauphin county thirty-three years. J. B. Nicklin, fifty years a respected citizen, died in 1890 at eighty-nine. To the end he retained his mental and physical strength, kept the accounts of the Baptist church, was at his desk regularly and could hit the bullseye with the crack shots of the military company. William Hilands, county-surveyor, was a familiar figure on the streets at eighty-seven. Rev. Dr. Crane preached, lectured, visited the sick and continued to do good at eighty-six. Grandma Snyder is eighty-eight and Benjamin May, a few miles up the Allegheny, is hardy and hearty at ninety-one. At eighty-five “Uncle Billy” Grove, of Canal, would hunt deer in Forest county and walk farther and faster than any man in the township. The people who have rubbed fourscore would fill a ten-acre patch. Of course, some get sick and die young, or the doctors would starve, heaven would be short of youthful tenants and the theories of Malthus might have to be tried on.

Franklin boasts the finest stone side-walks in the State. There are imposing churches, shady parks, broad streets, cosy homes, spacious stores, first-class 85schools, fine hotels and inviting drives. For years the Baptist quartette has not been surpassed in New York or Philadelphia. The opera-house is a gem. Three railroads—a fourth is coming that will lop off sixty-five miles between New York and Chicago—and electric street-cars supply rapid transit. Five substantial banks, a half-dozen millionaires, two-dozen hundred-thousand-dollar-citizens and multitudes of well-to-do property-holders give the place financial backbone. Manufactures flourish, wages are liberal and many workmen own their snug houses. Probably no town in the United States, of seven-thousand population, has greater wealth, better society and a kindlier feeling clear through the community.

On the south bank of French Creek, at Twelfth and Otter streets, James Evans, blacksmith, had lived twenty years. A baby when his parents settled farther up in 1802, he removed to Franklin in 1839. His house stood near the “spring” from which Hulings and Whitman wrung out the viscid scum. In dry weather the well he dug seventeen feet for water smelled and tasted of petroleum. Tidings of Drake’s success set the blacksmith thinking. Drake had bored into the well close to the “spring” and found oil. Why not try the experiment at Franklin? Evans was not flush of cash, but the hardware-dealer trusted him for the iron and he hammered out rough drilling-tools. He and his son Henry rigged a spring-pole and bounced the drill in the water-well. At seventy-two feet a crevice was encountered. The tools dropped, breaking off a fragment of iron, which obstinately refused to be fished out. Pumping by hand would determine whether a prize or a blank was to be drawn in the greasian lottery. Two men plied the pump vigorously. A stream of dark-green fluid gushed forth at the rate of twenty-five barrels a day. It was heavy oil, about thirty degrees gravity, free from grit and smooth as silk. The greatest lubricant on earth had been unearthed!

Picture the pandemonium that followed. Franklin had no such convulsion since the William B. Duncan, the first steamboat, landed one Sunday evening in January, 1828. The villagers speeded to the well as though all the imps of sheol were in pursuit. November court adjourned in half the number of seconds Sut Lovingood’s nest of hornets broke up the African camp-meeting. Judge John S. McCalmont, whose able opinions the Supreme Court liked to adopt, decided there was ample cause for action. A doctor rushed to the scene hatless, coatless and shoeless. Women deserted their households without fixing their back-hair or getting inside their dress-parade toggery. Babies cried, children screamed, dogs barked, bells rang and two horses ran away. At prayer-meeting a ruling elder, whom the events of the day had wrought to fever-heat, raised a hilarious snicker by imploring God to “send a shower of blessings—yea, Lord, twenty-five barrels of blessings!” Altogether it was a red-letter forenoon, for twenty-five barrels a day of thirty-dollar oil none felt inclined to sneeze at.

That night a limb of the law, “dressed in his best suit of clothes,” called at the Evans domicile. Miss Anna, one of the fair daughters of the house, greeted him at the door and said jokingly: “Dad’s struck ile!” The expression caught the town, making a bigger hit than the well itself. It spread far and wide, was printed everywhere and enshrined permanently in the petroleum-vernacular. The young lady married Miles Smith, the eminent furniture-dealer, still trading on Thirteenth street. In 1875 Mr. Smith revisited his native England, after many years’ absence. Meeting a party of gentlemen at a friend’s house, the conversation turned upon Pennsylvania. “May I awsk, Mr. Smith,” a Londoner inquired, “if you hever ’eard in your ’ome about ‘dad’s stwuck ile’? I wead it 86in the papahs, doncherknow, but I fawncied it nevah weally ’appened.” Mr. Smith had “’eard” it and the delight of the company, when he recited the circumstances and told of marrying the girl, may be conceived. The phrase is billed for immortality.

Sufficient oil to pay for an engine was soon pumped. Steam-power increased the yield to seventy barrels! Franklin became the Mecca of speculators, traders, dealers and monied men. Frederic Prentice, a leader in aggressive enterprises, offered forty-thousand dollars for the well and lot. Evans rejected the bid and kept the well, which declined to ten or twelve barrels within six months. The price of oil shrank like a flannel-shirt, but the lucky disciple of Vulcan realized a nice competence. He enjoyed his good fortune some years before journeying to “that bourne from which no traveler e’er returns.” Mrs. Evans long survived, dying at eighty-six. The son removed to Kansas, three daughters died and one resides at Franklin. The old well experienced its complement of fluctuations. Mosely & Co., of Philadelphia, leased it. It stood idle, the engine was taken away, the rig tumbled and the hole filled up partially with dirt and wreckage. Prices spurted and the well was hitched to a pumping-rig operating others around it. Captain S. A. Hull ran a group of the wells on the flats and a dozen three miles down the Allegheny. He was a man of generous impulses, finely educated and exceedingly companionable. His death, in 1893, resulted in dismantling most of these wells, hardly a vestige remaining to tell that the Evans and its neighbors ever existed.

James Evans was not “left blooming alone” in the search for oily worlds to conquer. Companies were organized while he was yanking the tools in the well that “set ’em crazy.” The first of these—The Franklin Oil-and-Mining-Company—started work on October fifth, twenty rods below Evans, finding oil at two-hundred-and-forty-one feet on January twelfth, 1860. The well pumped about one-half as much as the Evans for several months, but did not die of old age. The forty-two shares of stock advanced ten-fold in one week, selling at a thousand dollars each. Three or four wells were put down, the company dissolving and members operating on their own hook. It was strongly officered, with Arnold Plumer as president; J. P. Hoover, vice-president; Aaron W. Raymond, secretary; James Bleakley, Robert Lamberton, R. A. Brashear, J. L. Hanna and Thomas Hoge, executive committee. Mr. Plumer was a dominant factor in Democratic politics, largely instrumental in the nomination of James Buchanan for President, twice a member of Congress, twice State-Treasurer, Canal-Commissioner and founder of the First-National Bank. At his death, in 1869, he devised his family an estate that appraised several million dollars, making it the largest in Venango county. Judge Lamberton opened the first bank in the oil-regions, owned hundreds of houses and in 1885 bequeathed each of his eight children a handsome fortune. Colonel Bleakley rose by his own exertions, keen foresight and skillful management. He invested in productive realty, drilled scores of wells around Franklin, built iron-tanks and brick-blocks, established a bank, held thousands of acres of lands and in 1884 left a very large inheritance to his sons and daughters. Mr. Raymond developed the Raymilton district—it was named from him—in which hundreds of fair wells have rewarded Franklin operators, and at eighty-nine was exceedingly quick in his movements. Mr. Brashear, a civil engineer and exemplary citizen, has been in the grave twenty years. Mr. Hanna operated heavily in oil, acquired numerous farms and erected the biggest block—it contained the first opera-house—in the city. He is handling real-estate, but his former partner, John Duffield, 87slumbers in the cemetery. Mr. Hoge, an influential politician, elected to the Legislature two terms and Mayor one term, has also joined the silent majority.

In February, 1860, Caldwell & Co., a block southeast of Evans, finished a paying well at two-hundred feet. The Farmers and Mechanics’ Company, Levi Dodd, president, drilled a medium producer at the foot of High street, on the bank of the creek. Mr. Dodd was an old settler, originator of the first Sabbath-school in Franklin and a ruling-elder for over fifty years. Numerous companies and individuals pushed work in the spring. Holes were sunk in front yards, gardens and water-wells. Derricks dotted the landscape thickly. Franklin was the objective point of immense crowds of people. The earliest wells were shallow, seldom exceeding two-hundred feet. The Mammoth, near a huge walnut tree back of the Evans lot, began flowing on May fifteenth to the tune of a hundred barrels. This was the first “spouter” in the district and it quadrupled the big excitement. Four-hundred barrels of oil were shipped to Pittsburg, by the steamboat Venango, on April twenty-seventh. Twenty-two wells were drilling and twenty producing on July first. Farms for miles up French Creek had been bought at high prices and the noise of the drill permeated the summer ozone. Four miles west of Franklin, zig-zag Sugar Creek shared in the activity. Then the prices “came down like a thousand of brick.” Pumping was expensive, lands were scarce and dear, hauling the oil to a railroad cost half its value and hosts of small wells were abandoned. On November first, within the borough limits, fifteen were yielding one-hundred-and-forty barrels. Curtz & Strain had bored five-hundred feet in October, the deepest well in the neighborhood, without finding additional oil-bearing rock. The Presidential election foreboded trouble, war-clouds loomed up and the year closed gloomily.

The advantages of Franklin heavy-oil as a lubricant were quickly recognized. It possessed a “body” that artificial oils could not rival. In the crude state it withstood a cold-test twenty degrees below zero. Here is where it “had the bulge” on alleged lubricants which solidify into a sort of liver with every twitch of frost. The producing-area of heavy-oil is restricted to a limited section, where the first sand is thirty to sixty feet thick and the lower sands were entirely omitted in the original distribution of strata. For years operators 88hugged the banks of the streams and the low grounds, keeping off the hills more willingly than General Coxey kept off the Washington grass. The famous “Point Hill,” across French Creek from the Evans well, went begging for a purchaser. At its southern base Mason & Lane, Cook & Co., Welsby & Smith, Shuster, Andrews, Green and others had profitable wells, but nobody dreamed of boring through the steep “Point” for oil. J. Lowry Dewoody offered the lordly hill, with its forty acres of dense evergreen-brush, to Charles Miller for fifteen-hundred dollars. He wanted the money to drill on the flats and the hill was an elephant on his hands.

During the Columbian Exposition an aged man alighted from a western train at the union-depot in Chicago. His rifle and his buckskin-suit indicated the Kit-Carson brand of hunter. He gazed about him in amazement and a crowd assembled. “Wal,” ejaculated the white-haired Nimrod, “this be Chicago, eh? Sixty years ago I killed lots ov game right whar we stan’ an’ old man Kinzey fell all over hisse’f to trade me a hunnerd acre ov land fur a pair ov cowhide boots! I might hev took him up, but, consarn it, I didn’t hev the boots!”

Something of this kind would apply to Mr. Miller and the Dewoody proposition. He had embarked in the business that was to bring him wealth and honor, but just at that time “didn’t hev” the fifteen-hundred to spare from his working-capital for the fun of owning a hill presumed to be worthless except for scenery. Colonel Bleakley and Dr. A. G. Egbert bought it later at a low figure. Operators scaled the slopes and hills and the first well on the “Point” was of the kind to whet the appetite for more. Bleakley & Egbert pocketed a keg of cold-cash from their wells and the royalty paid by lessees. Daniel Grimm’s production put him in the van of Franklin oilmen. He came to the town in 1861, had a dry-goods store in partnership with the late William A. Horton and in 1869 drilled his first well. W. J. Mattem and Edward Rial & Son had a rich slice. The foundation of a dozen fortunes was laid on the “Point,” which yields a few barrels daily, although only a shadow of its former self. From the western end of the hill thousands of tons of a peculiar shale have been manufactured into paving-brick, the hardest and toughest in America. A million dollars would not pay for the oil taken from the hill that found no takers at fifteen-hundred!

Dewoody, over whose grave the storms of a dozen winters have blown, was a singular character. He cared not a continental for style and was independent 89in speech and behavior. Bagging a term in the Legislature as a Democratic-Greenbacker, his rugged honesty was proof against the allurements of the lobbyists, jobbers and heelers who disgrace common decency. His most remarkable act was a violent assault on the Tramp-Bill, a measure cruel as the laws of Draco, which Rhoads of Carlisle contrived to pass. He paced the central aisle, spoke in the loudest key and gesticulated fiercely. Tossing his long auburn hair like a lion’s mane, he wound up his torrent of denunciation with terrible emphasis: “If Jesus Christ were on earth this monstrous bill would jerk him as a vagrant and dump him into the lock-up!”

Gradually developments crept north and east. The Galloway—its Dolly Varden well was a daisy—Lamberton and McCalmont farms were riddled with holes that repaid the outlay lavishly. Henry F. James drilled scores of paying wells on these tracts. In his youth he circled the globe on whaling voyages and learned coopering. Spending a few months at Pithole in 1865, he returned to Venango county in 1871, superintended the Franklin Pipe-Line five years and operated judiciously. He was active in agriculture and served three terms in the Legislature with distinguished fidelity. He defeated measures inimical to the oil-industry and promoted the passage of the Marshall Bill, by which pipe-lines were permitted to buy, sell or consolidate. This sensible law relieves pipe-lines in the older districts, where the production is very light, from the necessity of maintaining separate equipments at a loss or ruining hundreds of well-owners by tearing up the pipes for junk and depriving operators of transportation. The late Casper Frank, William Painter—he was killed at his wells—Dr. Fee, the Harpers, E. D. Yates and others extended the field into Sugarcreek township. Elliott, Nesbett & Bell’s first well on the Snyder farm, starting at thirty barrels and settling down to regular work at fifteen, elongated the Galloway pool and brought adjoining lands into play. Kunkel & Newhouse, Stock & Co., Mitchell & Parker, Crawford & Dickey, Dr. Galbraith and M. O’Connor kept many sets of tools from rusting. The extension to the Carter and frontier-farms developed oil of lighter gravity, but a prime lubricator. Mrs. Harold, a Chicago lady, dreamed a certain plot, which she beheld distinctly, would yield heavy-oil in abundance. She visited Franklin, traversed the district a mile in advance of developed territory, saw the land of her dream, bargained for it, drilled wells and obtained “lashin’s of oil!” Still there are bipeds in bifurcated garments who declare woman’s “sphere” is the kitchen, with dish-washing, sock-darning and meal-getting as her highest “rights!”

Jacob Sheasley, who came from Dauphin county in 1860 and branched into oil in 1864, is the largest operator in the bailiwick. He drilled at Pithole, Parker, Bradford, on all sides of Franklin and put down a hundred wells the last two years. He enlarged the boundaries of the lubricating section by leasing lands previously condemned and sinking test-wells in 1893-4, with gratifying results. Rarely missing his guess on territory, he has been almost invariably fortunate. His son, George R., has operated in Venango and Butler counties and owns a bunch of desirable wells on Bully Hill, with his brother Charles as partner. The father and two sons are “three of a kind” hard to beat.

A mile north of Franklin, in February of 1870, the Surprise well on Patchel Run, a streamlet bearing the name of the earliest hat-maker, surprised everybody by its output. It foamed and gassed and frothed excessively, filling the pipe with oil and water. Throngs tramped the turnpike over the toilsome hill to look at the boiling, fuming tank into which the well belched its contents. “Good for four-hundred barrels” was the verdict. A party of us hurried from Oil Creek 90to judge for ourselves. Although the estimate was six times too great, a lease of adjacent lands would not be bad to take. Rev. Mr. Johns, retired pastor of the Presbyterian church at Spartansburg, Crawford county, had charge of the property. My acquaintance with Mr. Johns devolved upon me the duty of negotiating for the tract. He received me graciously and would be pleased to lease twenty acres for one-half the oil and one-thousand dollars an acre bonus! Br’er John’s exalted notions soared far too high to be entertained seriously. The Surprise fizzled down to four or five barrels in a week and the good minister—for twenty years he has been enjoying his treasure in heaven—never fingered a penny from his land save the royalty of two or three small wells.

Major W. T. Baum has operated in the heavy-oil field thirty-two years, beginning in 1864. He passed through the Pithole excitement and drilled largely at Foster, Pleasantville, Scrubgrass, Bullion, Gas City, Clarion, Butler and Tarkiln. His faith in Scrubgrass territory has been recompensed richly. In 1894 he sank a well on the west bank of the Allegheny, opposite Kennerdell Station, in hope of a ten-barrel strike. It pumped one-hundred-and-fifty barrels a day for months and it is doing fifty barrels to-day, with three more of similar caliber to keep it company! The Major’s persevering enterprise deserves the reward Dame Fortune is bestowing. He owns the wells and lands on Patchel Run, which yield a pleasant revenue. Colonel J. H. Cain, Colonel L. H. Fassett and J. W. Grant, all successful operators, have their wells in the vicinity. Modern devices connect wells far apart, by coupling them with rods two to ten feet above ground, so that a single engine can pump thirty or forty in shallow territory. The downward stroke of one helps the upward stroke of the other, each pair nearly balancing. This enables the owners of small wells to pump them at the least expense. Heavy-oil has sold for years at three-sixty to four dollars a barrel, consequently a quarter-barrel apiece from forty wells, handled by one man and engine, would exceed the income from a quarter-million dollars salted down in government bonds. It is worth traveling a long distance to stand on the hill and watch the pumping of Baum’s, Grimm’s, Cain’s, Grant’s, Sheasley’s and James’s wells, some of them a mile from the power that sets the strings of connecting-rods in motion.

On Two-Mile Run, up the Allegheny two miles, W. S. McMullan drilled several wells in 1871-2. The product was the blackest of black oils, indicating a deposit separated from the main reservoir of the lubricating region. Subsequent 91operations demonstrated that a dry streak intervened. Captain L. L. Ray put down fair wells near the river in 1894. Mr. McMullan resided at Rouseville and had valuable interests on Oil Creek. He served a term in the State Senate, reflecting honor upon himself and his constituents. A man of integrity and capacity, he could be trusted implicitly. Fifteen years ago he removed to Missouri to engage in lumbering. Senator McMullan, Captain WilliamWilliam Hasson, member of Assembly, and Judge Trunkey, who presided over the court and later graced the Supreme Bench, were three Venango-county men in public life whom railroad-passes never swerved from the path of duty. They refused all such favors and paid their way like gentlemen. If lawgivers and judges of their noble impress were the rule rather than the exception—“a consummation devoutly to be wished”—grasping corporations would not own legislatures and “drive a coach and four” through any enactment with impunity.

George P. Smith’s tract of land between Franklin and Two-Mile Run netted him a competence in oil and then sold for one-hundred-thousand dollars. Mr. Smith dispenses liberally to charitable objects, assists his friends and uses his wealth properly. He owns his money, instead of letting it own him. He has traveled much, observed closely and profited by what he has seen and read. He is verging on fourscore, his home is in Philadelphia and “the world will be the better for his having lived in it.”

The production of heavy-oil in 1875 aggregated one-hundred-and-thirty-thousand barrels. In 1877 it dropped to eighty-eight-thousand barrels and in 1878 to seventy thousand. Thirteen-hundred wells produced sixty-thousand barrels in 1883. Taft & Payn’s pipe-line was laid in 1870 from the Egbert and Dewoody tracts to the river, extended to Galloway in 1872 and combined with the Franklin line in 1878. The Producers’ Pipe-Line Company began to transport oil in 1883. J. A. Harris, who died in 1894, had the first refinery in the oil-regions in 1860. His plant was extremely primitive. Colonel J. P. Hoover built the first refinery of note, which burned in the autumn of 1861. Sims & Whitney had one in 1861 and the Norfolk Oil-Works were established the same year, below the Allegheny bridge. Samuel Spencer, of Scranton, expended thirty-thousand dollars on the Keystone Oil-Works, near the cemetery, in 1864. Nine refineries, most of them running the lighter oils, were operated in 1854-5, after which the business collapsed for years. Dr. Tweddle, a Pittsburg refiner who had suffered by fire, organized a company in 1872 to start the Eclipse Works. At different periods many of the local operators have been interested in refining, now the leading Franklin industry.

For some time heavy-oil was used principally in its natural state. At length improvements of great value were devised, out of which have grown the oil-works devoted solely to the manufacture of lubricants. Among these the most important and successful was that adopted in 1869 by Charles Miller, of Franklin, protected by letters-patent of the United States and since by patents covering the complete method. Besides improvements in the method of manufacturing, he recognized the value of lead-oxide as an ingredient in lubricating oils and a patent was secured for the combination of whale-oil, oxide of lead and petroleum. The Great-Northern Oil-Company, once a big organization, had built a refinery in 1865 on the north bank of French Creek, below the Evans Well, and leased it in 1868 to Colonel Street. In May of 1869 Mr. Miller and John Coon purchased the Point Lookout Oil-Works, as the refinery was called, Street retiring. The total tankage was one-thousand barrels and the daily manufacturing capacity scarcely one-hundred. The new firm, of which R. L. Cochran 92became a member in July, pushed the business with characteristic energy, doubling the plant and extending the trade in all directions. Mr. Cochran withdrew in January of 1870, R. H. Austin buying his interest. The following August fire destroyed the works, entailing severe loss. A calamity that would have disheartened most men seemed only to imbue the partners with fresh vigor. Colonel Henry B. Plumer, a wealthy citizen of Franklin, entered the firm and the Dale light-oil refinery, a half-mile up the creek, was bought and remodeled throughout. Reorganized on a solid basis as the “Galena Oil-Works,” a name destined to gain world-wide reputation, within one month from the fire the new establishment, its buildings and entire equipment changed and adapted to the treatment of heavy-oil, was running to its full capacity night and day! Such enterprise and pluck augured happily for the future and they have been rewarded abundantly.

Orders poured in more rapidly than ever. The local demand spread to the adjoining districts. Customers once secured were sure to stay. In addition to the excellence of the product, there was a vim about the business and its management that inspired confidence and won patronage. Messrs. Coon, Austin and Plumer disposed of their interest, at a handsome figure, to the Standard Oil Company in 1878. The Galena Oil-Works, Limited, was chartered and continued the business, with Mr. Miller as president. Increasing demands necessitated frequent enlargements of the works, which now occupy five acres of ground. Every appliance that ingenuity and experience can suggest has been provided, securing uniform grades of oil with unfailing precision.

The machinery and appurtenances are the best money and skill can supply. The same sterling traits that distinguished the smaller firm have all along marked the progress of the newer and larger enterprise. The standard of its products is always strictly first-class, hence patrons are never disappointed in the quality of any of the celebrated Galena brands of “Engine,” “Coach,” “Car,” “Machinery,” or “Lubricating” oils. Steadfast adherence to this cardinal principle has borne its legitimate fruit. Railway-oils are manufactured exclusively. The daily capacity is three-thousand barrels. “Galena Oils” are used on over ninety per cent. of the railway-mileage of the United States, Canada and Mexico. Such patronage has never before been gained by any one establishment and it is the result of positive merit. The Franklin district furnishes more and better lubricating oil than all the rest of the continent and the Galena treatment brings it to the highest measure of perfection. Reflect for a moment upon the enormous expansion of the Galena Works and see what earnest, faithful, intelligent effort and straightforward dealing may accomplish.

The first three railroads that tried the “Galena Oils” in 1869 have used none other since. Could stronger proof of their excellence be desired? It was a pleasing novelty for railway-managers to find a lubricant that would neither freeze in winter nor dissipate in summer and they made haste to profit by the experience. The severest tests served but to place it far beyond all competition. At twenty degrees below zero it would not congeal, while the fiercest heat of the tropical sun affected it hardly a particle. As the natural consequence it speedily superseded all others on the principal railroads of the country. The axles of the magnificent Pullman and Wagner coaches on the leading lines have their friction reduced to the minimum by “Galena Oil.” It adds immeasurably to the smoothness and speed of railway-travel between the Atlantic and the Pacific, from Maine to the Isthmus, from British Columbia to Florida. Passengers detained by a “hot box” and annoyed by the fumes of rancid grease frying in the 93trucks beneath their feet may be certain that the offending railways do not use “Galena Oil.” The “Galena” is not constructed on that plan, but stands alone and unapproachable as the finest lubricator of the nineteenth century.

This is a record-breaking age. The world’s record for fast time on a railroad was again captured from the English on September eleventh, 1895. The New-York-Central train, which left New York that morning, accomplished the trip to Buffalo at the greatest speed for a continuous journey of any train over any railroad in the world. The distance—four-hundred-and-thirty-six miles—was covered in four-hundred-and-seven minutes, a rate of sixty-four-and-one-third miles per hour. Until that feat the English record of sixty-three-and-one-fifth miles an hour for five-hundred miles was the fastest. In other words, the American train of four heavy cars, hauled to Albany by engine No. 999, the famous World’s Fair locomotive, smashed the English record more than a mile an hour, in the teeth of a stiff head-wind. Father Time, who has insisted for many years that travelers spend at least twenty-four hours on the journey between Chicago and New York, received a fatal shock on October twenty-fourth, 1895. Two men who left Chicago at three-thirty in the morning visited five theatres in New York that night! A special New-York-Central train, with Vice-President Webb and a small party of Lake-Shore officials, ran the nine-hundred-and-eighty miles in seventeen-and-three-quarter hours, averaging sixty-five miles an hour to Buffalo, beating all previous long-distance runs. For the first time copies of Chicago newspapers, brought by gentlemen on the train, were seen in New York on the day of their publication. Every axle, every journal, every box, every wheel of both these trains, from the front of the locomotive to the rear of the hind-coach, was lubricated with “Galena Oil.”

Later a train in Scotland, keeping step with the oatmeal-and-haggis fad that has deluged the land with Highland-dialect tales, snatched the garland by adding a mile or more to the Central’s achievement. The Scottish triumph was very brief. “Ian McLaren,” Barree and Crockett might shine in literature, but no foreign line could be permitted to fix the record for railroad-speed. Engineer Charles H. Fahl, of the Reading system, believed American railways to be the best on earth and backed up his opinion by solid proof. During the past summer he ran the famous flyer between Camden and Atlantic City the entire season on time every trip. The train, scheduled to travel the fifty-six miles in fifty-two minutes, always started at least two minutes late, owing to the ferryboats not connecting promptly. Yet Engineer Fahl made up this loss and reached Atlantic City a trifle ahead of time, without missing once. The trips averaged forty-eight minutes, or a fraction above sixty-nine miles an hour! This was not one experimental test, but a regular run day after day the whole season, generally with six passenger-coaches crowded from end to end. Week in and week out the flyer sped across the sandy plains of New Jersey, with never a skip or a break, at the pace which placed the record of Train 25, of the Atlantic-City branch of the Reading Railroad, upon the top rung of the ladder. This performance, unequaled in railway-history at home or abroad, brought Engineer Fahl a commendatory letter from Vice-President Theodore Voorhees. It was rendered possible only by the exclusive use, on locomotive and coaches alike, of the Galena Oils, which prevented the hot-journals and excessive friction that are fatal to speed-records.

The works are situated in the very heart of the heavy-oil district. Two railroads, with a third in prospect, and a paved street front the spacious premises. The main building is of brick, covering about an acre and devoted chiefly 94to the handling of oil for manufacture or in course of preparation, the repairing and painting of barrels and the accommodation of the engines and machinery. To the rear stands a substantial brick-structure, containing the steam-boilers, the electric-light outfit and the huge agitators in which the oil is treated. Big pumps next force the fluid into large vessels, where it is submitted to a variety of special processes, which finally leave it ready for the consumer. A dozen iron-tanks, each holding many thousand barrels, receive and store crude to supply the works for months. As this is piped directly from the wells the largest orders are filled with the utmost dispatch. Nothing is lacking that can ensure superiority. The highest wages are paid and every employee is an American citizen or proposes to become one. The men are regarded as rational, responsible beings, with souls to save and bodies to nourish, and treated in accordance with the Golden Rule. They are well-fed, well-housed, prosperous and contented. A strike, or a demand for higher wages or shorter hours, is unknown in the history of this model institution. Is it surprising that each year adds to its vast trade and wonderful popularity? The unrivalled “Galena Oil-Works,” of Franklin, Venango county, Pennsylvania, must be ranked among the most noteworthy representative industries of Uncle Sam’s splendid domain.

The Signal Oil-Works, Franklin, manufacture Sibley’s Perfection Valve-Oil for locomotive-cylinders and Perfection Signal-Oil. More than twenty-five years ago Joseph C. Sibley commenced experimenting with petroleum-oils for use in steam-cylinders under high pressure. He found that where the boiler-pressure was not in excess of sixty pounds the proper lubrication of a steam-cylinder with petroleum was a matter of little or no difficulty. With increase in pressure came increase in temperature. As a result the oil vaporized and passed through the exhaust. The destruction of steam-chests and cylinders through fatty acids incident to tallow, or tallow and lard-oils, cost millions of dollars annually; but it was held as a cardinal point in mechanical engineering that these were the only proper steam-lubricants. Mr. Sibley carried on his experiments for years. He conversed with leading superintendents-of-machinery in the United States and with leading chemists. Almost invariably he was laughed at when asserting his determination to produce a product of petroleum, free from fatty acids, capable of better lubrication even than the tallow then in use. Many of his 95friends in the oil-business, who thought they understood the nature of petroleum, expressed the deepest sympathy with Mr. Sibley’s hallucination. Amid partial successes, interspersed with many failures, he continued the experiments. So incredulous were chemists and superintendents-of-machinery, so fearful of disasters to their machinery through the use of such a compound, that he had in many instances to guarantee to assume any damages which might occur to a locomotive through its use. He rode thousands of miles upon locomotives, watching the use of the oil, daily doubling the distance made by engineers. Success at last crowned his efforts and the Perfection Valve-Oil has been for nearly twenty years the standard lubricant of valves and cylinders. To-day there is scarcely a locomotive in the United States that does not use some preparation of petroleum and the steam-chests and cylinders of more than three-fourths of all in the United States are lubricated with Perfection Valve-Oil.

The results have been astounding. Destruction of steam-joints by fatty acids from valve-lubricants is now an unknown thing. Not only this, but as a lubricant the Perfection Valve-Oil has proved itself so much superior that, where valve-seats required facing on an average once in sixty days, they do not now require facing on an average once in two years. The steam-pressure carried upon the boilers at that time rarely exceeded one-hundred-and-twenty pounds. With the increase of pressure and the corresponding increase of temperature it was found next to impossible to properly lubricate the valves and cylinders to prevent cutting. The superintendent-of-machinery of a leading American railway sent for Mr. Sibley at one time, told him that he proposed to build passenger-locomotives carrying one-hundred-and-eighty pounds pressure and asked if he would undertake to lubricate the valves and cylinders under that pressure. The reply was: “Go ahead. We will guarantee perfect lubrication to a pressure very much higher than that.” And to-day the higherhigher type of passenger-locomotives carry one-hundred-and-eighty pounds pressure regularly.

When it was clearly demonstrated that the Perfection Valve-Oil was a success, oil-men who had pronounced it impossible and had been backed in their opinion by noted chemists commenced to make oils similar to it in appearance. While many of them may have much confidence in their own product, the highest testimonial ever paid to Perfection Valve-Oil is that no competitor claims he has its superior. Some urge their product with the assurance that it is the equal of Perfection Valve-Oil, thus unconsciously paying the highest tribute possible to the latter.

The works also make Perfection Signal-Oil for use in railway-lamps and lanterns. Since 1869 this oil has been before the public. It is in daily use in more than three-fourths of the railway-lanterns of the United States and it is the proud boast of Mr. Sibley that, during that time, there has never occurred an accident which has cost either a human limb or life or the destruction of one penny’s worth of property, through the failure of this oil to perform its work perfectly. Making but the two products, Valve and Signal-Oils, catering to no other than railroad-trade, studying carefully the demands of the service, keeping in touch with the latest developments of locomotive-engineering and thoroughly acquainted with the properties of all petroleum in Pennsylvania, the company may well believe that, granted the possession of equal natural abilities with competitors, under the circumstances it is entitled to lead all others in the production of these two grades of oils for railroad-use.

