ELLS ON THE NIAGARA TRACT, CHERRYTREE RUN.
Rev. William Elliott, who united in one package the fervor of Paul and the snap of Ebenezer Elliott, “the Corn-Law Rhymer,” lived and preached at Rynd. He organized a Sunday-school in Kenney’s parish, which a devout settler undertook to superintend. At the close of the regular service on the opening day, Mr. Elliott asked the pious ruralist to “say a few words.” The good man, wishing to clinch the lesson—about Mary Magdalene—in the minds of the youngsters, implored them to follow the example of “Miss Magdolin.” The older brood tittered at this Hibernianism, the laugh swelled into a cloudburst. Mr. Elliott nearly swallowed his pocket-handkerchief trying to shut in his smiles and a new query was born, which had a long run. It was fired at every visitor to the settlement. Small boys hurled it at the defenceless superintendent, who resigned his job and broke up the school the next Sunday. Possibly[Possibly] Br’er Elliott, when ushered into Heaven, would not be one whit surprised to hear some white-winged cherub from Alemagooselum sing out: “Say, do you know Miss Mag Dolin?”
FISHING OUT THE PREACHER’S HORSE.
The scanty herbage on the tail of the parson’s horse gave rise to endless surmises. The animal stranded in a mud-hole and keeled over on his side. Four sturdy fellows tried to fish him out. In his misguided zeal one of the rescuers, tugging at the caudal appendage, pulled so hard that half the hair peeled off, leaving the denuded nag a fitting mate for Tam O’Shanter’s tailless Meg.
A Kane-City youngster prayed every morning and night that a well her father was drilling would be a good one. It was a hopeless failure, finished the day before Christmas. The result disturbed the child exceedingly. That night, as the loving mother was preparing her for bed, the little girl observed: “I dess it’s no use prayin’ till after Kismas, ’cos God’s so busy helpin’ Santa Claus He hasn’t time for nobody else!”
VAMPIRE AND WADE WELLS-CHERRY RUN
OLD REED WELL
W. REED
ROUSEVILLE 1868
MT. PISCAH, NEAR ROUSEVILLE
Cherry Run, once the ripest cherry in the orchard, had a satisfactory run. A spice of romance flavored its actual realities. Not two miles up the stream William Reed, in 1863, drilled a dry-hole six-hundred feet deep. Two miles farther, in the vicinity of Plumer, a test well was sunk seven-hundred feet, with no better result. Wells near the mouth of the ravine produced very lightly. Fifty-thousand dollars would have been an extreme price for all the land from Rouseville to Plumer, the tasteful village Henry McCalmont named in honor of Arnold Plumer. In May of 1864 Taylor & Rockwell opened a fresh vein on the run. At two-hundred feet their well threw oil above the derrick and flowed sixty barrels a day regularly. Operators reversed their opinion of the territory. To the surprise of his acquaintances, who deemed him demented, Reed started another well four rods below his failure of the previous year. It was on the right bank of the run, on a five-acre patch bought from John Rynd in 1861 by Thomas Duff, who sold two acres to Robert Criswell. Reed was not over-stocked with cash and Criswell joined forces with him to sink the second well. I. N. Frazer took one-third interest. At the proper depth the outlook was gloomy. The sand appeared good, but days of pumping failed to bring oil. On July eighteenth, 1864, the well commenced flowing three-hundred barrels a day, holding out at this rate for months. Criswell realized thirty-thousand dollars from his share of the oil and then sold his one-fourth interest in the land and well for two-hundred-and-eighty-thousand to the Mingo Oil-Company. He operated in the Butler field, lived at Monterey, removed to Ohio and died near Cincinnati. One son, David S., a well-known producer, resides at Oil City; another, Robert W., is on the editorial staff of a New-York daily. Frazer sold for one-hundred-thousand dollars and next loomed up as “the discoverer of Pithole.” Reed sold to Bishop & Bissell for two-hundred-thousand dollars, after pocketing seventy-five-thousand from oil. Coming to Venango county with Frederic Prentice in 1859, he drilled wells by contract, sometimes “a solid Muldoon” and sometimes “a broken Reed.” He returned east—his birthplace—with the proceeds of the world-famed well bearing his name. An idea haunted him that Captain Kidd’s treasure was buried at a certain part of the Atlantic coast. He boarded at a house on the shore and hunted land and sea for the hidden deposit. He would dig in the sand, sail out some distance and peer into the water. One day he went off in his skiff, a storm arose, the boat drifted away and that was the last ever seen of William Reed. He was a liberal supporter of the United-Presbyterian church and his nearest relatives live in the vicinity of Pittsburg.
The Reed well put Cherry Run at the head of the procession. Within sixty days it enriched Reed, Criswell and Frazer nearly seven-hundred-thousand dollars. The new owners drilled three more on the same acre, getting back every cent of their purchase-money and fifty per cent. extra for good measure. In other words, the five-acre collection of rocks and stumps, with eleven producing wells and one duster, harvested two-million dollars! The Mountain well mounted high, the Phillips & Egbert was a fillip and the Wadsworth & Wynkoop rolled out oil in wads worth a wine-coop of gold-eagles. The fever to lease or buy a spot to plant a derrick burned fiercely. The race to gorge the ravine with rigs and drilling appliances would shut out Edgar Saltus in his “Pace that Kills.” Soon three-hundred wells lined the flats and lofty banks guarding the purling streamlet. Clanking tools, wheezy engines and creaking pumps assailed the ears. Smoke from a myriad soft-coal fires attacked the eyes. An endless cavalcade of wagons churned the soil into vicious batter. The activities of the Foster, McElhenny, Farrell, Davison and Tarr farms were condensed into one surging, foaming caldron, quickening the pulse-beats and sending the brain see-sawing.