Better with the last effort to expire
Than lose the toil and struggle that have been,
And have the morning strength, the upward strain,
The distance conquered in the end made vain.”
JAMES H. OSMER.
Reorganized in the interest of Culver, Penn & Co.’s creditors, the Reno Company developed its property methodically. No. 18 well, finished in May of 1870, pumped two-hundred barrels and caused a flutter of excitement. Fifty others, drilled in 1870-1, were so satisfactory that the stockholders might have shouted “Keno!” The company declined to lease and very few dry-holes were put down on the tract. Gas supplied fuel and the sand, coarse and pebbly, produced oil of superior gravity at five to six-hundred feet. Reno grew, a spacious hotel was built, stores prospered, two railroads had stations and derricks dotted the banks of the Allegheny. The company’s business was conducted admirably, it reaped liberal profits and operated in Forest county. Its affairs are in excellent shape and it has a neat production today. Mr. Culver and Hon. Galusha A. Grow have been its presidents and Hon. J. H. Osmer is now the chief officer. Mr. Osmer is a leader of the Venango bar and has lived at Franklin thirty-two years. His thorough knowledge of law, sturdy independence, scorn of pettifogging and skill as a pleader gained him an immense practice. He has been retained in nearly all the most important cases before the court for twenty-five years and appears frequently in the State and the United-States Supreme Courts. He is a logical reasoner and brilliant orator, convincing juries and audiences by his incisive arguments. He served in Congress with distinguished credit. His two sons have adopted the legal profession and are associated with their father. A man of positive individuality and sterling character, a friend in cloud and sunshine, a deep thinker and entertaining talker is James H. Osmer.
Cranberry township, a regular petroleum-huckleberry, duplicated the Reno pool at Milton, with a vigorous offshoot at Bredinsburg and nibbles lying around loose. Below Franklin the second-sand sandwich and Bully-Hill successes were special features. A mile up East Sandy Creek—it separates Cranberry and Rockland—was Gas City, on a toploftical hill twelve miles south of Oil City. A well sunk in 1864 had heaps of gas, which caught fire and burned seven years. E. E. Wightman and Patrick Canning drilled five good wells in 1871 and Gas City came into being. Vendergrift & Forman constructed a pipeline and telegraph to Oil City. Gas fired the boilers, lighted the streets, heated the dwellings and great quantities wasted. The pressure could be run up to three-hundred pounds and utilized to run engines in place of steam, were it not for the fine grit with the gas, which wore out the cylinders. Wells that supplied fuel to pump themselves seemed very similar to mills that furnished their own motive-power and grist for the hoppers. A cow that gave milk and provided food for herself by the process could not be slicker. Gas City vaporized a year or two and flickered out. The last jet has been extinguished and not a glimmer of gas or symptom of wells has been visible for many years.
Fifteen of the first sixteen wells at Foster gladdened the owners by yielding bountifully. To drill, to tube, to pump, to get done-up with a dry-hole, “aye, there’s the rub” that tests a fellow’s mettle and changes blithe hope to bleak despair. Foster wells were not of that complexion. They lined the steep cliff that resembles an Alpine farm tilted on end to drain off, the derricks standing like sentries on the watch that nobody walked away with the romantic landscape. Lovers of the sterner moods of nature would revel in the rugged scenery, which discounts the overpraised Hudson and must have fostered sublime emotions in the impassive redmen. Indian-God Rock, inscribed with untranslatable hieroglyphics, presumably tells what “Lo” thought of the surroundings. Six miles south of the huge rock, which somebody proposed to boat to Franklin and set in the park as an interesting memento of the aborigines, was “the burning well.” For years the gas blazed, illuminating the hills and keeping a plot of grass constantly fresh and green. The flood in 1865 overflowed the hole, but the gas burned just as though water were its native element. It was the fad for sleighing parties to visit the well, dance on the sward when snow lay a yard deep ten rods away and hold outdoor picnics in January and February. This practically realized the fancy of the boy who wished winter would come in summer, that he might coast on the Fourth of July in shirt-sleeves and linen-pants. Here and there in the interior of Rockland township morsels of oil have been unearthed and small wells are pumping to-day.
C. D. Angell leased blocks of land from Foster to Scrubgrass in 1870-71 and jabbed them with holes that confirmed his “belt theory.” His first well—a hundred-barreler—on Belle Island, a few rods below the station, opened the Scrubgrass field. On the Rockland side of the river the McMillan and 99 wells headed a list of remunerative producers. Back a quarter-mile the territory was tricky, wells that showed for big strikes sometimes proving of little account. A town toddled into existence. Gregory—the genial host joined the heavenly host long ago—had a hotel at which trains stopped for meals. James Kennerdell ran a general store and the post-office. The town was busy and had nothing scrubby except the name. The wells retired from business, the depot burned down, the people vanished and Kennerdell Station was established a half-mile north. Wilson Cross continued his store at the old stand until his death in March, 1896. Within a year paying wells have been drilled near the station and two miles southward. On the opposite bank Major W. T. Baum, of Franklin, has a half-dozen along the base of the hill that net him a princely return. A couple of miles north-west, in Victory township, Conway Brothers, of Philadelphia, recently drilled a well forty-two hundred feet. The last sixty feet were sand with a flavor of oil, the deepest sand and petroleum recorded up to the present time. Careful records of the strata and temperature were taken. Once a thermometer slipped from Mr. Conway’s hand and tumbled to the bottom of the well, the greatest drop of the mercury in any age or clime.