Hon. Charles Miller, president of the Galena Oil-Works, and Hon. Joseph C. Sibley, president of the Signal Oil-Works, are brothers-in-law and proprietors 96of the great stock-farms of Miller & Sibley. Mr. Miller is of Huguenot ancestry, born in Alsace, France, in 1843. The family came to this country in 1854, settling on a farm near Boston, Erie county, New York. At thirteen Charles clerked one year in the village-store for thirty-five dollars and board. He clerked in Buffalo at seventeen for one-hundred-and-seventy-five dollars, without board. In 1861 he enlisted in the New-York National Guard. In 1863 he was mustered into the United States service and married at Springville, N. Y., to Miss Ann Adelaide Sibley, eldest child of Dr. Joseph C. Sibley. In 1864 he commenced business for himself, in the store in which he had first clerked, with his own savings of two-hundred dollars and a loan of two-thousand from Dr. Sibley. In 1866 he sold the store and removed to Franklin. Forming a partnership with John Coon of Buffalo, the firm carried on a large dry-goods house until 1869, when a patent for lubricating oil and a refinery were purchased and the store was closed out at heavy loss. The refinery burned down the next year, new partners were taken in and in 1878 the business was organized in its present form as “The Galena Oil-Works, Limited.” The entire management was given Mr. Miller, who had built up an immense trade and retained his interest in the works. He deals directly with consumers. Since 1870 his business-trips have averaged five days a week and fifty-thousand miles a year of travel. No man has a wider acquaintance and more personal friends among railroad-officials. His journeys cover the United States and Mexico. Wherever he may be, in New Orleans or San Francisco, on the train or in the hotel, conferring with a Vanderbilt or the humblest manager of an obscure road, receiving huge orders or aiding a deserving 97cause, he is always the same genial, magnetic, generous exemplar of practical belief in “the universal fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.”

Major Miller is one whom money does not spoil. He is the master, not the servant, of his wealth. He uses it to extend business, to foster enterprise, to further philanthropy, to alleviate distress and to promote the comfort and happiness of all about him. His benefactions keep pace with his increasing prosperity. He is ever foremost in good deeds. He gives thousands of dollars yearly to worthy objects, to the needy, to churches, to schools, to missions and to advance the general welfare. In 1889 he established a free night-school for his employés and the youth of Franklin, furnishing spacious rooms with desks and apparatus and engaging four capable teachers. This school has trained hundreds of young men for positions as accountants, book-keepers, stenographers and clerks. The First Baptist church, which he assisted in organizing, is the object of his special regard. He bore a large share of the cost of the brick-edifice, the lecture-room and the parsonage. He and Mr. Sibley have donated the massive pipe-organ, maintained the superb choir, paid a good part of the pastor’s salary, erected a branch-church and supported the only services in the Third Ward. For twenty-five years Mr. Miller has been superintendent of the Sabbath-school, which has grown to a membership of six-hundred. His Bible-class of three-hundred men is equalled in the state only by John Wanamaker’s, in Philadelphia, and James McCormick’s, in Harrisburg. The instruction is scriptural, pointed and business-like, with no taint of bigotry or sectarianism. No matter how far away Saturday may find him, the faithful teacher never misses the class that is “the apple of his eye,” if it be possible to reach home. Often he has hired an engine to bring him through on Saturday night, in order to meet the adult pupils of all denominations who flock to hear his words of wisdom and encouragement. Alike in conversation, teaching and public-speaking he possesses the faculty of interesting his listeners and imparting something new. He has raised the fallen, picked poor fellows out of the gutter, rescued the perishing and set many wanderers in the straight path. Not a few souls, “plucked as brands from the burning,” owe their salvation to the kindly sympathy and assistance of this earnest layman. Eternity alone will reveal the incalculable benefit of his night-school, his Bible-class, his church-work, his charity, his personal appeals to the erring and his unselfish life to the community and the world.

Twice Mr. Miller served as mayor of Franklin. Repeatedly has he declined nominations to high offices, private affairs demanding his time and attention. He is president or director of a score of commercial and industrial companies, with factories, mines and works in eight states. He has been president time after time of the Northwestern Association of Pennsylvania of the Grand Army of the Republic, Ordnance-Officer and Assistant Adjutant-General of the Second Brigade of Pennsylvania and Commander of Mays Post. He is a leading spirit in local enterprises. He enjoys his beautiful home and the society of his wife and children and friends. He prizes good horses, smokes good cigars and tells good stories. In him the wage-earner and the breadwinner have a steadfast helper, willing to lighten their burden and to better their condition. In short, Charles Miller is a typical American, plucky, progressive, energetic and invincible, with a heart to feel, genius to plan and talent to execute the noblest designs.

Hon. Joseph Crocker Sibley, eldest son of Dr. Joseph Crocker Sibley, was born at Friendship, N.Y.,N.Y., in 1850. His father’s death obliging him to give up 98a college-course for which he had prepared, in 1866 he came to Franklin to clerk in Miller & Coon’s dry-goods store. From that time his business interests and Mr. Miller’s were closely allied. In 1870 he married Miss Metta E. Babcock, daughter of Simon M. Babcock, of Friendship. He was agent of the Galena Oil-Works at Chicago for two years, losing his effects and nearly losing his life in the terrible fire that devastated that city. His business-success may be said to date from 1873, when he returned to Franklin. After many experiments he produced a signal-oil superior in light, safety and cold-test to any in use. The Signal Oil-Works were established, with Mr. Sibley as president and the proprietors of the Galena Oil-Works, whose plant manufactured the new product, as partners. Next he compounded a valve-oil for locomotives, free from the bad qualities of animal-oils, which is now used on three-fourths of the railway mileage of the United States.

Every newspaper-reader in the land has heard of the remarkable Congressional fight of 1892 in the Erie-Crawford district. Both counties were overwhelmingly Republican. People learned with surprise that Hon. Joseph C. Sibley, a resident of another district, had accepted the invitation of a host of good citizens, by whom he was selected as the only man who could lead them to victory over the ring, to try conclusions with the nominee of the ruling party, who had stacks of money, the entire machine, extensive social connections, religious associations—he was a preacher—and a regular majority of five-thousand to bank upon. Some wiseacres shook their heads gravely and predicted disaster. Such persons understood neither the resistless force of quickened public sentiment nor the sterling qualities of the candidate from Venango county. Democrats, Populists and Prohibitionists endorsed Sibley. He conducted a campaign worthy of Henry Clay. Multitudes crowded to hear and see a man candid enough to deliver his honest opinions with the boldness of “Old Hickory.” The masses knew of Mr. Sibley’s courage, sagacity and success in business, but they were unprepared to find so sturdy a defender of their rights. His manly independence, ringing denunciations of wrong, grand simplicity and incisive logic aroused unbounded enthusiasm. The tide in favor of the fearless advocate of fair-play for the lowliest creature no earthly power could stem. His opponent was buried out of sight and Sibley was elected by a sweeping majority.

Mr. Sibley’s course in Congress amply met the expectations of his most ardent supporters. The prestige of his great victory, added to his personal magnetism and rare geniality, at the very outset gave him a measure of influence few members ever attain. During the extra-session he expressed his views with characteristic vigor. A natural leader, close student and keen observer, he did not wait for somebody to give him the cue before putting his ideas on record. In the silver-discussion he bore a prominent part, opposing resolutely the repeal of the Sherman act. His wonderful speech “set the ball rolling” for those who declined to follow the administration program. The House was electrified by Sibley’s effort. Throughout his speech of three hours he was honored with the largest Congressional audience of the decade. Aisles, halls, galleries and corridors were densely packed. Senators came from the other end of the Capitol to listen to the brave Pennsylvanian who dared plead for the white metal. For many years Mr. Sibley has been a close student of political and social economics and he so grouped his facts as to command the undivided attention and the highest respect of those who honestly differed from him in his conclusions. Satire, pathos, bright wit and pungent repartee awoke in his hearers the strongest 99emotions, entrancing the bimetalists and giving their enemies a cold chill, as the stream of eloquence flowed from lips “untrained to flatter, to dissemble or to play the hypocrite.” Thenceforth the position of the representative of the Twenty-sixth district was assured, despite the assaults of hireling journals and discomfited worshippers of the golden calf.

He took advanced ground on the Chinese question, delivering a speech replete with patriotism and common-sense. An American by birth, habit and education, he prefers his own country to any other under the blue vault of heaven. The American workman he would protect from pauper immigration and refuse to put on the European or Asiatic level. He stands up for American skill, American ingenuity, American labor and American wages. Tariff for revenue he approves of, not a tariff to diminish revenue or to enrich one class at the expense of all. The tiller of the soil, the mechanic, the coal-miner, the coke-burner and the day-laborer have found him an outspoken champion of their cause. Small wonder is it that good men and women of all creeds and parties have abiding faith in Joseph C. Sibley and would fain bestow on him the highest office in the nation’s gift.

Human nature is a queer medley and sometimes manifests streaks of envy and meanness in queer ways. Mr. Sibley’s motives have been impugned, his efforts belittled, his methods assailed and his neckties criticised by men who could not understand his lofty character and purposes. The generous ex-Congressman must plead guilty to the charge of wearing clothes that fit him, of smoking decent cigars, of driving fine horses and of living comfortably. Of course it would be cheaper to buy hand-me-down misfits, to indulge in loud-smelling tobies, to walk or ride muleback, to curry his own horses and let his wife do the washing instead of hiring competent helpers. But he goes right ahead increasing his business, improving his farms, developing American trotters and furnishing work at the highest wages to willing hands in his factories, at his oil-wells, on his lands, in his barns and his hospitable home. He dispenses large sums in charity. His benevolence and enterprise reach far beyond Pennsylvania. He does not hoard up money to loan it at exorbitant rates. As a matter of fact, from the hundreds of men he has helped pecuniarily he never accepted one penny of interest. He has been mayor of Franklin, president of the Pennsylvania State-Dairymen’s Association, director of the American Jersey-Cattle Club and member of the State Board of Agriculture. He is a brilliant talker, a profound thinker, a capital story-teller and a loyal friend. “May he live long and prosper!”

Miller & Sibley’s Prospect-Hill Stock-Farm is one of the largest, best equipped and most favorably known in the world. Different farms comprising the establishment include a thousand acres of land adjacent to Franklin and a farm, with stabling for two-hundred horses and the finest kite-track in the United States, at Meadville. On one of these farms is the first silo built west of the Allegheny mountains. Trotting stock, Jersey cattle, Shetland ponies and Angora goats of the highest grades are bred. For Michael Angelo, when a calf six weeks old, twelve-thousand-five-hundred dollars in cash were paid A. B. Darling, proprietor of the Fifth-Avenue Hotel, New York City. Animals of the best strain were purchased, regardless of cost. In 1886 Mr. Sibley bought from Senator Leland Stanford, of California, for ten-thousand dollars, the four-year-old trotting-stallion St. Bel. Seventy-five thousand were offered for him a few weeks before the famous sire of numerous prize-winners died. Cows that have broken all records for milk and butter, and horses that have won the biggest 100purses on the leading race-tracks of the country are the results of the liberal policy pursued at Prospect-Hill. Charles Marvin, the prince of horsemen, superintends the trotting department and E. H. Sibley is manager of all the Miller & Sibley interests. Hundreds of the choicest animals are raised every year. Prospect-Hill Farm is one of the sights of Franklin and the enterprise represents an investment not far short of one-million dollars. Wouldn’t men like Charles Miller and Joseph C. Sibley sweep away the cobwebs, give business an impetus and infuse new life and new ideas into any community?

Franklin had tallied one for heavy-oil, but its resources were not exhausted. On October seventeenth, 1859, Colonel James P. Hoover, C. M. Hoover and Vance Stewart began to drill on the Robert-Brandon—now the Hoover—farm of three-hundred acres, in Sandycreek township, on the west bank of the Allegheny river, three miles south of Franklin. They found oil on December twenty-first, the well yielding one-hundred barrels a day! This pretty Christmas gift was another surprise. Owing to its distance from “springs” and the two wells—Drake and Evans—already producing, the stay-in-the-rut element felt confident that the Hoover Well would not “amount to a hill of beans.” It was “piling Ossa on Pelion” for the well to produce, from the second sand, oil with properties adapted to illumination and lubrication. The Drake was for light, the Evans for grease and the Hoover combined the two in part. Where and when was this variegated dissimilarity to cease? Perhaps its latest phase is to come shortly. Henry F. James is beginning a well south-west of town, on the N. B. Myers tract, between a sweet and a sour spring. Savans, scientists, beer-drinkers, tee-totalers and oil-operators are on the ragged edge of suspense, some hoping, some fearing, some praying that James may tap a perennial fount of creamy ’alf-and-’alf.

Once at a drilling-well on the “Point” the tools dropped suddenly. The driller relieved the tension on his rope and let the tools down slowly. They descended six or eight feet! The bare thought of a crevice of such dimensions paralyzed the knight of the temper-screw, all the more that the hole was not to the first sand. What a lake of oil must underlie that derrick! He drew up the tools. They were dripping amber fluid, which had a flavor quite unlike petroleum. Did his nose deceive him? It was the aroma of beer! A lick of the stuff confirmed the nasal diagnosis—it had the taste of beer! The alarm was sounded and the sand-pump run down. It came up brimming over with beer! Ten times the trip was repeated with the same result. Think of an ocean of the delicious, foamy, appetizing German beverage! Word was sent to the owners of the well, who ordered the tubing to be put in. They tried to figure how many breweries the production of their well would retire. Pumping was about to begin, in presence of a party of impatient, thirsty spectators, when an excited Teuton, blowing and puffing, was seen approaching at a breakneck pace. Evidently he had something on his mind. “Gott in Himmel!” he shrieked, “you vas proke mit Grossman’s vault!” The mystery was quickly explained. Philip Grossman, the brewer, had cut a tunnel a hundred feet into the hill-side to store his liquid-stock in a cool place. The well chanced to be squarely over this tunnel, the roof of which the tools pierced and stove in the head of a tun of beer! Workmen who came for a load were astonished to discover one end of a string of tubing dangling in the tun. It dawned upon them that the drillers three-hundred feet above must have imagined they struck a crevice and a messenger speeded to the well. The saddened crowd slinked off, muttering words that would not look nice in print. The tubing was withdrawn, the hogshead 101was shoved aside, the tools were again swung and two weeks later the well was pumping thirty barrels a day of unmistakable heavy-oil.

The Hoover strike fed the flame the Evans Well had kindled. Lands in the neighborhood were in demand on any terms the owners might impose. From Franklin to the new well, on both sides of the Allegheny, was the favorite choice, on a theory that a pool connected the deposits. Leases were snapped up at one-half royalty and a cash-bonus. Additional wells on the Hoover rivaled No. 1, which produced gamely for four years. The tools were stuck in cleaning it out and a new well beside it started at sixty barrels. The “Big-Emma Vein” was really an artery to which for years “whoa, Emma!” did not apply. Bissell & Co. and the Cameron Petroleum-Company secured control of the property, on which fifteen wells were producing two-hundred barrels ten years from the advent of the Hoover & Vance. Harry Smith, a city-father, is operating on the tract and drilling paying wells at reasonable intervals. Colonel James P. Hoover died on February fourth, 1871, aged sixty-nine. Born in Centre county, he settled in the southern part of Clarion, was appointed by Governor Porter in 1839 Prothonotary of Venango county and removed to Franklin. The people elected him to the same office for three years and State-Senator in 1844. The Canal-Commissioners in 1851 appointed him collector of the tolls at Hollidaysburg, Blair county, for five years. He filled these positions efficiently, strict adherence to principle and a high sense of duty marking his whole career. The esteem and confidence he enjoyed all through his useful life were attested by universal regret at his death and the largest funeral ever witnessed in Franklin. His estimable widow survived Colonel Hoover twenty years, dying at the residence of her son-in-law, Arnold Plumer, in Minnesota. Their son, C. M. Hoover, ex-sheriff of the county, has been interested in the street railway. Vance Stewart, who owned a farm near the lower river-bridge, removed to Greenville and preceded his wife and several children, one of them Rev. Orlando V. Stewart, to the tomb. Another son, James Stewart, was a prominent member of the Erie bar.

The opening months of 1860 were decidedly lively on the Cochran Farm, in Cranberry township, opposite the Hoover. The first well, the Keystone, on the flats above where the station now stands, was a second-sander of the hundred-barrel class. The first oil sold for fourteen dollars a barrel, at which rate land-owners and operators were not in danger of bankruptcy or the poor-house. Fourteen-hundred dollars a day from a three-inch hole would have seemed too preposterous for Munchausen before the Pennsylvania oil-regions demonstrated that “truth is stranger than fiction.” The Monitor, Raymond, Williams, McCutcheon and other wells kept the production at a satisfactory figure. Dale & Morrow, Horton & Son, Hoover & Co., George R. Hobby, Cornelius Fulkerson and George S. McCartney were early operators. B. E. Swan located on the farm in May of 1865 and drilled numerous fair wells. He has operated there for thirty-two years, sticking to the second-sand territory with a tenacity equal to the “perseverance of the saints.” When thousands of producers, imitating the dog that let go the bone to grasp the shadow in the water, quit their enduring small wells 102to take their chance of larger ones in costlier fields, he did not lose his head and add another to the financial wrecks that strewed the greasian shore. Appreciating his moral stamina, his steadfastness and ability, Mr. Swan’s friends insist that he shall serve the public in some important office. Walter Pennell—his father made the first car-wheels—and W. P. Smith drilled several snug wells on the uplands, Sweet & Shaffer following with six or eight. Eighteen wells are producing on the tract, which contains one-hundred-and-fortyone-hundred-and-forty acres and has had only two dry-holes in its thirty-six years of active developments.

Alexander Cochran, for forty years owner of the well-known farm bearing his name, is one of the oldest citizens of Franklin. Winning his way in the world by sheer force of character, scrupulous integrity and a fixed determination to succeed, he is in the highest and best sense a self-made man. Working hard in boyhood to secure an education, he taught school, clerked in general stores, studied law and was twice elected Prothonotary without asking one voter for his support. In these days of button-holing, log-rolling, wire-pulling, buying and soliciting votes this is a record to recall with pride. Marrying Miss Mary Bole—her father removed from Lewistown to Franklin seventy-five years ago—he built the home at “Cochran Spring” that is one of the land-marks of the town and established a large dry-goods store. As his means permitted he bought city-lots, put up dwelling-houses and about 1852 paid sixteen-hundred dollars for the farm in Cranberry township for which in 1863, after it had yielded a fortune, he refused seven-hundred-thousand! The farm was in two blocks. A neighbor expostulated with him for buying the second piece, saying it was “foolish to waste money that way.” In 1861, when the same neighbor wished to mortgage his land for a loan, he naively remarked: “Well, Aleck, I guess I was the fool, not you, in 1852.” A man of broad views, Mr. Cochran freely grants to others the liberality of thought he claims for himself. A hater of cant and sham and hollow pretence, he believes less in musty creeds than kindly deeds, more in giving loaves than tracts to the hungry, and takes no stock in religion that thinks only of dodging punishment in the next world and fails to help humanity in this. In the dark days of low-priced oil and depressed trade, he would accept neither interest from his debtors nor royalty from the operators who had little wells on his farm. He never hounded the sheriff on a hapless borrower, foreclosed a mortgage to grab a coveted property or seized the chattels of a struggling victim to satisfy a shirt-tail note. There is no shred of the Pecksniff, the Shylock or the Uriah-Heep in his anatomy. At fourscore he is hale and hearty, rides on horseback, cultivates his garden, attends to business, likes a good play and keeps up with the literature of the day. The productive oil-farm is now owned by his daughters, Mrs. J. J. McLaurin, of Harrisburg, and Mrs. George R. Sheasley, of Franklin. The proudest eulogy he could desire is Alexander Cochran’s just desert: “The Poor Man’s Friend.”

Down to Sandy Creek many wells were drilled from 1860 to 1865, producing fairly at an average depth of four-hundred-and-fifty to five-hundred feet. 103These operations included the Miller, Smith and Pope farms, on the west side of the river, and the Rice, Nicklin, Martin and Harmon, on the east side, all second-sand territory. North of the Cochran and the Hoover work was pushed actively. George H. Bissell and Vance Stewart bored twelve or fifteen medium wells on the Stewart farm of two-hundred acres, which the Cameron Petroleum Company purchased in 1865 and Joseph Dale operated for some years. It lies below the lower bridge, opposite the Bleakley tract, from which a light production is still derived. Above the Stewart are the Fuller and the Chambers farms, the latter extending to the Allegheny-Valley depot. Scores of eager operators thronged the streets of Franklin and drilled along the Allegheny. Joseph Powley and Charles Cowgill entered the lists in the Cranberry district. Henry M. Wilson and George Piagett veered into the township and sank a bevy of dry-holes to vary the monotony. That was a horse on Wilson, but he got ahead of the game by a deal that won him the nicest territory on Horse Creek. Stirling Bonsall and Colonel Lewis—they’re dead now—were in the thickestthickest of the fray, with Captain Goddard, Philip Montgomery, Boyd, Roberts, Foster, Brown, Murphy and many more whom old-timers remember pleasantly. Thomas King, whole-souled, genial “Tom”—no squarer man e’er owned a well or handled oil-certificates—and Captain Griffith were “a good pair to draw to.” King has “crossed over,” as have most of the kindred spirits that dispelled the gloom in the sixties.

Colonel W. T. Pelton, nephew of Samuel J. Tilden, participated in the scenes of that exciting period. He lived at Franklin and drilled wells on French Creek. He was a royal entertainer, shrewd in business, finely educated and polished in manner and address. He and his wife—a lovely and accomplished woman—were fond of society and gained hosts of friends. They boarded at the United-States Hotel, where Mrs. Pelton died suddenly. This affliction led Colonel Pelton to sell his oil-properties and abandon the oil-regions. Returning to New York, when next he came into view as the active agent of his uncle in the secret negotiations that grew out of the election of 1876, it was with a national fame. His death in 1880 closed a busy, promising career.

In the spring of 1864 a young man, black-haired, dark-eyed, an Apollo in form and strikingly handsome, arrived at Franklin and engaged rooms at Mrs. Webber’s, on Buffalo street. The stranger had money, wore good clothes and presented a letter of introduction to Joseph H. Simonds, dealer in real-estate, oil-wells and leases. He looked around a few days and concluded to invest in sixty acres of the Fuller farm, Cranberry township, fronting on the Allegheny river. The block was sliced off the north end of the farm, a short distance below the upper bridge and the Valley station. Mr. Simonds consented to be a partner in the transaction. The transfer was effected, the deed recorded and a well started. It was situated on the hill, had twenty feet of second-sand and pumped twenty barrels a day. The owner drilled two others on the bluff, the three yielding twenty barrels for months. The ranks of the oil-producers had received an addition in the person of—John Wilkes Booth.

The firm prospered, each of the members speculating and trading individually. M. J. Colman, a capital fellow, was interested with one or both in various deals. Men generally liked Booth and women admired him immensely. His lustrous orbs, “twin-windows of the soul,” could look so sad and pensive as to awaken the tenderest pity, or fascinate like “the glittering eye” of the Ancient Mariner or the gaze of the basilisk. “Trilby” had not come to light, or he might have enacted the hypnotic role of Svengali. His moods were variable 104and uncertain. At times he seemed morose and petulant, tired of everybody and “unsocial as a clam.” Again he would court society, attend parties, dance, recite and be “the life of the company.” He belonged to a select circle that exchanged visits with a coterie of young folks in Oil City. A Confederate sympathizer and an enemy of the government, his closest intimates were staunch Republicans and loyal citizens. William J. Wallis, the veteran actor who died in December of 1895, in a Philadelphia theater slapped him on the mouth for calling President Lincoln a foul name. Booth’s acting, while inferior to his brother Edwin’s, evinced much dramatic power. He controlled his voice admirably, his movements were graceful and he spoke distinctly, as Franklinites whom he sometimes favored with a reading can testify.

One morning in April, 1865, he left Franklin, telling Mr. Simonds he was going east for a few days. He carried a satchel, which indicated that he did not expect his stay to be prolonged indefinitely. His wardrobe, books and papers remained in his room. Nothing was heard of him until the crime of the century stilled all hearts and the wires flashed the horrible news of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. The excitement in Franklin, the murderer’s latest home, was intense. Crowds gathered to learn the dread particulars and discuss Booth’s conduct and utterances. Not a word or act previous to his departure pointed to deliberate preparation for the frightful deed that plunged the nation in grief. That he contemplated it before leaving Franklin the weight of evidence tended to disprove. He made no attempt to sell any of his property, to convert his lands and wells into cash, to settle his partnership accounts or to pack his effects. He had money in the bank, wells bringing a good income and important business pending. All these things went to show that, if not a sudden impulse, the killing of Lincoln was prompted by some occurrence in Washington that fired the passionate nature John Wilkes Booth inherited from his father. The world is familiar with the closing chapters of the dark tragedy—the assassin’s flight, the pursuit into Virginia, the burning barn, Sergeant Corbett’s fatal bullet, the pathetic death-scene on the Garrett porch and the last message, just as the dawn was breaking on the glassy eyes that opened feebly for a moment: “Tell my mother I died for my country. I did what I thought was best.”

The wells and the land on the river were held by Booth’s heirs until 1869, when the tract changed hands. The farm is producing no oil and the Simonds-Booth 105wells have disappeared. Had he not intended to return to Franklin, Booth would certainly have disposed of these interests and given the proceeds to his mother. “Joe” Simonds removed to Bradford to keep books for Whitney & Wheeler, bankers and oil-operators, and died there years ago. He was an expert accountant, quick, accurate and neat in his work and most fastidious in his attire. A blot on his paper, a figure not exactly formed, a line one hair-breath crooked, a spot on his linen or a speck of dust on his coat was simply intolerable. He was correct in language and deportment and honorable in his dealings. Colman continued his oil-operations, in company with W. R. Crawford, a real-estate agency, until the eighties. He married Miss Ella Hull, the finest vocalist Franklin ever boasted, daughter of Captain S. A. Hull, and removed to Boston. For years paralytic trouble has confined him to his home. He is “one of nature’s nobleman.”

“French Kate,” the woman who aided Ben Hogan at Pithole and followed him to Babylon and Parker, was a Confederate spy and supposed to be very friendly with J. Wilkes Booth. Besides his oil-interests at Franklin, the slayer of Abraham Lincoln owned a share in the Homestead well at Pithole. A favorite legend tells how, by a singular coincidence, which produced a sensation, the well was burned on the evening of the President’s assassination. It caught fire about the same instant the fatal bullet was fired in Ford’s Theater and tanks of burning oil enveloped Pithole in a dense smoke when the news of the tragedy flashed over the trembling wires. The Homestead well was not down until Lincoln had been dead seven weeks, Pithole had no existence and there were no blazing tanks; otherwise the legend is correct. Two weeks before his appalling crime Booth was one of a number of passengers on the scow doing duty as a ferry-boat across the Allegheny, after the Franklin bridge had burned. The day was damp and the water very cold. Some inhuman whelp threw a fine setter into the river. The poor beast swam to the rear of the scow and Booth pulled him on board. He caressed the dog and bitterly denounced the fellow who could treat a dumb animal so cruelly. At another time he knocked down a cowardly ruffian for beating a horse that was unable to pull a heavy load out of a mud-hole. He has been known to shelter stray kittens, to buy them milk and induce his landlady to care for them until they could be provided with a home. Truly his was a contradictory nature. He sympathized with horses, dogs and cats, yet robbed the nation of its illustrious chief and plunged mankind into mourning. To newsboys Booth was always liberal, not infrequently handing a dollar for a paper and saying: “No change; buy something useful with the money.” The first time he went to the Methodist Sunday-school, with “Joe” Simonds, he asked and answered questions and put a ten-dollar bill in the collection-box.

Over the hills to the interior of the townships developments spread. Bredinsburg, Milton and Tarkiln loomed up in Cranberry, where Taylor & Torrey, S. P. McCalmont, Jacob Sheasley, B. W. Bredin and E. W. Echols have sugar-plums. In Sandycreek, between Franklin and Foster, Angell & Prentice brought Bully Hill and Mount Hope to the front. The biggest well in the package was a two-hundred barreler on Mount Hope, which created a mount of hopes that were not fully realized. George V. Forman counted out one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars for the Mount Hope corner. The territory lasted well and averaged fairly. Bully Hill merited its somewhat slangy title. Dr. C. D. Galbraith, George R. Sheasley and Mattern & Son are among its present operators. Angell and Prentice parted company, each to engage in 106opening up the Butler region. Prentice, Crawford, Barbour & Co. did not let the grass grow under their feet. They “knew a good thing at sight” and pumped tens-of-thousands of barrels of oil from the country south of Franklin. The firm was notable in the seventies. Considerable drilling was done at Polk, where the state is providing a half-million-dollar Home for Feeble-Minded Children, and in the latitude of Utica, with about enough oil to be an aggravation. The Shippen wells, a mile north of the county poor-house, have produced for thirty years. West of them, on the Russell farm, the Twin wells, joined as tightly as the derricks could be placed, pumped for years. This was the verge of productive territory, test wells on the lands of William Sanders, William Bean, A. Reynolds, John McKenzie, Alexander Frazier and W. Booth, clear to Cooperstown, finding a trifle of sand and scarcely a vestige of oil. The Raymonds, S. Ramage, John J. Doyle and Daniel Grimm had a very tidy offshoot at Raymilton. On this wise lubricating and second-sand oils were revealed for the benefit of mankind generally. The fly in the ointment was the clerical crank who wrote to President Lincoln to demand that the producing of heavy-oil be stopped peremptorily, as it had been stored in the ground to grease the axletree of the earth in its diurnal revolution! This communication reminded Lincoln of a “little story,” which he fired at the fellow with such effect that the candidate for a strait-jacket was perpetually squelched.

Hon. William Reid Crawford, a member of the firm of Prentice, Crawford, Barbour & Co., lives in Franklin. His parents were early settlers in north-western Pennsylvania. Alexander Grant, his maternal grandfather, built the first stone-house in Lancaster county, removed to Butler county and located finally in Armstrong county, where he died sixty-five years ago. In 1854 William R. and four of his brothers went to California and spent some time mining gold. Upon his return he settled on a farm in Scrubgrass township, Venango county, of which section the Crawfords had been prominent citizens from the beginning of its history. Removing to Franklin in 1865, Mr. Crawford engaged actively in the production 107of petroleum, operating extensively in various portions of the oil-regions for twenty years. He acquired a high reputation for enterprise and integrity, was twice a city-councillor, served three terms as mayor, was long president of the school-board, was elected sheriff in 1887 and State-Senator in 1890. Untiring fidelity to the interests of the people and uncompromising hostility to whatever he believed detrimental to the general welfare distinguished his public career. Genial and kindly to all, the friend of humanity and benefactor of the poor, no man stands better in popular estimation or is more deserving of confidence and respect. His friends could not be crowded into the Coliseum without bulging out the walls. Ebenezer Crawford, brother of William R., died at Emlenton in August of 1897, on his seventy-sixth birthday. John P. Crawford, another brother, who made the California trip in 1849, still resides in the southern end of the county and is engaged in oil-operations. E. G. Crawford, a nephew, twice prothonotary of Venango and universally liked, passed away last June. His cousin, C. J. Crawford, a first-class man anywhere and everywhere, served as register and recorder with credit and ability. The Crawfords “are all right.”

Captain John K. Barbour, a man of imposing presence and admirable qualities, removed to Philadelphia after the dissolution of the firm. The Standard Oil-Company gave him charge of the right-of-way department of its pipe-line service and he returned to Franklin. Two years ago, during a business visit to Ohio, he died unexpectedly, to the deep regret of the entire community. S. A. Wheeler operated largely in the Bradford field and organized the Tuna-Valley Bank of Whitney & Wheeler. For a dozen years he has resided at Toledo, his early home. Like Captain Barbour, “Fred,” as he was commonly called, had an exhaustless mine of bright stories and a liberal share of the elements of popularity. One afternoon in 1875, three days before the fire that wiped out the town, a party of us chanced to meet at St. Joe, Butler county, then the centre of oil-developments. An itinerating artist had his car moored opposite the drug-store. Somebody proposed to have a group-picture. The motion carried unanimously and a toss-up decided that L. H. Smith was to foot the bill. The photographer brought out his camera, positions were taken on the store-platform and the pictures were mailed an hour ahead of the blaze that destroyed most of the buildings and compelled the artist to hustle off his car on the double-quick. Samuel R. Reed, at the extreme right, operated in the Clarion field. He had a hardware-store in company with the late Dr. Durrant and his home is in Franklin. James Orr, between whom and Reed a telegraph-pole is seen, was connected with the Central Hotel at Petrolia and later was a broker in the Producers’ Exchange at Bradford. On the step is Thomas McLaughlin, now oil-buyer at Lima, once captain of a talented base-ball club at Oil City and an active oil-broker. Back of him is “Fred” Wheeler, with Captain Barbour on his right and L. H. Smith sitting comfortably in front. Mr. Smith figured largely at Pithole, operated satisfactorily around Petrolia and removed years ago to New York. Cast in a giant mould, he weighs three-hundred pounds and does credit 108to the illustrious legions of Smiths. He is a millionaire and has an office over the Seaboard Bank, at the lower end of Broadway. Joseph Seep, the king-bee of good fellows, sits besides Smith. Pratt S. Crosby, formerly a jolly broker at Parker and Oil City, stands behind Seep. Next him is “Tom” King, who has “gone to the land of the leal,” J. J. McLaurin ending the row. James Amm, who went from an Oil-city clerkship to coin a fortune at Bradford—a street bears his name—sits on the platform. Every man, woman, child and baby near Oil City knew and admired “Jamie” Amm, who is now enjoying his wealth in Buffalo. Two out of the eleven in the group have “passed beyond the last scene” and the other nine are scattered widely.

