“Through many a year
We shall remember, with a sad delight,
The friends forever gone from mortal sight.”
Pittsburg assumed the airs of a petroleum-metropolis. Natural-gas in the suburbs and east of the city changed its sooty blackness to a delicate clearness that enabled people to see the sky. Oilmen made it their headquarters and built houses at East Liberty and Allegheny. To-day more representative producers can be seen in Pittsburg than in Oil City, Titusville or Bradford. Within a hundred yards of the National-Transit offices one can find Captain Vandergrift, T. J. Vandergrift, J. M. Guffey, John Galey, Frank Queen, W. J. Young, P. M. Shannon, Frederick Hayes, Dr. M C. Egbert, A. J. Gartland, Edward Jennings, Captain Grace, S. D. Karns, William Fleming, C. D. Greenlee, John N. Lambing, John Galloway, John J. Fisher, Henry Fisher, Frederick Fisher, J. A. Buchanan, J. N. Pew, Michael Murphy, James Patterson and other veterans in the business. These are some of the men who had the grit to open new fields, to risk their cash in pioneer-experiments, to cheapen transportation and to make kerosene “the poor man’s light.” They are not youngsters any more, but their hearts have not grown old, their heads have not swelled and the microbe of selfishness has not soured their kindly impulses. They are of the royal stamp that would rather tramp the cross-ties with honor than ride in a sixteen-wheeled Pullman dishonestly.
W. E. GRIFFITH.
Gas east and oil west was the rule at Pittsburg. Wildwood was the chief sensation in 1889-90. This was the pet of W. E. Griffith, whose first well on the Whitesell farm, twelve miles above Pittsburg, tapped the sand in March of 1890, and flowed three-hundred barrels a day. This prime send-off inaugurated Wildwood in good style. The Bear-Creek Refining-Company drilled on the C. J. Gibson farm, Pine Creek, in 1888, finding considerable gas. Later Barney Forst and Max Klein found third sand and no oil in a well two-thirds of a mile west, on the Moon farm. John M. Patterson went two miles south-east and drilled the Cockscomb well, twin-link to a duster. J. M. Guffey & Co. hit sand and a taste of oil near Perrysville, between which and the Cockscomb venture Gibson & Giles had encouraging indications. Anon Griffith’s spouter touched the jugular and opened a prolific pool. His No. 2 produced a quarter-million barrels. Guffey & Co.’s No. 4, Rolsehouse farm, and Bamsdall’s No. 2, Kress farm, started at three-thousand apiece the first twenty-four hours. About three-hundred acres of rich territory were punctured, some of the wells piercing the fifth sand at two-thousand feet. By the end of 1890 the district had yielded thirteen-hundred-thousand barrels, placing it close to the top of the white-sand column. Wildwood is situated in Allegheny county, on the Pittsburg & Western Railroad, and W. E. Griffith is justly deemed the father of the nobby district. He is a practical man, admirably posted regarding sands and oils and in every respect worthy of the success that has crowned his efforts to hold up his end of the string.
Thirty-three wells at Wildwood realized Greenlee & Forst not far from a quarter-million dollars. Five in “the hundred-foot” field west of Butler repaid their cost and brought them fifty-thousand dollars from the South-Penn Oil-Company. The two lucky operators next leased and purchased eight-hundred acres at Oakdale, Noblestown and McDonald, in Allegheny and Washington counties, fifteen to twenty miles west of Pittsburg. The Crofton third-sand pool was opened in February of 1888, the Groveton & Young hundred-foot in the winter of 1889-90 and the Chartiers third-sand field in the spring of 1890. South-west of these, on the J. J. McCurdy farm, five miles north-east of Oakdale, Patterson & Jones drilled into the fifth sand on October seventeenth, 1890. The well flowed nine-hundred barrels a day for four months, six months later averaged two-hundred and by the end of 1891 had yielded a hundred-and-fifty thousand. Others on the same and adjacent tracts started at fifty to twenty-five-hundred barrels, Patterson & Jones alone deriving four-thousand barrels a day from thirteen wells. In the summer of 1890 the Royal Gas-Company drilled two wells on the McDonald estate, two miles west of McDonald Station and ten south-west of McCurdy, finding a show of oil in the so-called “Gordon sand.” On the farm of Edward McDonald, west side of the borough, the company struck oil and gas in the same rock the latter part of September. The well stood idle two months, was bored through the fifth sand in November, torpedoed on December twentieth and filled three tanks of oil in ten days. The tools were run down to clean it out, stuck fast and the pioneer venture of the McDonald region ended its career simultaneously with the ending of 1890. Thorn Creek had been a wonder and Wildwood a dandy, yet both combined were to be dwarfed and all records smashed by the greatest white-sand pool and the biggest gushers in America.
