When we see it unrolled in eternity!”
James E. Brown, to whom Nesbit sold one-quarter of the Patton farm, made his mark upon the industries of the state. A carpenter’s son, he started a store on the site of Kittanning, saved money, purchased lands and at his death in 1880 left his family four-millions. He manufactured iron at various furnaces and owned a big block of stock in the rolling-mills at East Brady. Samuel J. Tilden was a stockholder in the works, which employed sixteen hundred men, turned out the first T-rails west of the Alleghenies and tottered to their fall in 1874. Mr. Brown cleared eight-hundred-thousand dollars in 1872 by the advance in iron. He owned oil-farms in Butler county, took stock in the Parker Bridge, the Parker & Karns City Railroad and the Karns Pipe-Line Company and conducted a bank at Kittanning. His granddaughter, Miss Findley, who inherited half his wealth, married Lord Linton, a British baronet. The aged banker—he stuck it out to eighty-two—knew how to pile up money.
Stephen Duncan Karns, who had a railroad and a town named in his honor, was a picturesque figure in the Armstrong-Butler district. With his two uncles he operated the first West-Virginia well, at the mouth of Burning-Spring Run, in 1860. His experience at his father’s Tarentum salt-wells enabled him to run engine, to sharpen tools and clean out an old salt-well to be tested for oil. The well pumped forty barrels a day during the winter of 1860-1. Fort Sumter was bombarded, several Kanawha operators were killed and young Karns escaped by night in a canoe. He enlisted, served three years, led his company at Antietam and Chancellorsville and in 1866 leased one acre at Parker’s Landing from Fullerton Parker. His first well, starting at one barrel a day, by months of pumping was increased to twelve barrels and earned him twenty-thousand dollars. From the Miles Oil-Company of New York he leased a farm and an abandoned well a mile below Parker. He drilled the well through the sand and it produced twenty-five barrels a day. This settled the question of oil south of Parker. “Dunc,” as he was usually called by his friends, leased the Farren farm, drilled on Bear Creek, secured the famous Stonehouse farm of three-hundred acres and in 1872 enjoyed an income of five-thousand dollars a day! A mile south of Petrolia, on the McClymonds farm, Cooper Brothers were about to give up their first well as a hopeless duster. Karns thought the hole not deep enough, bought the property, resumed drilling and in two days the well was flowing one-hundred barrels! The town of Karns City blossomed into a community of twenty-five-hundred people, with three big hotels, stores, offices and dwellings galore. It fell a prey to the flames eventually. The McClymonds, Riddle and J. B. Campbell farms doubled “Dunc’s” big income for many moons. He had the second well at Greece City and for a year or more was the largest producer in the oil-region. He built a pipe-line from Karns City to Harrisburg to fight the United Lines, held fifty-five-thousand dollars’ stock in the Parker Bridge and controlled the Parker & Karns-City Railroad and the Exchange Bank.
Near Freeport, on the Allegheny River, thirty miles above Pittsburg, he lassoed a great farm and erected a fifty-thousand-dollar mansion. Fourteen race-horses fed in his palatial stables. Guests might bathe in champagne and the generous host spent money royally. A good strike or a point gained meant a general jollification. He played billiards skillfully, handled cards expertly and wagered heavily on anything that hit his fancy. He and his wife were in Paris during the siege. Upon his return from Europe he built the Fredericksburg & Orange Railroad, in Virginia. The glut of crude from Butler wells dropped the price in 1874 to forty cents. Losses of different kinds cramped Karns and the man worth three-millions in 1872-3 was obliged to surrender his stocks and lands and wells and begin anew! James E. Brown secured Glen-Karns, the beautiful home below Freeport. In 1880 Karns induced E. O. Emerson, the wealthy Titusville producer, to start a cattle-ranch in Western Colorado. For six years he superintended the herds on the immense plains, joining the round-ups, sleeping on the ground with the boys, roping and branding cattle and accumulating a stock of health and muscle which he thinks will carry him to the hundred-year mark. Emerson had bought from Karns the Riddle farm for eleven-thousand dollars. He deepened one well—supposed dry—to the fourth sand. It flowed six-hundred barrels and Emerson sold the tract in sixty days for ninety-thousand dollars. Karns returned from the west, practiced law a short while in Philadelphia and for some years has managed a Populist paper at Pittsburg. He ran against John Dalzell for Congress and walked at the head of the parade when General Coxey’s “Army of the Commonweal” marched through the Smoky City. He enjoyed making money more than handling it, was honorable in his dealings, intensely active, comprehensive in his views and positive in his opinions. His “yes” or “no” was given promptly. “Dunc” is of slender build and nervous temperament[temperament], easy in his manners, frank in his utterances and not scared by spooks in politics or trade. He had his share of light and shade, struggle and triumph, defeat and victory, incident and adventure in his pilgrimage.