Frederic Prentice, one of the pluckiest operators ever known in petroleum-annals, was the first white child born on the site of Toledo, when Indians were the neighbors of the pioneers of Northern Ohio. His father left a fine estate, which the son increased greatly by extensive lumbering, in which he employed three-thousand men. Losses in the panic of 1857 retired him from the business. He retrieved his fortune and paid his creditors their claims in full, with ten per cent. interest, an act indicative of his sterling character. Reading in a newspaper about the Drake well, he decided to see for himself whether the story was fast colors. Journeying to Venango county by way of Pittsburg, he met and engaged William Reed to accompany him. Reed had worked at the Tarentum salt-wells and knew a thing or two about artesian-boring. The two arrived at Franklin on the afternoon of the day Evans’s well turned the settlement topsy-turvy. Next morning Prentice offered Evans forty-thousand dollars for a controlling interest in the well, one-fourth down and the balance in thirty, sixty and ninety days. Evans declining to sell, the Toledo visitor bought from Martin & Epley an acre of ground on the north bank of French Creek, at the base of the hill, and contracted with Reed to “kick down” a well, the third in the district. Prentice and Reed tramped over the country for days, locating oil-deposits by means of the witch-hazel, which the Tarentumite handled skillfully. This was a forked stick, which it was claimed turned in the hands of the holder at spots where oil existed. Various causes delayed the completion of the well, which at last proved disappointingly small. Meanwhile Mr. Prentice leased the Neeley farm, two miles up the Allegheny, in Cranberry township, and bored several paying wells. A railroad station on the tract is named after him and R. G. Lamberton has converted the property into a first-class stock-farm. Favorable reports from Little Kanawha River took him to West Virginia, where he leased and purchased immense blocks of land. Among them was the Oil-Springs tract, on the Hughes River, from which oil had been skimmed for generations. Two 109of his wells on the Kanawha yielded six-hundred barrels a day, which had to be stored in ponds or lakes for want of tankage. Confederate raiders burned the wells, oil and machinery and drove off the workmen, putting an extinguisher on operations until the Grant-Lee episode beneath the apple-tree at Appomattox.

Assuming that the general direction of profitable developments would be north-east and south-west, Mr. Prentice surveyed a line from Venango county through West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. This idea, really the foundation of “the belt theory,” he spent thousands of dollars to establish. Personal investigation and careful surveys confirmed his opinion, which was based upon observations in the Pennsylvania fields. The line run thirty years ago touched numerous “springs” and “surface shows” and recent tests prove its remarkable accuracy. On this theory he drilled at Mount Hope and Foster, opening a section that has produced several-million barrels of oil. C. D. Angell applied the principle in Clarion and Butler counties, mapping out the probable course of the “belt” and leasing much prolific territory. His success led others to adopt the same plan, developing a number of pools in four states, although nature’s lines are seldom straight and the oil-bearing strata are deposited in curves and beds at irregular intervals.

In company with W. W. Clark of New York, to whom he had traded a portion of his West-Virginia lands, Mr. Prentice secured a quarter-interest in the Tarr farm, on Oil Creek, shortly before the sinking of the Phillips well, and began shipping oil to New York. They paid three dollars apiece for barrels, four dollars a barrel for hauling to the railroad and enormous freights to the east. The price dropping below the cost of freights and barrels, the firm dug acres of pits to put tanks under ground, covering them with planks and earth to prevent evaporation. Traces of these storage-vats remain on the east bank of Oil Creek. Crude fell to twenty-five cents a barrel at the wells and the outlook was discouraging. Clark & Prentice stopped drilling and turned their attention to finding a market. They constructed neat wooden packages that would hold two cans of refined-oil, two oil-lamps and a dozen chimneys and sent one to each United-States Consul in Europe. Orders soon rushed in from foreign countries, especially Germany, France and England, stimulating the erection of refineries and creating a large export-trade. Clark & Summer, who also owned an interest in the Tarr farm, built the Standard Refinery at Pittsburg and agreed to take from Clark & Prentice one-hundred-thousand barrels of crude at a dollar a barrel, to be delivered as required during the year. Before the delivery of the first twenty-five-thousand barrels the price climbed to one-fifty and to six dollars before the completion of the contract, which was carried out to the letter. The advance continued to fourteen dollars a barrel, lasting only one day at this figure. These were vivifying days in oleaginous circles, never to be repeated while Chronos wields his trusty blade.

When crude reached two dollars Mr. Prentice bought the Washington-McClintock farm, on which Petroleum Centre was afterwards located, for three-hundred-thousand 110dollars. Five New-Yorkers, one of them the president of the Shoe and Leather Bank and another the proprietor of the Brevoort House, advanced fifty-thousand dollars for the first payment. Within sixty days Prentice sold three-quarters of his interest for nine-hundred-thousand dollars and organized the Central Petroleum Oil-Company, with a capital of five-millions! Wishing to repay the New-York loan, the Brevoort landlord desired him to retain his share of the money and invest it as he pleased. For his ten-thousand dollars mine host received eighty-thousand in six months, a return that leaves government-bond syndicates and Cripple-Creek speculations out in the latitude of Nansen’s north-pole. The company netted fifty-thousand dollars a month in dividends for years and lessees cleared three or four millions from their operations on the farm. Greenbacks circulated like waste-paper, Jules Verne’s fancies were surpassed constantly by actual occurrences and everybody had money to burn.

Prentice and his associates purchased many tracts along Oil Creek, including the lands where Oil City stands and the Blood farm of five-hundred acres. In the Butler district he drilled hundreds of wells and built the Relief Pipe-Line. Organizing The Producers’ Consolidated Land-and-Petroleum-Company, with a capital of two-and-a-half millions, he managed it efficiently and had a prominent part in the Bradford development. Boston capitalists paid in twelve-hundred-thousand dollars, Prentice keeping a share in his oil-properties representing thirteen-hundred-thousand more. The company is now controlled by the Standard, with L. B. Lockhart as superintendent. Its indefatigable founder also organized the Boston Oil Company to operate in Kentucky and Tennessee, put down oil-wells in Peru and gas-wells in West Virginia, produced and piped thousands of barrels of crude daily and was a vital force in petroleum-affairs for eighteen years. The confidence and esteem of his compatriots were attested by his unanimous election to the presidency of the Oilmen’s League, a secret-society formed to resist the proposed encroachments of the South-Improvement Company. The League accomplished its mission and then quietly melted out of existence.

Since 1877 Mr. Prentice has devoted his attention chiefly to lumbering in West Virginia and to his brown-stone quarries at Ashland, Wisconsin. The death of his son, Frederick A., by accidental shooting, was a sad bereavement to the aged father. His suits to get possession of the site of Duluth, the city of Proctor Knott’s impassioned eulogy, included in a huge grant of land deeded to him by the Indians, were scarcely less famous than Mrs. Gaines’s protracted litigation to recover a slice of New Orleans. The claim involved the title to property valued at twelve-millions of dollars. From his Ashland quarries the owner took out a monolith, designed for the Columbian Exposition in 1893, forty yards long and ten feet square at the base. Beside this monster stone Cleopatra’s Needle, disintegrating in Central Park, Pompey’s Pillar and the biggest blocks in the pyramids are Tom-Thumb pigmies. At seventy-four Mr. Prentice, foremost in energy and enterprise, retains much of his youthful vigor. Earnest and sincere, a master of business, his word as good as gold, Frederic Prentice holds an honored place in the ranks of representative oil-producers, “nobles of nature’s own creating.”

A native of Chautauqua county, N. Y., where he was born in 1826, Cyrus D. Angell received a liberal education, served as School-Commissioner and engaged in mercantile pursuits at Forestville. Forced through treachery and the monetary stringency of the times to compromise with his creditors, he recovered 111his financial standing and paid every cent of his indebtedness, principal and interest. In 1867 he came to the oil-regions with a loan of one-thousand dollars and purchased an interest in property at Petroleum Centre that paid handsomely. Prior to this, in connection with Buffalo capitalists, he had bought Belle Island, in the Allegheny River at Scrubgrass, upon which soon after his arrival he drilled three wells that averaged one-hundred barrels each for two years, netting the owners over two-hundred-thousand dollars. Operations below Franklin, in company with Frederic Prentice, also proved highly profitable. His observations of the course of developments along Oil Creek and the Allegheny led Mr. Angell to the conclusion that petroleum would be found in “belts” or regular lines. He adopted the theory that two “belts” existed, one running from Petroleum Centre to Scrubgrass and the other from St. Petersburg through Butler county. Satisfied of the correctness of this view, he leased or purchased all the lands within the probable boundaries of the “belt” from Foster to Belle Island, a distance of six miles. The result justified his expectations, ninety per cent. of the wells yielding abundantly. With “the belt theory,” which he followed up with equal success farther south, Mr. Angell’s name is linked indissolubly. His researches enriched him and were of vast benefit to the producers generally. He did much to extend the Butler region, drilling far ahead of tested territory. The town of Angelica owed its creation to his fortunate operations in the neighborhood, conducted on a comprehensive scale. Reverses could not crush his manly spirit. He did a large real-estate business at Bradford for some years, opening an office at Pittsburg when the Washington field began to loom up. Failing health compelling him to seek relief in foreign travel, last year he went to Mexico and Europe to recuperate. Mr. Angell is endowed with boundless energy, fine intellectual powers and rare social acquirements. During his career in Oildom he was an excellent sample of the courageous, unconquerable men who have made petroleum the commercial wonder of the world.

An old couple in Cranberry township, who eked out a scanty living on a rocky farm near the river, sold their land for sixty-thousand dollars at the highest pitch of the oil-excitement around Foster. This was more money than the pair had ever before seen, much less expected to handle and own. It was paid in bank-notes at noon and the log-house was to be vacated next day. Towards evening the poor old woman burst into tears and insisted that her husband should give back the money to the man that “wanted to rob them of their home.” She was inconsolable, declaring they would be “turned out to starve, without a roof to cover them.” The idea that sixty-thousand dollars would buy an ideal home brought no comfort to the simple-minded creature, whose hopes and ambitions were confined to the lowly abode that had sheltered her for a half-century. A promise to settle near her brother in Ohio reconciled her somewhat, but it almost broke her faithful heart to leave a spot endeared by many tender associations. John Howard Payne, himself a homeless wanderer, 112whose song has been sung in every tongue and echoed in every soul, jingled by innumerable hand-organs and played by the masters of music, was right:

The refusal of his wife to sign the deed conveying the property enabled a wealthy Franklinite to gather a heap of money. The tract was rough and unproductive and the owner proposed to accept for it the small sum offered by a neighboring farmer, who wanted more pasture for his cattle. For the first time in her life the wife declined to sign a paper at her husband’s request, saying she had a notion the farm would be valuable some day. The purchaser refused to take it subject to a dower and the land lay idle. At length oil-developments indicated that the “belt” ran through the farm. Scores of wells yielded freely, netting the land-owner a fortune and convincing him that womanly intuition is a sure winner.

A citizen of Franklin, noted for his conscientiousness and liberality, was interested in a test-well at the beginning of the Scrubgrass development. He vowed to set aside one-fourth of his portion of the output of the well “for the Lord,” as he expressed it. To the delight of the owners, who thought the venture hazardous, the well showed for a hundred barrels when the tubing was put in. On his way back from the scene the Franklin gentleman did a little figuring, which proved that the Lord’s percentage of the oil might foot up fifty dollars a day. This was a good deal of money for religious purposes. The maker of the vow reflected that the Lord could get along without so much cash and he decided to clip the one-fourth down to one-tenth, arguing that the latter was the scripture limit. Talking it over with his wife, she advised him to stick to his original determination and not trifle with the Lord. The husband took his own way, as husbands are prone to do, and revisited the well next day. Something had gone wrong with the working-valve, the tubing had to be drawn out and the well never pumped a barrel of oil! The disappointed operator concluded, as he charged two thousand dollars to his profit-and-loss account, that it was not the Lord who came out at the small end of the horn in the transaction.

Rev. Clarence A. Adams, the eloquent ex-pastor of the First Baptist Church at Franklin, is the lucky owner of a patch of paying territory at Raymilton. Recently he finished a well which pumped considerable salt-water with the oil. Contrary to Cavendish and the ordinary custom, another operator drilled very close to the boundary of the Adams lease and torpedoed the well heavily. Instead of sucking the oil from the preacher’s nice pumper, the new well took away most of the salt-water and doubled the production of petroleum! Commonly it would seem rather mean to rob a Baptist minister of water, but in this case Dr. Adams is perfectly resigned to the loss of aqueous fluid and gain of dollar-fifty crude. A profound student of Shakespeare, Browning and the Bible, a brilliant lecturer and master of pulpit-oratory, may he also stand on a lofty rung of the greasian ladder and attain the goodly 113age of Franklin’s “grand old man,” Rev. Dr. Crane. This “father in Israel,” whose death in February of 1896 the whole community mourned, left a record of devoted service as a physician and clergyman for over sixty years that has seldom been equaled. He healed the sick, smoothed the pillow of the dying, relieved the distressed, reclaimed the erring, comforted the bereaved, turned the faces of the straying Zionward and found the passage to the tomb “a gentle wafting to immortal life.” Let his memory be kept green.

The late Thomas McDonough, a loyal-hearted son of the Emerald Isle, was also an energetic operator in the lubricating region. He had an abundance of rollicking wit, “the pupil of the soul’s clear eye,” and an unfailing supply of the drollest stories. Desiring to lease a farm in Sandy-Creek township, supposed to be squarely “on the belt,” he started at daybreak to interview the owner, feeling sure his mission would succeed. An unexpected sight presented itself through the open door, as the visitor stepped upon the porch of the dwelling. The farmer’s wife was setting the table for breakfast and Frederic Prentice was folding a paper carefully. McDonough realized in a twinkling that Prentice had secured the lease and his trip was fruitless. “I am looking for John Smith” he stammered, as the farmer invited him to enter, and beat a hasty retreat. For years his friends rallied the Colonel on his search and would ask with becoming solemnity whether he had discovered John Smith. The last time we met in Philadelphia this incident was revived and the query repeated jocularly. The jovial McDonough died in 1894. It is safe to assume that he will easily find numerous John Smiths in the land of perpetual reunion. One day he told a story in an office on Thirteenth street, Franklin, which tickled the hearers immensely. A full-fledged African, who had been sweeping the back-room, broke into a tumultuous laugh. At that moment a small boy was riding a donkey directly in front of the premises. The jackass heard the peculiar laugh and elevated his capacious ears more fully to take in the complete volume of sound. He must have thought the melody familiar and believed he had stumbled upon a relative. Despite the frantic exertions of the boy, the donkey rushed towards the building whence the boisterous guffaw proceeded, shoved his head inside the door and launched a terrific bray. The bystanders were convulsed at this evidence of mistaken identity, which the jolly story-teller frequently rehearsed for the delectation of his hosts of friends.

Looking over the Milton diggings one July day, Col. McDonough met an amateur-operator who was superintending the removal of a wooden-tank from a position beside his first and only well. A discussion started regarding the combustibility of the thick sediment collected on the bottom of the tank. The amateur maintained the stuff would not burn and McDonough laughingly replied, “Well, just try it and see!” The fellow lighted a match and applied it to 114the viscid mass before McDonough could interfere, saying with a grin that he proposed to wait patiently for the result. He didn’t have to wait “until Orcus would freeze over and the boys play shinny on the ice.” In the ninetieth fraction of a second the deposit blazed with intense enthusiasm, quickly enveloping the well-rig and the surroundings in flames. Clouds of smoke filled the air, suggesting fancies of Pittsburg or Sheol. Charred fragments of the derrick, engine-house and tank, with an acre of blackened territory over which the burning sediment had spread, demonstrated that the amateur’s idea had been decidedly at fault. The experiment convinced him as searchingly as a Roentgen ray that McDonough had the right side of the argument. “If the ‘b. s.’ had been as green as the blamed fool, it wouldn’t have burned,” was the Colonel’s appropriate comment.

Miss Lizzie Raymond, daughter of the pioneer who founded Raymilton and erected the first grist-mill at Utica, has long taught the infant-class of the Presbyterian Sunday-school at Franklin. Once the lesson was about the wise and the foolish virgins, the good teacher explaining the subject in a style adapted to the juvenile mind. A cute little tot, impressed by the sad plight of the virgins who had no oil in their lamps, innocently inquired: “Miss ’Aymond, tan’t oo tell ’em dirls to turn to our house an’ my papa ’ll div’ ’em oil f’um his wells?” Heaven bless the children that come as sunbeams to lighten our pathway, to teach us lessons of unselfishness and prevent the rough world from turning our hearts as hard as the mill-stone.

Judge Trunkey, who presided over the Venango court a dozen years and was then elected to the Supreme Bench, was hearing a case of desertion. An Oil-City lawyer, proud of his glossy black beard, represented the forsaken wife, a comely young woman from Petroleum Centre, who dandled a bright baby of twenty months on her knee. Mother and baby formed a pretty picture and the lawyer took full advantage of it in his closing appeal to the jury. At a brilliant climax he turned to his client and said: “Let me have the child!” He was raising it to his arms, to hold before the men in the box and describe the heinous meanness of the wretch who could leave such beauty and innocence to starve. The baby spoiled the fun by springing up, clutching the attorney’s beard and screaming: “Oh, papa!” The audience fairly shrieked. Judge Trunkey laughed until the tears flowed and it was five minutes before order could be restored. That ended the oratory and the jury salted the defendant handsomely. Hon. James S. Connelly, an Associate Judge, who now resides in Philadelphia and enjoys his well-earned fortune, was also on the bench at the moment. Judge Trunkey, one of the purest, noblest men and greatest jurists that ever shed lustre upon Pennsylvania, passed to his reward six years ago.

The Shasta was Karns City’s first well.

Missouri has two wells producing oil.

North Dakota has traces of natural-gas.

Ninety wells in Japan pump four-hundred barrels.

Elk City, in the Clarion field, once had two-thousand population.

The Rob Roy well, at Karns City, has produced a quarter-million barrels of oil.

Alaska-oil is cousin of asphalt-pitch, very heavy, and thick as New-Orleans molasses in midwinter.

Wade Hampton, postmaster of Pittsburg, and cousin of Governor Wade Hampton, organized one of the first petroleum companies in the United States.

General Herman Haupt, of Philadelphia, now eighty-one years old, surveyed the route and constructed the first pipe-line across Pennsylvania.

Robert Nevin, founder of the Pittsburg Times, drilled a dry-hole four-hundred feet, ten miles west of Greensburg, in 1858, a year before Drake’s successful experiment in Oil Creek.

The Powell Oil-Company, superintended by Col. A. C. Ferris, still a resident of New York, paid fifty-thousand dollars in cash for the Shirk farm, half way between Franklin and Oil City, drilled a dry-hole and abandoned the property.

The new town of Guffey, the liveliest in Colorado, thirty miles from Cripple Creek, is fitly named in honor of James M. Guffey, the successful Pennsylvania oil-producer and political leader, who has big mining interests in that section.

The Fonner pool, Greene county, was the oil-sensation of 1897 in Pennsylvania. The Fonner well, struck in March, and territory around it sold for two-hundred-thousand dollars. Elk Fork wore the West-Virginia belt, Peru took the Hoosier biscuit and Lucas county the Buckeye premium.

When the biggest well in Indiana flowed oil fifty feet above the derrick, at Van Buren, a local paper noted the effect thus: “The strike has given the town a tremendous boom. Several real-estate offices have opened and the town-council has raised the license for faro-banks from five dollars a year to twelve dollars.” At this rate Van Buren ought soon to be in the van.

Wonderful Scenes on Oil Creek—Mud and Grease Galore—Rise and Fall of Phenomenal Towns—Shaffer, Pioneer and Petroleum Centre—Fortune’s Queer Vagaries—Wells Flowing Thousands of Barrels—Sherman, Delamater and “Coal-Oil Johnnie”—From Penury to Riches and Back—Recitals That Discount Fairy-Tales.

“I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry, ‘’Tis all barren.’”—Sterne.

“This beginning part is not made out of anybody’s head; it’s real.”—Dickens.

“Some ships come into port that are not steered.”—Seneca.

“God has placed in his great bank—mother earth—untold wealth and many a poor man’s check has been honored here for large amounts of oil.”—T. S. Scoville, A. D. 1861.

“Ain’t that well spittin’ oil?”—Small Boy, A. D. 1863.

“Wonderful, most wonderful, marvelous, most marvelous, are the stories told of the oil-region. It is another California.”—John W. Forney, A. D. 1863.

“Derricks peered up behind the houses of Oil City, like dismounted steeples, and oil was pumping in the back-yards.”—London Post, A. D. 1865.

“From this place and from this day henceforth commences a new era.”—Goethe.

“The chandelier drives off with its splendor the darkness of night.”—Henry Stanton.

“The onlookers were struck dumb with astonishment.”—Charles Kingsley.

“Either I will find a way or make one.”—Norman Proverb.

“I bid you look into the past as if it were a mirror.”—Terence.

Forty-three farms of manifold shapes and sizes lay along the stream from the Drake well to the mouth of Oil Creek, sixteen miles southward. For sixty years the occupants of these tracts had forced a bare subsistence from the reluctant soil. “Content to live, to propagate and die,” their requirements and their resources were alike scanty. They knew nothing of the artificial necessities and extravagances of fashionable life. To most of them the great, busy, plodding world was a sealed book, which they had neither the means nor the inclination to unclasp. The world reciprocated by wagging in its customary groove, blissfully unconscious of the scattered settlers on the banks of the Allegheny’s tributary. A trip on a raft to Pittsburg, with the privilege of walking back, was the limit of their journeyings from the hills and rocks of Venango. Hunting, fishing and hauling saw-logs in winter aided in replenishing the domestic larder. None imagined the unproductive valley would become the cradle of an industry before which cotton and 118coal and iron must “hide their diminished heads.” No prophet had proclaimed that lands on Oil Creek would sell for more than corner-lots in London or New York. Who could have conceived that these bold cliffs and patches of clearing would enlist ambitious mortals from every quarter of the globe in a mad race to secure a foothold on the coveted acres? What seventh son of a seventh son could foresee that a thousand dollars spent on the Willard farm would yield innumerable millions? Who could predict that a tiny stream of greenish fluid, pumped from a hole on an island too insignificant to have a name, would swell into the vast ocean of petroleum that is the miracle of the nineteenth century? Fortune has played many pranks, but the queerest of them all were the vagaries incidental to the petroleum-development on Oil Creek.

The Bissell, Griffin, Conley, two Stackpole, Pott, Shreve, two Fleming, Henderson and Jones farms, comprising the four miles between the Drake well and the Miller tract, were not especially prolific. Traces of a hundred oil-pits, in some of which oak-trees had grown to enormous size, are visible on the Bissell plot of eighty acres. A large dam, used for pond-freshets, was located on Oliver Stackpole’s farm. Two refineries of small capacity were built on the Stackpole and Fletcher lands, where eighteen or twenty wells produced moderately. The owner of a flowing well on the lower Fleming farm, imitating the man who killed the goose that laid the golden eggs, sought to increase its output by putting the tubing and seed-bagging farther down. The well resented the interference, refusing to yield another drop and pointing the obvious moral: “Let well enough alone!” The Miller farm of four-hundred acres, on both sides of the creek, was purchased in 1863 from Robert Miller by the Indian Rock-Oil Company of New York. Now a railroad-station and formerly the principal shipping-point for oil, refineries were started, wells were drilled and the stirring town of Meredith blossomed for a little space. The Lincoln well turned out sixty barrels a day, the Boston fifty, the Bobtail forty, the Hemlock thirty and others from ten to twenty-five, at an average depth of six-hundred feet. The Barnsdall Oil-Company operated on the Miller and the Shreve farms, drilling extensively on Hemlock Run, and George Bartlett ran the Sunshine Oil-Works. The village, the refineries and the derricks have disappeared as completely as Herculaneum or Sir John Franklin.

George Shaffer owned fifty acres below the Miller farm, divided by Oil Creek into two blocks, one in Cherrytree township and the other in Allegheny. Twenty-four wells, eight of them failures, were put down on the flats and the abrupt hill bordering the eastern shore of the stream. Samuel Downer’s Rangoon and three of Watson & Brewer’s were the largest, ranking in the fifty-barrel list. In July of 1864 the Oil-Creek Railroad was finished to Shaffer farm, which immediately became a station of great importance. From one house and barn the place expanded in sixty days to a town of three-thousand population. And such a town! Sixteen-hundred teams, mainly employed to draw oil from the wells down the creek, supported the stables, boarding-houses and hotels that sprang up in a night. Every second door opened into a bar-room. The buildings were “balloon frames,” constructed entirely of boards, erected in a few hours and liable to collapse on the slightest pretext. Houses of cards would be about as comfortable and substantial. Outdo Hezekiah, by rolling back time’s dial thirty-one years, and in fancy join the crowd headed for Shaffer six months after the advent of the railway.

Start from Corry, “the city of stumps,” with the Downer refinery and a jumble of houses thrown around the fields. Here the Atlantic & Great-Western, 119the Philadelphia & Erie and the Oil-Creek Railroads meet. The station will not shelter one-half the motley assemblage bound for Oildom. “Mother Cary is plucking her geese” and snow-flakes are dropping thickly. Speculators from the eastern cities, westerners in quest of “a good thing,” men going to work at the wells, capitalists and farmers, adventurers and drummers clamor for tickets. It is the reverse of “an Adamless Eden,” for only three women are to be seen. At last the train backs to the rickety depot and a wild struggle commences. Scrambling for the elevated cars in New York or Chicago is a feeble movement compared with this frantic onslaught. Courtesy and chivalry are forgotten in the rush. Men swarm upon the steps, clog the platforms, pack the baggage-car, thrust the women aside, stick to the cowcatcher and clamber on the roofs of the coaches. Over the roughest track on earth, which winds and twists and skirts the creek most of the way, the train rattles and jolts and pitches. The conductor’s job is no sinecure, as he squeezes through the dense mass that leaves him without sufficient elbow-room to “punch in the presence of the passenjare.” Derricks—tall, gaunt skeletons, pickets of the advancing army—keep solemn watch here and there, the number increasing as Titusville comes in sight.

A hundred people get off and two-hundred manage somehow to get on. Past the Drake well, past a forest of derricks, past steep cliffs and tortuous ravines the engineer speeds the train. Did you ever think what a weight of responsibility rests upon the brave fellow in the locomotive-cab, whose clear eye looks straight along the track and whose steady hand grasps the throttle? Should he relax his vigilance or lose his nerve one moment, scores of lives might be the fearful penalty. A short stop at Miller Farm, a whiff of refinery-smells and in five minutes Shaffer is reached. The board-station is on the right hand, landings on the left form a semi-circle hundreds of feet in length, freight-cars jam the double track and warehouses dot the bank. The flat-about thirty rods wide-contains the mushroom-town, bristling with the undiluted essence of petroleum-activity. Three-hundred teamsters are unloading barrels of oil from wagons dragged by patient, abused horses and mules through miles of greasy, clayey mud. Everything reeks with oil. It pervades the air, saturates clothes and conversation, floats on the muddy scum and fills lungs and nostrils with its peculiar odor. One cannot step a yard without sinking knee-deep in deceptive mire that performs the office of a boot-jack if given “a ghost of a show.” Christian’s Slough of Despond wasn’t a circumstance to this adhesive paste, which engulfs unwary travelers to their trouser-pockets and begets a dreadful craving for roads not

The trip of thirty-five miles has shaken breakfast clear down to the pilgrims’ boots. Out of the cars the hungry passengers tumble as frantically as they had clambered in and break for the hotels and restaurants. A dollar pays for a dinner more nearly first-class in price than in quality. The narrow hall leading to the dining-room is crammed with men—Person’s Hotel fed four-hundred a day—waiting their turn for vacant chairs at the tables. Bolting the meal hurriedly, the next inquiry is how to get down the creek. There are no coupés, no prancing steeds, no stages, no carriages for hire. The hoarse voice of a hackman would be sweeter music than Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” or Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March.” Horseback-riding is impracticable and 120walking seems the only alternative. To wade and flounder twelve miles—Oil City is that far off—is the dreary prospect that freezes the blood. Hark! In strident tones a fierce-looking fellow is shouting: “Packet-boat for Oil City! This way for the packet-boat! Packet-boat! Packet-boat!” Visions of a pleasant jaunt in a snug cabin lure you to the landing. The “packet-boat” proves to be an oily scow, without sail, engine, awning or chair, which horses have drawn up the stream from Oil City. It will float back at the rate of three miles an hour and the fare is three-fifty! The name and picture of “Pomeroy’s Express,” the best of these nondescript Oil-Creek vessels, will bring a smile and warm the cockles of many an old-timer’s heart!

Perhaps you decide to stay all night at Shaffer and start on foot early in the morning. A chair in a room thick with tobacco-smoke, or a quilt in a corner of the bar, is the best you can expect. By rare luck you may happen to pre-empt a half-interest in a small bed, tucked with two or three more in a closet-like apartment. Your room-mates talk of “flowing wells—five-hundred-thousand dollars—third sand—big strike—rich in a week—thousand-dollars a day,” until you fall asleep to dream of wells spouting seas of mud and hapless wights wading in greenbacks to their waists. Awaking cold and unrefreshed, your brain fuddled and your thoughts confused, you gulp a breakfast of “ham ’n eggs ’n fried potatoes ’n coffee” and prepare to strike out boldly. Encased in rubber-boots that reach above the thighs, you choose one of the two paths—each worse than the other—pray for sustaining grace and begin the toilsome journey. Having seen the tips of the elephant’s ears, you mean to see the end of his tail and be able to estimate the bulk of the animal. Night is closing in as you round up at your destination, exhausted and mud-coated to the chin. But you have traversed a region that has no duplicate “in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth,” and feel recompensed a 121thousand-fold for the fatigue and exposure. Were your years to exceed Thomas Parr’s and Methuselah’s combined, you will never again behold such a scene as the Oil-Creek valley presented in the days of “the middle passage”passage” between Shaffer and Oil City. Rake it over with a fine-comb, turn on the X-rays, dig and scrape and root and to-day you couldn’t find a particle of Shaffer as big as a toothpick! When the railroad was extended the buildings were torn down and carted to the next station.

Widow Sanney’s hundred-acre farm, south of the Shaffer, had three refineries and a score of unremunerative wells. David Gregg’s two-hundred acres on the west side of Oil Creek, followed suit with forty non-paying wells, three that yielded oil and the Victoria and Continental refineries. The McCoy well, the first put down below the Drake, at two-hundred feet averaged fifteen barrels a day from March until July, 1860. Fire burning the rig, the well was drilled to five-hundred feet and proved dry. R. P. Beatty sold his two-hundred acres on Oil Creek and Hemlock Run to the Clinton Oil-Company of New York, a bunch of medium wells repaying the investment. James Farrell, a teamster, for two-hundred dollars purchased a thirty-acre bit of rough land south of Beatty, on the east side of Oil Creek and Bull Run, the extreme south-west corner of Allegheny—now Oil Creek—township. In the spring of 1860 Orange Noble leased sixteen acres for six hundred dollars and one-quarter royalty. Jerking a “spring-pole” five months sank a hole one-hundred-and-thirty feet, without a symptom of greasiness, and the well was neglected nearly three years. The “third sand” having been found on the creek, the holders of the Farrell lease decided to drill the old hole deeper. George B. Delamater and L. L. Lamb were associated with Noble in the venture. They contracted with Samuel S. Fertig, of Titusville, whose energy and reliability had gained the good-will of operators, to drill about five-hundred feet. Fertig went to work in April of 1863, using a ten-horse boiler and engine and agreeing to take one-sixteenth of the working-interest as part payment. He had lots of the push that long since placed him in the van as a successful producer, enjoying a well-earned competence. Early in May, at four-hundred-and-fifty feet, a “crevice” of unusual size was encountered. Fearing to lose his tools, the contractor shut down for consultation with the well-owners. Noble was at Pittsburg on a hunt for tubing, which he ordered from Philadelphia. The well stood idle two weeks, waiting for the tubing, surface-water vainly trying to fill the hole.

