H. H. CUMMINGS. JAHU HUNTER.
The Boss weakened to eleven-hundred barrels in July and to a humble pumper by the end of the year. Forty rods east, on the Crawford farm, Hunter & Cummings plucked a September pippin. Their Lady Hunter, sixteen-hundred feet deep and flowing twenty-five-hundred barrels, was a trophy to enrapture any hunter coming from the chase. The Boss and the Lady Hunter were the lord and lady of the manor, none of the others approaching them in importance. Hunter & Cummings laid a pipe-line to East Brady, to load their oil on the Allegheny-Valley Railroad. The railroad company refused to furnish cars, urging a variety of pretexts to disguise the unfair discrimination. The owners of the oil had a Roland for the Oliver of the officials. They quietly gauged their output and let it run upon the ground, notifying the company to pay for the oil. A new light dawned upon the railroaders, who discovered they had to deal with men who knew their rights and dared maintain them. Crawling off their high stool, they footed the bill, apologized meekly and thenceforth took precious care Hunter & Cummings should not have reason to complain of a car-famine. Simon Legree was not the only braggart whom good men have been obliged to knock down to inspire with decent respect for fair-play.
Hunter & Cummings stayed in the business, opening the “Pontius Pool,” east of Millerstown, and sinking many wells at Herman Station, where they acquired a snug production. They operated on the lands of the Brady’s Bend Iron-company, putting down the wells on the hills opposite East Brady and a number in the Bradford region. They owned the Tidioute Savings Bank and large tracts in North Dakota—the scene of their “bonanza farming”—and were interested with the Grandins in the great lumber-mills at Grandin, Missouri, the largest in the south-west. In connection with these mills they were building railroads to develop their two-hundred-thousand acres of timber lands and establish experimental farms. Both members of the firm were the architects of their own fortunes, public-spirited, generous and eminently deserving of the liberal measure of success that has attended their labors during the twenty-three years of their association as partners.
Jahu Hunter was born on a farm two miles above Tidioute in 1830. From seventeen to twenty-seven he lumbered and farmed, in 1857 engaged in merchandising and in 1861 sold his store and embarked in oil. He operated moderately five years, increasing his interests largely in 1866 and forming a partnership with H. H. Cummings in 1873, which death ended. Mr. Hunter married Miss Margaret R. Magee in 1860 and one son, L. L. Hunter, survives to aid in managing his extensive business-enterprises. He occupied a delightful home at Tidioute, was president of the Savings Bank and of the chair-factory, a Mason of the thirty-second degree and a leader in all progressive movements. He had lands in various states and was prospered in manifold undertakings. He served as school-director fifteen years, contributing time and money freely in behalf of education. He believed in bettering humanity, in relieving distress, in befriending the poor, in helping the struggling and in building up the community. Retired from active work, the evening of Jahu Hunter’s useful life was serene and unclouded. As the shadows lengthened he reviewed the past with calm content and awaited the future without apprehension. He died last March.
Captain H. H. Cummings removed from Illinois, his birthplace in 1840, to Ohio and was graduated from Oberlin College at twenty-two. Enlisting in July, 1862, he shared the privations and achievements of the Army of the Cumberland until mustered out in June, 1865. Three months later he visited the oil-region[oil-region] and in January of 1866 located at Tidioute in charge of Day & Co.’s refinery. Becoming a partner, he refined and exported oil seven years and was interested in wells at Tidioute and Fagundas. The firm dissolving in 1873, he joined hands with Jahu Hunter and operated extensively in the lower country. Hunter & Cummings stood in the front rank as representative producers. Captain Cummings is president of the Missouri Mining and Lumbering Company, which has a paid-up capital of five-hundred-thousand dollars and saws forty-million feet of lumber a year. L. L. Hunter is secretary, E. B. Grandin is treasurer and Hon. J. B. White, formerly a member of the Legislature from Warren county, is general manager. As Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic in Pennsylvania, Judge Darte succeeding him this year, Captain Cummings is favorably known to veterans over the entire state. He is a man of fine attainments, broad views and noble traits—a man who sizes up to a high ideal, who can be trusted and whose friendship “does not shrink in the wash.”
