Mr. Kirkbride lives at Toledo, in a handsome home gladdened by a devoted wife and five children. S. M. Jones, the distinguished Mayor of Toledo, also came from the Keystone State. He drilled in the lower oil-districts in 1868, joined the tide for Bradford and located at Duke Centre. Thence he migrated to Toledo, patented a sucker-rod improvement, erected a big factory, dabbled skilfully in municipal affairs, advocated civic reforms and won the mayoralty on the grand platform of “eight hours work a day.” Mr. Jones helped organize the Western Oilmen’s Association, which occupies fine quarters in the heart of the city. There Fred Boden, W. J. McCullagh, Frank Steele, C. A. Lupher and other Keystoners often hang out to welcome old friends from Pennsylvania. W. B. Nolan, who pumped at Oil City in 1864 and operated from Edenburg to Bradford, has drilled five-hundred wells in Ohio for himself or by contract. C. C. Harris, who sold to the Ohio Oil-Company in 1890 for one-hundred-thousand dollars, has put down four-hundred. Truly the Buckeye State is no slouch in petroleum.
WELLS ON TOWN LOTS AT CYGNET, OHIO.
A farmer in the Black Swamp of Wood county, half-starved on corn-bread and bad water, leased his forty-acre patch for oil-purposes. The first well, which was sunk a hundred yards from his cabin, flowed two-thousand barrels a day. When the spurt began the old fellow happened to be chopping wood beside his door. He saw the mass of oil climb into the atmosphere, flung down his axe and shouted: “Bet yer life, no more corn-dodgers an’ watered whisky for this chicken!”
A barren streak in Mercer and Van Wert, on Ohio’s western border, seemed to demonstrate the folly of seeking an extension of the Lima belt in Indiana, despite convincing symptoms of oil at Geneva. To test the matter the Northern-Indiana Oil-Company, composed mainly of Lima operators, leased five-thousand acres along the boundary between Adams and Jay counties and drilled several wells in 1892. Nearly the whole range proved productive, showing that the belt stretched westward. Portions of Wells, Blackford, Grant and Huntingdon joined the procession in due course. Last year an important pool was unearthed near Alexandria, Madison county, twenty-five miles south-west of the original field, which demanded a pipe-line to Montpelier. This newest accession is in the town of Peru, with spurs quite close to Cass county. This has been the stellar attraction of Hoosierdom, fifty-five wells completed in October of 1897 yielding thirty-five-hundred barrels. Roan, New Waverley and Denver have not escaped and the drill has invaded Kokomo, twenty miles south. Peru is the fad of the hour, the pride of the Wabash. Just clear across the state, several wells at Terre Haute have revealed the presence of sand, gas and oil. The average price of Indiana crude in 1896 was sixty-three cents, and five-million barrels were produced.
BIT OF INDIANA OIL-TERRITORY.
The Indiana oil-region is a level country, about forty miles long east and west and three to four wide. The oil, dark green in color and thirty-six gravity, is found in the Trenton limestone, at a depth of a thousand feet. Thirty to a hundred feet of driving-pipe and three-hundred feet of casing are needed in each well. The main belt runs in regular pools and may be considered ten-barrel territory. The aggregate production of the field is twelve to fifteen-thousand barrels a day. The largest well started at two-thousand barrels and some have records of five-hundred to eight-hundred. The great gas-field, south of the oil-belt, has boomed manufactures and contributed vastly to the wealth of the Hoosiers.
Last May the Byram Oil-Company of Indianapolis finished the first oil-well, within sight of the village of Dundee, ever drilled by electricity. A fifty-horse dynamo, which runs the small motors at a dozen wells on the tract, supplied the power. Gas is used under the boilers in the power-house, a substantial frame-building, which shelters the central station. The entire plant cost five-thousand dollars and the company votes it a success of the first magnitude.
Hiram Tewksbury, of Montpelier, who pays taxes on six-hundred acres of land in Wells county, is one of the few men whom getting into a lawsuit enriched. When the Indiana field was in its infancy he contracted to purchase the Howard farm for some oilmen, who refused to take it off his hands and were sustained by the Court. He sued Howard to take it back, the Supreme Court decided against him and Tewksbury had to keep the land. It turned out to be the bosom of an oil-pool, the cream of the district. One acre brought Tewksbury eleven-thousand dollars, and for months his royalty exceeded five-hundred dollars a week.