From the sinking of the Dyer well drilling went on recklessly. Everybody felt confident of a great future for Washington territory. Isaac Willets, brother of an owner of the Smith tract, paid sixty-thousand dollars for the adjoining farm—the Munce—and spent two-hundred-thousand in wells that cleared him a plump half-million. John McKeown the same day bought the farm of the Munce heirs, directly north of their uncle’s, and drilled wells that yielded him five-thousand dollars a day. He removed to Washington and died there. His widow erected a sixty-thousand-dollar monument over his grave, something that would never have happened if John, plain, hard-headed and unpretentious, could have expressed his sentiments. Thayer No. 2, on the Clark farm, adjoining the Gordon, startled the fraternity in May of 1886 by flowing two-thousand barrels a day from the Gordon sand. It was the biggest spouter in the heap. Lightning struck the tank and burned the gusher, the blazing oil shooting flames a hundred feet towards the blue canopy. At night the brilliant light illumined the country for miles, travelers pronouncing it equal to Mt. Vesuvius in active eruption. The burning oil ran to Gordon No. 1, on lower ground, setting it off also. In a week the Thayer blaze was doused and the stream of crude turned into the tanks of No. 1. Next night a tool-dresser, carrying a lantern on his way to “midnight tower,” set fire to the gas which hung around the tanks. The flames once more shot above the tree-tops, the tool-dresser saved his life only by rolling into the creek, but the derrick was saved and no damage resulted to the well.
Captain J. J. Vandergrift leased the Barre farm, south of the Smith, and drilled a series of gushers that added materially to his great wealth. Disposing of the Barre, he developed the Taylorstown pool and reaped a fortune. T. J. Vandergrift leased the McManis farm, six miles south of Washington, and located the first Taylorstown well. Taylorstown is still on duty and W. J. Young manages the company that acquired the Vandergrift interests. South of the Barre farm James Stewart, vendor of a cure-all salve, owned a shanty and three acres of land worth four-hundred dollars. He leased to Joseph M. Craig for one-fourth royalty. The one well drilled on the lot spouted two-thousand barrels a day for weeks. It is now pumping fairly. This was salve for Stewart and liniment for Craig, whose Washington winnings exceed a half-million. “Mammy” Miller, an aged colored woman, lived on a small lot next to Stewart and leased it at one-fourth royalty to a couple of local merchants. They drilled a thousand-barrel well and “Mammy” became the most courted negress in Pennsylvania. The Union Oil-Company took four-hundred-thousand dollars from the Davis farm. Patrick Galligan, the contractor of the Smith well, leased the Taylor farm and grew rich. Pew & Emerson, who have made millions by natural-gas operations, leased the Manifold farm, west of the Smith. The first well paid them twenty-thousand dollars a month and subsequent strikes manifolded this a number of times. Pew & Emerson have risen by their energy and shrewdness and can occupy a front pew in the congregation of petroleumites.
Samuel Fergus, once county-treasurer and a man of broad mould, struck a geyser in the Fergus annex to the main pool. He drilled on his twenty-four acres solely to accommodate Robert Greene, pumper for Davis Brothers. Greene had much faith and no money, but he advised Fergus to exercise the tools at a particular spot. Fergus might have kept the whole hog and not merely a pork-chop. He sold three-eighths and carried one-eighth for Greene, who refused twenty-thousand dollars for it the day the well began flowing two-thousand barrels. “Bob” Greene, like Artemas Ward’s kangaroo, was “a amoosin’ cuss!” Called to Bradford shortly after the gusher was struck, he met an old acquaintance at the station. His friend invited Bob into the smoker to enjoy a good cigar. He declined and in language more expressive than elegant said: “I’ve been a ridin’ in smokers all my life. Now I’m goin’ to turn a new leaf. I’m goin’ to take a gentleman’s car to Pittsburg and from there to Bradford I’m goin’ to have a Pullman, if it takes a hull day’s production.” Bob took his first ride in a Pullman accordingly. The first venture induced Fergus to punch his patch full of holes and do a turn at wildcatting. His stalwart luck fired the hearts of many young farmers to imitate him, in some instances successfully. Washington has not yet gone out of the oil-business. The Cecil pool kept the trade guessing this year, but its gushers lacked endurance and the field no longer terrorizes the weakest lambkin in the speculative fold.