On the afternoon of May twenty-seventh, 1863, everything was ready. “Start her slowly,” Noble shouted from the derrick to Fertig, who stood beside the engine and turned on the steam. The rods moved up and down with steady stroke, bringing a stream of fresh water, which it was hoped a day’s pumping might exhaust. Then it would be known whether two of the owners—Noble and Delamater—had acted wisely on May fifteenth in rejecting one-hundred-thousand dollars for one-half of the well. Noble went to an eating-house near by for a lunch. He was munching a sandwich when a boy at the door bawled: “Golly! Ain’t 122that well spittin’ oil?” Turning around, he saw a column of oil and water rising a hundred feet, enveloping the trees and the derrick in dense spray! The gas roared, the ground fairly shook and the workmen hastened to extinguish the fire beneath the boiler. The “Noble well,” destined to be the most profitable ever known, had begun its dazzling career at the dizzy figure of three-thousand barrels a day!

Crude was four dollars a barrel, rose to six, to ten, to thirteen! Compute the receipts from the Noble well at these quotations—twelve-thousand, eighteen-thousand, thirty-thousand, thirty-nine-thousand dollars a day! Sinbad’s fabled Valley of Diamonds was a ten-cent side-show in comparison with the actual realities of the valley of Oil Creek.

Soon the foaming volume filled the hollow close to the well and ran into the creek. What was to be done? In the forcible jargon of a driller: “The divil wuz to pay an’ no pitch hot!” For two-hundred dollars three men crawled through the blinding shower and contrived to attach a stop-cock device to the pipe. By sunset a seven-hundred-barrel tank was overflowing. Boatmen down the creek, notified to come at once for all they wanted at two dollars a barrel, by midnight took the oil directly from the well. Next morning the stream was turned into a three-thousand-barrel tank, filling it in twenty-one hours! Sixty-two-thousand barrels were shipped and fifteen-thousand tanked, exclusive of leakage and waste, in thirty days. Week after week the flow continued, declining to six-hundred barrels a day in eighteen months. The superintendent of the Noble & Delamater Oil Company—organized in 1864 with a million capital—in February of 1865 recommended pulling out the tubing and cleaning the well. Learning of this intention, Noble and Delamater unloaded their stock at or above par. The tubing was drawn, the well pumped fifteen barrels in two days, came to a full stop and was abandoned as a dry-hole!

The production of this marvelous gusher—over seven-hundred-thousand barrels—netted upwards of four-million dollars! One-fourth of this lordly sum went to the children of James Farrell—he did not live to see his land developed—James, John, Nelson and their sister, now Mrs. William B. Sterrett, of Titusville. Noble and Delamater owned one-half the working-interest, less the sixteenth assigned to S. S. Fertig, who bought another sixteenth from John Farrell while drilling the well and sold both to William H. Abbott for twenty-seven-thousand dollars. Ten persons—L. L. Lamb, Solomon and W. H. Noble, Rev. L. Reed, James and L. H. Hall, Charles and Thomas Delamater, G. T. Churchhill and Rollin Thompson—held almost one-quarter. Even this fractional claim gave each a splendid income. The total outlay for the lease and well—not quite four-thousand dollars—was repaid one-thousand times in twenty months! Is it surprising that men plunged into speculations which completely eclipsed the South-Sea Bubble and Law’s Mississippi-Scheme? Is it any wonder that multitudes were eager to stake their last dollar, their health, their lives, their very souls on the chance of such winnings?

Thirteen wells were drilled on the Farrell strip. The Craft had yielded a hundred-thousand barrels and was doing two-hundred a day when the seed-bag burst, flooding the well with water and driving the oil away. The Mulligan and the Commercial did their share towards making the territory the finest property in Oildom, with third sand on the flats and in the ravine of Bull Run forty feet thick. Not a fragment of tanks or derricks is left to indicate that twenty fortunes were acquired on the desolate spot, once the scene of tremendous 123activity, more coveted than Naboth’s vineyard or Jason’s Golden Fleece. On the Caldwell farm of two-hundred acres, south of the Farrell, twenty-five or thirty wells yielded largely. The Caldwell, finished in March of 1863, at the north-west corner of the tract, flowed twelve-hundred barrels a day for six weeks. Evidently deriving its supply from the same pool, the Noble well cut this down to four-hundred barrels. A demand for one-fourth the output of the Noble, enforced by a threat to pull the tubing and destroy the two, was settled by paying one-hundred-and-forty-five-thousand dollars for the Caldwell well and an acre of ground. “Growing smaller by degrees and beautifully less,” within a month of the transfer the Caldwell quit forever, drained as dry as the bones in Ezekiel’s vision!

Hon. Orange Noble, the son of a New-York farmer, dealt in sheep and cattle, married in 1841 and in 1852 removed to Randolph, Crawford county, Pa. He farmed, manufactured “shooks” and in 1855 opened a store at Townville in partnership with George B. Delamater. The partners and L. L. Lamb inspected the Drake well in October of 1859, secured leases on the Stackpole and Jones farms and drilled two dry-holes. Other wells on different farms in 1860-1 resulted similarly, but the Noble compensated richly for these failures. The firm wound up the establishment at Townville in 1863, squared petroleum-accounts, and in 1864 Mr. Noble located at Erie. There he organized banks, erected massive blocks, served as mayor three terms, built the first grain elevator and contributed greatly to the prosperity of the city. Blessed with ample wealth—the Noble well paid him eight-hundred-thousand dollars—a vigorous constitution and the regard of his fellows, he has lived to a ripe age to enjoy the fruits of his patient industry and remarkable success.

Hon. George B. Delamater, whose parents settled in Crawford county in 1822, studied law and was admitted to the Meadville bar in 1847. He published a newspaper at Youngsville, Warren county, two years and in 1852 started in business at Townville. Clients were not plentiful in the quiet village, where a lawsuit was a luxury, and the young attorney found boring juries much less remunerative than he afterwards found boring oil-wells. Returning to Meadville in 1864, with seven-hundred-thousand dollars and some real-estate at his command, he built the magnificent Delamater Block, opened a bank, promoted many important enterprises and engaged actively in politics. Selected to oppose George K. Anderson—he, too, had a bar’l—for the State Senate in 1869, Delamater carried off the prize. It was a case of Greek meeting Greek. Money flowed like water, Anderson spending thirty-thousand dollars and his opponent twenty-eight-thousand on the primaries alone! This was the beginning of the depletion of the Delamater fortune and the political demoralization that scandalized Crawford county for years. Mr. Delamater served one term, declined to run again and Anderson succeeded him. His son, George W., a young lawyer of ability and superior address, entered the lists and was elected Mayor of Meadville and State-Senator. He married an accomplished lady, occupied a brick-mansion, operated at Petrolia, practiced 124law and assisted in running the bank. Samuel B. Dick headed a faction that opposed the Delamaters bitterly. Nominated for Governor of Pennsylvania in 1890, George W. Delamater was defeated by Robert E. Pattison. He conducted an aggressive campaign, visiting every section of the state and winning friends by his frank courtesy and manly bearing. Ruined by politics, unable longer to stand the drain that had been sapping its resources, the Delamater Bank suspended two weeks after the gubernatorial election. The brick-block, the homes of the parents and the sons, the assets of the concern—mere drops in the bucket—met a trifling percentage of the liabilities. Property was sacrificed, suits were entered and dismissed, savings of depositors were swept away and the failure entailed a host of serious losses. The senior Delamater went to Ohio to start life anew at seventy-one. George W. located in Chicago and quickly gathered a law-practice. That he will regain wealth and honor, pay off every creditor and some day represent his district in Congress those who know him best are not unwilling to believe. The fall of the Delamater family—the beggary of the aged father—the crushing of the son’s honorable ambition—the exile from home and friends—the suffering of innocent victims—all these illustrate the sad reverses which, in the oil-region, have “come, not single spies, but in battalions.”

James Bonner, son of an Ohio clergyman and book-keeper for Noble & Delamater, lodged in the firm’s new office beside the well. Seized with typhoid fever, his recovery was hopeless. The office caught fire, young Bonner’s father carried him to the window, a board was placed to slide him down and he expired in a few moments. His father, overcome by smoke, was rescued with difficulty; his mother escaped by jumping from the second story.

James Foster owned sixty acres on the west side of Oil Creek, opposite the Farrell and Caldwell tracts. The upper half, extending over the hill to Pioneer Run, he sold to the Irwin Petroleum Company of Philadelphia, whose Irwin well pumped two-hundred barrels a day. The Porter well, finished in May of 1864, flowed all summer, gradually declining from two-hundred barrels to seventy and finally pumping twenty. Other wells and a refinery paid good dividends. J. W. Sherman, of Cleveland, leased the lower end of the farm and bounced the “spring-pole” in the winter of 1861-2. His wife’s money and his own played out before the second sand was penetrated. It was impossible to drill deeper “by hand-power.” A horse or an engine must be had to work the tools. “Pete,” a white, angular equine, was procured for one-sixteenth interest in the well. The task becoming too heavy for “Pete,” another sixteenth was traded to William Avery and J. E. Steele for a small engine and boiler. Lack of means to buy coal—an expensive article, sold only for “spot cash”—caused a week’s delay. The owners of the well could not muster “long green” to pay for one ton of fuel! For another sixteenth a purchaser grudgingly surrendered eighty dollars and a shot-gun! The last dollar had been expended when, on March sixteenth, 1862—just in season to celebrate St. Patrick’s day—the tools punctured the third sand. A “crevice” was hit, the tools were drawn out and in five minutes everything swam in oil. The Sherman well was flowing two-thousand barrels a day! Borrowing the phrase of the parrot stripped of his feathers and blown five-hundred feet by a powder-explosion, people might well exclaim: “This beats the Old Scratch!”

To provide tankage was the first concern. Teams were dispatched for lumber and carpenters hurried to the scene. Near the well a mudhole, between two stumps, could not be avoided. In this one of the wagons stuck fast and 125had to be pried out, John A. Mather chanced to come along with his photograph apparatus. The men posed an instant, the horses “looked pleasant,” the wagon didn’t stir and he secured the artistic picture reproduced here thirty-five years after. It is an interesting souvenir of former times—times that deserve the best work of pen and pencil, camera and brush, “to hold them in everlasting remembrance.”

The Sherman well “whooped it up” bravely, averaging nine-hundred barrels daily for two years and ceasing to spout in February of 1864. Pumping restored it to seventy-five barrels, which dwindled to six or eight in 1867, when fire consumed the rig and the veteran was abandoned. The product sold at prices ranging from fifty cents to thirteen dollars a barrel, the total aggregating seventeen-hundred-thousand dollars! How was that for a return? It meant one-hundred-thousand dollars for the man who traded “Pete,” one-hundred-thousand for the man who invested eighty dollars and a rusty gun, one-hundred-thousand for the two men who furnished the second-hand engine, and a million—deducting the royalty—for the man who had neither cash nor credit for a load of coal!

None of the other fifty or sixty wells on the Foster farm, some of them Sherman’s, was particularly noteworthy. The broad flat, the sluggish stream and the bluffs across the creek remain as in days of yore, but the wells, the shanties, the tanks, the machinery and the workmen have vanished. Sherman, long hale and hearty, struck a spouter in Kentucky, operated two or three years at Bradford and took up his abode at Warren. It was a treat to hear his vivid descriptions of life on Oil Creek in the infancy of developments—life crowded with transformations far surpassing the fantastic changes of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” He died at Cleveland last year.

Among the teamsters who hauled oil from the Sherman well in its prime was “Con” O’Donnell, a fun-loving, impulsive Irishman. He saved his 126earnings, secured leases for himself, owned a bevy of wells at Kane City and operated in the Clarion field. Marrying a young lady of Ellicottville, N. Y., his early home, he lived some years at Foxburg and St. Petersburg. He was the rarest of practical jokers and universally esteemed. Softening of the brain afflicted him for years, death at last stilling as warm and kindly a heart as ever throbbed in a manly breast. “Con” often regaled me with his droll witticisms as we rode or drove through the Clarion district. “Peace to his ashes.”

Late in the fall of 1859, “when th’ frost wuz on th’ punkin’ an’ th’ bloom wuz on th’ rye,” David McElhenny sold the upper and lower McElhenny farms—one-hundred-and-eighty acres at the south-east corner of Cherrytree township—to Captain A. B. Funk, for fifteen-hundred dollars and one-fourth of the oil. Joining the Foster farm on the north, Oil Creek bounded the upper tract on the east and south and Pioneer Run gurgled through the western side. Oil Creek flowed through the northern and western sides of the lower half, which had the Espy farm on the east, the Boyd south and the Benninghoff north and west. McElhenny’s faith in petroleum was of the mustard-seed order and he jumped at Hussey & McBride’s offer of twenty-thousand dollars for the royalty. Captain Funk—he obtained the title from running steamboats lumbering on the Youghiogheny river—in February of 1860 commenced the first well on the lower McElhenny farm. All spring and summer the “spring-pole” bobbed serenely, punching the hole two-hundred-and-sixty feet, with no suspicion of oil in the first and second sands. The Captain, believing it a rank failure, would gladly have exchanged the hole “for a yellow dog.” His son, A. P. Funk, bought a small locomotive-boiler and an engine and resumed work during the winter. Early in May, 1861, at four-hundred feet, a “pebble rock”—the “third sand”—tested the temper of the center-bit. Hope, the stuff that “springs eternal in the human breast,” took a fresh hold. It languished as the tools bored thirty, forty, fifty feet into the “pebble” and not a drop of oil appeared. Then something happened. Flecks of foam bubbled to the top of the conductor, jets of water rushed out, oil and water succeeded and a huge pillar of pure oil soared fifty yards! The Fountain well had tapped a fountain in the rock ordained thenceforth to furnish mankind with Pennsylvania petroleum. The first well put down to “the third sand,” and really the first on Oil Creek that flowed from any sand, it revealed oil-possibilities before unknown and unsuspected.

More tangible than the mythical Fountain of Youth, the Fountain well tallied three-hundred barrels a day for fifteen months. The flow ended as suddenly as it began. Paraffine clogged and strangled it to death, sealing the pores and pipes effectually. A young man “taught the young idea how to shoot” at Steam Mills, east of Titusville, where Captain Funk had lumber-mills. A visit to the Drake and Barnsdall wells, in December of 1859, determined the schoolmaster to have an oil-well of his own. Funk liked the earnest, manly youth and leased him five acres of the upper McElhenny farm. Plenty of brains, a brave heart, robust health, willing hands and thirty dollars constituted his capital. Securing two partners, “kicking down” started in the spring of 1860. Not a sign of oil could be detected at two-hundred feet, and the partners departed from the field. Summer and the teacher’s humble savings were gone. He earned more money by drilling on the Allegheny river, four miles above Oil City. While thus engaged the Fountain well revolutionized the business by “flowing” from a lower rock. The ex-wielder of the birch—he had resigned the ferrule for the “spring-pole”—hastened to sink the 127deserted well to the depth of Funk’s eye-opener. The second three-hundred-barrel gusher from the third sand, it rivaled the Fountain and arrived in time to help 1861 crimson the glorious Fourth!

Hon. John Fertig, of Titusville, the plucky schoolmaster of 1859-60, has been largely identified with oil ever since his initiation on the McElhenny lease. The Fertig well, in which David Beatty and Michael Gorman were his partners originally, realized him a fortune. Born in Venango county, on a farm below Gas City, in 1837, he completed a course at Neilltown Academy and taught school several terms. Soon after embarking in the production of oil he formed a partnership with the late John W. Hammond, which lasted until dissolved by death twenty years later. Fertig & Hammond operated in different sections with great success, carried on a refinery and established a bank at Foxburg. Mr. Fertig was Mayor of Titusville three terms, School-Controller, State Senator and Democratic candidate for Lieutenant-Governor in 1878. He has been vice-president of the Commercial Bank from its organization in 1882 and is president of the Titusville Iron-Works. Head of the National Oil-Company, he was also chief officer of the Union Oil-Company, an association of refining companies. For three years its treasurer—1892-5—he tided the United-States Pipe-Line Company over a financial crisis in 1893. As a pioneer producer—one of the few survivors connected with developments for a generation—a refiner and shipper, banker, manufacturer and business-man, John Fertig is most distinctively a representative of the oil-country. From first to last he has been admirably prudent and aggressive, conservative and enterprising in shaping a career with much to cherish and little to regret.

Frederick Crocker drilled a notable well on the McElhenny, near the Foster line, jigging the “spring-pole” in 1861 and piercing the sand at one-hundred-and-fifty feet. He pumped the well incessantly two months, getting clear water for his pains. Neighbors jeered, asked if he proposed to empty 128the interior of the planet into the creek and advised him to import a Baptist colony. Crocker pegged away, remembering that “he laughs best who laughs last.” One morning the water wore a tinge of green. The color deepened, the gas “cut loose,” and a stream of oil shot upwards! The Crocker well spurted for weeks at a thousand-barrel clip and was sold for sixty-five-thousand dollars. Shutting in the flow, to prevent waste, wrought serious injury. The well disliked the treatment, the gas sought a vent elsewhere, pumping coaxed back the yield temporarily to fifty barrels and in the fall it yielded up the ghost.

Bennett & Hatch spent the summer of 1861 drilling on a lease adjoining the Fountain, striking the third sand at the same depth. On September eighteenth the well burst forth with thirty-three-hundred barrels per day! This was “confusion worse confounded,” foreigners not wanting “the nasty stuff” and Americans not yet aware of its real value. The addition of three-thousand barrels a day to the supply—with big additions from other wells—knocked prices to twenty cents, to fifteen, to ten! All the coopers in Oildom could not make barrels as fast as the Empire well—appropriate name—could fill them. Bradley & Son, of Cleveland, bought a month’s output for five-hundred dollars, loading one-hundred-thousand barrels into boats under their contract! The despairing owners, suffering from “an embarrassment of riches,” tried to cork up the pesky thing, but the well was like Xantippe, the scolding wife of Socrates, and would not be choked off. They built a dam around it, but the oil wouldn’t be dammed that way. It just gorged the pond, ran over the embankment and greased Oil Creek as no stream was ever greased before! Twenty-two-hundred barrels was the daily average in November and twelve-hundred in March. The torrent played April-fool by stopping without notice, seven months from its inception. Cleaning out and pumping restored it to six-hundred barrels, which dropped two-thirds and stopped again in 1863. An “air blower” revived it briefly, but its vitality had fled and in another year the grand Empire breathed its last.

These wells boomed the territory immensely. Derricks and engine-houses studded the McElhenny farms, which operators hustled to perforate as full of holes as a strainer. To haul machinery from the nearest railroad doubled its cost. Pumping five to twenty barrels a day, when adjacent wells flowed more hundreds spontaneously, lost its charm and most of the small fry were abandoned. Everybody wanted to get close to the third-sand spouters, although the market was glutted and crude ruinously cheap. A town—Funkville—arose on the northern end of the upper farm, sputtered a year or two, then “folded its tent like the Arabs and silently stole away.” A search with a microscope would fail to unearth an atom of Funkville or the wells that created it. Fresh strikes in 1862 kept the fever raging. Davis & Wheelock’s rattler daily poured out fifteen-hundred barrels. The Densmore triplets, bunched on a two-acre lease, were good for six-hundred, four-hundred and five-hundred respectively. The Olmstead, American, Canfield, Aikens, Burtis and two Hibbard wells, of the vintage of 1863, rated from two-hundred to five-hundred each. A band of less account—thirty to one-hundred barrels—assisted in holding the daily product of the McElhenny farms, from the spring of 1862 to the end of 1863, considerably above six-thousand barrels. The mockery of fate was accentuated by a dry-hole six rods from the Sherman and dozens of poor wells in the bosom of the big fellows. Disposing of his timber-lands and saw-mills in 1863, Captain Funk built a mansion and removed to Titusville. Early in 1864 he sold his wells and oil-properties and died on August second, leaving an estate of 129two-millions. He built schools and churches, dispensed freely to the needy and was honest to the core. Pleased with the work of a clerk, he deeded him an interest in the last well he ever drilled, which the lucky young man sold for one-hundred-thousand dollars.

Almost simultaneously with the Empire, in September of 1861, the Buckeye well, on the George P. Espy farm, east of lower McElhenney, set off at a thousand-barrel jog. It was located on a strip of level ground too narrow for tanks, which had to be erected two-hundred feet up the hill. The pressure of gas sufficed to force the oil into these tanks for a year. The production fell to eighty barrels and then, tiring of a climbing job that smacked of Sisyphus and the rolling stone, took a permanent rest. From this famous well J. T. Briggs, manager of the Briggs and the Gillettee Oil-Companies, shipped to Europe in 1862 the first cargo of petroleum ever sent across the Atlantic. The Buckeye Belle stood about hip-high to its consort, a dozen other wells on the Epsy produced mildly and Northrup Brothers operated a refinery.

Improved methods of handling and new uses for the product advanced crude to five dollars in the spring of 1864. Operations encroached upon the higher lands, exploding the notion that paying territory was confined to flats bordering the streams. Pioneer Run, an affluent of Oil Creek, bisecting the western end of the upper McElhenney and Foster farms, panned out flatteringly. Substantial wells, yielding fifteen barrels to three-hundred lined the ravine thickly. The town of Pioneer attracted the usual throngs. David Emery and Lewis Emery, Frank W. Andrews and not a few leading operators resided there for a time. The Morgan House, a rude frame of one story, dished up meals at which to eat beef-hash was to beefashionable. Clark & McGowen had a feed-store, offices and warehouses abounded, tanks and derricks mixed in the mass and boats loaded oil for refineries down the creek or the Allegheny river. The characteristic oil-town has faded from sight, only the weather-beaten rail road-station and a forlorn iron-tank staying. John Rhodes, 130the last resident, was killed in February of 1892 by a train. He lived alone in a small house beside the track, which he was crossing when the engine hit him, the noisy waters in the culvert drowning the sound of the cars. Rhodes hauled oil in the old days to Erie and Titusville, became a producer, met with reverses, attended to some wells for a company, worked a bit of garden and felt independent and happy.

Matthew Taylor, a Cleveland saloonist, whom the sequel showed to be no saloonatic, took a four-hundred-dollar flyer at Pioneer, on his first visit to Oildom. A well on the next lease elevated values and Taylor returned home in two weeks with twenty-thousand dollars, which subsequent deals quadrupled. A Titusville laborer—“a broth of a b’y wan year frum Oireland”—who stuck fifty dollars into an out-of-the-way Pioneer lot, sold his claim in a month for five-thousand. He bought a farm, sent across the water for his colleen and “they lived happily ever after.” The driver of a contractor’s team, assigned an interest in a drilling-well for his wages, cleaned up thirty-thousand dollars by the transaction and went to Minnesota. Could the mellowest melodrama unfold sweeter melodies?

Although surrounded by farms unrivaled as oil-territory and sold to Woods & Wright of New York at a fancy price, James Boyd’s seventy-five acres in Cornplanter township, south of the lower McElhenny, dodged the petroleum-artery. The sands were there, but so barren of oil that nine-tenths of the forty wells did not pay one-tenth their cost. The Boyd farm was for months the terminus of the railroad from Corry. Hotels and refineries were built and the place had a short existence, a brief interval separating its lying-in and its laying-out.

G. W. McClintock, in February of 1864, sold his two-hundred-acre farm, on the west side of Oil Creek, midway between Titusville and Oil City, to the Central Petroleum Company of New York, organized by Frederic Prentice and George H. Bissell. This notable farm embraced the site of Petroleum Centre and Wild-Cat Hollow, a circular ravine three-fourths of a mile long, in which two-hundred paying wells were drilled. Brown, Catlin & Co.’s medium well, finished in August of 1861, was the first on the McClintock tract. The company bored a multitude of wells and granted leases only to actual operators, for one-half royalty and a large bonus. For ten one-acre leases one-hundred-thousand dollars cash and one-half the oil, offered by a New-York firm in 1865, were refused. The McClintock well, drilled in 1862, figured in the thousand-barrel class. The Coldwater, Meyer, Clark, Anderson, Fox, Swamp-Angel and Bluff wells made splendid records. Altogether the Central Petroleum-Company and the corps of lessees harvested at least five-millions of dollars from the McClintock farm!

Aladdin’s lamp was a miserly glim in the light of fortunes accruing from petroleum. The product of a flowing-well in a year would buy a tract of gold-territory in California or Australia larger than the oil-producing regions. Millions of dollars changed hands every week. The Central Company staked off a half-dozen streets and leased building-lots at exorbitant figures. Board-dwellings, offices, hotels, saloons and wells mingled promiscuously. It mattered nothing that discomfort was the rule. Poor fare, worse beds and the worst liquors were tolerated by the hordes of people who flocked to the land of derricks. Edward Fox, a railroad contractor who “struck the town” with eighty-thousand dollars, felicitously baptised the bantling Petroleum Centre. The 131owners of the ground opposed a borough-organization and the town traveled at a headlong go-as-you-please. Sharpers and prostitutes flourished, with no fear of human or divine law, in the metropolis of rum and debauchery. Dance-houses, beside which “Billy” McGlory’s Armory-Hall and “The.” Allen’s Mabille in New York were Sunday-school models, nightly counted their revelers by hundreds. In one of these dens Gus Reil, the proprietor, killed poor young Tait, of Rouseville. Fast women and faster men caroused and gambled, cursed and smoked, “burning the candle at both ends” in pursuit of—pleasure! Frequently the orgies eclipsed Monte Carlo—minus some of the glitter—and the Latin Quartier combined. Some readers may recall the night two “dead game sports” tossed dice twelve hours for one-thousand dollars a throw! But there was a rich leaven of first-class fellows. Kindred spirits, like “Sam” Woods, Frank Ripley, Edward Fox and Col. Brady were not hard to discover. Spades were trumps long years ago for Woods, who has taken his last trick 132and sleeps in an Ohio grave. Ripley is in Duluth, Fox is “out west” and Brady is in Harrisburg. Captain Ray and A. D. Cotton had a bank that handled barrels of money. For two or three years “The Centre”—called that for convenient brevity—acted as a sort of safety-valve to blow off the surplus wickedness of the oil-regions. Then “the handwriting on the wall” manifested itself. Clarion and Butler speedily reduced the four-thousand population to a mere remnant. The local paper died, houses were removed and the giddy Centre became “a back number.” The sounds of revelry were hushed, flickering lights no longer glared over painted harlots and the streets were deserted. Bissell’s empty bank-building, three dwellings, the public school, two vacant churches and the drygoods box used as a railway-station—scarcely enough to cast a shadow—are the sole survivors in the ploughed field that was once bustling, blooming, surging, foaming Petroleum Centre!

Across the creek from Petroleum Centre, on the east side of the stream, was Alexander Davidson’s farm of thirty-eight acres. A portion of this triangular “speck on the map” consisted of a mud-flat, a smaller portion of rising ground and the remainder set edgewise. Dr. A. G. Egbert, a young physician who had recently hung out his shingle at Cherrytree village, in 1860 negotiated for the farm. Davidson died and a hitch in the title delayed the deal. Finally Mrs. Davidson agreed to sign the deed for twenty-six-hundred dollars and one-twelfth the oil. Charles Hyde paid the doctor this amount in 1862 for one-half his purchase and it was termed the Hyde & Egbert farm. The Hollister well, drilled in 1861, the first on the land, flowed strongly. Owing to the dearness and scarcity of barrels, the oil was let run into the creek and the well was never tested. The lessees could not afford, as their contract demanded, to barrel the half due the land-owners, because crude was selling at twenty-five cents and barrels at three-fifty to four dollars! A company of Jerseyites, in the spring of 1863, drilled the Jersey well, on the south end of the property. The Jersey—it was a Jersey Lily—flowed three-hundred barrels a day for nine months, another well draining it early in 1864. The Maple-Shade, which cast the majority into the shade by its performance, touched the right spot in the third sand on August fifth, 1863. Starting at one-thousand barrels, it averaged eight-hundred for ten months, dropped to fifty the second year and held on until 1869. Fire on March second, 1864, burned the rig and twenty-eight tanks of oil, but the well kept flowing just the same, netting the owners a clear profit of fifteen-hundred-thousand dollars! “Do you notice it?” A plump million-and-a-half from a corner of the “measly patch” poor Davidson offered in 1860 for one-thousand dollars! And the Maple Shade was only one of twenty-three flowing wells on the despised thirty-eight acres!

Companies and individuals tugged and strained to get even the smallest lease Hyde & Egbert would grant. The Keystone, Gettysburg, Kepler, Eagle, Benton, Olive Branch, Laurel Hill, Bird and Potts wells, not to mention a score of minor note, helped maintain a production that paid the holders of the royalty eight-thousand dollars a day in 1864-5! E. B. Grandin and William C. Hyde, partners of Charles Hyde in a store at Hydetown, A. C. Kepler and Titus Ridgway obtained a lease of one acre on the west side of the lot, north of the wells already down, subject to three-quarters royalty. A bit of romance attaches to the transaction. Kepler dreamed that an Indian menaced him with bow and arrow. A young lady, considered somewhat coquettish, handed him a rifle and he fired at the dusky foe. The redskin vamoosed and a stream of oil burst forth. Visiting his brother, who superintended the farm, he recognized 133the scene of his dream. The lease was secured, on the biggest royalty ever offered. Kepler chose the location and bored the Coquette well. The dream was a nightmare? Wait and see.

Drilling began in the spring of 1864 and the work went merrily on. Each partner would be entitled to one-sixteenth of the oil. Hyde & Ridgway sold their interest for ten-thousand dollars a few days before the tools reached the sand. This interest Dr. M. C. Egbert, brother of the original purchaser of the farm, next bought at a large advance. He had acquired one-sixth of the property in fee and wished to own the Coquette. Grandin and Kepler declined to sell. The well was finished and did not flow! Tubed and pumped a week, gas checked its working and the sucker-rods were pulled. Immediately the oil streamed high in the air! Twelve-hundred barrels a day was the gauge at first, settling to steady business for a year at eight-hundred. A double row of tanks lined the bank, connected by pipes to load boats in bulk. Oil was “on the jump” and the first cargo of ten-thousand barrels brought ninety-thousand dollars, representing ten days’ production! Three months later Grandin and Kepler sold their one-eighth for one-hundred-and-forty-five thousand dollars, quitting the Coquette with eighty-thousand apiece in their pockets. Kepler was a dreamer whom Joseph might be proud to accept as a chum.

Dr. M. C. Egbert retained his share. Riches showered upon him. His interests in the land and wells yielded him thousands of dollars a day. Once his safe contained, by tight squeezing, eighteen-hundred-thousand dollars in currency and a pile of government bonds! He built a comfortable house and lived on the farm. He and his family traveled over Europe, met shoals of titled folks and saw all the sights. In company with John Brown, subsequently manager of a big corporation at Bradford and now a resident of Chicago, he engaged in oil-shipments on an extensive scale. To control this branch of the trade, as the Standard Oil-Company has since done by combinations of capital, was too gigantic a task for the firm and failure resulted. The brainy, courageous doctor went to California, returned to Oildom and operated in McKean county. He has secured a foothold in the newer fields and lives in Pittsburg, frank and urbane as in the palmiest days of the Hyde & Egbert farm. If Dame Fortune was strangely capricious on Oil Creek, the pluck of the men with whom “the fickle jade” played whirligig was surely admirable.

