The largest of twenty-five or thirty wells drilled around Walnut Bend, six miles up the river, in 1860-65, was rated at two-hundred barrels. Four miles farther, two miles north-east of the mouth of Pithole Creek, John Henry settled on the north bank of the river in 1802. Henry’s Bend perpetuates the name of this brave pioneer, who reared a large family and died in 1858. The farm opposite Henry’s, at the crown of the bend, Heydrick Brothers, of French Creek township, leased in the fall of 1859. Jesse Heydrick organized the Wolverine Oil-Company, the second ever formed to drill for petroleum. Thirty shares of stock constituted its capital of ten-thousand-five-hundred dollars. The first well, one-hundred-and-sixty feet deep, pumped only ten barrels a day, giving Wolverine shares a violent chill. The second, also sunk in 1860, at three-hundred feet flowed fifteen-hundred barrels! Beside this giant the Drake well was a midget. The Allegheny had knocked out Oil Creek at a stroke, the production of the Heydrick spouter doubling that of all the others in the region put together. It was impossible to tank the oil, which was run into a piece of low ground and formed a pond through which yawl-boats were rowed fifty rods! By this means seven-hundred barrels a day could be saved. At last the tubing was drawn, which decreased the yield and rendered pumping necessary. The well flowed and pumped about one-hundred-thousand barrels, doing eighty a day in 1864-5, when the oldest producer in Venango county. It was a celebrity in its time and proved immensely profitable. In December of 1862 Jesse Heydrick went to Irvine, forty miles up the river, to float down a cargo of empty barrels. Twenty-five miles from Irvine, on the way back, the river was frozen from bank to bank. He sawed a channel a mile, ran the barrels to the well, filled them, loaded them in a flat-boat and arrived at Pittsburg on a cold Saturday before Christmas. Oil was scarce, the zero-weather having prevented shipments, and he sold at thirteen dollars a barrel. A thaw set in, the market was deluged with crude and in four days the price dropped to two dollars! Stock-fluctuations had no business in the game with petroleum.
Wolverine shares climbed out of sight. Mr. Heydrick bought the whole batch, the lowest costing him four-thousand dollars and the highest fifteen-thousand. He sold part of his holdings on the basis of fifteen-hundred-thousand dollars for the well and farm of two-hundred acres, forty-three-thousand times the original value of the land! Heydrick Brothers bored seventy wells on three farms in President township, one of which cost eighteen months’ labor and ten-thousand dollars in money and produced nine barrels of oil. They disposed of it, the new owner fussed with it and for five years received fifteen barrels of oil a day.
Accidents and incidents resulting from the Wolverine operations would fill a dime-novel. Jesse Heydrick, organizer of the company, went east with two or three-hundred-thousand dollars, presumably to “play Jesse” with the bulls and bears of Wall Street. He returned in a year or more destitute of cash, but loaded with entertaining tales of adventure. He told a thrilling story of his abduction from a New-York wharf and shipment to Cuba by a band of kidnappers, who stole his money and treated him harshly. He endured severe hardships and barely escaped with his life and a mine of experience. Working his way north, he resumed surveying, prepared valuable maps of the Butler field and was a standard authority on oil-matters in the district. For years he was connected with a pipe-line in Ohio, returning thence to Butler, his present residence, to engage in oil-operations. Mr. Heydrick is cultured and social, brimful of information and interesting recitals, and not a bilious crank who thinks the world is growing worse because he lost a fortune. A brother at Franklin was president of the Oil-City Bank, incorporated in 1864 as a bank of issue and forced to the wall in 1866, and served a year on the Supreme Bench. James Heydrick was a skilled surveyor and Charles W. resided at the old homestead on French Creek. Heydrick Brothers were “the Big Four” in developments that brought the Allegheny-River region into the petroleum-column. It is singular that the Heydrick well, located at random thirty-seven years ago, was the largest ever struck on the banks of the zig-zagged, ox-bowed stream.
It set the pace to serve as an example,
But not another could come up to sample.
Eight rods square on the Heydrick tract leased for five-thousand dollars and fifty per cent. of the oil, while the Wolverine shares attested the increasing wealth of the oil-interest and the pitch to which oil-stocks might rise. Hussey & McBride secured the Henry farm and obtained a large production in 1860-1. The Walnut Tree and Orchard wells headed the list. Warren & Brother pumped oil from Pithole to Henryville, a small town on the flats, of whose houses, hotels, stores and shipping-platforms no scrap survives. The Commercial Oil-Company bought the Culbertson farm, above Henry, and drilled extensively on Muskrat and Culbertson Runs. Patrick McCrea, the first settler on the river between Franklin and Warren, the first Allegheny ferryman north of Franklin and the first Catholic in Venango county, migrated from Virginia in 1797 to the wilds of North-western Pennsylvania. C. Curtiss purchased the McCrea tract of four-hundred acres in 1861 and stocked it in the Eagle Oil-Company of Philadelphia. Fair wells were found on the property and the town of Eagle Rock attained the dignity of three-hundred buildings. An eagle could fly away with all that is left of the town and the wells.
