The Forest-Warren white-sand pools marked a new era in developments, with new ideas and new methods to hoodoo speculation. Cherry Grove had wilted from twenty-five-thousand barrels in September to three-thousand in December, when Cooper Hill loomed above the horizon and Balltown appeared on deck. Shallow wells had been sunk far up Tionesta Creek in 1862-3. Near the two dwellings, saw-mill, school-house and barn dubbed Foxburg, the stamping-ground of deer-hunters and bark-peelers, Marcus Hulings—his name is a synonym for successful wildcatting—in 1876 drilled a well that smacked of oil. The derrick stood ten years and globules of grease bubbled up from the depths, a thousand feet beneath. C. A. Shultz, a piano-tuner, taking his cue from the Hulings well, interested Frederick Morck, a Warren jeweler, and leased the Fox estate and contiguous lands in 1881. The Blue-Jay and two Darling wells, small producers, created a ripple which dry-holes evaporated. They were on Warrant 2991, Howe township, known to fame as the Cooper tract, north-west of Foxburg. The conditions of the lease required a well at the western end of the warrant. Cherry Grove was at its zenith, crude was flirting with the fifties and operators considered the Blue-Jay chick a lean bird. J. Mainwaring leased one-hundred acres from Morck & Shultz and built a rig at the head of a wild ravine, in the sunless woodland, a half-mile from Tionesta Creek. He lost faith and the Mainwaring lease and rig passed to P. M. Shannon, of Bradford. Born in Clarion county, Philip Martin Shannon enlisted at fourteen, served gallantly through the war, traveled as salesman for a Pittsburg house and in 1870 cast his lot with the oilmen at Parker. A pioneer at Millerstown and its burgess in 1874, he filled the office capably and in 1876 received a big majority at the Republican primary for the legislative nomination. The county-ring counted him out. He drifted with the tide to Bullion, removed to Bradford in 1879, was elected mayor in 1885 and discharged his official duties with excellent discretion. Temperate in habits and upright in conduct, Mayor Shannon had been an observer and not a participant in the nether side of oil-region life and knew where to draw the line. He was a favorite in society, high in Masonic circles and efficient in securing lands for firms with which he had become connected. Pittsburg is now his home and he manages the company that is developing the Wyoming field. Mr. Shannon is always generous and courteous. He could give a scout “the marble heart,” lecture an offender, denounce a wrong or decline to furnish points regarding his mystery-well in a good-natured way that disarmed criticism. He retains his old-time geniality and prosperity has not compelled him to buy hats three sizes larger than he wore at Parker and Millerstown “in the days of auld lang-syne.”
A. B. Walker and T. J. Melvin joined Shannon in his Cooper venture. A road was cut through the dense forest from the Fox farm-house up the steep hill to the Mainwaring derrick. An engine and boiler were dragged to the spot and Captain Haight contracted to drill the hole. Melvin and Walker, believing the well a failure at eighteen-hundred feet, went to Cherry Grove on July twenty fifth, 1882. Shannon stayed to urge the drill a trifle farther and it struck the sand at one o’clock next day. He drove in two pine-plugs, sent a messenger for his partners and filled the well with water to shut in the oil. The well wouldn’t consent to be plugged and drowned. The stream broke loose at three o’clock, hurling the tools and plugs into the Forest ozone. Shannon and Haight, standing in the derrick, narrowly escaped death as the tools crashed through the roof and fell to the floor. More plugs, sediment and old clothes were jammed down to conceal the true inwardness of the well, news of which was expected to pulverize the market. Heavy flows following the expulsion of the tools led the owners to anticipate a big strike. Outposts were established and guards, each armed with a Winchester rifle, were changed every six hours. The wildcat-well, eight miles from a telegraph-wire, became an entrenched camp with a half-dozen wakeful scouts besieging the citadel. Vicksburg was not guarded more vigilantly. If a twig cracked or an owl hooted a shower of bullets whizzed in the direction of the noise. Through August the well was permitted to slumber, oil that forced a passage in spite of the obstructions running into pits inside “the dead-line.” The trade staggered under the adverse fear of the mystery. Bradford operators formed a syndicate with the owners in lands and speculation and sold a million barrels of crude short. When everything was ready to spring the trap some of the parties went to drill out the plugs and usher in the market-crusher. “We have a jack-pot to open at our pleasure” remarked one of them, voicing the sentiment of all. None looked for anything smaller than fifteen-hundred barrels. The four drillers were discharged and two trusted lieutenants turned the temper-screw and dressed the bits. Ten plugs and a mass of dirt must be cleaned out. From a distance the scouts timed every motion of the walking-beam, gluing their eyes to field-glasses that not a symptom of a flow might slip their eager gaze, “like stout Cortez when he stared at the Pacific upon a peak in Darien.” Swift horses were fastened to convenient trees, saddled and bridled for a race to the telegraph-office. A slice of bread and a can of beans served for food. For days the drilling continued. On September fourteenth the last splinter of the plugs was extracted, the sand was cut deeper and—the well didn’t respond worth a cent! The faithful scouts, who had stood manfully between the trade and the manipulators, rushed the report. It was a bracer to the market. Bears who pinned their hopes to the Shannon well, the pivot upon which petroleum hinged, scrambled to cover their shorts at heavy loss. Balltown duplicated some of the Cooper experiences, mystery-wells on Porcupine Run agitating the trade in the spring of 1883. The Cherry-Grove, Cooper-Hill and Balltown pools yielded eight or nine-million barrels. Operations extended to Sheffield and the cream was soon skimmed off. The middle field had enjoyed a very lively inning.