Probably no parcel of ground in America of equal size ever yielded a larger return, in proportion to the expenditure, than the Hyde & Egbert tract. Six weeks’ production of the Coquette or Maple Shade would drill all the wells on the property. Charles Hyde and Dr. A. G. Egbert cleared at least three-million dollars, the latter selling one-twelfth of the Coquette alone for a quarter-million cash. Profits of others interested in the land and of the lessees trebled this alluring sum. The aggregate—eight to ten millions—in silver-dollars would load a freight-train or build a column twenty miles high! Fused into a lump of gold, a dozen mules might well decline the task of drawing it a mile. Done 134up into a bundle of five-dollar bills, Hercules couldn’t budge the bulky package. A “promoter” of the Mulberry-Sellers brand wanted an owner of the farm, when the wells were at their best, to launch the whole thing into a stock-company with five-millions capital. “Bah!” responded the gentleman, “five millions—did you say five-millions? Don’t waste your breath talking until you can come around with twenty-five millions!”

A native of New-York, born in 1822, Charles Hyde was fifteen when the family settled on a farm two miles south of Titusville, now occupied by the Octave Oil-Company. At twenty he engaged with his father and two brothers, W. C. and E. B. Hyde, in merchandising, lumbering and the manufacture of salts from ashes. In 1846 he assumed charge of the lumber-mills John Titus sold the firm, originating the thrifty village of Hydetown, four miles above Titusville. The Hydes frequently procured oil from the “springs” on Oil Creek, selling it for medicine as early as 1840-1. From their Hydetown store Colonel Drake obtained some tools and supplies Titusville could not furnish. Samuel Grandin, of Tidioute, in the spring of 1860 induced Charles Hyde to buy a tenth-interest in the Tidioute and Warren Oil-Company for one-thousand dollars. The company’s first well, of which he heard on his way to Pittsburg with a raft, laid the foundation of Hyde’s great fortune in petroleum. He organized the Hydetown Oil-Company, which leased the McClintock farm, below Rouseville, from Jonathan Watson and drilled a two-hundred-barrel well in the summer of 1860. Mr. Hyde operated on the Clapp farm, south of McClintock, and at different points on Oil Creek and the Allegheny River. His gains from the Hyde & Egbert farm approximated two-millions. Starting the Second National Bank of Titusville in 1865, he has always been its president and chief stockholder. In 1869 he removed to Plainfield, New Jersey, cultivating four-hundred acres of suburban land and maintaining an elegant home.

Dr. Albert G. Egbert, born in Mercer county in 1828, belonged to a family of eminent physicians, his grandfather, father, two uncles, three brothers and one son practicing medicine. Predicating a future for oil upon the Drake well, his good judgment displayed itself promptly. Agreeing to purchase the Davison farm, which his modest income at Cherrytree would not enable him to pay for, his sale of a half-interest to Charles Hyde provided the money to meet the entire claim. After the wonderful success of that investment the doctor located at Franklin. He carried on oil-operations, farming and coal-mining and was always active in advancing the general welfare. Elected to Congress against immense odds, he served his district most capably, attending sedulously to his official duties and doing admirable work on committees. In public and private life he was enterprising and liberal, zealous for the right and a helpful citizen. True to his convictions and professions, he never turned his back to friend or foe. To the steady, masterful purpose of men like Dr. Egbert the oil-industry owes its rapid strides and commanding position as a commercial staple. His demise on March twenty-eighth, 1896, severs another of the links that bind the eventful past and the important present of petroleum. Early operators on Oil Creek are reduced to a handful of men whose heads are white with the snows no July sun can melt.

The rich pickings around Petroleum Center set many on the straight cinder-path to prosperity. The four Phillips brothers—Isaac N., Charles M., John I. 135and Thomas M. came from Newcastle to coin money operating a farm south of the Espy. Prolific wells on the Niagara tract, Cherrytree Run, back of the Benninghoff farm, added to their wealth. They cut a wide swath in all the Pennsylvania fields. Three of the brothers have “ascended to the hill of frankincense and to the mountain of myrrh.” Thomas M. was a millionaire congressman. During the heated debates on free-silver, in 1894, he scored the hit of the season by suggesting to convert each barrel of Petroleum into legal-tender for a dollar and let it go at that. Crude was selling at sixty cents, which gave the Phillips proposition a point “sharper than a serpent’s tooth” or a Demosthenean philippic. Dr. Egbert offered Isaac Phillips an interest in the Davidson farm in 1862. The offer was not accepted instantly, Phillips saying he would “consider it a few days.” Two weeks later he was ready to close the deal, but the plum had fallen into the lap of Charles Hyde and diverted prospective millions into another channel.

George K. Anderson figured conspicuously in this latitude, his receipts for two years exceeding five-thousand dollars a day! He built a sumptuous residence at Titusville, sought political preferment and served a term in the State Senate. Holding a vast block of Pacific-Railroad stock, he was the bosom friend of the directors and trusted lieutenant of William H. Kemble, the Philadelphia magnate whose “addition, division and silence” gave him notoriety. He bought thousands of acres of land, plunged deeply into stocks and insured his life for three-hundred-and-fifteen-thousand dollars, at that time the largest risk in the country. If he sneezed or coughed the agents of the insurance-companies grew nervous and summoned a posse of doctors to consult about the case. Outside speculations swamped him at last. The stately mansion, piles of bonds and scores of farms passed under the sheriff’s hammer in 1880. Plucky and unconquerable, Anderson tried his hand in the Bradford field, operating on Harrisburg Run. The result was discouraging and he entered an insurance-office in New York. Five years ago he accepted a government-berth in New Mexico. Meeting him on Broadway the week before he left New York, his buoyant spirits seemed depressed. He spoke regretfully of his approaching departure, yet hoped it might turn out advantageously. He arrived at his post, sickened and died in a few days, “a stranger in a strange land.” Relatives and loved ones were far away when he went down into the starless night of the grave. No gentle wife or child or valued friend was there to smooth the pillow of the dying man, to cool the fevered brow, to catch the 136last whisper, to close the glassy eyes and fold the rigid hands above the lifeless breast. The oil-regions abound with pathetic experiences, but none surpassing George K. Anderson’s. Wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice, the courted politician, the confidant of presidents and statesmen, a social favorite in Washington and Harrisburg, the owner of a home beautiful as Claude Melnotte pictured to Pauline, he drained the cup of sorrow and misfortune. Reverses beset him, his riches took wings, bereavements bore heavily upon him, he was glad to secure a humble clerkship, and death ended the sad scene in a distant territory. Does not human life contain more tears than smiles, more pain than pleasure, more cloud than sunshine in the passage from the cradle to the tomb?

Frank W. Andrews, born in Vermont and reared in Ohio, taught school in Missouri, hunted for gold at Pike’s Peak and landed on Oil Creek in the winter of 1863-4. Hauling oil nine months supplied funds to operate on Cherrytree Run. He drilled four dry holes. One on the McClintock farm and three more on Pithole Creek followed. This was not a flattering start, but Andrews had lots of sand and persistence. Emerging from the Pithole excitement with limited cash and unlimited machinery, he returned to Oil Creek and operated extensively. His first well at Pioneer flowed three-hundred barrels a day. Fifty others at Shamburg, on the Benninghoff farm and Cherrytree Run brought him hundreds of thousands of dollars. He was rated at three-millions in 1870. Keeping up with the tidal wave southward, he put down two-hundred wells in the Franklin, Clarion and Butler districts. Failures of banks and manufactories in which he had a large stake shattered his fortune. With the loss of money he did not lose his manliness and self-reliance. In the Bradford region he pressed forward vigorously. Again he “plucked the flower of success” and was fast recuperating when thrown from his horse and fatally injured. Upright, unassuming and refined, Andrews merited the confidence and esteem of all.

The bluff overlooking Petroleum Centre from the east formed the western side of the McCray farm. At its base, on the Hyde & Egbert plot, were several of the finest wells in Pennsylvania, the Coquette almost touching McCray’s line. Dr. M. C. Egbert leased part of the slope and drilled three wells. Other parties drilled five and the eight behaved so handsomely that the owner of the land declined an offer, in 1865, of a half-million dollars for his eighty acres. A well on top of the hill, not deep enough to hit the sand and supposed to be dry, postponed further operations five years. His friends distanced Jeremiah in their lamentations that McCray had spurned the five-hundred-thousand dollars. He may have thought of Shakespeare’s “tide in the affairs of men,” but he sawed wood and said nothing. Jonathan Watson, advised by a clairvoyant, in the spring of 1870 drilled a three-hundred-barrel well on the uplands of the Dalzell farm, close to the southern boundary of the McCray. The clairvoyant’s astonishing guess revived interest in Petroleum Centre, which for a year or two had been on the down grade. Besieged for leases, McCray could not meet a tithe of the demand at one-thousand dollars an acre and half the oil. Derricks clustered thickly. Every well tapped the pool underlying fifteen acres, pumping as if drawing from a lake of petroleum. Within four months the daily production was three-thousand barrels. This meant nineteen-hundred barrels for the land-owner—fifteen-hundred from royalty and four-hundred from wells he had drilled—a regular income of nine-thousand dollars a day! Cipher it out—nineteen-hundred barrels at four-fifty to five dollars, with eleven-hundred barrels for the lessees—and what do you find? Fourteen-thousand dollars a day for the last quarter of 1870 and nine months of 1871, from one-sixth of a 137farm sold in 1850 for seventeen-hundred dollars! Say, how was that for high?

James S. McCray, a farmer’s son, born in 1824 on the flats below Titusville, at twenty-two set out for himself with two dollars in his pocket. Working three years in a saw-mill on the Allegheny, he saved his earnings and in 1850 was able to buy a team and take up the farm decreed to enrich him beyond his wildest fancies. He married Miss Martha G. Crooks, a willing helpmeet in adversity and wise counsellor in prosperity. His first venture in oil, a share in a two-acre lease at Rouseville, he sold to drill a well on the Blood farm, elbowing his own. From this he realized seventy-thousand dollars. For his own farm he refused a million dollars in 1871. Sharpers dogged his footsteps and endeavored to rope him into all sorts of preposterous schemes. He told me one project, which was expected to control the coal-trade of the region, bled him two-hundred-and-sixty-thousand dollars! Instead of selling his oil right along, at an average figure of nearly five dollars, he stored two-hundred-thousand barrels in iron-tanks, to await higher prices. In my presence H. I. Beers, of McClintockville, bid him five-thirty-five a barrelfive-thirty-five a barrel for the lot. McCray stuck out for five-fifty. He kept the oil for years, losing thousands of barrels by leakage and evaporation, and sold the bulk of it at one to two dollars. Had he dealt with Beers he would have been six-hundred-thousand dollars richer! Mr. McCray removed to Franklin in 1872 and died some years ago. He rests in the cemetery beside his faithful wife and only daughter. The wells on his farm drooped and withered and the famous fifteen-acre field has long been a pasture. A robust character, strong-willed and kindly, sometimes queerly contradictory and often misjudged, James S. McCray could adopt the words of King Lear: “I am a man more sinned against than sinning.”

The Dalzell or Hayes farm, on which the first well—fifty barrels—was drilled in 1861, boasted the Porcupine, Rhinoceros, Ramcat, Wildcat, and a menagerie of thirty others ranging from ten barrels to three-hundred. At the north end of the farm, in the rear of the Maple-Shade and Jersey wells, the Petroleum Shaft-and-Mining-Company attempted to sink a hole seven feet by 138seventeen to the third sand. The shaft was dug and blasted one-hundred feet, at immense cost. The funds ran out, gas threatened to asphyxiate the workmen, the big pumps could not exhaust the water and the absurd undertaking was abandoned.

The story of the Story farm does not lack romantic ingredients. William Story owned five-hundred acres south of the G. W. McClintock farm, Oil Creek, the Dalzell and Tarr farms bounding his land on the east. He sold in 1859 to Ritchie, Hartje & Co., of Pittsburg, for thirty-thousand dollars. George H. Bissell had negotiated for the property, but Mrs. Story objected to signing the deed. Next day Bissell returned to offer the wife a sufficient inducement, but the Pittsburg agent had been there the previous evening and secured her signature to the Ritchie-Hartje deed by the promise of a silk dress! Thus a twenty-dollar gown changed the ultimate ownership of millions of dollars! The long-haired novelist, who soars into the infinite and dives into the unfathomable, may try to imagine what the addition of a new bonnet would have accomplished.

The seven Pittsburgers organized a stock company in 1860 to develop the farm. By act of Legislature this was incorporated on May first, 1861, as the Columbia Oil-Company, with a nominal capital of two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars—ten-thousand shares of twenty-five dollars each. Twenty-one-thousand barrels of oil were produced in 1861 and ninety-thousand in 1862, shares selling at two to ten dollars. Foreign demand for oil improved matters. On July eighth, 1863, the first dividend of thirty per cent. was declared, followed in August and September by two of twenty-five per cent. and in October by one of fifty per cent. Four dividends, aggregating one-hundred-and-sixty per cent., were declared the first six months of 1864. The capital was increased to two-and-a-half-millions, by calling in the old stock and giving each holder of a twenty-five-dollar share five new ones of fifty dollars apiece. Four-hundred per cent. were paid on this capital in six years. The original stockholders received their money back forty-three times and had ten times their first stock to keep on drawing fat dividends! Suppose a person had bought one-hundred shares in 1862 at two dollars, in eight years he would have been paid one-hundred-and-seven-thousand dollars for his two hundred and have five-hundred fifty-dollar shares on hand! From a mere speck of the Story farm the Columbia Oil-Company in ten years produced oil that sold for ten-millions of dollars! Wonder not that men, dazzled by such returns, blind to the failures that littered the oily domain, clutched at the veriest phantoms in the mad craze for boundless wealth.

Splendidly managed throughout, the policy of the Columbia Company was to operate its lands systematically. Wells were not drilled at random over the farm, nor were leases granted to speculators. There was no effort to make a big showing of production and exhaust the territory in the shortest time possible. For twenty-five years the Story farm yielded profitably. The wells, never amazingly large, held on tenaciously. The Ladies’ well produced sixty-five-thousand barrels, the Floral sixty-thousand, the Big Tank fifty-thousand, the Story Centre forty-five-thousand, the Breedtown forty-thousand, the Cherry Run fifty-five-thousand, the Titus pair one-hundred-thousand and the Perry thirty-five-thousand. The company erected machine-shops, built houses for employés, and the village of Columbia prospered. The Columbia Cornet Band, superbly appointed, its thirty members in rich uniforms, its instruments the finest and its drum-major an acrobatic revelation, could have given Gilmore’s or Sousa’s 139points in ravishing music. G. S. Bancroft superintended the wells and D. H. Boulton, now of Franklin, assisted President D. B. Stewart, of Pittsburg, in conducting affairs generally. The village has vanished, the cornet band is hushed forever, the fields are the prey of weeds and underbrush and brakemen no more call out “Columby!” A few small wells, hidden amid the hills, produce a morsel of oil, but the farm, despoiled of sixteen-million dollars of greasy treasure, would not bring one-fourth the price paid William Story for it in the fall of 1859. “So passes away earthly glory” is as true to-day as when Horace evolved the classic phrase two-thousand years ago.

On the east side of Oil Creek, opposite the southern half of the Story farm, James Tarr owned and occupied a triangular tract of two-hundred acres. He was a strong-limbed, loud-voiced, stout-hearted son of toil, farming in summer and hauling lumber in winter to support his family. Although uneducated, he had plenty of “horse sense” and native wit. His quaint speech coined words and terms that are entrenched firmly in the nomenclature of Oildom. Funny stories have been told at his expense. One of these, relating to his daughter, whom he had taken to a seminary, has appeared in hundreds of newspapers. According to the revised version, the principal of the school expressing a fear that the girl had not “capacity,” the fond father, profoundly ignorant of what was meant, drew a roll of greenbacks from his pocket and exclaimed: “Damn it, that’s nothing! Buy her one and here’s the stuff to pay for it!” The fact that it is pure fiction may detract somewhat from the piquancy of this incident. Tarr realized his own deficiencies from lack of schooling and spared no pains, when the golden stream flowed his way, to educate the children dwelling in the old home on the south end of the farm. His daughters were bright, good-looking, intelligent girls. Scratching the barren hills for a meager corn-crop, hunting rabbits on Sundays, rafting in the spring and fall and teaming while snow lasted barely sufficed to keep the gaunt wolf of hunger from the door of many a hardy Oil-Creek settler. To their credit be it said, most of the land-owners whom petroleum enriched took care of their money. Rough diamonds, uncut and unpolished, they possessed intrinsic worth. James Tarr was of the number who did not lose their heads and squander their substance. The richest of them all, he bought a delightful home near Meadville, provided every comfort and convenience, spent his closing years enjoyably and died in 1871. “Put yourself in his place” and, candidly, would you have done better?

For himself, George B. Delamater and L. L. Lamb, in the summer of 1860 Orange Noble leased seven acres of the Tarr farm, at the bend in Oil Creek. Dry holes the partners “kicked down” on the Stackpole and Jones farms dampening their ardor, they let the Tarr lease lie dormant some months. Contracting with a Townville neighbor—N. S. Woodford—to juggle the “spring-pole,” he cracked the first sand in June, 1861. The Crescent well—so called because the faith of the owners was increasing—tipped the beam at five-hundred barrels. The first well on the Tarr farm, it flowed an average of three-hundred barrels a day for thirteen months, quitting without notice. Cleaning it out, drilling it deeper and pumping it for weeks were of no avail. Not a drop of oil could be extracted and the Crescent was abandoned. Crude was so low during most of its existence—ten to twenty-five cents—that the well, although it produced one-hundred-and-twenty-thousand barrels, did not pay the owners a dollar of profit! 140Drilling, royalty and tankage absorbed every nickel. Like the victories of Pyrrhus, the more such strikes a fellow achieved the sooner he would be undone!

On the evening of August first, 1861, as James Tarr sat eating his supper of fried pork and johnny-cake, Heman Janes, of Erie, entered the room. “Tarr,” he said, “I’ll give you sixty-thousand dollars in spot cash for your farm!” Tarr almost fell off his chair. A year before one-thousand dollars would have been big money for the whole plantation. “I mean it,” continued the visitor; “if you take me up I’ll close the deal right here!” Tarr “took him up” and the deal, which included a transfer of several leases, was closed quickly. Janes planked down the sixty-thousand and Tarr, within an hour, had stepped from poverty to affluence. This was the first large cash transaction in oil-lands on the creek and people promptly pronounced Janes a fool of the thirty-third degree. An Irishman, on trial for stealing a sheep, asked by the judge whether he was guilty or not guilty, replied: “How can I tell till I hear the ividence?” Don’t endorse the Janes verdict “till you hear the ividence.”

A short distance below the Crescent well William Phillips, who had leased a narrow strip the entire length of the farm, was also urging a “spring-pole” actively. Born in Westmoreland county in 1824, he passed his boyhood on a farm and earned his first money mining coal. Saving his hard-won wages, he bought the keel-boat Orphan Boy and started freighting on the Ohio and Allegheny rivers. The business proving remunerative, he drilled salt-wells at Bull Creek and Wildcat Hollow. On his last trip from Warren to Pittsburg, in September of 1859, he noticed a scum of oil in front of Thomas Downing’s farm, where South Oil City now stands. The story of the Drake well was in everybody’s mouth and it occurred to Phillips that he could increase his growing fortune by drilling on the Downing land. At Pittsburg he consulted Charles Lockhart, William Frew, Captain Kipp and John Vanausdall and with them formed the partnership of Phillips, Frew & Co. Returning at once, he leased from Downing, erected a pole-derrick and proceeded to bore a well on the water’s edge. With no machine-shops, tools or appliances nearer than Pittsburg, a hundred-and-thirty miles off, difficulties of all kinds retarded the work nine months. Finally the job was completed and the Albion well, pumping forty barrels a day, raised a commotion.

The Albion brought Phillips to the front as an oil-operator. James Tarr readily leased him part of his farm and he began Phillips No. 1 well in the spring of 1861. The Crescent’s unexpected success spurred him to greater efforts. Hurrying an engine and boiler from Pittsburg, he started his second well on the flat hugging the stream twenty rods north of the Crescent. Steam-power rushed the tools at a boom-de-ay gait. The first sand, from which meanwhile No. 1 was rivaling the Crescent’s yield, had not a pinch of oil. The solid-silver lining of the petroleum-cloud assumed a plated look, but Phillips heeded it not. An expert driller, he hustled the tools and on October nineteenth, at four-hundred-and-eighty feet, pierced the shell above the third sand. At dusk he shut down for the night. The weather was clear and the moon shone brightly. Suddenly a vivid flame illumined the sky. Reuben Painter’s well on the Blood farm, a mile southward, had caught fire and blazed furiously. The rare spectacle of a burning well attracted everybody for miles. Phillips and Janes were among those who hastened to the fire, returning about midnight. An hour later they were summoned from bed by a man yelling at the Ella-Yaw pitch: “The Phillips is bu’sted and runnin’ down the creek!” People ran to the spot on the double-quick, past the Crescent and down the bank. Gas was settling densely upon the 141flats and into the creek oil was pouring lavishly. Dreading a fire, lights were extinguished on the adjoining tracts and needful precautions taken. For three or four days the flow raged unhindered, then a lull occurred and tubing was inserted. After the seed-bag swelled, a stop-cock was placed on the tubing and thenceforth it was easy to regulate the flow. When oil was wanted the stop-cock was opened and wooden troughs conveyed the stuff to boats drawn up the creek by horses, the chief mode of transportation for years. The oil was forty-four gravity and four-thousand barrels a day gushed out! In June of 1862, when Phillips and Major Frew, with their wives and a party of friends, inspected the well, a careful gauge showed it was doing thirty-six-hundred-and-sixty barrels! The Phillips well held the champion-belt twenty-seven years. It produced until 1871, getting down to ten or twelve barrels and ceasing altogether the night James Tarr expired, having yielded nearly one-million barrels! Cargoes of the oil were sold to boatmen at five cents a barrel, thousands of barrels were wasted, tens of thousands were stored in underground tanks and much was sold at three to thirteen dollars.

N. S. Woodford, Noble & Delamater’s contractor, had the foresight to lease the ground between the Crescent and the Phillips No. 2. His three-thousand barreler, finished in December, 1861, drew its grist from the Phillips crevice and interfered with the mammoth gusher. When the two became pumpers neither would give out oil unless both were worked. If one was stopped the other pumped water. Ultimately the Phillips crowd paid Woodford a half-million for his well and lease, a wad for which a man would ford even the atrocious Tarr-farm mud and complacently whistle “Ta-ra-ra.” He retired to his pleasant home, with six-hundred-thousand dollars to show for eighteen months’ operations on Oil Creek, and never bothered any more about oil. The Woodford well repaid its enormous cost. Lockhart and Frew bought out their partners at a high price and put the Phillips-Woodford interests into a stock-company capitalized at two-million dollars. The Phillips well—one result of a keen-eyed 142boatman’s observing an oily scum on the Allegheny River—enriched all concerned. Had Phillips failed to see the speck of grease that September day, who can tell how different oil-region history might have been? Happily for a good many persons, the Orphan Boy was not one of the “Ships that Pass in the Night.” What a field Oil Creek presents for the fervid fancy of a Dumas, a Dickens, a Wilkie Collins or a Charles Reade!

Comrades in business and good-fellowship, William Phillips and John Vanausdall removed to South Oil-City, lived neighbors and died twenty years ago. They resembled each other in appearance and temper, in charitable impulse and kindness to the poor. Phillips drilled dozens of wells—none of them dry—aided Oil-City enterprises and was a member of the shipping firm of Munhall & Co. until its dissolution in 1876. He was the first man to ship oil by steamer, the Venango taking the first load to Pittsburg, and the first to run crude in bulk down the creek. One son, John C. Phillips, and a married daughter live at Oil City and two sons at Freeport.

Heman Janes, of Erie, the first purchaser of the Tarr farm, from 1850 to 1861 shipped large quantities of lumber to the eastern market. Passing through Canada in 1858, he heard oil was obtained from gum-beds in Lambton county, south of Lake Huron, and visited the place. John Williams was dipping five barrels a day from a hole ten feet square and twenty feet deep. The best gum-beds spread over two-hundred acres of timbered land, which Mr. Janes bought at nine dollars an acre, the owner selling because “the stinking oil smelled five miles off.” Leasing four-hundred acres more, in 1860 he sold a half-interest in both tracts for fifteen-thousand dollars and retired from lumbering to devote his attention to oil. Large wells on his Canadian lands enabled him to sell the second half of the property in 1865 for fifty-five-thousand dollars. In February, 1861, he secured a thirty-day option on the J. Buchanan farm, the site of Rouseville, and tendered the price at the stipulated time, but the transaction fell through. In March of that year he went to West Virginia and leased one-thousand acres on the Kanawha River, including the famous “Burning Spring.” U. E. Everett & Co. agreed to pay fifty-thousand dollars for one-half interest in the property, at Parkersburg, on April twelfth. All parties met, a certified check was laid on the table and Attorney J. B. Blair started to draw the papers. At that moment a boy ran past, shouting: “Fort Sumpter’s fired on!” The gentlemen hurried out to learn the particulars. “The cat came back,” but Everett didn’t. A message told him to “hold off,” and he is holding off still. Janes stayed as long as a Northerner dared and was thankful to sell the batch of leases for seventy-five-hundred dollars. In 1862 he sued the owners of the Phillips well for his royalty in barrels. They refused to furnish the barrels, which were scarce and expensive, and the well was shut down for months pending the litigation. The suit was for one-hundred-and-twelve-thousand dollars, up to that time the largest amount ever involved in a case before the Venango court. Edwin M. Stanton, soon to be known as the illustrious War-Secretary, was one of the attorneys engaged by the plaintiff, for a fee of 143twenty-five-thousand dollars. A compromise was arranged for half the oil. The first oil sold after this agreement was at three dollars a barrel, taken from the first twelve-hundred-barrel tank ever seen in the region. A wooden tank of that size excited more curiosity in those days than a hundred iron-ones of forty-thousand barrels in this year of grace. Janes sold back half the farm to Tarr for forty-thousand dollars and two-thirds of the remaining half to Clark & Sumner for twenty-thousand, leaving him one-sixth clear of cost, the same month he bought the tract. He first suggested casing wells to exclude the water, built the first bulk-boat decked over—six-hundred barrels—to transport oil and was identified with the first practicable pipe-line. Paying seventy-five-thousand dollars for the Blackmar farm, at Pithole, he drilled three dry holes and then got rid of the land at a snug advance. Since 1878 Mr. Janes has been interested in the Bradford field and living at Erie. A man of forceful character and executive ability, hearty, vigorous and companionable, he deserves the large measure of success that rewarded him as an important factor in petroleum-affairs. In the words of the good Scottish mother to her son: “May your lot be wi’ the rich in this warld and wi’ the puir in the warld to come.”

The amazing output of the Phillips and Woodford wells stimulated the demand for territory to the boiling point. Men were infinitely less eager to “read their title clear to mansions in the skies” than to secure a title to a fragment of the Tarr farm. Rigs huddled on the bank and in the water, for nobody thought oil existed back in the hilly sections. Sixty yards below the Phillips spouter J. F. Crane sank a well that responded as pleasantly as “the swinging of the crane.” Densmore Brothers, at the lower end of the farm, drilled a seven-hundred-barreler late in 1861. A zoological freak introduced the animal-fad, which named the Elephant, Young Elephant, Tigress, Tiger, Lioness, Scared Cat, Anaconda and Weasel wells. Reckless speculation held the fort unchecked. The third sand was sixty feet thick, the territory was durable and three-hundred walking-beams exhibited “the poetry of motion” to the music of three-four-five-six-eight-ten-dollar oil. Mr. Janes built a commodious hotel and a town of two-thousand population flourished. James Tarr sold his entire interest in 1865, for gold equivalent to two-millions in currency, and removed to Crawford county. Another million would hardly cover his royalties. Three-million dollars ahead of the game in four years, he could afford to smile at the jibes of small-souled retailers of witless ridicule. If “money talks,” three-millions ought to be pretty eloquent. The churches, stores, houses, offices, wells and tanks have “gone glimmering.” Tarr-Farm station appears no more on railroad time-tables. Modern maps do not reveal it. Few know and fewer care who owns the place once the apple of the oilman’s eye, now a shadowy relic not worth carting off in a wheelbarrow!

Producers have enjoyed quite a reputation for “resolving,” and the first meeting ever held to regulate the price of crude was at Tarr farm in 1861. The moving spirits were Mr. Janes, General James Wadsworth and Josiah Oakes, the latter a New-York capitalist. The idea was to raise five-hundred-thousand dollars and buy up the territory for ten miles along Oil Creek. Wadsworth and Oakes raised over three-hundred-thousand dollars for this purpose, when the panic arising from the war ended the scheme. A contract was also made with Erie parties to lay a four-inch wooden pipe-line from Tarr farm to Oil City. On the advice of Col. Clark, of Clark & Sumner, and Sir John Hope, the eminent London banker, it was decided to abandon the project and apply for a charter for a pipe-line. This was done in the winter of 1861-2, Hon. Morrow B. Lowry, 144who represented the district in the State Senate, favoring the application. Hon. M. C. Beebe, the local member of the Legislature, opposed it resolutely, because, to quote his own words: “There are four-thousand teams hauling oil and my constituents won’t stand this interference.” The measure failing to carry, Clark & Hope built the Standard refinery at Pittsburg.

Resistance to the South-Improvement-Company welded the producers solidly in 1872. The refiners organized to force a larger margin between crude and refined. To offset this and govern the production and sale of crude, the producers established a “union,” “agencies” and “councils.” In October of 1872 every well in the region was shut down for thirty days. The “spirit of seventy-six” was abroad and individual losses were borne cheerfully for the general good. This was the heroic period, which demonstrated the manly fiber of the great body of oil-operators. E. E. Clapp, of President, and Captain William Harson, of Oil City, were the chief officers of these remarkable organizations. Suspensions of drilling in 1873-4-5 supplemented the memorable “thirty-day shut-down.” At length the “union,” the “councils” and the “agencies” wilted and dissolved. The area of productive territory widened and strong companies became a necessity to develop it. The big fish swallowed the little ones, hence the personal feature so pronounced in earlier years has been almost eliminated. Many of the operators are members of the Producers’ Association, in which Congressman Phillips, Lewis Emery, David Kirk and T. J. Vandergrift are prime factors. Its president, Hon. J. W. Lee, practiced law at Franklin, served twice as State-Senator and located at Pittsburg last year. He is a cogent speaker, not averse to legal tilts and not backward flying his colors in the face of the enemy.

South of the Story and Tarr farms, on both sides of Oil Creek, were John Blood’s four-hundred-and-forty acres. The owner lived in an unpainted, weatherbeaten frame house. On five acres of the flats the Ocean Petroleum-Company had twelve flowing wells in 1861. The Maple-Tree Company’s burning well spouted twenty-five-hundred barrels for several months, declined to three-hundred in a year and was destroyed by fire in October of 1862. The flames devastated twenty acres, consuming ten wells and a hundred tanks of oil, the loss aggregating a million dollars. A sheet of fire, terribly grand and up to that date the most extensive and destructive in Oildom, wrapped the flats and the stream. Blood Well No. 1, flowing a thousand barrels, Blood No. 2, flowing six hundred, and five other gushers never yielded after the conflagration, prior to which the farm was producing more oil than the balance of the region. Brewer & Watson, Ballard & Trax, Edward Filkins, Henry Collins, Reuben Painter, James Burrows and J. H. Duncan were pioneer operators on the tract. Blood sold in 1863 for five-hundred-and-sixty-thousand dollars and removed to New York. Buying a brownstone residence on Fifth avenue, he splurged around Gotham two or three years, quit the city for the country and died long since. The Blood farm was notably prolific, but its glory has departed. Stripped bare of derricks, houses, wells and tanks, naught is left save the rugged hills and sandy banks. “It is no matter, the cat will mew, the dog will have his day.”

Neighbors of John Blood, a raw-boned native and his wife, enjoyed an experience not yet forgotten in New York. Selling their farm for big money, the couple concluded to see Manhattanville and set off in high glee, arrayed in homespun-clothes of most agonizing country-fashion. Wags on the farm advised them to go to the Astor House and insist upon having the finest room in 145the caravansary. Arriving in New York, they were driven to the hotel, each carrying a bundle done up in a colored handkerchief. Their rustic appearance attracted great attention, which was increased when the man marched to the office-counter and demanded “the best in the shebang, b’gosh.” The astounded clerk tried to get the unwelcome guest to go elsewhere, assuring him he must have made a mistake. The rural delegate did not propose to be bluffed by coaxing or threats. At length the representative of petroleum wanted to know “how much it would cost to buy the gol-darned ranche.” In despair the clerk summoned the proprietor, who soon took in the situation. To humor the stranger he replied that one-hundred-thousand dollars would buy the place. The chap produced a pile of bills and tendered him the money on the spot! Explanations followed, a parlor and bedroom were assigned the pair and for days they were the lions of the metropolis. Hundreds of citizens and ladies called to see the innocents who had come on their “first tower” as green and unsophisticated as did Josiah Allen’s Wife twenty years later.