Taylor & Satterfield began operations in the lower fields in 1870, secured much of the finest territory in Butler and became one of the wealthiest firms in the oil-region. Harvesters rather than sowers, their usual policy was to buy lands tested by one or more wells and avoid the risk of wildcatting. In this way they acquired productive farms in every part of the district, which yielded thousands of barrels a day when fully developed. Their transactions footed up many millions yearly. They established banks at Petrolia and Millerstown, employed an army of drillers and pumpers and clerks and were always ready fora big purchase that promised fat returns. In company with Vandergrift & Forman, John Pitcairn and Fisher Brothers, they built the Fairview Pipe-Line from Argyle to Brady, the nucleus of the magnificent National-Transit system of oil-transportation. Captain J. J. Vandergrift, George V. Forman and John Pitcairn were associated with them in their gigantic producing-operations, which in 1879 extended to the Bradford field and grew to such magnitude that the Union Oil-Company was formed in 1881, with five-millions capital. The Union was almost uniformly successful, owning big wells and paying big dividends. In 1883 it paid Forman a million dollars for his separate holdings in Allegany county, up to that date the largest individual sale in the region. All its properties were sold to the Forest Oil-Company and the Union was dissolved, Taylor retiring and Satterfield continuing to assist in the management some months.
Hascal L. Taylor was first known in Oildom as a member of the firm of Taylor & Day, Fredonia, N. Y., whose “buckboards” had a tremendous sale in Venango, Clarion, Armstrong and Butler. He lived at Petrolia several years, having charge of the office of Taylor & Satterfield and general oversight of the Argyle Savings Bank. After his retirement from the oil-business with an ample fortune he lived at Buffalo, speculated in real-estate and purchased miles of Florida lands. He died last year, as he was arranging to erect a fifteen-story office-block in Buffalo. Mr. Taylor was of medium height and stout build, energetic, resourceful and notable in the busy world of petroleum. His only son, Emory G., clerked in the bank at Petrolia, engaged in manufacturing at Williamsport a year or two and removed to Buffalo before his father’s death. He and his sister inherited the estate.
John Satterfield, a man of heart and brain, imposing in stature, frank in speech and square in his dealings, was a Mercer boy. He served four years in a regiment organized at Greenville and opened a grocery at Pithole in 1865, with James A. Waugh as partner. Selling the remnants of the grocery in 1867, he superintended wells at Tarr Farm three years and went to Parker in 1870. His work in the Butler field increased his excellent reputation for honesty and enterprise. He married Miss Matilda Martin, of Allentown, lived four years at Millerstown, removed to Titusville and built an elegant house on Delaware avenue, Buffalo. When the Union Oil-Company’s accounts were closed, the books balanced and the assets transferred to the Forest he engaged in banking. He was vice-president of the Third National Bank of Buffalo and president of the Fidelity Trust Company, whose new bank-building is the boast of the Bison City. George V. Forman and Thomas L. McFarland joined him in the Fidelity. Mr. McFarland, formerly cashier of the bank at Petrolia and secretary of the Union Company, is exceedingly affable, capable and popular. Failing health induced Mr. Satterfield to go on a trip designed to include France, the Mediterranean Sea and the warmer countries of the east. With his brother-in-law, Dr. T. J. Martin, he reached Paris, took seriously ill and died on April sixth, 1894, in his fifty-fourth year. Besides his wife, who was on the ocean hastening to his bedside when the end came, he left one son and one daughter. Dr. Martin cremated the body, pursuant to the wish of the deceased, and brought the ashes home for interment. Charitable and unostentatious, upright and active, all men liked and trusted “Jack” Satterfield, whom old friends miss sadly and remember tenderly.
The sinless land some of his friends have enter’d long ago,
Some others stay a little while to struggle here below;