Two miles back of Trunkeyville, on the west side of the Allegheny, Calvert, Gilchrist & Risley drilled the Venture well in April, 1870, on the Tuttle farm. Fisher Brothers, of Oil City, and O. D. Harrington, of Titusville, bought the well for fifteen-thousand dollars when it touched the third sand. It was eight-hundred feet deep, flowed three-hundred barrels and started the Fagundas field. The day after it began flowing the Fishers, Adnah Neyhart, Grandin Brothers and David Bently paid one-hundred-and-twenty-thousand dollars for the Fagundas farm of one-hundred-and-sixty acres. Mrs. Fagundas, one son and one daughter died within three months of the sale. Neyhart & Grandin bought a half-interest in David Beatty’s farm for ninety-thousand dollars. The Lady Burns well, on the Wilkins farm, finished in June, seconded the Venture. A daily production of three-thousand barrels and a town of twenty-five-hundred population followed quickly. A mile from Fagundas operations on the Hunter, Pearson, Guild and Berry farms brought the suburb of Gillespie into being. The territory lasted and a small yield is obtained to-day. A half-dozen houses, the Venture derrick, Andrews & Co.’s big store and the office in which whole-souled M. Compton—he’s in Pittsburg with the Forest Oil-Company now—labored as secretary of the Producers’ Council, hold the fort on the site of well-nigh-forgotten Fagundas. William H. Calvert, who projected the Venture well, died at Sistersville, West Virginia, on February seventeenth, 1896. He had drilled on Oil Creek and at Pithole, operated in the southern field and was negotiating for a block of lands near Sistersville when a clot of blood on the brain cut short his active life.
David Beatty had drilled on Oil Creek in 1859-60 with John Fertig. He settled on a farm in Warren county “to get away from the oil.” His farm was smothered in oil by the Fagundas development. He removed to the pretty town of Warren, building an elegant home on the bank of Conewango Creek. Fortune hounded him and insisted upon heaping up his riches. John Bell drilled a fifty-barrel well eighty rods above the mansion. Wells surrounding his lot and in his yard emitted oil. Mr. Beatty resigned himself to the inevitable and lived at Warren until called to his final rest some years ago. His case resembled the heroine in Milton Nobles’s Phenix, where “the villain still pursued her.” The boys used to relate how a negro, the first man to die at Oil City after the advent of petroleum, was buried in a lot on the flats. Somebody wanted that precise spot next day to drill a well and the corpse was planted on the hill-side. The next week that particular location was selected for a well and the body was again exhumed. To be sure of getting out of reach of the drill the friends of the deceased boated his remains down the river to Butler county. Twelve years later the bones were disinterred—an oil-company having leased the old graveyard—and put in the garden of the dead man’s son, to be handy for any further change of base that may be required.
At East Hickory the Foster well, drilled in 1863, flowed three-hundred barrels of amber oil. Two-hundred wells were sunk in the Hickory district, which proved as tough as Old Hickory to nineteen-twentieths of the operators. Three Hickory Creeks—East Hickory and Little Hickory on the east and West Hickory—enter the river within two miles. Near the mouth of West Hickory three Scotchmen named McKinley bored a well two-hundred-and-thirty feet in 1861. They found oil and were preparing to tube the well when the war broke out and they abandoned the field. A well on the flats, drilled in 1865, flowed two-hundred barrels of lubricating oil, occasioning a furore. One farm sold for a hundred-thousand dollars and adjacent lands were snapped up eagerly.
