IN THE MIDDLE FIELD.
Closely allied to Balltown and Cooper in its principal features, its injurious effects and sudden depreciation, was the field that taught the Forest lesson. On May nineteenth, 1882, the oil-trade was paralyzed by the report of a big well in Cherry-Grove township, Warren county, miles from previous developments. The general condition of the region was prosperous, with an advancing market and a favorable outlook. The new well—the famous “646”—struck the country like a cyclone. Nobody had heard a whisper of the finding of oil in the hole George Dimick was drilling near the border of Warren and Forest. The news that it was flowing twenty-five-hundred barrels flashed over the wires with disastrous consequences. The excitement in the oil-exchanges, as the price of certificates dropped thirty to fifty per cent. in a few moments, was indescribable. Margins and small-fry holders were wiped out in a twinkling and the losses aggregated millions. It was a panic of the first water, far-reaching and ruinous. A plunge from one-thirty to fifty-five cents for crude meant distress and bankruptcy to thousands of producers and persons carrying oil. Men comfortably off in the morning were beggared by noon. Other wells speedily followed “646.” The Murphy, the Mahoopany and scores more swelled the daily yield to thirty-thousand barrels. Five-hundred wells were rushed down with the utmost celerity. Big companies bought lands at big prices and operated on a big scale. Pipe-lines were laid, iron-tanks erected and houses reared by the hundred. Cherry Grove dwarfed the richest portions of the region into insignificance. It bade fair to swamp the business, to flood the world with cheap oil, to compel the abandonment of entire districts and to crush the average operator. But if the rise of Cherry Grove was vividly picturesque, its fall was startlingly phenomenal. One dark December morning the workmen noticed that the Forest Oil-Company’s largest gusher had stopped flowing. Within a week the disease had spread like an epidemic. Spouters ceased to spout and obstinately declined to pump. The yield was counted by dozens of barrels instead of thousands. In January one-fourth the wells were deserted and the machinery removed. Three-hundred wells on April first yielded hardly two-thousand barrels, three-quarters what “646” or the Murphy had done alone! The suddenness of the topple cast Oil Creek into the shade and eclipsed Pithole itself. Piles of junk represented miles of pipe-lines and acres of tanks. The Cooper fever was breaking out and, with Henry’s Mills and Balltown, repeated in 1883 the hurrah of 1882. For eleven months the Forest-Warren pools fretted and fumed, producing five-million barrels of oil and having the trade by the throat. In that brief period Cherry Grove came and went, Cooper threatened and subsided, and Balltown was bowled out. Nine-tenths of the operators figured as heavy losers. Pennsylvania’s production shrank from ninety-thousand barrels to sixty-thousand and a healthy reaction set in. Petroleum-developments often presented remarkable peculiarities, but the strangest of all was the readiness with which speculators time and again fell a prey to the schemes of Forest-Warren jobbers, whose “picture is turned to the wall.”