“How chances mock,
And changes fill the cup of alteration
With divers liquors!”
Richard Jennings, over whose head the grass and flowers are growing, and his brother-in-law, the late Jacob L. Meldren, did much to develop the territory east of Petrolia. Coming from England to Armstrong county a half-century ago, they located at what is now Queenstown. Meldren bought the farm at the head of Armstrong Run on which the noted Armstrong well was struck in 1870. It opened “the Cross-Belt,” an abnormal strip running nearly at right angles to the main lines and remarkable for mammoth gushers. This unprecedented “belt” upset the theories of geologists and operators. The first and only one of its kind, it resembled the mule that “had no pride of ancestry and no hope of posterity.” Mr. Jennings drilled on many farms and gathered a large fortune. He was a man of character and ability, with a priceless reputation for integrity and truthfulness. Once he sent his foreman, Daniel Evans, to secure the Dougherty farm, on the southern edge of Petrolia, owned by two maiden sisters. The foreman knocked at the door, engaged board for a week, was engaged to the elder sister before the week expired and had the pleasure of reaping a harvest of greenbacks from the property in due course. It is satisfactory to find such enterprise abundantly recompensed. Not so lucky was a gay and festive operator with an ancient maiden who owned a tempting patch of land near Millerstown. He exhausted every art to get a lease, in desperation finally hinting at matrimony. The indignant lady exploded like a ton of dynamite, seizing a broom and compelling the bold visitor to beat an ungraceful retreat through the window, minus his hat and gloves! Evans leased part of the farm to his former employer, who finished the Dougherty spouter on November twenty-second, 1873. It flowed twenty-seven-hundred barrels a day from the fourth sand, loading Jennings with greenbacks and sending the speculative trade into convulsions. A patriotic citizen, devoted parent and genuine philanthropist, Richard Jennings was sincerely respected and his death was deeply mourned. His sons inherited their father’s sagacity and manly principle. They have operated in the McDonald field and are prominent in banking and business at Pittsburg.
The “Cross-Belt” crossed the petroleum-horizon in dead earnest in March of 1874. Taylor & Satterfield’s Boss well, on the James Parker farm, two miles east of Petrolia, flowed three-thousand barrels a day! William Hartley—General Harrison Allen defeated him for Auditor-General in 1872—organized the Stump Island Oil-Company and drilled from the mouth of the Clarion River six miles south, in 1866-7. He and John Galey owned the Island-King well at Parker’s Landing and a hundred others, some of which crept well down into Armstrong county. Richard Jennings and Jacob L. Meldren had punched holes on Armstrong Run and around Queenstown, but the spouter in the Parker-farm ravine was the fellow that touched the spot and hypnotized the trade. A solid stream of oil poured into the tank as if butted through the pipe by a hundred hydraulic-rams. The billowy mass of fluid heaved and foamed and boiled and tried its level best to climb over the wooden walls and unload the roof. David S. Criswell, of Oil City, had an interest in the gusher, and Criswell City—a shop, a lunch-room and five or six dwellings—was imprinted on Heydrick & Stevenson’s map. Stages between Petrolia and Brady halted at the bantling town for the convenience of pilgrims to the shrine of the Boss—a “boss” representing innumerable “bar’ls.” Wells were hurried down at a spanking gait, to divy up the oily freshet. “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley” and the uncertainty of fourth-sand wells was forcibly illustrated. Jennings had dry-holes on the Steele and Bedford farms, the latter ten rods north-west of the mastodon. Taylor & Satterfield’s No. 2, thirty rods west, was a small affair. Dusters and light pumpers studded the road from Criswell to Petrolia, with the Hazelwood Oil-Company’s two-hundred-barreler a trifle north to tantalize believers in a straight “belt.” Lines and belts and theories and former experiences amounted to little or nothing. The only safe method was to “go it blind” and bear with exemplary resignation whatever might turn up, be it a big gusher or a measly duster.