Greene county experienced its first baptism of petroleum in 1861-2-3, when many wells were drilled on Dunkard Creek. The general result was unsatisfactory. The idea of boring two-thousand feet for oil had not been conceived and the shallow holes did not reach the principal strata. Of fourth sand, fifth sand, Gordon rock, fifty-foot rock, Trenton rock, Berea grit, corn-meal rock, Big-Injun sand and others of the deep-down brand operators on Dunkard Creek never dreamed. Some oil was detected and more blocks of land were tied up in 1864-5. The credulous natives actually believed their county would soon be shedding oil from every hill and hollow, garden and pasture-field. The holders of the tracts—lessees for speculation only—drilled a trifle, sold interests to any suckers wanting to bite and the promised developments fizzled. E. M. Hukill, who started in 1868 at Rouseville, leased twenty-thousand acres in 1885 and located a well on D. L. Donley’s farm, one-third mile south-east of the modest hamlet of Mt. Morris. Morris Run empties into Dunkard Creek near the village. The tools were swung on March second, 1886. Fishing-jobs, hard rock and varied hindrances impeded the work. On October twenty-first oil spouted, two flows occurred next day and a tank was constructed. Saltwater bothered it and the well—twenty-two-hundred feet—was not worth the pains taken for months to work it as a mystery. Hukill drilled a couple of dusters and the Gregg well at Willowtree was also a dry-hole at twenty-three hundred feet. Craig & Cappeau and James M. Guffey & Co. swept over the south-western section in an expensive search for crude. From the northern limit of McKean to the southern border of Greene county Pennsylvania had been ransacked. The Keystone players—Venango, Warren, Forest, Elk, McKean, Clarion, Armstrong, Butler, Allegheny, Beaver and Washington—put up a stiff game and the region across the Ohio was to have its innings.
In the summer of 1881 Butler capitalists drilled a well on the Smith farm, near Baldridge, seven miles south of the county-seat. It had a nice white sand and a smell of oil. S. Simcox, J. J. Myers and Porter Phipps leased the land on which Renfrew now stands and put down a hole on the Hamill tract. The well showed only a freshet of salt-water until thirty feet in the third sand, when it flowed crude at a hundred-barrel gait. This strike, in March of 1882, boomed the territory below Butler and ushered in Baldridge and Renfrew. Milton Stewart and Lyman Stewart were interested with Simcox, Myers and Phipps in the property and helped organize the Bullion Salt-Water Company.
The Cecil pool, in Washington county, furnishes its oil from the fifty-foot sand. One well, finished in April of 1895, on a village lot, flowed thirty-three hundred barrels in twenty-four hours. The biggest strike at Legionville, Beaver county, was Haymaker’s seven-hundred barreler. The Shoustown or Shannopin field, also in Beaver, sixteen miles from Pittsburg, is owned principally by James Amm & Co. Coraopolis is a thriving oil town, fifteen miles west of the Smoky City. For miles along the Ohio derricks are quite plentiful. Greene county has been decidedly brisk in this year of grace and cheap petroleum. And so the tide rolls on and “thus wags the world away.”
The southern trail, with its magnificent Butler output, its Allegheny geysers, its sixteen-thousand barrels a day in Washington and its wonderful strikes in Greene, was big enough to fill the bill and lap over all the edges.
HITS AND MISSES.
A Bradford minister, when the Academy of Music burned down, shot wide of the mark in attributing the fire to “the act of God.” Sensible Christians resented the imputation that God would destroy a dozen houses and stores to wipe out a variety-theater, or that He had anything to do with building up a trade in arson and figuring as an incendiary.
He struck a match and the gas exploded;