THEY NOTICED IT.
Writing of several Jesuits who, about 1642, penetrated the territory of the Eries, probably[probably] 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.”
NOTABLE WELLS ON OIL CREEK IN 1861-2-3.
IV.
WHERE THE BLUE-GRASS GROWS.
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, good 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.
FAMOUS “AMERICAN WELL.”
“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 and 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 fail 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.
GOVERNOR AMES.
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 time 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.”
“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends.”
GIRL CLIMBING A DERRICK.
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 discover 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. “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 until 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!
NORTH-EASTERN KENTUCKY.
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 development 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!”
“Jes’ nail dat mink to de stable do’—
De niggahs’ll dance when de oil-wells flo!”
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.
THREE DANGLING FROM A TREE.
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 took 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!”
A MOUNTAIN VENDETTA.
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.”
“A BIGGER MAN ’N GEN’RAL GRANT.”
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 us the clerk, in answer to my desire to learn the basis of Kennedy’s greatness, naively said: “Why, he’s killed eight men!”
“Some have greatness thrust upon them.”
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 village[village] 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 left to work upon, even the village-editor and the disciples of Blackstone joining the hallelujah band! No wonder Satan’s imps wailed sadly:[sadly:]
“And the blow almost killed father!”
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.”
AN AFRICAN TALE OF WOE.
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 were 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.
A WELCOME IN JUGS.
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 daughter 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 was 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 BE ORFUL GLAD TER SEE YO!”
“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” and “Sally an’ the babies” when she returned to her quiet home after such a trip! Bless her old heart!
“EF YO KNOW’D COUSIN JIM.”
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.
Fair women, pure Bourbon and men extra plucky,
No wonder blue-grass folks esteem themselves lucky—
But wait till the oil-boom gets down to Kentucky!
Let Fortune assume forms and fancies Protean,
No matter for that, there will rise a loud pæan
So long as oil gladdens the proud Tennesseean!
Map
of
VENANGO COUNTY
Pennsylvania
EARLY OPERATORS ON OIL CREEK.
WM. BARNSDALL.
GEO. H. BISSELL. DR. F. B. BREWER.
DR. A. G. EGBERT. JONATHAN WATSON. COL. E. L. DRAKE.
DAVID EMERY. CHARLES HYDE.
DAVID CROSSLEY.
V.
A HOLE IN THE GROUND.
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 of 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 to 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.
“Great minds never limit their designs in their plans.”
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 each 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.”
FAC-SIMILE OF LABEL ON KIER’S PETROLEUM.
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 in 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.
JONATHAN TITUS.
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 lease 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.
THE FIRST DRAKE WELL, ITS DRILLERS AND ITS COMPLETE RIG.
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, troughs 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 dollars 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. “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.
“Auld Ayr, wham ne’er a town surpasses.”
MAIN STREET, TITUSVILLE, IN 1861.
DANIEL CADY.
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, J. 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 any 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 land 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.
“Since every man who lives is born to die * * *
Like pilgrims to the appointed place we tend;
The world’s an inn, and death the journey’s end.”
George H. Bissell, honorably identified with the petroleum-development from its inception, was a New-Hampshire boy. Thrown upon his own resources at 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.
“Pass some few years,
Thy flowering Spring, thy Summer’s ardent strength,
Thy sober Autumn fading into age,
And pale concluding Winter comes at last
And shuts the scene.”
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 money 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.
“I am as a weed
Flung from the rock, on ocean’s foam to sail
Where’er the surge may sweep, the tempest’s breath prevail.”
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 neglected 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!
LOCATION AND SURROUNDINGS OF THE DRAKE WELL IN 1897.
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 dawned 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.
“KICKING DOWN” A WELL.
Drilling-tools, the chief novelty of which are the “jars”—a pair of sliding-bars moving 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.
JONATHAN LOCK.
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, which 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-Company[Oil-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. In 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
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 to 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!
A grape-seed is a small affair,
Yet, swallow’d when you sup,
In your appendix it may stick
Till doctors carve you up.
A coral-insect is not large,
Still it can build a reef
On which the biggest ship that floats
May quickly come to grief.
A hint, a word, a look, a breath
May bear envenom’d stings,
From all of which the moral learn:
Despise not little things!