H.F. BARBER.
EDWARD C. JONES.
A number of producers agreeing to stand sponsors for the bills, McMullen & Bradshaw floated the Daily News in 1886. Its backers grew tired of emptying their pockets and the bright venture gave up the ghost. Eben Brewer’s Evening Star tinted the sky under its founder’s artistic touch. He sold to Andrew Carr, who found the load unbearable and shoved it upon Rufus B. Stone, brother of Congressman Charles W. Stone. Mr. Stone, an able lawyer, was Chancellor of Mississippi in the reconstruction-days. The reconstructed legislature lopped off his salary and he located at Bradford to practice law. He owned the Star several years, writing most of the political editorials that carried weight and gave the paper high standing. H. F. Barber, a man of fine intellect and noble purpose, dropped the Smethport Miner, relieved Stone and honed the Star a few years, assisted at times by George Allen’s clever stroke. Protracted sickness, during which he showed “how sublime it is to suffer and be strong,” at last “withered the garlands on his brow.” He is dead, but “his speaking dust has more of life than half its breathing moulds.” Allen slid to Buffalo to polish up a railroad-periodical. “Judge” Johnson—in 1875 he landed at Bradford, served a term in the Legislature and another as postmaster, operated in oil and died three years ago—controlled the Star after Barber, whose widow still retains an interest in the paper. Ex-Senator Emery fitted out the Daily Record, which seeks to trail the standard of the Standard in the dust and ticket independent producers, refiners and pipe-liners to a petroleum-Utopia. “Ed.” Jones, the adept who toed the chalk-mark on the Harrisburg Call, whirled the emery-wheel so expertly that the Record has never approached Davy Jones’s locker. It is snappy and full of fight as a shillaleh at Donnybrook Fair. Carr’s Sunday-Mail, freighted with a car of delicate morsels, barked up the wrong tree and went to the bow-wows. Carr rolled down to Pittsburg to sell buggies, bagging a cargo of ducats. “Tom” L. Wilson—he’s as humorous as they make ’em—got out three numbers of Sunday Morning, a four-page blanket in size and a ten-course banquet in contents. Col. Ege shut it down for publishing a rank extract from Walt Whitman’s “Blades o’ Grass” and boomed the Evening-Times, which expired in infancy. Ege was a banker who hankered to be State-Treasurer, banked upon newspaper-support, went into bankruptcy, received an appointment in the Philadelphia Mint and traveled westward when Cleveland shuffled the pack for a new deal. Wilson wrote for the oil-region press, handled the Reading branch of a Harrisburg paper, edited the Washington Review—Sistersville has a sisterly Review now—and rounded up in Buffalo. The Post, Bradford’s latest Sunday experiment, owes its good looks and good matter to Edward F. McIntyre and George O. Sloan.
J.C. McMULLEN.
A.L. SNELL. W.C. ARMOR.
One evening in 1877 a young stranger walked into the St. Petersburg post-office, bought a package of stationery at the book-counter and told J. M. Place he was looking for a situation. Place hired him as a clerk. He had come from the homestead farm in Orange county, N. Y., to Cornell University, worked his way and graduated in civil-engineering. Marshall Swartzwelder lectured at St. Petersburg on temperance and Place’s clerk sat up all night to report the masterpiece for the Derrick. It was his first production in print, a voluntary act on his part, and the article attracted most favorable notice. Its author was at once offered a position on the Derrick. He came in contact with oil-statistics and his real genius asserted itself. His painstaking, conscientious reports were accepted as strictly reliable. He would trudge over the hills, wade through miles of mud and ford swollen streams to ascertain the precise status of an important well, rather than approximate it from hearsay. This care and thoroughness gave the highest value to the statistical work of Justus C. McMullen. In 1879 he went to Bradford and worked on the Breeze, the Era and the Star, always with the same devotion that was a ruling maxim of his life. In 1883 he scouted in Warren and Forest counties and became part owner of the Petroleum Age. Alfred L. Snell and Major W. C. Armor were associated with him in this admirable monthly, of which he became sole proprietor on the first of December, 1887. A. C. Crum, now on the editorial staff of the Pittsburg Dispatch, contributed many a newsy crumb to the Age. A newsboy at Pickwick hailed me in front of his stand one cool morning and asked—not in a Pickwickian sense—if it would be worth while to get somebody to send locals to the Derrick. “Why not do it yourself?” was my answer. He tried and he succeeded. His work expanded and improved and he adopted journalism permanently. He catered for Oil City and Bradford papers, spun yarns for Pittsburg dailies and was a legislative correspondent several sessions. Snell, a statistical hummer and hard-to-beat purveyor of news, hangs his manuscript on the Derrick hook. Armor sponsored a historic book and laid off his armor to second Dr. Egle in the State Library. He has a book-store in Harrisburg and a museum that distances the “Old Curiosity Shop.” McMullen established and edited the Daily Oil-News in 1886. He died of pleurisy, contracted from exposure in collecting oil-data, on January thirty-first, 1888, cut off at thirty-seven. The Petroleum Age did not stay long behind its unswerving projector. Justus C. McMullen is enshrined in the affections of the people. An unrelenting foe of oppression, he had a warm heart for the poor and pursued his own path of right through thorns or flowers. He married Miss Cora, daughter of Col. L. M. Morton, who lives in Bradford and has one little girl. A brave, grand, exalted spirit passed from earth when J. C. McMullen’s light was quenched.
“On the sands of life
Sorrow treads heavily and leaves a print