Are turned upon the smallest hinge,
And thus some seeming pettiest chance
Oft gives our life its after tinge.”
Fertig & Hammond drilled numerous wells on the Fox estate in 1870-71 and started a bank. Operations were pressed actively by producers from the upper districts. Foxburg was the jumping off point for pilgrims to the Clarion field, which Galey No. 1 well, on Grass Flats, inaugurated in August, 1871. Others on the Flats, ranging from thirty to eighty barrels, boomed Foxburg and speedily advanced St. Petersburg, three miles inland, from a sleepy village of thirty houses to a busy town of three-thousand population. In September of 1871 Marcus Hulings, whose great specialty was opening new fields, finished a hundred-barrel well on the Ashbaugh farm, a mile beyond St. Petersburg. The town of Antwerp was one result. The first building, erected in the spring of 1872, in sixty days had the company of four groceries, three hotels, innumerable saloons, telegraph-office, school-house and two-hundred dwellings. Its general style was summed up by the victim of a poker-game in the expressive words: “If you want a smell of brimstone before supper go to Antwerp!” Fire in 1873 wiped it off the face of the planet.
Charles H. Cramer, now proprietor of a hotel in Pittsburg, left the Butler field to drill the Antwerp well, in which he had a quarter-interest. James M. Lambing, for whom he had been drilling, jokingly remarked: “When you return ‘broke’ from the wildcat well on the Ashbaugh farm I will have another job for you.” It illustrates the ups and downs of the oil business in the seventies to note that, when the well was completed, Lambing had met with financial reverses and Cramer was in a position to give out jobs on his own hook. Victor Gretter was one of the spectators of the oil flowing over the derrick. The waste suggested to him the idea of the oil-saver, which he patented. This strike reduced the price of crude a dollar a barrel. Antwerp would have been more important but for its nearness to St. Petersburg, which disastrous fires in 1872-3 could not prevent from ranking with the best towns of Oildom. Stages from Foxburg were crowded until the narrow-gauge railroad furnished improved facilities for travel. Schools, churches, hotels, newspapers, two banks and an opera-house flourished. The Pickwick Club was a famous social organization. The Collner, Shoup, Vensel, Palmer and Ashbaugh farms and Grass Flats produced three-thousand barrels a day. Oil was five to six dollars and business strode ahead like the wearer of the Seven-League Boots. Now the erstwhile busy town is back to its pristine quietude and the farms that produced oil have resumed the production of corn and grass.
A jolly Dutchman near St. Petersburg, who married his second wife soon after the funeral of the first, was visited with a two-hours’ serenade in token of disapproval. He expostulated pathetically thus: “I say, poys, you ought to be ashamed of myself to be making all dish noise ven der vas a funeral here purty soon not long ago.” This dispersed the party more effectually than a bull-dog and a revolver could have done.
A girl just returned to St. Petersburg from a Boston high-school said, upon seeing the new fire-engine at work: “Who would evah have dweamed such a vewy diminutive looking apawatus would hold so much wattah!”
“Where are you going?” said mirth-loving Con. O’Donnell to an elderly man in a white cravat whom he overtook on the outskirts of Antwerp and proposed to invite to ride in his buggy. “I am going to heaven, my son. I have been on my way for eighteen years.” “Well, good-bye, old fellow! If you have been traveling toward heaven for eighteen years and got no nearer than Antwerp, I will take another route.”
The course of operations extended past Keating Furnace, up and beyond Turkey Run, a dozen miles from the mouth of the Clarion River. Good wells on the Ritts and Neeley farms originated Richmond, a small place that fizzled out in a year. The Irwin well, a mile farther, flowed three-hundred barrels in September of 1872. The gas took fire and burned three men to death. The entire ravine and contiguous slopes proved desirable territory, although the streak rarely exceeded a mile in breadth. Turkey City, in a nice expanse to the east of the famous Slicker farm, for months was second only to St. Petersburg as a frontier town. It had four stages to Foxburg, a post-office, daily mail-service and two passable hotels. George Washington, who took a hack at a cherry-tree, might have preferred walking to the drive over the rough, cut-up roads that led to and from Turkey City. The wells averaged eleven-hundred feet, with excellent sand and loads of gas for fuel. Richard Owen and Alan Cochran, of Rouseville, opened a jack-pot on the Johnson farm, above town. Wells lasted for years and this nook of the Clarion district could match pennies with any other in the business of producing oil.
Northward two miles was Dogtown, beautifully situated in the midst of a rich agricultural section. The descendents of the first settlers retain their characteristics of their German ancestors. Frugal, honest and industrious, they live comfortably in their narrow sphere and save their gains. The Delo farm, another mile north, was for a time the limit of developments. True to his instincts as a discoverer of new territory, Marcus Hulings went six miles north-east of St. Petersburg, leased B. Delo’s farm and drilled a forty-barrel well in the spring of 1872. Enormous quantities of gas were found in the second sand. The oil was piped to Oil City. A half-mile east, on the Hummell farm, Salem township, Lee & Plumer struck a hundred-barreler in July of 1872. The Hummell farm had been occupied for sixty years by a venerable Teuton, whose rustic son of fifty-five summers described himself as “the pishness man ov the firm.” The new well, twelve-hundred feet deep, had twenty-eight feet of nice sand and considerable gas. Its success bore fruit speedily in the shape of a “town” dubbed Pickwick by Plumer, who belonged to the redoubtable Pickwick Club at St. Petersburg. A quarter-mile ahead, on a three-cornered plot, Triangle City bloomed. The first building was a hotel and the second a hardware store, owned by Lavens & Evans. Charles Lavens operated largely in the Clarion region and in the northern field, lived at Franklin several years and removed to Bradford. He is president of the Bradford Commercial Bank and a tip-top fellow at all times and under all circumstances. Evans may claim recognition as the author, in the muddled days of shut-downs and suspensions in 1872, of the world-famed platform of the Grass-Flats producers: “Resolved that we don’t care a damn!” The three tailors of Tooley street, who issued a manifesto as “We, the people of England,” were outclassed by Evans and his friends. News of their action was flashed to every “council” and “union” in the oil-country, with more stimulating effect than a whole broadside of formal declarations. Triangle, Pickwick and Paris City have passed to the realm of forgetfulness.