JAMES W. ROWLAND.
Peru, a natty place of ten-thousand inhabitants, twelve miles east of Logansport, is the Indiana sensation of the year. Last June a bevy of citizens drilled a duster on the Wallace farm, two miles east. This dose of Peruvian bark spurred them to drill on the north-west edge of town in July. The well flowed fifteen barrels a day through the casing, at twenty feet in the Trenton rock, increasing ten-fold when tubed and pumped. At once the oil craze ran riot in the wild rush for leases. Tourists from Ohio and Pennsylvania led the long procession of land-seekers. The Klondyke pool east of Toledo and the Hume south of Lima were forgotten temporarily. Scores of slick wells demolished the theory of a mere “pocket,” which the absence of gas and scarcity of salt-water led would-be scientists to expect at the first blush. The good work has crowded ahead and Peru roosts high on the petroleum-perch in the center of the patch.
A dandy thing it is to be on top,
Provided you don’t have to take a drop
And come down with a thud, kerflop.
H. C. ZEIGLER.
Thirteen per cent. of the five-thousand wells drilled in Benjamin Harrison’s state are dry-holes. Montpelier has benefited largely from operations in Wells, Blackford and Jay counties. The Sibley Oil-Company, Isaac N. Patterson, the Rowland-Zeigler Oil-Company and other Pennsylvania firms and individuals have been prominent in the field. Mr. Patterson lives at Franklin, is president of the savings bank and has figured extensively in the chief districts since Petroleum Centre and Pithole first tinctured the horizon a flaming red. James W. Rowland quit mercantile-life in Franklin to conduct a bank at Emlenton and embark in the oil-business. The success he richly merited attended him in banking, producing and refining. He gained a liberal fortune, returned to Franklin and took a leading share in developing the Indiana region. Mr. Rowland is a first-class man of affairs, genial and generous, true to his convictions, loyal in his friendships and always ready to further a good cause. The Rowland-Zeigler Company sold to the Standard recently at a price which hugged a quarter-million dollars closely. H. C. Zeigler, who managed and was president of the company, began his oil-career as owner of an interest in the first two producing wells at Raymilton, drilled in 1869. Operating at Pleasantville a short season, the fourth-sand development attracted him to Petrolia. In 1873 he and J. D. Ritchey and W. T. Jackson procured a charter for the Cleveland Pipe-Line, which was sold to S. D. Karns and merged into the Karns Line. Assisting in the management of the Karns Line until the United Lines absorbed it, he then engaged actively in producing oil. His circuit of operations comprised Bullion, Cogley, Thorn Creek, Cherry Grove, Bradford and Richburg. Moving westward, he participated in the early development of the Ohio and Indiana fields. In company with Jacob S. Smith he established the plant that supplied natural-gas to Chicago. His master-stroke was the organization of the Rowland-Zeigler Company, which alone realized him a competence. Mr. Zeigler is in his prime, hearty and vigorous, quick to relieve distress and prompt to aid the right. None better deserves the compliment George D. Prentice paid Mark M. Pomeroy: “He is a brick.”
John and Michael Cudahy, behind whom Philip Armour, the Swifts, Fairbanks and Nelson Morris, the Chicago beef-magnates, are supposed to pose, in 1895 purchased a huge slice of the Indiana field, laid a pipe-line to the Windy City and talked of building a refinery that would outshine the Standard giant at Whiting. The brothers are sons of an Irish resident of Milwaukee, who taught them his own trade of meat-packing. Michael Cudahy went to Chicago to manage a branch for John Plankington, whom the Armours succeeded, and John “came tumbling after.” John piled up millions by plunges in pork and lard that won him the soubriquet of “Daring Jack” Cudahy, while Michael stuck to Armour faithfully. John toppled and lost his wealth, Michael started him afresh, he paid off a million of debts and built up another fortune. Michael, several times a millionaire, has studied the swine as Sir John Lubbock has studied the ant. No part of the hog is wasted under his trained system, but thus far the Cudahys have not been able to hog the Hoosier oil-fields.