No help is given, no safe abiding-place;
No idling in the pathway, hard and slow—
I must go forward or must backward go!”
GEN. JESSE L. RENO.
Down the Allegheny three miles, on a gentle slope facing bold hills across the river, is the remnant of Reno, once a busy, attractive town. It was named from Gen. Jesse L. Reno, who rose to higher rank than any other of the heroes Venango “contributed to the death-roll of patriotism.” He spent his boyhood at Franklin, was graduated from West Point in the class with George B. McClellan and “Stonewall” Jackson, served in the Mexican war, was promoted to Major-General and fell at the battle of South Mountain in 1862. The Reno Oil-Company, organized in 1865 as the Reno-Oil-and-Land Company, owns the village-site and twelve-hundred acres of adjacent farms. The company and the town owed their creation to the master-mind of Hon. C. V. Culver, to whose rare faculty for developing grand enterprises the oil-regions offered an inviting field. Visiting Venango county early in the sixties, a canvass of the district convinced him that the oil-industry, then an infant beginning to creep, must attain giant proportions. To meet the need of increased facilities for business, he conceived the idea of a system of banks at convenient points and opened the first at Franklin in 1861. Others were established at Oil City, Titusville and suitable trade-centres until the combination embraced twenty banks and banking-houses, headed by the great office of Culver, Penn & Co. in New York. All enjoyed large patronage and were converted into corporate banks. The speculative mania, unequaled in the history of the world, that swept over the oil-regions in 1864-5, deluged the banks with applications for temporary loans to be used in purchasing lands and oil-interests. Philadelphia alone had nine-hundred stock-companies. New York was a close second and over seven-hundred-million dollars were capitalized—on paper—for petroleum-speculations! The production of oil was a new and unprecedented business, subject to no known laws and constantly overturning theories that set limits to its expansion. There was no telling where flowing-wells, spouting thousands of dollars daily without expense to the owners, might be encountered. Stories of sudden fortunes, by the discovery of oil on lands otherwise valueless, pressed the button and the glut of paper-currency did the rest.
Mr. Culver directed the management and employment of fifteen-million dollars in the spring of 1865! People literally begged him to handle their money, elected him to Congress and insisted that he invest their cash and bonds. The Reno Oil-Company included men of the highest personal and commercial standing. Preliminary tests satisfied the officers of the company that the block of land at Reno was valuable territory. They decided to operate it, to improve the town and build a railroad to Pithole, in order to command the trade of Oil Creek, Cherry Run and “the Magic City.” Oil City opposed the railroad strenuously, refusing a right-of-way and compelling the choice of a circuitous route, with difficult grades to climb and ugly ravines to span. At length a consolidation of competing interests was arranged, to be formally ratified on March twenty-ninth, 1866. Meanwhile rumors affecting the credit of the Culver banks were circulated. Disastrous floods, the close of the war and the amazing collapse of Pithole had checked speculation and impaired confidence in oil-values. Responsible parties wished to stock the Reno Company at five-million dollars and Mr. Culver was in Washington completing the railroad-negotiations which, in one week, would give him control of nearly a million. A run on his banks was started, the strain could not be borne and on March twenty-seventh, 1866, the failure of Culver, Penn & Co. was announced. The assets at cost largely exceeded the liabilities of four-million dollars, but the natural result of the suspension was to discredit everything with which the firm had been identified. The railroad-consolidation, confessedly advantageous to all concerned, was not confirmed and Reno stock was withheld from the market. While the creditors generally co-operated to protect the assets and adjust matters fairly, a few defeated measures looking to a safe deliverance. These short-sighted individuals sacrificed properties, instituted harassing prosecutions and precipitated a crisis that involved tremendous losses. Many a man standing on his brother’s neck claims to be looking up far into the sky watching for the Lord to come!
The fabric reared with infinite pains toppled, pulling down others in its fall. The Reno, Oil-Creek & Pithole Railroad, within a mile of completion, crumbled into ruin. The architect of the splendid plans that ten days of grace would have carried to fruition displayed his manly fiber in the dark days of adversity and he has been amply vindicated. Instead of yielding to despair and “letting things take their course,” he strove to realize for the creditors every dollar that could be saved from the wreck. Animated by a lofty motive, for thirty years Mr. Culver has labored tirelessly to discharge the debts of the partnership. No spirit could be braver, no life more unselfish, no line of action more steadfastly devoted to a worthy object. He had bought property and sought to enhance its value, but he had never gambled in stocks, never dealt in shares on the mere hazard of a rise or gone outside the business—except to help customers whose necessities appealed to his sympathy—with which he was intimately connected. Driven to the wall by stress of circumstances and general distrust, he has actually paid off all the small claims and multitudes of large ones against his banks. How many men, with no legal obligation to enforce their payment, would toil for a generation to meet such demands? Thistles do not bear figs and banana-vendors are not the only persons who should be judged by their fruits. It is a good thing to achieve success and better still to deserve it. Gauged by the standard of high resolve, earnest purpose and persistent endeavor—by what he has tried to do and not by what may have been said of him—Charles Vernon Culver can afford to accept the verdict of his peers and of the Omniscient Judge, who “discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart.”
“I will go on then, though the limbs may tire,
And though the path be doubtful and unseen;