Geologists solemnly averred in 1883 that “the general boundaries of the oil-region of Pennsylvania are now well established,” “we can have no reasonable expectation that any new and extensive field will be found” and “there are not any grounds for anticipating the discovery of new fields which will add enough to the declining products of the old to enable the output to keep pace with the consumption.” Notwithstanding these learned opinions, Thorn Creek had the effrontery to “be found” in 1884, Wildwood in 1890 and the monarch of the tribe in 1891. The men who want people to discard Genesis for their interpretation of the rocks were as wide of the mark as the dudish Nimrod who couldn’t hit a barn-door at thirty yards. He paralyzed his friends by announcing: “Wal, I hit the bullseye to-day the vehwy fiwst shot!” Congratulations were pouring in when he added: “Yaas, and the bweastly fawmeh made me pay twenty-five dollahs fawh the bull I didn’t see when I fiwed, doncherknow!” A raw recruit instructed the architect of his uniform to sew in an iron-plate “to protect the most vital part.” The facetious tailor, instead of fixing the plate in the breast of the coat, planted it in the seat of the young fellow’s breeches. The enemy worsting his side in a skirmish, the retreating youth tried to climb over a stone-wall. A soldier rushed to transfix him with his bayonet, which landed on the iron-plate with the force of a battering-ram. The shock hurled the climber safely into the field, tilted his assailant backward and broke off the point of the cold steel! The happy hero picked himself up and exclaimed fervently: “That tailor knew a devilish sight better’n me what’s my most vital part!” Operators who paid no heed to scientific disquisitions, but went on opening new fields each season, believed the drill was the one infallible test of petroleum’s most vital part.
In May of 1891 the Royal Gas-Company finished two wells on the Robb and Sauters tracts, south of town, across the railroad-track. The Robb proved a twenty-barreler and the Sauters flowed one-hundred-and-sixty barrels a day from the fifth sand. They attracted the notice of the oilmen, who had not taken much stock in the existence of paying territory at McDonald. Three miles north-east the Matthews well, also a May-flower, produced thirty barrels a day from the Gordon rock. On July first it was drilled into the fifth sand, increasing the output to eight-hundred barrels a day for two months. Further probing the first week in September increased it to eleven-thousand barrels! Scouts gauged it at seven-hundred barrels an hour for three hours after the agitation ceased! It yielded four-hundred-thousand barrels of oil in four months and was properly styled Matthews the Great. The owners were James M. Guffey, John Galey, Edward Jennings and Michael Murphy. They built acres of tanks and kept ten or a dozen sets of tools constantly at work. Mr. Guffey, a prime mover in every field from Richburg to West Virginia, was largely interested in the Oakdale Oil-Company’s eighteen-hundred acres. With Galey, Jennings and Murphy he owned the Sturgeon, Bell and Herron farms, the first six wells on which yielded twenty-eight-thousand barrels a day! The mastodon oil-field of the world had been ushered in by men whose sagacious boldness and good judgment Bradford, Warren, Venango, Clarion and Butler had witnessed repeatedly.