EDWIN E. CLAPP.
Farther along Robert Elliott, who removed from Franklin, owned one-thousand acres on the south side of the river and built the first mill in President township. Rev. Ralph Clapp built a blast-furnace in 1854-5, a mile from the mouth of Hemlock Creek, at the junction of which with the Allegheny a big hotel, a store and a shop are situated. Mr. Clapp gained distinction in the pulpit and in business, served in the Legislature and died in 1865. His son, Edwin E. Clapp, had a block of six-thousand acres, the biggest slice of undeveloped territory in Oildom. Productive wells have been sunk on the river-front, but Clapp invariably refused to sell or lease except once. To Kahle Brothers, for the sake of his father’s friendship for their father, he leased two-hundred acres, on which many good wells are yielding nicely. Preferring to keep his own lands untouched until he “got good and ready,” he operated largely at Tidioute, he and his brother, John M. Clapp, acquiring great wealth. He was chairman of the Producers’ Council and active in the memorable movements of 1871-3. He built for his home the President Hotel, furnishing it with every comfort and luxury except the one no bachelor can possess. From him Macadam, Talbot and Nicholson could have learned much about road-making. At his own expense he constructed many a mile of first-class roads in President, grading, ditching and leveling in a fashion to make a bicycler’s mouth water. There was not a scintilla of pride or affectation in his composition. It is told that an agent of the Standard Oil-Company appointed a time to meet him “on important business.” The interview lasted two minutes. “What is the business?” interrogated Clapp. “Our company authorizes me to offer you one-million dollars for your lands in President and I am prepared to pay you the money.” “Anything else?” “No.” “Well, the land isn’t for sale; good-morning!” Off went Clapp as coolly as though he had merely received a bid for a bushel of potatoes. Whether true or not, the story is characteristic. As a friend to swear by, a helper of the poor, a believer in fair-play, a prime joker and an inimitable weaver of comic yarns few could equal, none excel, the “President of President.” He died in July, 1897.
Around Tionesta, the county-seat of Forest, numerous holes were punched. Thomas Mills, who operated in Ohio and missed opening the Sistersville[Sistersville] field by a scratch, drilled in 1861-2. The late George S. Hunter—he built Tionesta’s first bridge and ought to have a monument for enterprise—hunted earnestly for paying territory. Up Tionesta Creek operations extended slowly, but developments in 1882-3 atoned for the delay. Then Forest county was “the cynosure of all eyes,” each week springing fresh surprises. Balltown had a crop of dry-holes, followed by wells of all grades from twenty barrels to fifteen-hundred. At Henry’s Mills and on the Cooper lands, north-east of Balltown and running into Warren county, spouters were decidedly in vogue. Reno No. 1 well, finished in December of 1882, flowed twenty-eight-hundred barrels! Reno No. 2, McCalmont Oil-Company’s No. 1, Patterson’s and the Anchor Oil-Company’s No. 14 went over the fifteen-hundred mark. In the midst of these gushers Melvin, Walker & Shannon’s duster indicated spotted territory, uncertain as the verdict of a petit jury. The Forest splurge held the entire oil-trade on the ragged edge for months. Every time one or more fellows took to the woods to manipulate a wildcat-well oil took a tumble. Notwithstanding the magnitude of the business, with thirty-six-million barrels of oil in stock and untold millions of dollars invested, the report from Balltown or Cooper of a new strike caused a bad break. Some owners of important wells worked them as “mysteries” to “milk the trade.” Derricks were boarded tightly, armed men kept intruders from approaching too near and information was withheld or falsified until the gang of manipulators “worked the market.” To offset this leading dealers employed “scouts,” whose mission was to get correct news at all hazards. The duties of these trusty fellows involved great labor, night watches, incessant vigilance and sometimes personal danger. The “mystery” racket and the introduction of “scouts” were new elements in the business, necessitated by the peculiar tactics of a small clique whose methods were not always creditable. The passing of the Forest field, which declined with unprecedented rapidity, practically ended the system that had terrorized the oil-exchanges in New York, Oil City, Bradford and Pittsburg. The collapse of the Cooper pool was more unexpected than the striking of a gusher would be under any circumstances. Its influence upon oil-values was ridiculously disproportionate to its merits, just as the tail sometimes wags the dog.