Ambrose Rynd, an Irish woolen-factor, bought five-hundred acres from the Holland Land-Company in 1800 and built a log-cabin at the mouth of Cherrytree Run. He attained the Nestorian age of ninety-nine. His grandson, John Rynd, born in the log-cabin in 1815, owned three-hundred acres of the tract when the petroleum-wave swept Oil Creek. The Blood farm was north and the Smith east. Cherrytree and Wykle Runs rippled through the western half of the property, which Oil Creek divided nicely. Developments in 1861 were on the eastern half. Starting at five-hundred barrels, the Rynd well flowed until 1863. The Crawford “saw” the Rynd and “went it one better,” lasting until June of 1864. Six fair wells were drilled on Rynd Island, a dot at the upper part of the farm. The Rynd-Farm Oil-Company of New York purchased the tract in 1864. John Rynd moved to Fayette county and died in the seventies. Hume & Crawford, Porter & Milroy, B. F. Wren, the Ozark, Favorite, Frost, Northern and a score of companies operated vigorously. The third sand thickened and improved with the elevation of the hills. Five refineries handled a thousand barrels of crude per week. A snug village bloomed on the west side, the broad flat affording an eligible site. The late John Wallace and Theodore Ladd were prominent in the later stage of operations. Cyrus D. Rynd returned in 1881 to take charge of the farm and served as postmaster six years. Rynd, once plump and juicy, now lean and desiccated, resembles an orange which a boy has sucked and thrown away the rind.

Two museum-curio wells on the Rynd farm illustrated practically Chaplain McCabe’s “Drinking From the Same Canteen.” A dozen strokes of the pump every hour caused the Agitator to flow ten or fifteen minutes. The pious Sunday well, its companion, loafed six days in the week while the other worked, flowing on the Sabbath when the Agitator pump rested from its labors. This sort of affinity, which cost William Phillips and Noble & Delamater a mint of money, was evinced most forcibly on the McClintock farm, west side of Oil Creek, south of Rynd. William McClintock, original owner of the two-hundred acres, dying in 1859, the widow remained on the farm with her grandson, John W. Steele, whom the couple had adopted at a tender age, upon the decease of his mother. Nearly half the farm was bottom-land, fronting the creek, on the bank of which the first wells were sunk in 1861. The Vanslyke flowed twelve-hundred barrels a day, declined slowly and in its third year pumped fourteen-thousand. The Lloyd, Eastman, Little Giant, Morrison, Hayes & Merrick, Christy, Ocean, Painter, Sterrett, Chase and sixty more each put up fifty to four-hundred 146barrels daily. Directly between the Vanslyke and Christy, a few rods from either, New-York parties finished the Hammond well in May, 1864. Starting to flow three-hundred barrels a day, the Hammond killed the Lloyd and Christy and reduced the Vanslyke to a ten-barrel pumper. Its triumph was short-lived. Early in June the New Yorkers, elated over its performance, bought the royalty of the well and one-third acre of ground for two-hundred thousand dollars. The end of June the tubing was drawn from the Excelsior well, on the John McClintock farm, five-hundred yards east, flooding the Hammond and all the wells in the vicinity. The damage was attributed to Vandergrift & Titus’s new well a short distance down the flat, nobody imagining it came from a hole a quarter-mile off. Retubing the Excelsior quickly restored one-half the Hammond’s yield, which increased as the Excelsior’s lessened. An adjustment followed, but the final pulling of the tubing from the Excelsior drowned the affected wells permanently. Geologists and scientists reveled in the ethics suggested by such interference, which casing wells has obviated. The Widow-McClintock farm produced hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil and changed hands repeatedly. For years it was owned by a man who as a boy blacked Steele’s boots. In 1892 John Waites renovated a number of the old wells. Pumping some and plugging others, to shut out water, surprised and rewarded him with a yield that is bringing him a tidy fortune. The action of the stream has washed away the ground on which the Vanslyke, the Sterrett and several of the largest wells were located. “Out, out, brief candle!”

Mrs. McClintock, like thousands of women since, attempted one day in March of 1863 to hurry up the kitchen-fire with kerosene. The result was her fatal burning, death in an hour and the first funeral to the account of the treacherous oil-can. The poor woman wore coarse clothing, worked hard and secreted her wealth about the house. Her will, written soon after McClintock’s exit, bequeathed everything to the adopted heir, John W. Steele, twenty years old when his grandmother met her tragic fate. At eighteen he had married Miss M. Moffett, daughter of a farmer in Sugarcreek township. He hauled oil in 1861 with hired plugs until he could buy a span of stout horses. Oil-Creek teamsters, proficient in lurid profanity, coveted his varied stock of pointed expletives. The blonde driver, of average height and slender build, pleasing in appearance and address, by no means the unlicked cub and ignorant boor he has been represented, neither smoke nor drank nor gambled, but “he could say ‘damn’!” Climbing a hill with a load of oil, the end-board dropped out and five barrels of crude wabbled over the steep bank. It was exasperating and the spectators expected a special outburst. Steele “winked the other eye” and remarked placidly: “Boys, it’s no use trying to do justice to this occasion.” The shy youth, living frugally and not the type people would associate with unprecedented antics, was to figure in song and story and be advertised more widely than the sea-serpent or Barnum’s woolly-horse. Millions who never heard of John Smith, Dr. Mary Walker or Baby McKee have heard and read and talked about the one-and-only “Coal-Oil Johnnie.”

The future candidate for minstrel-gags and newspaper-space was hauling oil when a neighbor ran to tell him of Mrs. McClintock’s death. He hastened home. A search of the premises disclosed two-hundred-thousand dollars the old lady had hoarded. Wm. Blackstone, appointed his guardian, restricted the minor to a reasonable allowance. The young man’s conduct was irreproachable until he attained his majority. His income was enormous. Mr. Blackstone paid him three-hundred-thousand dollars in a lump and he resolved to “see some of 147the world.” He saw it, not through smoked glass either. His escapades supplied no end of material for gossip. Many tales concerning him were exaggerations and many pure inventions. Demure, slow-going Philadelphia he colored a flaming vermilion. He gave away carriages after a single drive, kept open-house in a big hotel and squandered thousands of dollars a day. Seth Slocum was “showing him the sights” and he fell an easy victim to blacklegs and swindlers. He ordered champagne by the dozen baskets and treated theatrical companies to the costliest wine-suppers. Gay ballet girls at Fox’s old play-house told spicy stories of these midnight frolics. To a negro-comedian, who sang a song that pleased him, he handed a thousand-dollar pin. He would walk the streets with bank-bills stuck in the buttonholes of his coat for Young America to grab. He courted club-men and spent cash like the Count of Monte Cristo. John Morrissey sat a night with him at cards in his Saratoga gambling-house, cleaning him out of many thousands. Leeches bled him and sharpers fleeced him mercilessly. He was a spendthrift, but he didn’t light cigars with hundred-dollar bills, buy a Philadelphia hotel to give a chum nor destroy money “for fun.” Usually somebody benefited by his extravagances.

Occasionally his prodigality assumed a sensible phase. Twenty-eight-hundred dollars, one day’s receipts from his wells and royalty, went toward the erection of the soldiers’ monument—a magnificent shaft of white marble—in the Franklin park. Except Dan Rice’s five-thousand memorial at Girard, Erie county, this was the first monument in the Union to the fallen heroes of the civil war. Ten, twenty or fifty dollars frequently gladdened the poor who asked for relief. He lavished fine clothes and diamonds on a minstrel-troupe, touring the country and entertainingentertaining crowds in the oil-regions. John W. Gaylord, an artist in burnt-cork and member of the troupe, has furnished these details:

“Yes. ‘Coal-Oil Johnnie’ was my particular friend in his palmiest days. I was his room-mate when he cut the shines that celebrated him as the most eccentric millionaire on earth. I was with the Skiff & Gaylord minstrels. Johnnie saw us perform in Philadelphia, got stuck on the business and bought one-third interest in the show. His first move was to get five-thousand dollars’ worth of woodcuts at his own expense. They were all the way from a one-sheet to a twenty-four-sheet in size and the largest amount any concern had ever owned. The cartoon, which attracted so much attention, of ‘Bring That Skiff Over Here,’ was in the lot. We went on the road, did a monstrous business everywhere, turned people away and were prosperous.

“Reaching Utica, N. Y., Johnnie treated to a supper for the company, which cost one-thousand dollars. He then conceived the idea of traveling by his own train and purchased an engine, a sleeper and a baggage-car. Dates for two weeks were cancelled and we went junketing, Johnnie footing the bills. At Erie we had a five-hundred-dollar supper; and so it went. It was here that Johnnie bought his first hack. After a short ride he presented it to the driver. Our dates being cancelled, Johnnie insisted upon indemnifying us for the loss of time. He paid all salaries, estimated the probable business receipts upon the basis of packed houses and paid that also to our treasurer.

“In Chicago he gave another exhibition of his eccentric traits. He leased the Academy of Music for the season and we did a big business. Finally he proposed a benefit for Skiff & Gaylord and sent over to rent the Crosby Opera-House, then the finest in the country. The manager sent back the insolent reply: ‘We won’t rent our house for an infernal nigger-show.’ Johnnie got warm in the collar. He went down to their office in Root & Cady’s music-store.

“‘What will you take for your house and sell it outright?’ he asked Mr. Root.

“‘I don’t want to sell.’

“‘I’ll give you a liberal price. Money is no object.’

“Then Johnnie pulled out a roll from his valise, counted out two-hundred-thousand dollars and asked Root if that was an object. Mr. Root was thunderstruck. ‘If you are that kind of a man you can have the house for the benefit free of charge.’ The benefit was the biggest success ever known in minstrelsy. The receipts were forty-five-hundred dollars and more were turned away than could be given admission. Next day Johnnie hunted up one of the finest carriage-horses in the city and presented it to Mr. Root for the courtesy extended.

“Oh, Johnnie was a prince with his money. I have seen him spend as high as one hundred-thousand 148dollars in one day. That was the time he hired the Continental Hotel in Philadelphia and wanted to buy the Girard House. He went to the Continental and politely said to the clerk: ‘Will you please tell the proprietor that J. W. Steele wishes to see him?’ ‘No, sir,’ said the clerk; ‘the landlord is busy.’ Johnnie suggested he could make it pay the clerk to accommodate the whim. The clerk became disdainful and Johnnie tossed a bell-boy a twenty-dollar gold-piece with the request. The result was an interview with the landlord. Johnnie claimed he had been ill-treated and requested the summary dismissal of the clerk. The proprietor refused and Johnnie offered to buy the hotel. The man said he could not sell, because he was not the entire owner. A bargain was made to lease it one day for eight-thousand dollars. The cash was paid over and Johnnie installed as landlord. He made me bell-boy, while Slocum officiated as clerk. The doors were thrown open and every guest in the house had his fill of wine and edibles free of cost. A huge placard was posted in front of the hotel: ‘Open house to-day; everything free; all are welcome!’ It was a merry lark. The whole city seemed to catch on and the house was full. When Johnnie thought he had had fun enough he turned the hostelry over to the landlord, who reinstated the odious clerk. Here was a howdedo. Johnnie was frantic with rage. He went over to the Girard and tried to buy it. He arranged with the proprietor to ‘buck’ the Continental by making the prices so low that everybody would come there. The Continental did mighty little business so long as the arrangement lasted.

“The day of the hotel-transaction we were up on Arch street. A rain setting in, Johnnie approached a hack in front of a fashionable store and tried to engage it to carry us up to the Girard. The driver said it was impossible, as he had a party in the store. Johnnie tossed him a five-hundred-dollar bill and the hackman said he would risk it. When we arrived at the hotel Johnnie said: ‘See here, Cabby, you’re a likely fellow. How would you like to own that rig?’ The driver thought he was joking, but Johnnie handed him two-thousand dollars. A half-hour later the delighted driver returned with the statement that the purchase had been effected. Johnnie gave him a thousand more to buy a stable and that man to-day is the wealthiest hack-owner in Philadelphia.”

Steele reached the end of his string and the farm was sold in 1866. When he was flying the highest Captain J. J. Vandergrift and T. H. Williams kindly urged him to save some of his money. He thanked them for the friendly advice, said he had made a living by hauling oil and could do so again if necessary, but he couldn’t rest until he had spent that fortune. He spent a million and got the “rest.” Returning to Oildom “dead broke,” he secured the position of baggage-master at Rouseville station. He attended to his duties punctually, was a model of domestic virtue and a most popular, obliging official. Happily his wife had saved something and the reunited couple got along swimmingly. Next he opened a meat-market at Franklin, built up a nice business, sold the shop and moved to Ashland, Nebraska. He farmed, laid up money and entered the service of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad some years ago as baggage-master. His manly son, whom he educated splendidly, is telegraph-operator at Ashland station. The father, “steady as a clock,” is industrious, reliable and deservedly esteemed. Recently a fresh crop of stories regarding him has been circulated, but he minds his own affairs and is not one whit puffed up that the latest rival of Pears and Babbitt has just brought out a brand of “Coal-Oil Johnnie Soap.”

John McClintock’s farm of two-hundred acres, east of Steele and south of Rynd, Chase & Alden leased in September of 1859, for one-half the oil. B. R. Alden was a naval officer, disabled from wounds received in California, and an oil-seeker at Cuba, New York. A hundred wells rendered the farm extremely productive. The Anderson, sunk in 1861 near the southeast corner, on Cherry Run, flowed constantly three years, waning gradually from two-hundred barrels to twenty. Efforts to stop the flow in 1862, when oil dropped to ten or fifteen cents, merely imbued it with fresh vigor. Anderson thought the oil-business had gone to the bow-wows and deemed himself lucky to get seven-thousand dollars in the fall for the well. It earned one-hundred-thousand dollars subsequently and then sold for sixty-thousand. The Excelsior produced fifty-thousand barrels before the interference with the Hammond destroyed both. The 149Wheeler, Wright & Hall, Alice Lee, Jew, Deming, Haines and Taft wells were choice specimens. William and Robert Orr’s Auburn Oil-Works and the Pennechuck Refinery chucked six-hundred barrels a week into the stills. The McClintocks have migrated from Venango. Some are in heaven, some in Crawford county and some in the west. If Joseph Cooke’s conundrum—“Does Death End All?”—be negatived, there ought to be a grand reunion when they meet in the New Jerusalem and talk over their experiences on Oil Creek.

Eight miles east of Titusville, at Enterprise, John L. and Foster W. Mitchell, sons of a pioneer settler of Allegheny township, were lumbering and merchandising in 1859. They had worked on the farm and learned blacksmithing from their father. The report of Col. Drake’s well stirred the little hamlet. John L. Mitchell mounted a horse and rode at a John-Gilpin gallop to lease Archibald Buchanan’s big farm, on both sides of Oil Creek and Cherry Run. The old man agreed to his terms, a lease was executed, the rosy-cheeked mistress and all the pupils in the log school-house who could write witnessed the signatures and Mitchell rode back with the document in his pocket. He also leased John Buchanan’s two hundred acres, south of Archibald Buchanan’s three-hundred on the same terms—one-fourth the oil for ninety years. Forming a partnership with Henry R. Rouse and Samuel Q. Brown, he “kicked down” the first well in 1860 to the first sand. It pumped ten barrels a day and was bought by A. Potter, who sank it and another to the third sand in 1861. A three-hundred-barreler for months, No. 1 changed hands four times, was bought in 1865 by Gould & Stowell and produced oil—it pumped for fifteen years—that sold for two-hundred-and-ninety-thousand dollars! This veteran was the third or fourth producing well in the region. The Curtis, usually considered “the first flowing-well,” in July of 1860 spouted freely at two-hundred feet. It was not tubed and surface-water soon mastered the flow of oil. The Brawley—sixty-thousand barrels in eight months—Goble & Flower, Shaft and Sherman were moguls of 1861-2. Beech & Gillett, Alfred Willoughby, Taylor & Rockwell, Shreve & Glass, Allen Wright, Wesley Chambers—his infectious laugh could be heard five squares—and a host of companies operated in 1861-2-3. Franklin S. Tarbell, E. M. Hukell, E. C. 150Bradley, Harmon Camp, George Long and J. T. Jones arrived later. The territory was singularly profitable. Mitchell & Brown erected a refinery, divided the tracts into hundreds of acre-plots for leases and laid out the town of Buchanan Farm. Allen Wright, president of a local oil-company, in February of 1861 printed his letter-heads “Rouseville” and the name was adopted unanimously.

Rouseville grew swiftly and for a time was headquarters of the oil industry. Churches and schools arose, good people feeling that man lives not by oil alone any more than by bread. Dwellings extended up Cherry Run and the slopes of Mt. Pisgah. Wells and tanks covered the flats and there were few drones in the busy hive. If Satan found mischief for the idle only, he would have starved in Rouseville. Stores and shops multiplied. James White fitted up an opera-house and C. L. Stowell opened a bank. Henry Patchen conducted the first hotel. N. W. Read enacted the role of “Petroleum V. Nasby, wich iz postmaster.” The receipts in 1869 exceeded twenty-five-thousand dollars. Miss Nettie Dickinson, afterwards in full charge of the money-order department at Pittsburg and partner with Miss Annie Burke in a flourishing Oil-City bookstore, ran the office in an efficient style Postmaster-General Wilson would have applauded. Yet moss-backed croakers in pants, left over from the Pliocene period, think the gentle sex has no business with business! The town reached high-water mark early in the seventies, the population grazing nine-thousand. Production declined, new fields attracted live operators and in 1880 the inhabitants numbered seven-hundred, twice the present figure. Rouseville will go down in history as an oil-town noted for progressiveness, intelligence, crooked streets and girls “pretty as a picture.”

The Buchanan-Farm Oil-Company purchased Mitchell & Brown’s interest and the Buchanan Royalty Oil-Company acquired the one-fourth held by the land-owners. Both realized heavily, the Royalty Company paying its stock-holders—Arnold Plumer, William Haldeman and Dr. C. E. Cooper were principals—about a million dollars. The senior Buchanan, after receiving two or three-hundred-thousand dollars—fifty times the sum he would ever have gained farming—often denounced “th’ pirates that robbed an old man, buyin’ th’ farm he could ’ave sold two year later fur two millyun!” The old man has been out of pirate range twenty-five years and the Buchanan families are scattered. Most of the old-time operators have handed in their final account. Poor Fred Rockwell has mouldered into dust. Wright, Camp, Taylor, Beech, Long, Shreve, Haldeman, Hostetter, Cooper, Col. Gibson and Frank Irwin are “grav’d in the hollow ground.” Death claimed “Hi” Whiting in Florida and last March stilled the cheery voice of Wesley Chambers. The earnest, pleading tones of the Rev. R. M. Brown will be heard no more this side the walls of jasper and the gates of pearl. Scores moved to different parts of the country. John L. Mitchell married Miss Hattie A. Raymond and settled at Franklyn. He organized the Exchange Bank in 1871 and was its president until ill-health obliged him to resign. Foster W. Mitchell also located at the county-seat and 151built the Exchange Hotel. He operated extensively on Oil Creek and in the northern districts, developed the Shaw Farm and established a bank at Rouseville, subsequently transferring it to Oil City. He was active in politics and in the producers’ organizations, treasurer of the Centennial Commission and an influential force in the Oil-Exchange. David H. Mitchell likewise gained a fortune in oil, founded a bank and died at Titusville. Samuel Q. Brown, their relative and associate in various undertakings, was a merchant and banker at Pleasantville. Retiring from these pursuits, he removed to Philadelphia and then to New York to oversee the financial work of the Tidewater Pipe-Line. He procured the charter for the first pipe-line and acquired a fortune by his business-talent and wise management.

Born in New York in 1824, Henry R. Rouse studied law, taught school in Warren county and engaged in lumbering and storekeeping at Enterprise. He served in the legislatures of 1859-60, acquitting himself manfully. Promptly catching the inspiration of the hour, he shared with William Barnsdall and Boone Meade the honor of putting down the third oil-well in Pennsylvania. With John L. Mitchell and Samuel Q. Brown he leased the Buchanan farm and invested in oil-lands generally. Fabulous wealth began to reward his efforts. Had he lived “he would have been a giant or a bankrupt in petroleum.” Operations on the John Buchanan farm were pushed actively. Near the upper line of the farm, on the east side of Oil Creek, at the foot of the hill, Merrick & Co. drilled a well in 1861, eight rods from the Wadsworth. On April seventeenth, at the depth of three-hundred feet, gas, water and oil rushed up, fairly lifting the tools out of the hole. The evening was damp and the atmosphere surcharged with gas. People ran with shovels to dig trenches and throw up a bank to hold the oil, no tanks having been provided. Mr. Rouse and George H. Dimick, his clerk and cashier, with six others, had eaten supper and were sitting in Anthony’s Hotel discussing the fall of Fort Sumter. A laborer at the Merrick well bounded into the room to say that a vein of oil had been struck and barrels were wanted. All ran to the well but Dimick, who went to send barrels. Finishing this errand, he hastened towards the well. A frightful explosion hurled him to the earth. Smouldering coals under the Wadsworth boiler had ignited the gas. In an instant the two wells, tanks and an acre of ground saturated with oil were in flames, enveloping ninety or a hundred persons. Men digging the ditch or dipping the oil wilted like leaves in a gale. Horrible shrieks rent the air. Dense volumes of black smoke ascended. Tongues of flame leaped hundreds of feet. One poor fellow, charred to the bone, died screaming with agony over his supposed arrival in hell. Victims perished scarcely a step from safety. Rouse stood near the derrick at the fatal moment. Blinded by the first flash, he stumbled forward and fell into the marshy soil. Throwing valuable papers and a wallet of money beyond the circuit of fire, he struggled to his feet, groped a dozen paces and fell again. Two men dashed into the sea of flame and dragged him forth, his flesh baked and his clothing a handful of shreds. He was carried to a shanty and gasped through five hours of excruciating torture. His wonderful self-possession never deserted him, no word or act betraying his fearful suffering. Although obliged to sip water from a spoon at every breath, he dictated a concise will, devising the bulk of his estate in trust to improve the roads and benefit the poor of Warren county. Relatives and intimate friends, his clerk and hired boy, the men who bore him from the broiling 152furnace and honest debtors were remembered. This dire calamity blotted out nineteen lives and disfigured thirteen men and boys permanently. The blazing oil was smothered with dirt the third day. Tubing was put in the well, which flowed ten-thousand barrels in a week and then ceased. Nothing is left to mark the scene of the sad tragedy. The Merrick, Wadsworth, Haldeman, Clark & Banks, Trundy, Comet and Imperial wells, the tanks and the dwellings have been obliterated. Dr. S. S. Christy—he was Oil City’s first druggist—Allen Wright, N. F. Jones, W. B. Williams and William H. Kinter, five of the six witnesses to Rouse’s remarkable will, are in eternity, Z. Martin alone remaining.

Warren’s greatest benefactor, the interest of the half-million dollars Rouse bequeathed to the county has improved roads, constructed bridges and provided a poor-house at Youngsville. Rouse was distinguished for noble traits, warm impulses, strong attachments, energy and decision of character. He dispensed his bounty lavishly. It was a favorite habit to pick up needy children, furnish them with clothes and shoes and send them home with baskets of provisions. He did not forget his days of trial and poverty. His religious views were peculiar. While reverencing the Creator, he despised narrow creeds, deprecated popular notions of worship and had no dread of the hereafter. To a preacher, in the little group that watched his fading life, who desired an hour before the end to administer consolation, he replied: “My account is made up. If I am a debtor, it would be cowardly to ask for credit now. I do not care to discuss the matter.” He directed that his funeral be without display, that no sermon be preached and that he be laid beside his mother at Westfield, New York. Thus lived and died Henry R. Rouse, of small stature and light frame, but dowered with rare talents and heroic soul. Perhaps at the Judgment Day, when deeds outweigh words, many a strict Pharisee may wish he could change places with the man whose memory the poor devoutly bless. As W. A. Croffut has written of James Baker in “The Mine at Calumet”:

Seventy-five wells were drilled on Hamilton McClintock’s four-hundred acres in 1860-1. Here was Cary’s “oil-spring” and expectations of big wells soared high. The best yielded from one-hundred to three-hundred barrels a day. Low prices and the war led to the abandonment of the smaller brood. A company bought the farm in 1864. McClintockville, a promising village on the flat, boasted two refineries, stores, a hotel and the customary accessories, of which the bridge over Oil Creek is the sole reminder. Near the upper boundary of the farm the Reno Railroad crossed the valley on a giddy center-trestle and timber abutments, not a splinter of which remains. General Burnside, the distinguished commander, superintended the construction of this mountain-line, designed to connect Reno and Pithole and never completed. Occasionally the dignified general would be hailed by a soldier who had served under him. It was amusing to behold a greasy pumper, driller or teamster step up, clap Burnside on the shoulder, grasp his hand and exclaim: “Hello, General! Deuced glad to see you! I was with you at Fredericksburg! Come and have a drink!”

The Clapp farm of five-hundred acres had a fair allotment of long-lived 153wells. George H. Bissell and Arnold Plumer bought the lower half, in the closing days of 1859, from Ralph Clapp. The Cornplanter Oil Company purchased the upper half. The Hemlock, Cuba, Cornwall—a thousand-barreler—and Cornplanter, on the latter section, were notably productive. The Williams, Stanton, McKee, Elizabeth and Star whooped it up on the Bissell-Plumer division. Much of the oil in 1862-3 was from the second sand. Four refineries flourished and the tract coined money for its owners. A mile east was the prolific Shaw farm, which put two-hundred-thousand dollars into Foster W. Mitchell’s purse. Graff & Hasson’s one-thousand acres, part of the land granted Cornplanter in 1796, had a multitude of medium wells that produced year after year. In 1818 the Indian chief, who loved fire-water dearly, sold his reservation to William Connely, of Franklin, and William Kinnear, of Centre county, for twenty-one-hundred-and-twenty-one dollars. Matthias Stockberger bought Connely’s half in 1824 and, with Kinnear and Reuben Noyes, erected the Oil-Creek furnace, a foundry, mill, warehouses and steamboat-landing at the east side of the mouth of the stream. William and Frederick Crary acquired the business in 1825 and ran it ten years. William and Samuel Bell bought it in 1835 and shut down the furnace in 1849. The Bell heirs sold it to Graff, Hasson & Co. in 1856 for seven-thousand dollars. James Hasson located on the property with his family and farmed five years. Graff & Hasson sold three-hundred acres in 1864 to the United Petroleum Farms Association for seven-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars. James Halyday settled on the east side in 1803. His son James, the first white baby in the neighborhood, was born in 1809. The Bannon family came in the forties, Thomas Moran built the Moran House—it still lingers—in 1845 and died in 1857. Dr. John Nevins arrived in 1850 and in the fall of 1852 John P. Hopewell started a general store. Hiram Gordon opened the “Red Lion Inn,” Samuel Thomas shod horses and three or four families occupied small habitations. And this was the place, when 1860 dawned, that was to become the petroleum-metropolis and be known wherever men have heard a word of “English as she is spoke.”

Cornplanter was the handle of the humble settlement, towards which a stampede began with the first glimmer of spring. To trace the uprising of dwellings, stores, wharves and boarding-houses would be as difficult as perpetual motion. People huddled in shanties and lived on barges moored to the bank. Derricks peered up behind the houses, thronged the marshy flats, congregated on the slopes, climbed the precipitous bluffs and established a foothold on every ledge of rock. Pumping-wells and flowing-wells scented the atmosphere with gas and the smell of crude. Smoke from hundreds of engine-houses, black, sooty and defiling, discolored the grass and foliage. Mud was everywhere, deep, unlimited, universal—yellow mud from the newer territory—dark, repulsive, oily mud around the wells—sticky, tricky, spattering mud on the streets and in the yards. J. B. Reynolds, of Clarion county, and Calvin and William J. McComb, of Pittsburg, opened the first store under the new order of things in March of 1860. T. H. and William M. Williams joined the firm. They withdrew to open the Pittsburg store next door. Robson’s hardware-store was farther up the main street, on the east side, which ended abruptly at Cottage Hill. William P. Baillee—he lives in Detroit—and William Janes built the first refinery, on the same street, in 1861, a year of unexampled activity. The plant, which attracted people from all parts of the country—Mr. Baillee called it a “pocket-still”—was enlarged into a refinery of five stills, with an output of two-hundred barrels of refined oil every twenty-four hours. Fire destroyed it and 154the firm built another on the flats near by. On the west side, at the foot of a steep cliff, Dr. S. S. Christy opened a drug-store. Houses, shops, offices, hotels and saloons hung against the side of the hill or sat loosely on heaps of earth by the creek and river. One evening a half-dozen congenial spirits met in Williams & Brother’s store. J. B. Reynolds, afterwards a banker, who died several years since, thought Cornplanter ought to be discarded and a new name given the growing town. He suggested one which was heartily approved. Liquid refreshments were ordered and the infant was appropriately baptized Oil City.

Peter Graff was laid to rest years ago. The venerable James Hasson sleeps in the Franklin cemetery. His son, Captain William Hasson, is an honored resident of the city that owes much to his enterprise and liberality. Capable, broad-minded and trustworthy, he has been earnest in promoting the best interests of the community, the region and the state. A recent benefaction was his splendid gift of a public park—forty acres—on Cottage Hill. He was the first burgess and served with conspicuous ability in the council and the legislature. Alike as a producer, banker, citizen, municipal officer and lawgiver, Captain Hasson has shown himself “every inch a manly man.”

When you talk of any better town than Oil City, of any better section than the oil-regions, of any better people than the oilmen, of any better state than Pennsylvania, “every potato winks its eye, every cabbage shakes its head, every beet grows red in the face, every onion gets stronger, every sheaf of grain is shocked, every stalk of rye strokes its beard, every hill of corn pricks up its ears, every foot of ground kicks” and every tree barks in indignant dissent.

Such was the narrow ravine, nowhere sixty rods in width, that figured so grandly as the Valley of Petroleum.

Juicy Streaks Bordering Oil Creek—Famous Benninghoff Robbery—Close Call for a Fortune—City Set Upon a Hill—Alemagooselum to the Front—Cherry Run’s Whirligig—Romance of the Reed Well—Smith and McFate Farms—Pleasantville, Shamburg and Red Hot—Experiences Not Unworthy of the Arabian Nights.

“Who can view the ripened rose, nor seek to wear it?”—Byron.

“Black’s not so black, nor white so very white.”—Canning.

“Wild and eerie is the story, but it is true as Truth.”—Hall Caine.

“No two successes ever were alike.”—Hawthorne.

“There is nothing so great as the collection of the minute.”—Vitus Auctor.

“The crop is always greater on the lands of another.”—Ovid.

“It didn’t rain, the water simply fell out of the clouds.”—Cy Warman.

“There are days when every stream is Pachlus and every man is Crœsus.”—Richard Le Gallienne.

“We shall not fail, if we stand firm.”—Abraham Lincoln.

Rich pickings, luscious as the clustering grapes beyond the fox’s reach, were not limited to the wonderful Valley of Petroleum. Live operators quickly learned that big wells could be found away from the low banks of Oil Creek. Anon they climbed the hills, ascended the ravines and invaded the near townships. Very naturally the tributary streams were favored at first, until experience inspired courage and altitude failed to be a serious obstacle. In this way many juicy streaks were encountered, broadening men’s ideas and the area of profitable developments to a marvelous degree. Alaska nuggets are fly-specks compared with the golden spoil garnered from oil-wells on scores of farms in Allegheny, Cherrytree and Cornplanter. Tales of the petroleum-seesaw’s ups and downs, without any “mixture rank of midnight weeds” that savor of 158“something rotten in Denmark,” need no Klondyker’s imagination, measureless as the ice-floes of the Yukon, to awaken interest and be worthy of attention.