S. B. HUGHES.
The professional “oil-scout” first became prominent at Cherry Grove. He was neither an Indian fighter nor a Pinkerton detective, although possessing the courage and sharpness of both. He combined a knowledge of woodcraft and human-nature with keen discernment, acute judgment and infinite patience. S. B. Hughes, J. C. Tennent, P. C. Boyle, J. C. McMullen, Frank H. Taylor, Joseph Cappeau, James Emery and J. H. Rathbun were captains in the good work of worrying and circumventing the “mystery” men. Hughes rendered service that won the confidence of his employers and brought him a competence. Never caught napping, for one special feat he was said to have received ten-thousand dollars. It was not uncommon for him and his comrades to keep their boots on a week at a stretch, to snatch a nap under a tree or on a pile of casing, to creep on all-fours inside the guard-lines and watch pale Luna wink merrily and the bright stars twinkle while reclining on the damp ground to catch the faintest sound from a mystified well. Boyle and Tennent made brilliant plays in the campaign of 1882-3. Captain J. T. Jones, failing to get correct information regarding “646,” lost heavily on long oil when the Cherry-Grove gusher hypnotized the market and sent Tennent from Bradford to size up the wells and the movements of those manipulating them. Michael Murphy, learning that Grace & Dimick were quietly drilling a wildcat-well on lot 646, smelled a large-sized rodent and concluded to share in the sport. For one-hundred dollars an acre and one-eighth the usufruct Horton, Crary & Co., the Sheffield tanners, sold him lot 619, north-east of 646. Murphy had cut his eye-teeth as an importer—John S. Davis was his partner—of oil-barrels, an exporter of crude and an operator at Bradford. He pushed a well on the south-west corner of his purchase and secured lands in the vicinity. Grace & Dimick held back their well a month to tie up lots and complete arrangements regarding the market. Everything was managed adroitly. The trade had not a glimmer of suspicion that a bombshell might be fired at any moment. Murphy’s rig burned down on May fifteenth, he was in Washington trying to close a deed for another tract and “646” was put through the sand. On June second Murphy’s No. 1, which he guarded strictly after rebuilding the rig, flowed sixteen-hundred barrels. His No. 2, finished on July third, flowed thirty-six-hundred barrels in twenty-four hours! The Mahoopany and a half-dozen others aided in the demoralization of prices. Murphy sold eighty acres of lot 619 for fifty-thousand dollars to the McCalmont Oil-Company. The Anchor Oil-Company’s gusher on lot 647 caught fire, without curtailing the flow, and was burning furiously as “Jim” Tennent arrived from Bradford. The scouts had their hands full, with the “white-sand pools” and the keenest masters of “mystery wells” to demand their best licks.
Watching Murphy’s dry-hole on lot 633 was Tennent’s initial job. The Whale Oil-Company’s duster on lot 648 next claimed the attention of the scouts. It had been drilled below the sand-level and the tools left at the bottom. On Sunday night, July ninth, 1882, Boyle, Tennent and two companions raised the tools by hand, measured the well with a steel-line and telegraphed their principals that it was dry. This report jumped the market on Monday morning from forty-nine cents to sixty. The Shannon well on the Cooper tract needed constant care and the scouts divided the labor. Tennent and Rathbun one night sought to crawl near the well. A twig snapped off and a guard fired, the ball grazing “Jim’s” ear. In December Boyle and W. C. Edwards drilled Grandin No. 4 below the sand before the owners knew the rock had been reached. Its failure surprised the trade as much as the success of “646.” Boyle actually posted the guards to keep intruders away and they refused to let W. W. Hague, an owner of the well, inside the line until the contractor appeared and permitted him to pass! Boyle and Tennent did fine work north of the Cooper field. At the Shultz well Tennent, in order to make a quick trip of a half-mile to the pipe-line telegraph, clung to the tail of Cappeau’s horse and kept up with the animal’s gallop. Mercury might not have endorsed that style of locomotion, but it served the purpose and got the news to Jones ahead of everybody else. Tennent played the market skillfully, cleared twenty-five-thousand dollars on Macksburg lands and operated with tolerable success in McKean county. Nine years ago he removed to his thousand-acre prairie-farm in Kansas, the land of sockless statesman and nimble grasshoppers.
Boyle, brimful of novel resources, puzzled the “mystery” chaps by his bold ingenuity and usually beat them at their own game. He squarely overmatched the field-marshals of manipulation. His fertile brain originated the plan of drilling Grandin No. 4 and other test wells. The night he went to drill the Grace well through the sand he paid the ferryman at Dunham’s Mills not to answer any calls until morning, thus cutting off all chance of pursuit and surprise. At the well Boyle wrote an order to deliver the well to Tennent, signing it Pickwick, and the drillers retired to bed! Somebody had been there before them and poured back the sand-pumpings. At the Patterson well Boyle devised a code of tin-horn signals that outwitted the men inside the derrick and flashed the result to Gusher City. The number of expedients continually devised was a marvel. Thanks to the energy and ability of these tireless scouts, of whose midnight exploits, wild rides, hairbreadth escapes and queer adventures many pages could be written, the effect of “mysteries” was frequently neutralized and at length the whole system of guarded wells, bull-dogs and shot-guns was eliminated.
P. M. SHANNON.