THE DINNER HOUR AT WIGGINS’S HOTEL.
The first “hotel” at Pithole—a balloon-frame rushed up in a day—bore the pretentious title of Astor House. Before its erection pilgrims to the coming city took their chance of meals at the Holmden farm-house. As a guest wittily remarked: “It was table d’hote for men and also table d’oat for horses.” The viands were all heaped upon large dishes and everybody helped himself. The Morey-Farm Hotel, just above Pithole, charged twenty-one dollars a week for board, had gas-light, steam-heat, telegraph-office, barber-shop, colored waiters and “spring-mattresses.” Its cooking rivalled the best in the large cities. At Wiggins’s Hotel, a three-story boarding-house in the Tidioute field, two-hundred men would often wait their turn to get dinner. This was a common experience in the frontier towns, to which big throngs hurried before houses could be erected for their accommodation. E. H. Crittenden’s hotel at Titusville was the finest Oildom boasted in the sixties. Book & Frisbee’s was notable at the height of the Parker development. A dollar for a meal or a bed, four dollars a day or twenty-eight dollars a week, be the stay long or short, was the invariable rate. Peter Christie’s Central Hotel, at Petrolia, was immensely popular and a regular gold-mine for the owner. Oil City’s Petroleum House was a model hostelry, under “Charley” Staats and “Jim” White. The Jones House cleared Jones forty-thousand dollars in nine months. Its first guest was a Mr. Seymour, who spent one year collecting data for a statistical work on petroleum. His manuscripts perished in the flood of 1865. The last glimpse my eyes beheld of Jones was at Tarport, where he was driving a dray. Bradford’s Riddell House and St. James Hotel both sized up to the most exacting requirements. Good hotels and good restaurants were seldom far behind the triumphant march of the pioneers whose successes established oil-towns.
Col. Gardner, “a big man any way you take him,” was Chief-of-Police at Pithole. He has operated at Bradford and Warren, toyed with politics and military affairs and won the regard of troops of friends. Charles H. Duncan, of Oil City—his youthful appearance suggests Ponce de Leon’s spring—served in the borough-council, of which James M. Guffey, the astute Democratic leader and successful producer, was clerk. Col. Morton arrived in August of 1865 with a carpet-bag of job-type. His first work—tickets for passage over Little Pithole Creek—the first printing ever done at Pithole, was never paid for. The town had shoals of trusty, generous fellows—“God’s own white boys,“ Fred Wheeler dubbed them—whose manliness and enterprise and liberality were always above par.
When men went crazy at Pithole and outsiders thought the oil-country was “flowing with milk and honey” and greenbacks, a party of wags thought to put up a little joke at the expense of a new-comer from Boston. They arranged with the landlord for some coupon-bonds to use in the dining-room of the hotel and to seat the youth at their table. The New-Englander was seated in due course. The guests talked of oil-lands, fabulous strikes and big fortunes as ordinary affairs. Each chucked under his chin a five-twenty government-bond as a napkin. One lay in front of the Bostonian’s plate, folded and creased like a genuine linen-wiper. Calmly taking the “paper” from its receptacle, the chap from The Hub wiped his brow and adjusted the valuable napkin over his shirt-bosom. A moment later he beckoned to a servant and said: “See here, waiter, this napkin is too small; bring me a dish of soup and a ‘ten-forty.’” The jokers could not stand this. A laugh went around the festive board that could have been heard at the Twin Wells and the matter was explained to the bean-eater. He was put on the trail of “a soft snap” and went home in a month with ten-thousand dollars. “Bring me a ten-forty” circulated for a twelve-month in cigar-shops and bar-rooms.
Ben Hogan was one of the motley crew that swarmed to Pithole “broke.” He taught sparring and gave exhibitions of strength at Diefenbach’s variety-hall. He fought Jack Holliday for a purse of six-hundred dollars and defeated him in seven rounds. Four-hundred tough men and tougher women were present, many of them armed. Hogan was assured before the fight he would be killed if he whipped his opponent. He was shot at by Marsh Elliott during the mill, but escaped unhurt. Ben met Elliott soon thereafter and knocked him out in four brief rounds, breaking his nose and using him up generally. Next he opened a palatial sporting-house, the receipts of which often reached a thousand dollars a day. An adventure of importance was with “Stonehouse Jack.” This desperado and his gang had a grudge against Hogan and concocted a scheme to kill him. Jack was to arrange a fight with Ben, during which Hogan was to be killed by the crowd. Ben saw his enemy coming out of a dance-house and blazed away at him, but without effect. The fusillade scared “Stonehouse” away from Pithole and on January twenty-second, 1866, a vigilance committee at Titusville drove the villain out of the oil-region, threatening to hang him or any of his gang who dared return. This committee was organized to clear out a nest of incendiaries and thugs. The vigilants erected a gallows near the smoking embers of E. B. Chase & Co.’s general store, fired the preceding night, and decreed the banishment of hordes of toughs. “Stonehouse Jack” and one-hundred other men, with a number of vile women came under this sentence. The whole party was formed in line in front of the gallows, the “Rogue’s March” was played and the procession, followed by a great crowd of people, proceeded to the Oil-Creek Railroad station. The prisoners were ordered on board a special train, with a warning that if they ever again set foot upon the soil of Titusville they would be summarily executed. This salutary action ended organized crime in the oil-region.
North of Pithole the tide crossed into Allegheny township. Balltown, a meadow on C. M. Ball’s farm in July, 1865, at the end of the year paraded stores, hotels, a hundred dwellings and a thousand people. Fires in 1866 scorched it and waning production did the rest. Dawson Centre, on the Sawyer tract, budded, frosted and perished. The Morey House, on the Copeland farm, was the oasis in the desert, serving meals that tickled the midriff and might cope with Delmonico’s. Farms on Little Pithole Creek were riddled without swelling the yield of crude immoderately. Where are those oil-wells now? Echo murmurs “where?” In all that section of Cornplanter and Allegheny townships a derrick, an engine-house or a tank would be a novelty of the rarest breed.
Eight miles north-east of Titusville, where Godfrey Hill drilled a dry-hole in 1860 and two companies drilled six later, the Colorado district finally rewarded gritty operators. Enterprise was benefited by small wells in the vicinity. Down Pithole Creek to its junction with the Allegheny the country was punctured. Oleopolis straggled over the slope on the river’s bank, a pipe-line, a railroad to Pithole and minor wells contributing to its support. The first well tackled a vein of natural gas, which caught fire and consumed the rig. The driller was alone, the owner of the well having gone into the shanty. In a twinkling flames enveloped the astonished knight of the temper-screw, who leaped from the derrick, clothes blazing and hair singed off, and headed for the water. “Boss,” he roared in his flight, “jump into the river and say your prayers quick! I’ve bu’sted the bung and hell’s running out.”
“Breathe through the nostrils” is good advice. People should breathe through the nose and not use it so much for talking and singing through. Yet every rule has exceptions. A pair of mules hauled oil from Dawson Centre in the flush times of the excitement. The mud was practically bottomless. A visitor was overheard telling a friend that the bodies of the mules sank out of sight and that they were breathing through their ears, which alone projected above the ooze. Dawson and many more departed oil-towns suggest the jingle:
“There was an old woman lived under a hill;