By the side of the romance, the pathos, the tragedy and the startling incidents of the oil-regions thirty years ago the gold-excitements of California and Australia and the diamond-fever of South Africa are tame and vapid. Prior to the oil-development settlers in the back-townships lived very sparingly. Children grew up simple-minded and untutored. The sale of a pig or a calf or a turkey was an event looked forward to for months. Petroleum made not a few of these rustics wealthy. Families that had never seen ten dollars suddenly owned hundreds-of-thousands. Lawless, reckless, wicked communities sprang up. The close of the war flooded the region with paper-currency and bold adventurers. Leadville or Cheyenne at its zenith was a camp-meeting compared with Pithole, Petroleum Centre or Babylon. Men and women of every degree of decency and degradation huddled as closely as the pig-tailed Celestials in Chinatown. Millions of dollars were lost in bogus stock-companies. American history records no other such era of riotous extravagance. The millionaire and the beggar of to-day might change places to-morrow. Blind chance and consummate rascality were equally potent. Of these centers of sin and speculation, strange transformations and wild excesses, scarcely a trace remains. Where hosts of fortune-seekers and devotees of pleasure strove and struggled nothing is to be seen save the bare landscape, a growth of underbrush or a grassy field. Sodom was not blotted out more completely than Pithole, the type of many oil-towns that have been utterly exterminated.

North and west of the lower McElhenny farm, at the bend in Oil Creek, lay John Benninghoff’s two big blocks of land, through which Benninghoff Run flowed southward. Pioneer Run crossed the north-east corner of the property, the greater part of which was on the hills. Five acres on Oil Creek and the slopes on Pioneer Run were first developed. Leases for a cash-bonus and liberal royalty were gobbled greedily. Up Benninghoff Run and back of the hills operations spread. For one piece of ground the owner declined tempting offers, because he would not permit his potato-patch to be trodden down! Some wells pumped and some flowed from twenty-five to three-hundred barrels a day seven days in the week. William Jenkins, the Huidekoper Oil-Company, the DeKalb Oil-Company and Edward Harkins had regular bonanzas. The Lady Herman, which Robert Herman had the politeness to name for his wife, was a genuine beauty. The first well ever cased and the first pump-station—it hoisted oil to Shaffer—were on the hillside at the mouth of Benninghoff Run. The platoon of wells in the illustration of that locality, as they appeared in 1866, includes these and a hint of the barn beside the homestead. The busy scene—pictured now for the first time—was photographed within an hour of its obliteration. The artist had not finished packing his outfit when lightning struck one of the derricks and a disastrous fire swept the hill as bare as Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard! Wealth deluged the thrifty land-holder, oil converting his broad acres into a veritable Golconda. He awoke one morning to find himself rich. He was awakened one night to find himself famous, the newspapers devoting whole pages—under “scare-heads”—to the unpretending farmer in the southern end of Cherry tree. “And thereby hangs a tale.”

Suspicious of banks, Benninghoff stored his money at home. Purchasing a cheap safe, he placed it in a corner of the sitting-room and stocked it with a half-million dollars in gold and greenbacks! Cautious friends warned him to be careful, lest thieves might “break through and steal.” James Saeger, of Saegertown, 159a handsome, popular young fellow, who sometimes played cards, heard of the treasure in the flimsy receptacle. “Jim” belonged to a respectable family and had been a merchant at Meadville. Napoleon melted silver statues of the apostles to put the precious metal in circulation and Saeger concluded to give Benninghoff’s pile an airing. He spoke to George Miller of the ease with which the safe could be cracked and engaged two Baltimore burglars, McDonald and Elliott, to manage the job. Jacob Shoppert, of Saegertown, and Henry Geiger, who worked for Benninghoff and slept in the house, were enlisted. The deed, planned with extreme care not to miss fire, was fixed for a night when Joseph Benninghoff, the son, was to attend a dance.

On Thursday evening, January sixteenth, 1868, Saeger, Shoppert, McDonald and Elliott left Saegertown in a two-horse sleigh for Petroleum Centre, twenty-nine miles distant. At midnight they knocked at Benninghoff’s door. Geiger answered the rap and was quickly gagged, said to be as arranged previously. John Benninghoff, his wife and daughter were bound and the experts proceeded to open the safe. The frail structure was soon ransacked. The marauders bundled up their booty, sampled Mrs. Benninghoff’s pies, drank a gallon of milk and departed at their leisure, leaving the inmates of the house securely tied. Joseph returned in an hour or two and relieved the prisoners from their unpleasant predicament. An examination of the safe showed that two-hundred-and-sixty-five-thousand dollars had been taken! The bulk of this was in gold. A package of two-hundred-thousand dollars, in large bills, done up in a brown paper, the looters passed unnoticed! The alarm was given, the wires flashed the news everywhere and the press teemed with sensational reports. By noon on Friday the oil-regions had been set agog and people all over the United States were talking of “the Great Benninghoff Robbery.”

Saegar and his pals drove back and stopped at Louis Warlde’s hotel to divide the spoils. McDonald, Elliott and Saeger took the lion’s share, Geiger and Shoppert received smaller sums and Warlde accepted thirteen-hundred dollars for his silence. The Baltimore toughs lingered in the neighborhood a week and then sought the wintry climate of Canada, Saeger staying around home. Intense excitement prevailed. Hundreds of detectives, eager to gain reputation and the reward of ten-thousand dollars, spun theories and looked wise. Ex-Chief-of-Police Hague, of Pittsburg, was especially alert. For three months the search was vain. George Miller, whom McDonald wished to put out of the road “to keep his mouth shut,” in a quarrel with Saeger over a game of cards, blurted out: “I know about the Benninghoff robbery!” Saeger pacified Miller with a thousand dollars, which the latter scattered quickly. Jacob Shoppert was his boon companion and the pair spent money at a rate that caused officers to shadow them. Shoppert visited a town on the edge of Ohio and was arrested. Calling for a pen and paper, he wrote to Louis Warlde, the Saegertown hotel-keeper, reproaching him for not sending money. The jailer handed the detectives the letter, on the strength of which Warlde, who had started a brewery in Ohio, and Miller were arrested. The three were convicted and sentenced to a short term in the penitentiary. Geiger’s complicity in the plot could not be proved beyond a doubt and he was acquitted. Officer Hague captured McDonald and Elliott in Toronto, but Canadian lawyers picked flaws in the papers and they could not be extradited. Escaping to Europe, they were heard of no more. Saeger, who had not been suspected until after his departure, went west and was lost sight of for many a day.

Three years later a noted cattle king of the Texas-Colorado trail entered a 160saloon in Denver to treat a party of friends. The bar-tender, Gus. Peiflee, formerly of Meadville, recognized the customer as “Jim.” Saeger. He telegraphed east and Chief-of-Police Rouse, of Titusville, posted off to Denver with Joseph Benninghoff. They secured extradition-papers and arrested Saeger, who coolly remarked:remarked: “You’ll be a devilish sight older before you see me in Pennsylvania.” Their lawyers informed them that a hundred of Saeger’s cowboys were in the city—reckless, lawless fellows, certain to kill whoever attempted to take him away. Rouse and Benninghoff dropped the matter and returned alone. Saeger is living in Texas, prosperous and respected. He is just in his dealings, a bountiful giver, and not long ago sent five-thousand dollars to the widow of George Miller. Perhaps he may yet turn up in Washington as Congressman or United-States Senator. This is the story of a robbery that attracted more attention than the first woman in bloomers.

John Benninghoff was born in Lehigh county, where his ancestorsancestors were among the first German immigrants, on Christmas Day, 1801. His father, Frederick Benninghoff, settled near New Berlin, Union county, in John’s boyhood. There the son married Elizabeth Heise in 1825 and in 1828 located on a farm near Oldtown, Clearfield county. Thence he removed to Venango county, living close to Cherry tree village four years. In 1836 he bought a piece of land on the south border of Cherrytree township, near what was to become Petroleum Centre. He added to his purchase as his means permitted, until he owned about three-hundred acres, with solid buildings and modern improvements. He was in easy circumstances prior to the oil-developments that enriched him. Contrary to the general opinion, the robbery did not impoverish him, as one-half the money was untouched. His twelve children—eight boys and four girls—grew up and eight are still living. Selling his farms in Venango, he removed to Greenville, Mercer county, in the spring of 1868 and died in March, 1882. At his death he had sixty-one grandchildren and fifteen great-grandchildren. He left his family a large estate. The Benninghoff farms, so far as oil is concerned, are utterly deserted.

West and north of Benninghoff were the farms of John and R. Stevenson. On the former, extending south to Oil Creek, Reuben Painter, a live operator, drilled a well in 1863. The contractor reporting it dry, Painter moved the machinery and surrendered the lease. He and his brothers operated profitably in Butler and McKean counties, Reuben dying at Olean in 1892. In November of 1864 the Ocean Oil-Company of Philadelphia bought John Stevenson’s lands. The Ocean well began flowing at a six-hundred-barrel pace on September first, 1865, with the Arctic a good second. Fifty others varied from fifty to two-hundred barrels. Thomas McCool built a refinery and the farm paid the company about two-thousand per cent! The principal wells on both Stevenson tracts clustered far above the flats, the derricks and buildings resembling “a city set on a hill.” Major Mills, justly proud of his King of the Hills, an elegant producer, delighted to visit it with his wife and two young daughters, one of them now Mrs. John D. Archbold, of New York. Painter’s supposed dry-hole, drilled seventeen feet deeper, gushed furiously, proving to be the best well in the collection! Said the Ocean manager, as he watched the oily stream ascend “higher ’n a steeple”: “A million dollars wouldn’t touch one side of this property!” Sinking a four-inch hole seventeen feet farther would have given Reuben Painter this splendid return two years earlier! He missed a million dollars by only seventeen feet! A Gettysburg soldier, from whose nose a rifle-ball shaved a piece of cuticle the size of a pin-head, wittily observed: 161“That shot came mighty near missing me!” Inverting this remark, Painter had cause to exclaim: “That million came mighty near hitting me!”

Various companies bored three-hundred wells on Cherrytree Run and its tiny branches without jarring the trade particularly. Prolific strikes on the Niagara tract, in the rear of the Benninghoff lands, added to the wealth of Phillips Brothers. Kane City, two miles north of Rynd, raised Cain in mild style, “wearing like leather.” Farther back D. W. Kenney’s wells, lively as the Kilkenny cats, stirred a current that wafted in Alemagooselum City. Its unique name, the biggest feature of the “City,” was worked out by Kenney, a fun-loving genius, known far and wide as “Mayor of Alemagooselum.” He and his wells and town have long been “out of sight.” Kane City casts an attenuated shadow.

Rev. William Elliott, who united in one package the fervor of Paul and the snap of Ebenezer Elliott, “the Corn-Law Rhymer,” lived and preached at Rynd. He organized a Sunday-school in Kenney’s parish, which a devout settler undertook to superintend. At the close of the regular service on the opening day, Mr. Elliott asked the pious ruralist to “say a few words.” The good man, wishing to clinch the lesson—about Mary Magdalene—in the minds of the youngsters, implored them to follow the example of “Miss Magdolin.” The older brood tittered at this Hibernianism, the laugh swelled into a cloudburst. Mr. Elliott nearly swallowed his pocket-handkerchief trying to shut in his smiles and a new query was born, which had a long run. It was fired at every visitor to the settlement. Small boys hurled it at the defenceless superintendent, who resigned his job and broke up the school the next Sunday. PossiblyPossibly Br’er Elliott, when ushered into Heaven, would not be one whit surprised to hear some white-winged cherub from Alemagooselum sing out: “Say, do you know Miss Mag Dolin?”

The scanty herbage on the tail of the parson’s horse gave rise to endless surmises. The animal stranded in a mud-hole and keeled over on his side. Four sturdy fellows tried to fish him out. In his misguided zeal one of the rescuers, tugging at the caudal appendage, pulled so hard that half the hair peeled off, leaving the denuded nag a fitting mate for Tam O’Shanter’s tailless Meg.

A Kane-City youngster prayed 162every morning and night that a well her father was drilling would be a good one. It was a hopeless failure, finished the day before Christmas. The result disturbed the child exceedingly. That night, as the loving mother was preparing her for bed, the little girl observed: “I dess it’s no use prayin’ till after Kismas, ’cos God’s so busy helpin’ Santa Claus He hasn’t time for nobody else!”

Cherry Run, once the ripest cherry in the orchard, had a satisfactory run. A spice of romance flavored its actual realities. Not two miles up the stream William Reed, in 1863, drilled a dry-hole six-hundred feet deep. Two miles farther, in the vicinity of Plumer, a test well was sunk seven-hundred feet, with no better result. Wells near the mouth of the ravine produced very lightly. Fifty-thousand dollars would have been an extreme price for all the land from Rouseville to Plumer, the tasteful village Henry McCalmont named in honor of Arnold Plumer. In May of 1864 Taylor & Rockwell opened a fresh vein on the run. At two-hundred feet their well threw oil above the derrick and flowed sixty barrels a day regularly. Operators reversed their opinion of the territory. To the surprise of his acquaintances, who deemed him demented, Reed started another well four rods below his failure of the previous year. It was on the right bank of the run, on a five-acre patch bought from John Rynd in 1861 by Thomas Duff, who sold two acres to Robert Criswell. Reed was not over-stocked with cash and Criswell joined forces with him to sink the second well. I. N. Frazer took one-third interest. At the proper depth the outlook was gloomy. The sand appeared good, but days of pumping failed to bring oil. 163On July eighteenth, 1864, the well commenced flowing three-hundred barrels a day, holding out at this rate for months. Criswell realized thirty-thousand dollars from his share of the oil and then sold his one-fourth interest in the land and well for two-hundred-and-eighty-thousand to the Mingo Oil-Company. He operated in the Butler field, lived at Monterey, removed to Ohio and died near Cincinnati. One son, David S., a well-known producer, resides at Oil City; another, Robert W., is on the editorial staff of a New-York daily. Frazer sold for one-hundred-thousand dollars and next loomed up as “the discoverer of Pithole.” Reed sold to Bishop & Bissell for two-hundred-thousand dollars, after pocketing seventy-five-thousand from oil. Coming to Venango county with Frederic Prentice in 1859, he drilled wells by contract, sometimes “a solid Muldoon” and sometimes “a broken Reed.” He returned east—his birthplace—with the proceeds of the world-famed well bearing his name. An idea haunted him that Captain Kidd’s treasure was buried at a certain part of the Atlantic coast. He boarded at a house on the shore and hunted land and sea for the hidden deposit. He would dig in the sand, sail out some distance and peer into the water. One day he went off in his skiff, a storm arose, the boat drifted away and that was the last ever seen of William Reed. He was a liberal supporter of the United-Presbyterian church and his nearest relatives live in the vicinity of Pittsburg.

The Reed well put Cherry Run at the head of the procession. Within sixty days it enriched Reed, Criswell and Frazer nearly seven-hundred-thousand dollars. The new owners drilled three more on the same acre, getting back every cent of their purchase-money and fifty per cent. extra for good measure. In other words, the five-acre collection of rocks and stumps, with eleven producing wells and one duster, harvested two-million dollars! The Mountain well mounted high, the Phillips & Egbert was a fillip and the Wadsworth & Wynkoop rolled out oil in wads worth a wine-coop of gold-eagles. The fever to lease or buy a spot to plant a derrick burned fiercely. The race to gorge the ravine with rigs and drilling appliances would shut out Edgar Saltus in his “Pace that Kills.” Soon three-hundred wells lined the flats and lofty banks guarding the purling streamlet. Clanking tools, wheezy engines and creaking pumps assailed the ears. Smoke from a myriad soft-coal fires attacked the eyes. An endless cavalcade of wagons churned the soil into vicious batter. The activities of the Foster, McElhenny, Farrell, Davison and Tarr farms were condensed into one surging, foaming caldron, quickening the pulse-beats and sending the brain see-sawing.

Across the run the Curtin Oil-Company farmed out forty acres. The Baker well, an October biscuit, flowed one-hundred barrels a day all the winter of 1864-5 and pumped six years. Water, bane of flannel-suits and uncased oil-wells, deluged it and its neighbors. Hugh Cropsey, a New-York lawyer and last owner of the well nearest the Baker, “ran engine,” saved a trifle, pulled up stakes in 1869 and tried his luck at Pleasantville. Returning to Cherry Run, he resuscitated a well on the hill and was suffocated by gas in a tank containing a few inches of fresh crude. His heirs sold me the old well, which pumped nine months without varying ten gallons in any week and repaid twice its cost. Unchangeable as the laws of the Medes and Persians, its production was the steadiest in the chronicles of grease. One Saturday evening N. P. Stone, superintendent of the St. Nicholas Oil-Company, bought it from me at the original price. His men took charge of it at noon on Tuesday. At five o’clock the well quit forever, “too dead to skin!” Cleaning out, drilling deeper, casing, torpedoing 164and weeks of pumping could not persuade it to shed another drop of oil or water. This close shave was a small by-play in a realistic drama teeming with incidents far stranger than “The Strange Adventures of Miss Brown.” B. H. Hulseman, president of the St. Nicholas Oil-Company, was a wealthy leather-merchant in Philadelphia. He spent much of his time on Cherry Run, lost heavily in speculations, entered the oil-exchange and died at Oil City. Kind-hearted, sincere and unpretending, his good remembrance is a legacy to cherish lovingly.

Two-hundred yards above the Baker a half-dozen wells crowded upon a half-acre. True to its title, the Vampire sucked the life-blood from its pal and produced bounteously. The Munson, owned by the first sacrifice to nitro-glycerine, sustained the credit of its environment. The Wade was the star-performer of the group. James Wade, an Ohio teamster, earned money hauling oil. Concluding to wade in, he secured a bantam lease and engaged Thomas Donnelly to drill a well. It surpassed the Reed, flowing four-hundred barrels a day at the start. Frank Allen, agent of a gilt-edged New-York company, rode from Oil City to see a well described to him as “livelier than chasing a greased pig at a county-fair.” His exalted conceptions of petroleum befitted the representative of a company capitalized at three-millions, in which August Belmont, Russell Sage and William B. Astor were said to be stockholders. The fuming, gassing stream of oil suited him to a t. “I’ll give you three-hundred-thousand dollars for it,” he said to Wade, whom the offer well-nigh paralyzed. The two men went into the grocery close by, Wade signed a transfer of the well and Allen handed him a New-York draft. The happiest being in the pack, Wade packed his carpet-bag, hitched his horses to the wagon, bade the boys good-bye and drove to Oil City to get the paper cashed. He wore greasy clothes and did not wear the air of a millionaire. “Is Mr. Bennett in?” he asked a clerk at the bank. “Naw; what do you want?” was the reply. “I want a draft cashed.” “Oh, you do, eh? I guess I can cash it!” The clerk’s haughty demeanor fell below zero upon beholding the draft. He invited Wade to be seated. Mr. Bennett, the urbane cashier, returned in a few moments. The bank hadn’t half the currency to meet the demand on the instant. Wade left directions to forward the money to his home in Ohio, where he and his faithful steeds landed two days later. He bought fine farms for his brothers and himself, invested two-hundred-thousand dollars in government-bonds and wisely enjoyed, amid the peaceful scenes of agricultural life, the fruits of his first and last oil-venture. Few have been as sensible, for the petroleum-coast is encrusted with financial wrecks—vast fortunes amassed only to be lost on the perilous sea of speculation. The world has heard of the prizes in the lottery of oil, while the blanks—tenfold more numerous—are glossed over by the glamour of the Sherman, Empire, Noble, Phillips, Reed and other wells, “familiar as household words.”

Thomas Johnson, of Oil City, held one-eighth of the Curtin interest and Patrick Johnson had a bevy of patrician wells at the summit of the tallest hill in the valley. The curtain has been rung down, the lights are out, the players have dispersed and none can hint of “Too Much Johnson.” The farm of sixty acres adjacent to the Curtin and the Criswell nook Hamilton McClintock traded to Daniel Smith in 1858 for a yoke of oxen. Smith sold it in 1860 for five-hundred 165dollars and sank the cash in a dry-hole on Oil Creek. P. P. Cornen and Henry I. Beers bought the farm in 1863 for twenty-five-hundred dollars, clearing two-millions from the investment. Cornen served as State-Senator in Connecticut and died in 1893. His sons operate in Warren county and down the Allegheny. Mr. Beers, who settled at McClintockville, for thirty years has been prominent in business and politics. He was a California argonaut, spent three years in San Francisco, built the first house in that city after the first great fire and revisited the East to marry “the girl he left behind him” in 1849. The Yankee well, erratic as George Francis Train, was the first glory of the Smith tract. The Reed caused a rush for one-acre leases at four-thousand-dollars bonus and half the oil. Picking up gold-dollars at every step would have been less lucrative. The wells were stayers and Daniel Smith was not “a Daniel come to judgment” in his estimate of the farm he implored J. W. Sherman to buy for two-hundred-and-fifty dollars.

Cornen & Beers first leased a half-dozen plots six rods square at one-half royalty. Two New-Englanders and Cyrus A. Cornen, son of Peter P. Cornen and nephew of Mr. Beers, drilled the first well, the queer Yankee. Some gas and no oil looked promising for a dry-hole, but the owners put in small tubing and pumped a plump day. They decided to draw the tubing, seed-bag higher and try it once more for luck. The tubing had been raised only a foot when the well flowed “like Mount Vesuvius spilling lava.” The flow lasted five minutes, stopped twenty, flowed five more, stopped twenty and kept up this program regularly twenty-one months. Sixty barrels a day was the average yield month after month, until one day the Yankee concluded to retire from active duty. Much of its product sold at ten to thirteen dollars a barrel, enriching all concerned. The Yankee boomed the crush for leases and was altogether a tempting plum. The Auburn, the second well on the Smith farm, was a good second to the Yankee, the Gromiger and Cattaraugus traveled in the one-hundred-and-fifty-barrel class, while the Watkins toed the two-hundred mark, with the Aazin and Fry chasing it closely.

S. S. Watkins, who died at St. Paul in the fall of 1896, was given a lot for a grocery, with the privilege of sinking one well for half the oil. He opened the store and sold the oil-right to Wade Brothers for twenty-five-hundred dollars. The Wades sold one-eighth of the working-interest to the Pittsburg Petroleum-Company, used the proceeds to drill the hole and stuck the tools in the third sand. The lookout for a paying strike was exceedingly poor, but James Wade held on and tubed the well above the tools. It flowed three-hundred barrels a day and Wade sold his seven-eighths to Frank Allen, who offered the Pittsburg Petroleum-Company seventy-five-thousand dollars for its eighth. When the Wade declined to fifty barrels the company pulled the tubing, moved the derrick three feet and drilled another, with no better result. Thereupon the Wade was abandoned, after having netted the Great-Republic Oil-Company a quarter-million dead loss. In 1864 Cornen & Beers organized the Cherry-Valley Oil-Company, sold twelve or fifteen leases and put down all the other 166wells themselves. The partnership dissolved in 1876, Mr. Beers maintaining the farm and Mr. Cornen dying at his Connecticut home in 1893. The Smith rated among the best properties in the region and it still rewards its fortunate owner with a moderate production, although merely a shadow of its former greatness.

Blacklegs, thieves and murderers ran little risk of punishment in the early days of oil-developments, unless they became unusually obstreperous and were brought to a period with a shot-gun. Scoundrels lay in wait for victims at every turn and stories of their misdeeds could be told by the hundred. The McFate farm was one of the first on Cherry Run to be sold at a fancy price. S. J. McFate, one of the brothers owning the property, two weeks after the sale in 1862, walked down to Oil City to draw several-thousand dollars from the bank. He displayed the money freely and left for home late at night. The road was dark and lonely and next morning, in a clump of bushes a mile above Oil City, his lifeless body was discovered. A ghastly wound in the head and the absence of the money explained the tragedy and the motive. No clue to the murderer was ever found, although squads of detectives “worked on the case” and queer fictions regarding the mysterious assassin were printed in many newspapers.

Queerly enough, the farms above the Smith were failures. Hundreds of wells clear up to Plumer never paid the expense of recording the leases. The territory was a roast for scores of stock-companies. Below Plumer a mile Bruns & Ludovici, of New York, built the Humboldt Refinery in 1862. Money was lavished on palatial quarters for the managers, enclosed grounds, cut-stone walls, a pipe-line to Tarr Farm and the largest refining capacity in America. Inconvenient location and improved methods of competitors forced the Humboldt to retire. Part of the machinery was removed, the structures crumbled and some of the dressed stone forms the foundations of the National Transit Building at Oil City. Plumer, which had a grist-mill, store, blacksmith-shop and tavern in 1840 and four-thousand population in 1866, is quiet as its briar-grown graveyard. The Brevoort Oil-Company, Murray & Fawcett and John P. Zane raked in shekels on Moody Run, which emptied into Cherry Run a half-mile south-west of the Reed well. Zane, whole-souled, resolute and manly, operated in the northern district and died at Bradford in 1894. A “forty-niner,” he supported John W. Geary for Mayor of San Francisco, built street-railways and worked gold-mines in California. He wrote on finance and petroleum, hated selfishness and stood firmly on the platform laid down in the beatitudes by the Man of Galilee.

In the winter of 1859-60 Robert Phipps, of Clinton township, sold a horse to D. Knapp, who owned a farm, “between Plumer and the mouth of Oil Creek,” that extended across Cherry Run some distance above the Smith patch. Phipps followed up the horse-sale by paying Knapp twenty-five dollars and one-eighth the oil for one acre of his land. He took A. Lowry for a partner, and sent his son, Porter Phipps, and John Haas, a German blacksmith, to “kick down” a well. Haas constructed 167a set of light tools—the augur stem was one-inch iron—lumber for a shanty and the rig was drawn from Hood’s Mill on Pithole Creek and a forty-foot hemlock served as a spring-pole. Drilling began in April of 1860 at the first well on the bank of Cherry Run. Young Phipps would carry the bit or the reamer daily on his shoulder to be dressed at a blacksmith-shop on Hamilton McClintock’s farm. The work had continued three months, when one day the tools struck a crevice at a hundred feet, a gurgling sound greeted the ears of the expectant drillers and they awaited the flow. Sulphur-water, not oil, was the outcome and the well was abandoned. Robert Phipps “exchanged mortality for life” at a ripe old age. His parents settled in Venango county a century ago and the Phipps family has always been noted for intelligence and progressiveness. Porter Phipps, known everywhere as ’Squire, was reared on the farm, had his initial tussle with oil-wells in 1860 and operated at Bullion and in Butler county. He is Vice-president of the Monroe Oil-Company and makes Pittsburg his headquarters.

Two miles east of Miller-Farm station, on the eighty-acre tract of Oliver Stowell, the Cherry-Run Petroleum-Company finished a well in February of 1866. It was eight-hundred feet deep, drilled through the sixth sand and pumped one-hundred barrels a day. The company operated systematically, using heavy tools, tall derricks and large casing. It was managed by Dr. G. Shamburg, a man of character and ability, who studied the strata carefully and gathered much valuable data. The second well equalled No. 1 in productiveness and longevity, both lasting for years. J. B. Fink’s, a July posy of two-hundred barrels, was the third. The grand rush began in December, 1867, the Fee and Jack-Brown wells, on the Atkinson farm, flowing four-hundred barrels apiece. A lively town, eligibly located in a depression of the table-lands, was properly named Shamburg, as a compliment to the genial doctor. The Tallman, Goss, Atkinson and Stowell farms whooped up the production to three-thousand barrels. Frank W. and W. C. Andrews, Lyman and Milton Stewart, John W. Irvin and F. L. Backus had bought John R. Tallman’s one-hundred acres in 1865. Their first well began producing in September, 1867, and in 1868 they sold two-hundred-thousand barrels of oil for nearly eight-hundred-thousand dollars! A. H. Bronson—bright, alert, keen in business and popular in society—paid twenty-five-thousand for the Charles Clark farm, a mile north-east. His first well—three-hundred barrels—paid for the property and itself in sixty days. Operations in the Shamburg pool were almost invariably profitable and handsome fortunes were realized. A peculiarity was the presence of green and black oils, a line on the eastern part of the Cherry-Run Company’s land defining them sharply. Their gravity and general properties were identical and the black color was attributed to oxide of iron in the rock. Dr. Shamburg died at Titusville and the town he founded is taking a perpetual vacation.

Carl Wageforth, a genius well known in early days as one of the owners of the Story farm, started a “town” in the woods two miles above Shamburg. The “town” collapsed, Wageforth clung to his store a season and next turned 168up in Texas as the founder of a German colony. He secured a claim in the Lone-Star State about thrice the size of Rhode Island, settled it with thrifty immigrants from the “Faderland” and bagged a bushel of ducats. He made and lost fortunes in oil and could no more be kept from breaking out occasionally than measles or small-pox.

East of Petroleum Centre three miles, on the bank of a pellucid stream, John E. McLaughlin drilled a well in 1868 that flowed fourteen-hundred barrels. The sand was coarse, the oil dark and the magnitude of the strike a surprise equal to the answer of the dying sinner who, asked by the minister if he wasn’t afraid to meet an angry God, unexpectedly replied: “Not a bit; it’s the other chap I’m afraid of!” Excepting the half-dozen mastodons on Oil Creek, the McLaughlin was the biggest well in the business up to that date. Wide-awake operators struck a bee-line for leases. A town was floated in two weeks, a Pithole grocer erecting the first building and labeling the place “Cash-Up” as a gentle hint to patrons not to let their accounts get musty with age. The name fitted the town, which a twelvemonth sufficed to sponge off the slate. Small wells and dry-holes ruled the roost, even those nudging “the big ’un” missing the pay-streak. The McLaughlin—a decided freak—declined gradually and pumped seven years, having the reservoir all to itself. Located ten rods away in any direction, it would have been a duster and Cash-Up would not have existed! A hundred surrounding it did not cash-up the outlay for drilling.

Attracted by the quality of the soil and the beauty of the location—six-hundred feet above the level of Oil Creek and abundantly watered—in 1820 Abraham Lovell forsook his New York farm to settle in Allegheny township, six miles east by south of Titusville. Aaron Benedict and Austin Merrick came in 1821. John Brown, the first merchant, opened a store in 1833. A pottery, tannery, ashery, store and shops formed the nucleus of a village, organized in 1850 as the borough of Pleasantville. Three wells on the outskirts of town, bored in 1865-6, produced a trifling amount of oil. Late in the fall of 1867 Abram James, an ardent spiritualist, was driving from Pithole to Titusville with three friends. A mile south of Pleasantville his “spirit-guide” assumed control of Mr. James and humped him over the fence into a field on the William Porter farm.farm. Powerless to resist, the subject was hurried to the northern end of the field, contorted violently, jerked through a species of “couchee-couchee dance” and pitched to the ground! He marked the spot with his finger, thrust a penny into the dirt and fell back pale and rigid. Restored to consciousness, he told his astonished companions it had been revealed to him that streams of oil lay beneath and extended several miles in a certain direction. Putting no faith in “spirits” not amenable to flasks, they listened incredulously and resumed their 169journey. James negotiated a lease, borrowed money—the “spirit-guide” neglected to furnish cash—and planted a derrick where he had planted the penny. On February twelfth, 1868, at eight-hundred-and-fifty feeteight-hundred-and-fifty feet, the Harmonial Well No. 1 pumped one-hundred-and-thirty barrels!

The usual hurly-burly followed. People who voted the James adventure a fish-story writhed and twisted to drill near the spirited Harmonial. New strikes increased the hubbub and established the sure quality of the territory. Scores of wells were sunk on the Porter, Brown, Tyrell, Beebe, Dunham and other farms for miles. Prices of supplies advanced and machine-shops in the oil-regions ran night and day to meet orders. Land sold at five-hundred to five-thousand dollars an acre, often changing hands three or four times a day. Interests in wells going down found willing purchasers. Strangers crowded Pleasantville, which trebled its population and buildings during the year. It was a second edition of Pithole, mildly subdued and divested of frothy sensationalism. If gigantic gushers did not dazzle, dry-holes did not discourage. If nobody cleared a million dollars at a clip, nobody cleared out to avoid creditors. Nobody had to loaf and trust to Providence for daily bread. Providence wasn’t running a bakery for the benefit of idlers and work was plentiful at Pleasantville. The production reached three-thousand barrels in the summer of 1868, dropping to fifteen-hundred in 1870. Three banks prospered and imposing brick-blocks succeeded unsubstantial frames. Fresh pastures invited the floating mass to Clarion, Armstrong and Butler. Small wells were abandoned, machinery was shipped southward and the pretty village moved backward gracefully. Pleasantville had “marched up the hill and then marched down again.”

