J. L. GRANDIN.
ADNAH NEYHART.
E. B. GRANDIN.
Owning thousands of acres in Warren and Forest counties, the Grandins were heavily interested in developments at Cherry Grove, Balltown and Cooper. As those sections declined they gradually withdrew from active oil-operations, sold their pipe-lines and wound up their bank. J. L. Grandin removed to Boston and E. B. to Washington, to embark in new enterprises and enjoy, under most favorable conditions, the fruits of their prosperous career at Tidioute. Their business for ten years has been chiefly loaning money, farming and lumbering in the west. They purchased seventy-two-thousand acres in the Red-River Valley of Dakota—known the world over as “the Dalrymple Farm”—and in 1895 harvested six-hundred-thousand bushels of wheat and oats. They employ hundreds of men and horses, scores of ploughs and reapers and steam-threshers and illustrate how to farm profitably on the biggest scale. With Hunter & Cummings, of Tidioute, and J. B. White, of Kansas City, as partners, they organized the Missouri-Lumber-and-Mining-Company. The company owns two-hundred-and-forty-thousand acres of timber-land in Missouri and cut fifty-million feet of lumber last year in its vast saw-mills at Grandin, Carter county. Far-seeing, clear-headed, of unblemished repute and liberal culture, such men as J. L. and E. B. Grandin reflect honor upon humanity and deserve the success an approving conscience and the popular voice commend heartily.
Above Tidioute a number of “farmers’ wells”—shallow holes sunk by hand and soon abandoned—flickered and collapsed. On the islands in the river small wells were drilled, most of which the great flood of 1865 destroyed. Opposite the town, on the Economite lands, operations began in 1860. Steam-power was used for the first time in drilling. The wells ranged from five barrels to eighty, at one-hundred-and-fifty feet. They belonged to the Economites, a German society that enforced celibacy and held property in common. About 1820 the association founded the village of Harmony, Butler county, having an exclusive colony and transacting business with outsiders through the medium of two trustees. The members wore a plain garb and were distinguished for morality, simplicity, industry and strict religious principles. Leaving Harmony, they located in the Wabash Valley, lost many adherents, returned to Pennsylvania and built the town of Economy, in Beaver county, fifteen miles below Pittsburg. They manufactured silks and wine, mined coal and accumulated millions of dollars. A loan to William Davidson, owner of eight-thousand acres in Limestone township, Warren county, obliged them to foreclose the mortgage and bid in the tract. Their notions of economy applied to the wells, which they numbered alphabetically. The first, A well, yielded ten barrels, B pumped fifty and C flowed seventy. The trustees, R. L. Baker and Jacob Henrici, erected a large boarding-house for the workmen, whose speech and manners were regulated by printed rules. Pine and oak covered the Davidson lands, which fronted several miles on the Allegheny and stretched far back into the township. Of late years the Economite Society has been disintegrating, until its membership has shrunk to a dozen aged men and women. Litigation and mismanagement have frittered away much of its property. It seems odd that an organization holding “all things in common” should, by the perversity of fate, own some of the nicest oil-territory in Warren, Butler and Beaver counties. A recent strike on one of the southern farms flows sixty barrels an hour. Natural gas lighted and heated Harmony and petroleum appears bound to stick to the Economites until they have faded into oblivion.
Below the Economite tract numerous wells strove to impoverish the first sand. G. I. Stowe’s, drilled in 1860, pumped eight barrels a day for six years. The Hockenburg, named from a preacher who wrote an essay on oil, averaged twelve barrels a day in 1861. The Enterprise Mining-and-Boring-Company of New-York leased fifteen rods square on the Tipton farm to sink a shaft seven feet by twelve. Bed-rock was reached at thirty feet, followed by ten feet of shale, ten of gray sand, forty of slate and soap-rock and twenty of first sand. The shaft, cribbed with six-inch plank to the bottom of the first sand, tightly caulked to keep out water, was abandoned at one-hundred-and-sixty feet, a gas-explosion killing the superintendent and wrecking the timbers. Of forty wells on the Tipton farm in 1860-61 not a fragment remained in 1866.
Tidioute’s laurel wreath was Triumph Hill, the highest elevation in the neighborhood. Wells nine-hundred feet deep pierced sixty feet of oil-bearing sand, which produced steadily for years. Grandins, Fisher Brothers, M. G. Cushing, E. E. Clapp, John M. Clapp and other leading operators landed bounteous pumpers. The east side of the hill was a forest of derricks, crowded like trees in a grove. Over the summit and down the west side the sand and the development extended. For five years Triumph was busy and prosperous, yielding hundreds-of-thousands of barrels of oil and advancing Tidioute to a town of five-thousand population. Five churches, the finest school-buildings in the county, handsome houses, brick blocks, superior hotels and large stores greeted the eye of the visitor. The Grandin Block, the first brick structure, built of the first brick made in Deerfield township, contained an elegant opera-house. Three banks, three planing-mills, two foundries and three machine-shops flourished. A dozen refineries turned out merchantable kerosene. Water-works were provided and an iron bridge spanned the river. Good order was maintained and Tidioute—still a tidy village—played second fiddle to no town in Oildom for intelligence, enterprise and all-round attractiveness.