Ninety-five years ago hardy lumbermen settled permanently in Deerfield township, Warren county, thirty miles above the mouth of Oil Creek. Twenty years later a few inhabitants, supported by the lumber trade, had collected near the junction of a small stream with the Allegheny. Bold hills, grand forests, mountain rills and the winding river, sprinkled with green islets, invested the spot with peculiar charms. Upon the creek and hamlet the poetic Indian name of Tidioute, signifying a cluster of islands, was fittingly bestowed. Samuel Grandin, who located near Pleasantville, Venango county, in 1822, removed to Tidioute in 1839. He owned large tracts of timber-lands and increased the mercantile and lumbering operations that gave him prominence and wealth. Mr. Grandin maintained a high character and died at a ripe age. His oldest son, John Livingston Grandin, returned from college in 1857 and engaged in business with his father, assuming almost entire control when the latter retired from active pursuits. News of Col. Drake’s well reached the four-hundred busy residents of the lumber-center in two days. Col. Robinson, of Titusville, rehearsed the story of the wondrous event to an admiring group in Samuel Grandin’s store. Young J. L. listened intently, saddled his horse and in an hour purchased thirty acres of the Campbell farm, on Gordon Run, below the village, for three-hundred dollars. An “oil-spring” on the property was the attraction. Next morning he contracted with H. H. Dennis, a man of mechanical skill, to drill a well “right in the middle of the spring.” The following day a derrick—four pieces of scantling—towered twenty feet, a spring-pole was procured, the “spring” was dug to the rock, and the “tool” swung at the first oil-well in Warren county and among the first in Pennsylvania. Dennis hammered a drilling-tool from a bar of iron three feet long, flattening one end to cut two-and-a-half inches, the diameter of the hole. In the upper end of the drill he formed a socket, to hold an inch-bar of round iron, held by a key riveted though and lengthened as the depth required. Two or three times a day, when the “tool” was drawn out to sharpen the bit and clean the hole, the key had to be cut off at each joint! With this rude outfit drilling began the first week of September, 1859, and the last week of October the well was down one-hundred-and-thirty-four feet. Tubing would not go into the hole and it was enlarged to four inches. The discarded axle of a tram-car, used to carry lumber from Gordon Run to the river, furnished iron for the reamer. Days, weeks and months were consumed at this task. At last, when the hole had been enlarged its full depth, the reamer was let down “to make sure the job was finished.” It stuck fast, never saw daylight again and the well sunk with so much labor had not one drop of oil!
Other wells in the locality fared similarly, none finding oil nearer than Dennis Run, a half-mile distant. There scores of large wells realized fortunes for their owners. In two years James Parshall was a half-million ahead. He settled at Titusville and built the Parshall House—a mammoth hotel and opera-house—which fire destroyed. The “spring” on the Campell farm is in existence and the gravel is impregnated with petroleum, supposed to percolate through fissures in the rocks from Dennis Run.
During the summer of 1860 developments extended across and down the river a mile from Tidioute. The first producing well in the district, owned by King & Ferris, of Titusville, started in the fall at three-hundred barrels and boomed the territory amazingly. It was on the W. W. Wallace lands—five-hundred acres below town—purchased in 1860 by the Tidioute & Warren Oil-Company, the third in the world. Samuel Grandin, Charles Hyde and Jonathan Watson organized it. J. L. Grandin, treasurer and manager of the company, in eight years paid the stockholders twelve-hundred-thousand dollars dividends on a capital of ten-thousand! He leased and sub-leased farms on both sides of the Allegheny, drilling some dry-holes, many medium wells and a few large ones. He shipped crude to the seaboard, built pipe-lines and iron-tanks and became head of the great firm of Grandins & Neyhart. Elijah Bishop Grandin—named from the father of C. E. Bishop, founder of the Oil-City Derrick—who had carried on a store at Hydetown and operated at Petroleum Centre, resumed his residence at Tidioute in 1867 and associated with his brother and brother-in-law, Adnah Neyhart, in producing, buying, storing and transporting petroleum. Mr. Neyhart and Joshua Pierce, of Philadelphia, had drilled on Cherry Run, on Dennis Run and at Triumph and engaged largely in shipping oil to the coast. Pierce & Neyhart—J. L. Grandin was their silent partner—dissolved in 1869. The firm of Grandins & Neyhart, organized in 1868, was marvelously successful. Its high standing increased confidence in the stability of financial and commercial affairs in the oil-regions. The brothers established the Grandin Bank and Neyhart, besides handling one-fourth of the crude produced in Pennsylvania, opened a commission-house in New York to sell refined, under the skilled management of John D. Archbold, now vice-president of the Standard Oil-Company. They and the Fisher Brothers owned the Dennis Run and Triumph pipe-lines and piped the oil from Fagundas, where they drilled a hundred prolific wells and were the largest operators. They bought properties in different portions of the oil-fields, extended their pipe-lines to Titusville and erected tankage at Parker and Miller Farm. The death of Mr. Neyhart terminated their connection with oil-shipments.
“There is no parley with death.”