Abram James, a man of fine intellect, nervous temperament and lofty principle, lived at Pleasantville a year. He located a dozen paying wells in other sections, under the influence of his “spirit-guide.” The Harmonial was his greatest hit, bringing him wealth and distinction. His worst break—a dry-hole on the Clarion river eighteen-hundred feet deep—cost him six-thousand dollars in 1874. None questioned his absolute sincerity, although many rejected his theories of the supernatural. Whether he is still in the flesh or has become a spirit has not been manifested to his old friends in Oildom.

Samuel Stewart, an old resident and prosperous land-owner, is a leading citizen of Cherrytree township. He operated successfully in his own neighborhood and around Pleasantville. His acquaintance with men and affairs is not surpassed in Venango county. He is half-brother of Mrs. William R. Crawford, Franklin. Lyman and Milton Stewart, of Titusville, have not stayed in the rear. They drilled hundreds of wells in Pennsylvania and invested liberally in California territory. Good men and true are the Stewarts from beginning to end.

Red-Hot, in the palmy era of the Shamburg excitement a place of much sultriness, is cold enough to chill any stray visitor who knew the mushroom at its warmest stage. Windsor Brothers, of Oil City—they built the Windsor Block—drilled a well in 1869 that flowed three-hundred-and-fifty barrels. Others followed rapidly, people flocked to the newest centre of attraction and a typical 170oil-town strutted to the front. The territory lacked the staying quality, the Butler region was about to dawn and 1871 saw Red-Hot reduced to three houses, a half-dozen light wells and a muddy road. Lightning-rod pedlars, book-agents and medical fakirs no longer disturb its calm serenity. Not a scrap of the tropical town has been visible for two decades.

Tip-Top filled a short engagement. Operations around Shamburg and Pleasantville directed attention to the Captain Lyle and neighboring farms, midway between these points. “Ned” Pitcher’s well, drilled in 1866 on the Snedaker farm, east of Lyle, had started at eighty barrels and pumped twenty for two years. Pithole was booming and nobody thought of Ned’s pitcher until 1868. Many of the wells produced fairly, but the territory soon depreciated and the elevated town—aptly named by a poet with an eye to the eternal fitness of things—lost its hold and glided down to nothingness. The hundred-eyed Argus could not find a sliver that would prick a thumb or tip a top.

Picking cherries was sometimes a mixed operation in the land of grease.

Kerosene is often the last scene.

The ladies—God bless them!—are nothing if not consistent—at times. It used to be a fad with Bradford wives to keep a stuffed owl in the parlor for ornament and a stuffed club in the hall for the night-owl’s benefit.

The steel of a rimmer was lost in a drilling well on Cherry Run. After fishing for it for a longtime the well-owner, becoming discouraged, offered a man one-thousand dollars to take it out. He broomed the end of a tough block, ran it down the well attached to the tools and in ten minutes had the steel out.

At a drilling well near Rouseville the tools were lowered on Monday morning and, after running a full screw, were drawn minus the bit, with the stem-box greatly enlarged. After fishing several days for it the drillers were greatly surprised to find the lost bit standing in the slack-tub. The tools had been lowered in the darkness with no bit on.

William McClain, grandfather of Senator S. J. M. McCarrell, Harrisburg, once owned and occupied the Tarr farm, on Oil Creek. Fifty or more years ago he sold the tract to James Tarr for a rifle and an old gray horse named Diamond. McClain removed to Washington county and settled on a farm which his son inherited and sold before oil was found in the neighborhood. Like the Tarr farm on Oil Creek, the McClain farm in Washington county proved a petroleum-bonanza to the purchasers.

All kinds of engines, from one to fifty horse-power, were used on Oil Creek in the sixties. The old “Fabers,” with direct attachment, will recall many a broad grin. The boys called them “Long Johns.” The Wallace-engine had hemp-packing on the piston, and the inside of the cylinder, rough as a rasp, soon used it up and leaked steam like a sieve. The Washington-engine was the first to come into general use. C. M. Farrar, of Farrar & Trefts, whose boilers and engines have stood every test demanded by improvements in drilling, made the drawing for the first locomotive-pattern boiler on a drilling well—a wonderful stride in advance of the old-time boiler. Trefts made the castings for the engine that pumped the Drake well and was the first man, in company with J. Willard, to use ropes on Oil Creek in drilling. This was on the Foster farm, near the world-famed Empire well, in 1860. Willard made the second set of jars on the creek. Senator W. S. McMullan was a stalwart blacksmith, who made drilling-tools noted for their enduring quality.

The Meteoric City that Dazzled Mankind—From Nothing to Sixteen-Thousand Population in Three Months—First Wells and Fabulous Prices—Noted Organizations at Pithole—A Foretaste of Hades—Excitement and Collapse—Speculation Run Wild—Duplicity and Disappointment—The Wild Scramble for the Almighty Dollar.

“The gourd came up in a night and perished in a night.”—Jonah, iv:10.

“The earth hath bubbles, as the water has.”—Shakespeare.

“All things rise to fall and flourish to decay.”—Sallust.

“A lively place in days of yore, but something ails it now.”—Wordsworth.

“Ah! who shall lift that wand of magic power?”—Longfellow.

“It went up like a rocket and came down like a stick.”—Thomas Paine.

“Yet golde all is not that doth golden seeme.”—Spenser.

“Can it be that this is all remains of life.”—Bryon.

“What it is to eat forbidden fruit and find it a turnip!”—Flora Annie Steel.

“Old Rhinestein’s walls are crumbled now.”—Birch Arnold.

“For this will never hold water again.”—J. Fenimore Cooper.

“Of the vanished drama no image was there left.”—William Morris.

Pithole, “the magic city,” had little in its antecedents to betoken the meteoric rise and fall of the most remarkable oil-town that ever “went up like a rocket and came down like a stick.” The unpoetic name of Pithole Creek was applied to the stream which flows through Allegheny township and bounds Cornplanter for several miles on the east. It empties into the Allegheny River eight miles above Oil City and was first mentioned by Rev. Alfred Brunson, an itinerant Methodist minister, in his “Western Pioneer” in 1819. Upheavals of rock left a series of deep pits or chasms on the hills near the mouth of the stream. From the largest of these holes a current of warm air repels leaves or pieces of paper. Snow melts around the cavity, which is of unknown depth, and the air is a mephitic vapor or gas. A story is told of three hunters who, finding the snow melted on a midwinter day, determined to investigate. One of them swore it was an entrance to the infernal regions and that he intended to warm himself. He sat on the edge of the hole, dangled his feet over the side, thanked the devil for the opportune heat, inhaled the gas and tumbled back insensible. His companions dragged him away and the investigation ended summarily. Seven miles up the creek, in the northeast corner of Cornplanter, 174Rev. Walter Holmden was a pioneer-settler. Choosing a tract of two-hundred acres, he built a log-house on the west bank of the creek, cleared a few acres, struggled with poverty and died in 1840. Mr. Holmden was a fervent Baptist preacher. Thomas Holmden occupied the farm after the good old man’s decease, with the Copelands and Blackmers and James Rooker as neighbors. Developments had covered the farms from the Drake well to Oil City. Operators ventured up the ravines, ascended the hills and began to take chances miles from either side of Oil Creek. Successful wells on the Allegheny River broadened opinions regarding the possibilities of petroleum. Nervy men invaded the eastern portion of Cornplanter, picking up lands along Pithole Creek and its tributaries. I. N. Frazer, fresh from his triumph on Cherry Run as joint-owner of the Reed well, desired fresh laurels. He organized the United-States Oil-Company, leased part of the Holmden farm for twenty years and started a well in the fall of 1864. The primitive derrick was reared in the woods below the Holmden home. At six-hundred feet the “sixth sand”—generally called that at Pithole—was punctured. Ten feet farther the tools proceeded, the drillers watching intently for signs of oil. On January seventh, 1865, the torrent broke loose, the well flowing six-hundred-and-fifty barrels a day and ceasing finally on November tenth. A picture of the well, showing Frazer with his back to the tree beside his horse and a group of visitors standing around, was secured in May. Kilgore & Keenan’s Twin wells, good for eight-hundred barrels, were finished on January seventeenth and nineteenth. The unfathomable mud and disastrous floods of that memorable season retarded the hegira from other sections, only to intensify the excitement when it found vent. Duncan & Prather bought Holmden’s land for twenty-five-thousand dollars and divided the flats and slopes into half-acre leases. The first of May witnessed a small clearing in the forest, with three oil-wells, one drilling-well and three houses as its sole evidences of human handiwork.

Ninety days later the world heard with unfeigned surprise of a “city” of 175sixteen-thousand inhabitants, possessing most of the conveniences and luxuries of the largest and oldest communities! Capitalists eager to invest their greenbacks thronged to the scene. Labor and produce commanded extravagant figures, every farm for miles was leased or bought at fabulous rates, money circulated like the measles and for weeks the furore surpassed the frantic ebullitions of Wall Street on Black Friday! New strikes perpetually inflated the mania. Speculators wandered far and wide in quest of the subterranean wealth that promised to outrival the golden measures of California or the silver-lodes of Nevada. The value of oil-lands was reckoned by millions. Small interests in single wells brought hundreds-of-thousands of dollars. New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago measured purses in the insane strife for territory. Hosts of adventurers sought the new Oil-Dorado and the stocks of countless “petroleum-companies” were scattered broadcast over Europe and America. An ambitious operator sold seventeen-sixteenths in one well and shares in leases were purchased ravenously. A half-acre lease on the Holmden farm realized bonuses of twenty-four-thousand dollars before a well was drilled on the property and the swarm of dealers resembled the plague of locusts in Egypt in number and persistence!

Everything favored the growth of Pithole. The close of the war had left the country flooded with paper currency and multitudes of men thrown upon their own resources. Hundreds of these flocked to the inviting “city,” which presented manifold inducements to venturesome spirits, keen shysters, unscrupulous stock-jobbers, needy laborers and dishonest tricksters. The post-office speedily ranked third in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and Pittsburg alone excelling it. Seven chain-lightning clerks assisted Postmaster S. S. Hill to handle the mail. Lines of men extending a block would await their turns for letters at the general-delivery. It was a roystering time! Hotels, theaters, saloons, drinking-dens, gambling-hells and questionable resorts were counted by the score. A fire-department was organized, a daily paper established and a mayor elected. Railways to Reno and Oleopolis were nearly completed before “the beginning of the end” came with terrible swiftness. In November and December the wells declined materially. The laying of pipe-lines to Miller Farm and Oleopolis, through which the oil was forced to points of shipment by steam-pumps, in one week drove fifteen-hundred teams to seek work elsewhere. Destructive fires accelerated the final catastrophe. The graphic pen of Dickens would fail to give an adequate idea of this phenomenal creation, whose career was a magnified type of dozens of towns that suddenly arose and as suddenly collapsed in the oil-regions of Pennsylvania.

Pithole had many wells that yielded freely for some time. The Homestead, on the Hyner farm, finished in June of 1865, proved a gusher. On August first the Deshler started at one-hundred barrels; on August second the Grant, at four-hundred-and-fifty barrels; on August twenty-eighth the Pool, at eight-hundred barrels; on September fifth the Ogden, at one-hundred barrels, and on September fifteenth Pool & Perry’s No. 47, at four-hundred barrels. The Frazer improved during the spring to eight-hundred 176barrels, while the Grant reached seven-hundred in September. On November twenty-second the Eureka joined the chorus at five-hundred barrels. The daily production of the Holmden farm exceeded five-thousand barrels for a limited period, with a proportionate yield of seven-dollar crude from adjacent tracts. John A. Mather, the veteran Titusville photographer, discarded his camera to become a full-fledged oilman. He bored a well that tinctured the suburban slope of Balltown a glowing madder. The frenzy spread. J. W. Bonta and James A. Bates paid James Rooker two-hundred-and-eighty-thousand dollars for his hundred-acre farm, south of the Holmden. Rooker, a hard-working tiller of the soil, lived in a kind of rookery and earned a poor subsistence by constant toil. He stuck to the money derived from the sale of his farm, and he is still living at a goodly age. The Grand Dutch S well would have given Lillian Russell new wrinkles in her delineation of the “Grand Duchess of Gerolstein.” A neighbor refused eight-hundred-thousand dollars for his barren acres. “I don’t keer ter hev my buckwheat tramped over,” he explained, “but you kin hev this farm next winter fur a million!” He kept the farm, reaped his crop and was not disturbed until death compelled him to lodge in a plot six by two.

Bonta & Bates did not linger for “two blades of grass to grow where one grew before.” Within two months they disposed of ninety leases for four-hundred-thousand dollars and half the oil! They spent eighty-thousand on the Bonta House, a sumptuous hostlery. Duncan & Prather leased building-lots at a yearly rental of one-hundred to one-thousand dollars. First, Second and Holmden streets bristled with activity. The Danforth House stood on a lot subleased for fourteen-thousand dollars bonus. Sixty hotels could not accommodate the influx of guests. Beds, sofas and chairs were luxuries for the few. “First come, first served,” was the rule. The many had to seek the shaving-pile, the hay-cock or the tender side of a plank. Some mingled promiscuously in “field-beds”—rows of “shake-downs” on attic floors. Besides the Bonta and Danforth, the United States, Chase, Tremont, Buckley, Lincoln, Sherman, St. James, American, Northeast, Seneca, Metropolitan, Pomeroy and fifty hotels of minor note flourished. If palaces of sin, gorgeous bar-rooms, business-houses and places of amusement abounded, churches and schools marked the moral sentiment. Fire wiped out the Tremont and adjoining houses in February of 1866. Eighty buildings went up in smoke on May first and June thirteenth. Thirty wells and twenty-thousand barrels of oil went the same road in August. The best buildings were torn down, to bloom at Pleasantville or Oil City. The disappearance of Pithole astonished the world no less than its marvelous growth. The Danforth House sold for sixteen dollars, to make firewood! The railroads 177were abandoned and in 1876 only six voters remained. A ruined tenement, a deserted church and traces of streets alone survive. Troy or Nineveh is not more desolate.

In July of 1865 Duncan & Prather granted Henry E. Picket, George J. Sherman and Brian Philpot, of Titusville, a thirty-day option on the Holmden farm for one-million-three-hundred-thousand dollars. Mr. Sherman arranged to sell the property in New York at sixteen-hundred-thousand! The wells already down produced largely, seventy more were drilling and the annual ground-rents footed up sixty-thousand dollars. The Ketcham forgeries tangled the funds of the New-Yorkers and negotiations were opened with H. H. Honore, of Chicago. After dark on the last day of the option Honore tendered the first payment—four-hundred-thousand dollars. It was declined, on the ground that the business day expired at sundown, and litigation ensued. A compromise resulted in the transfer of the property to Honore. The deal involved the largest sum ever paid in the oil regions for a single tract of land. The bubble burst so quickly that the Chicago purchaser, like Benjamin Franklin, “paid too much for the whistle.” Col. A. P. Duncan commanded the Fourth Cavalry Company, the first mustered in Venango county, every member of which carried to the war a small Bible presented by Mrs. A. G. Egbert, of Franklin. Tall, erect, of military bearing and undoubted integrity, he lived at Oil City and died years ago. Duncan & Prather owned one of the two banks that handled car-loads of money in the dizziest town that ever blasted radiant hopes and shriveled portly pocket-books.

The Pithole bubble was blown at an opportune moment to catch suckers. Hundreds of oil-companies had come into existence in 1864, hungry for territory and grasping at anything within rifle-shot of an actual or prospective “spouter.” The speculative tide flowed and ebbed as never before in any age or nation. Volumes could be written of amazing transitions of fortune. Scores landed at Pithole penniless and departed in a few months “well heeled.” Others came with “hatfuls of money” and went away empty-handed. Thousands of stockholders were bitten as badly as the sailor, whom the shark nipped off by the waist-band. It was rather refreshing in its way for “country Reubens” to do up Wall-street sharpers at their own game. Shrewd Bostonians, New-Yorkers and Philadelphians, magnates in business and finance, were snared as readily as hayseeds who buy green-goods and gold-bricks. There are no flies on the smooth, glib Oily Gammon whose mouth yielded more lubricating oil than the biggest well on French Creek. His favorite prey was a pilgrim with a bursting wallet or the agent of an eastern petroleum-company. A well pouring forth 178three, six, eight, ten, twelve or fifteen-hundred barrels of five-dollar crude every twenty-four hours was a spectacle to fire the blood and turn the brain of the most sluggish beholder. “Such a well,” he might calculate, “would make me a millionaire in one year and a Crœsus in ten.” The wariest trout would nibble at bait so tempting. The schemer with property to sell had “the very thing he wanted” and would “let him in on the ground-floor.” He met men who, driving mules or jigging tools six months ago, were “oil-princes” now. Here lay a tract, “the softest snap on top of the earth,” only a mile from the Great Geyser, with a well “just in the sand and a splendid show.” He could have it at a bargain-counter sacrifice—one-hundred-thousand dollars and half the oil. The engine had given out and the owner was about to order a new one when called home by the sudden death of his mother-in-law. Settling the old lady’s estate required his entire attention, therefore he would consent to sell his oil-interests “dirt-cheap” to a responsible buyer who would push developments. The price ought to be two or three times the sum asked, but the royalty from the big wells sure to be struck would ultimately even up matters. The tale was plausible and the visitor would “look at the property.” He saw real sand on the derrick-floor and everything besmeared with grease. The presence of oil was unmistakable. Drilling ten feet into the rich rock would certainly tap the jugular and—glorious thought!—perhaps outdo the Great Geyser itself. He closed the deal, telegraphed for an engine—he was dying to see that stream of oil climbing skywards—and chuckled gleefully. The keen edge of his delight might have been dulled had he known that the well was through, not merely to, the sand and absolutely guiltless of the taint of oil! He did not suspect that barrels of crude and buckets of sand from other wells had been dumped into the hole at night, that the engine had been disabled purposely and that another innocent was soon to cut his wisdom-teeth! He found out when the well “came in dry” that Justice Dogberry was not a greater ass and that the fool-killer’s snickersnee was yearning for him. Possibly he might by persistent drilling find paying wells and get back part of his money, but nine times out of ten the investment was a total loss and the disgusted victim quit the scene with a new interpretation of the scriptural declaration: “I was a stranger and ye took me in.” Butler anticipated Pithole when he wrote in Hudibras:

The methods of “turning an honest penny” varied to fit the case. To “doctor” a well by dosing it with a load of oil was tame and commonplace. In three instances wells sold at fancy prices were connected by underground pipes with tanks of oil at a distance. When the parties arrived to “time the well” the secret pipe was opened. The oil ran into the tubing and pumped as though coming direct from the sand! The deception was as perfect as the oleomargarine the Pennsylvania State Board of Agriculture pronounced “dairy butter of superior quality!” “Seeing is believing” and there was the oil. They had seen it pumping a steady stream into the tank, timed it, gauged it, smelled it. The demonstration was complete and the cash would be forked over, a twenty-barrel well bringing a hundred-barrel price! A smart widow near Pithole sold her farm at treble its value because of “surface indications” she created by emptying a barrel of oil into a spring. The farm proved good territory, much to the chagrin of the widow, who roundly abused the purchasers 179for “cheatin’ a poor lone woman!” Selling stock in companies that held lands, or interests in wells to be drilled “near big gushers”—they might be eight or ten miles off—was not infrequent. On the other hand, a very slight risk often brought an immense return. Parties would pay five-hundred dollars for the refusal of a tract of land and arrange with other parties to sink a well for a small lease on the property. If the well succeeded, one acre would pay the cost of the entire farm; if it failed, the holders of the option forfeited the trifle that secured it and threw up the contract. It was risking five-hundred dollars on the chance, not always very remote, of gaining a half-million.

Sometimes the craze to invest bordered upon the ludicrous. Sixteenths and fractions of sixteenths in producing, non-producing, drilling, undrilled and never-to-be-drilled wells “went like hot cakes” at two to twenty-thousand dollars. A newcomer, in his haste to “tie onto something,” shelled out one-thousand dollars for a share in a gusher that netted him two quarts of oil a day! Another cheerfully paid fifteen-thousand for the sixteenth of a flowing well which discounted the Irishman’s flea—“you put your finger on the varmint and he wasn’t there”—by balking that night and declining ever to start again! At a fire in 1866 water from a spring, dashed on the blaze, added fuel to the flames. An examination showed that oil was filling the spring and water-wells in the neighborhood. From the well in Mrs. Reichart’s yard the wooden pump brought fifty barrels of pure oil. L. L. Hill’s well and holes dug eight or ten feet had the same complaint. Excitement blew off at the top gauge. The Record devoted columns to the new departure. Was the oil so impatient to enrich Pitholians that, refusing to wait for the drill to provide an outlet, it burst through the rocks in its eagerness to boom the district? Patches of ground the size of a quilt sold for two, three or four-hundred dollars and rows of pits resembling open graves decorated the slope. In a week a digger discovered that a break in the pipe-line supplied the oil. The leak was repaired, the pits dried up, the water-wells resumed their normal condition and the fiasco ended ignominiously. It was a modern version of the mountain that set the country by the ears to bring forth a mouse.

Joseph Wood, proprietor of the St. James Hotel at Paterson, N.J., died on May thirteenth, 1896. He was a wit and story-teller of the best kind, a gallant fighter for the Union and for a year lived at Pithole. A fortune made by operating and speculation he lost by fire in a year. He conducted hotels at Hot Springs, Washington, Chicago and Milwaukee and was one of the famous Bonifaces of the United States. On his business-cards he printed these “religious beliefs:”

“Do not keep the alabaster-boxes of your love and tenderness sealed up until your friends are dead. Fill their lives with sweetness. Speak approving, cheering words while their ears can hear them and while their hearts can be thrilled and made happier by them. The kind things you mean to say when they are gone say before they go. The flowers you mean to send to their coffins send to brighten and sweeten their homes before they leave them. If my friends have alabaster-boxes laid away, full of fragrant perfumes of sympathy and affection, which they intend to break over my dead body, I would rather they would bring them out in my weary and troubled hours and open them, that I may be refreshed and cheered by them while I need them. I would rather have a plain coffin without a flower, a funeral without a eulogy, than a life without the sweetness of love and sympathy. Let us learn to anoint our friends beforehand for their burial. Post-mortem kindness does not cheer the burdened spirit. Flowers on the coffin cast no fragrance backward over the weary way.”

Let down the bars and enter the field that was once the seething, boiling caldron called Pithole. A poplar-tree thirty feet high grows in the cellar of the National Hotel. Stones and underbrush cover the site of the Metropolitan 180Theater and Murphy’s Varieties. This bit of sunken ground, clogged with weeds and brambles, marks the Chase House.House. Here was Main street, where millions of dollars changed hands daily. For years the Presbyterian church stood forsaken, the bell in the tower silent, the pews untouched and the pulpit-Bible lying on the preacher’s desk. John McPherson’s store and Dr. Christie’s house were about the last buildings in the place. Not a human-being now lives on the spot. All the old-timers moved away. All? No, a score or two quietly sleep among the bushes and briars that run riot over the little graveyard in which they were laid when the dead city was in the throes of a tremendous excitement.

Pithole was the Mecca of a legion of operators whose history is part and parcel of the oil-development. Phillips Brothers, giants on Oil Creek, bought farms and drilled extensively. Frederic Prentice and W. W. Clark, who figured in two-thirds of the largest transactions from Petroleum Centre to Franklin, held a full hand. Frank W. Andrews, John Satterfield, J. R. Johnson, J. B. Fink, A. J. Keenan—the first burgess—D. H. Burtis, Heman Janes, “Pap” Sheakley, L. H. Smith and hundreds of similar caliber were on deck. John Galloway, known in every oil-district of Pennsylvania and West Virginia as a tireless hustler, did not let Pithole slip past unnoticed. He has been an operator in all the fields since his first appearance on Oil Creek in the fall of 1861. Sharing in the prosperity and adversity of the oil-regions, he has never been hoodooed or bankrupted. His word is his bond and his promise to pay has always meant one-hundred cents on the dollar. More largely interested in producing than ever, he attends to business at Pittsburg and lives at Jamestown, happy in his deserved success, in the love of his family and the esteem of countless friends. Mr. Galloway’s pedestrian feats would have crowned him with olive-wreaths at the Olympic games. Deerfoot could hardly have kept up with him on a twenty-mile tramp to see an important well or hit a farmer for a lease before breakfast. He’s a good one!

The Swordsman’s Club attained the highest reputation as a social organization. One night in 1866, when Pithole was at the zenith of its fame, John Satterfield, Seth Crittenden, Alfred W. Smiley, John McDonald, George Burchill, George Gilmore, Pard B. Smith, L. H. Smith, W. H. Longwell and other congenial gentlemen met for an evening’s enjoyment. The conversation turned upon clubs. Smiley jumped to his feet and moved that “we organize a club.” All assented heartily and the Swordman’s Club was organized there and then, with Pard B. Smith as president and George Burchill as secretary. Elegant rooms were fitted up, the famous motto of “R. C. T.” was adopted and the club gave a series of most elaborate “promenade-concerts and balls” in 1866-7. Invitations to these brilliant affairs were courted by the best people of Oildom. The club dissolved in 1868. Its membership included four congressmen, two ex-governors wore its badge and scores of men conspicuous in the state and nation 181had the honor of belonging to the Swordman’s. At regular meetings “the feast of reason and the flow of soul” blended merrily with the flowing bowl. Sallies of bright wit, spontaneous and never hanging fire, were promptly on schedule time. Good fellowship prevailed and C. C. Leonard immortalized the club in his side-splitting “History of Pithole.” Verily the years slip by. Long ago the ephemeral town went back to its original pasture, long ago the facetious historian went back to dust, long ago many a good clubman’s sword turned into rust. Pard B. Smith runs a livery in Cleveland, Longwell is in Oil City, Smiley—he represented Clarion county twice in the Legislature—manages the pipe-line at Foxburg, L. H. Smith is in New York and others are scattered or dead. On November twenty-first, 1890, the “Pioneers of Pithole”—among them a number of Swordsmen—had a reunion and banquet at the Hotel Brunswick, Titusville. These stanzas, composed and sung by President Smith and “Alf” Smiley, were vociferously cheered:

“Spirits” inspired four good wells at Pithole. One dry hole, a mile south-east of town, seriously depressed stock in their skill as “oil-smellers.” An enthusiastic disciple of the Fox sisters, assured of “a big well,” drilled two-hundred feet below the sixth sand in search of oil-bearing rock. He drilled himself into debt and Sheriff C. S. Mark—six feet high and correspondingly broad—whom nobody could mistake for an ethereal being, sold the outfit at junk-prices.

In the swish and swirl of Pithole teamsters—a man with two stout horses could earn twenty dollars a day clear—drillers and pumpers played no mean part. They received high wages and spent money freely. Variety-shows, music-halls—with “pretty waiter-girls”—dance-houses, saloons, gambling-hells and dens of vice afforded unlimited opportunities to squander cash and decency and self-respect. Many a clever youth, flushed with the idea of “sowing his wild oats,” sacrificed health and character on the altars of Bacchus and Venus. Many a comely maiden, yielding to the wiles of the betrayer, rounded up in the brothel and the potter’s field. Many a pious mother, weeping for the wayward prodigal who was draining her life-blood, had reason to inquire: “Oh, where is my boy to-night?” Many a husband, forgetting the trusting wife and children at home, wandered from the straight path and tasted the forbidden fruit. Many 182a promising life was blighted, many a hopeful career blasted, many a reputation smirched and many a fond heart broken by the pitfalls and temptations of Pithole. Dollars were not the only stakes in the exciting game of life—good names, family ties, bright prospects, domestic happiness and human souls were often risked and often lost. “The half has never been told.”

Scarcely less noted was the organization heralded far and wide as “Pithole’s Forty Thieves.” Well-superintendents, controlling the interests of outside companies, were important personages. Distant stockholders, unable to understand the difficulties and uncertainties attending developments, blamed the superintendents for the lack of dividends. No class of men in the country discharged their duties more faithfully, yet cranky investors in wildcat stocks termed them “slick rascals,” “plunderers” and “robbers.” Some joker suggested that once a band of Arabian Knights—fellows who stole everything—associated as “The Forty Thieves” and that the libeled superintendents ought to organize a club. The idea captured the town and “Pithole’s Forty Thieves” became at once a tangible reality. Merchants, producers, capitalists and business-men hastened to enroll themselves as members. Hon. James Sheakley, of Mercer, was elected president. Social meetings were held regularly and guying greenhorns, who supposed stealing to be the object of the organization, was a favorite pastime. The practical pranks of the “Forty” were laughed at and relished in the whole region. Nine-tenths of the members were young men, honorable in every relation of life, to whom the organization was a genuine joke. They enjoyed its notoriety and delighted to gull innocents who imagined they would purloin engines, derricks, drilling-tools, saw-mills and oil-tanks. Ten years after the band disbanded its president served in Congress and was a leading debater on the Hayes-Tilden muddle. “Pap” Sheakley—as the boys affectionately called him—was the embodiment of integrity, kindliness and hospitality. He operated in the Butler field and lived at Greenville. Bereft of his devoted wife and lovely daughters by “the fell sergeant, Death,” he sold his, desolated home and accepted from President Cleveland the governorship of Uncle Sam’s remotest Territory. His administration was so satisfactory that President Harrison reappointed him. There was no squarer, truer, nobler man in the public service than James Sheakley, Ex-Governor of Alaska.

Rev. S. D. Steadman, the first pastor at Pithole, a zealous Methodist—was universally respected for earnestness and piety. The “forty thieves” sent him one-hundred-and-fifty dollars at Christmas of 1866, with a letter commending his moral teachings, his courtesy and charity. Another minister inquired of a Swordsman what the letters of the club’s motto—“R. C. T.”—signified, “Religious Councils Treasured” was the ready response. This raised the club immensely in the divine’s estimation and led to a sermon in which he extolled the jolly organization! He “took a tumble” when a deacon smilingly informed him that the letters—a fake proposed in sport—symbolized “Rum, Cards, Tobacco.”

Mud was responsible for the funniest—to the spectators—mishap that ever 183convulsed a Pithole audience. A group of us stood in front of the Danforth House at the height of the miry season. Thin mud overflowed the plank-crossing and a grocer laid short pieces of scantling two or three feet apart for pedestrians to step on. A flashy sport, attired in a swell suit and a shiny beaver, was the first to take advantage of the improvised passage. Half-way across the scantling to which he was stepping moved ahead of his foot. In trying to recover his balance the sport careened to one side, his hat flew off and he landed plump on his back, in mud and water three feet deep! He disappeared beneath the surface as completely as though dropped into the sea, his head emerging a moment later. Blinded, sputtering and gasping for breath, he was a sight for the gods and little fishes! Mouth, eyes, nose and ears were choked with the dreadful ooze. Two men went to his assistance, led him to the rear of the hotel and turned the hose on him. His clothes were ruined, his gold watch was never recovered and for weeks small boys would howl: “His name is Mud!”

John Galloway, on one of his rambles for territory, ate dinner at the humble cabin of a poor settler. A fowl, tough, aged and peculiar, was the principal dish. In two weeks the tourist was that way again. A boy of four summers played at the door, close to which the visitor sat down. A brood of small chickens approached the entrance. “Poo’, ittey sings,” lisped the child, “oo mus’ yun away; here’s ’e yasty man ’at eated up oos mammy.” The good woman of the shanty had stewed the clucking-hen to feed the unexpected guest.

A maiden of uncertain age owned a farm which various operators vainly tried to lease. Hoping to steal a march on the others, one smooth talker called the second time. “I have come, Miss Blank,” he began, “to make you an offer.” He didn’t get a chance to add “for your land.” The old girl, not a gosling who would let a prize slip, jumped from her chair, clasped him about the neck and exclaimed: “Oh! Mr. Blank, this is so sudden, but I’m yours!” The astounded oilman shook her off at last and explained that he already had a wife and five children and wanted the Farm only. The clinging vine wept and stormed, threatened a breach-of-promise suit and loaded her dead father’s blunderbuss to be prepared for the next intruder.

W. J. Bostford, who died at Jamestown in November of 1895, operated at Pithole in its palmy days. Business was done on a cash basis and oil-property was paid for in money up to hundreds-of-thousands of dollars. Bostford made a big sale and started from Pithole to deposit his money. A cross-country trip was necessary to reach Titusville. Shortly after leaving Pithole he was attacked by robbers, who took all the money and left him for dead upon the highway. He was picked up alive, with a broken head and many other injuries, which he survived thirty years.