Thus far the losses of human life were occasioned by the explosion of great quantities of the messengers of death. The next instance demonstrated the amazing strength of Nitro-Glycerine in small parcels, a few drops ending the existence of a vigorous man at Scrubgrass, Venango county, in the summer of 1870. R. W. Redfield, agent of a torpedo-company, hid a can of glycerine in the bushes, expecting to return and use it the following day. While picking berries Mrs. George Fetterman saw the can and handed it to her husband. Thinking it was lard-oil, which Nitro-Glycerine[Nitro-Glycerine] in its fluid state resembles closely, Fetterman poured some into a vessel and sent it to his wells. It was used as a lubricant for several days. Noticing a heated journal one morning, Fetterman put a little of the supposed oil on the axle, with the engine in rapid motion. A furious explosion ensued, tearing the engine-house into splinters and partially stunning three men at work in the derrick. Poor Fetterman was found shockingly mangled, with one arm torn off and his head crushed into jelly. The mystery was not solved for hours, when it occurred to a neighbor to test the contents of the oil-can. Putting one drop on an anvil, he struck it a heavy blow and was hurled to the earth by the force of the concussion. The can was a common oiler, holding a half-pint, and probably not a dozen drops had touched the journal before the explosion took place. Fetterman was a man of remarkable physical power, weighing two-hundred-and-thirty pounds and looking the picture of health and vigor. Yet a quarter-spoonful of nitro-glycerine sufficed to usher him into the hereafter under circumstances particularly distressing.
In the fall a young man lost his life almost as singularly as Fetterman. He attended a well at Shamburg, seven miles south of Titusville. The well was torpedoed on a cold day. To thaw the glycerine a tub was filled with hot water, into which the cans were put. When sufficiently thawed they were taken out, the glycerine was poured into the shell and the torpedoing was done satisfactorily. The tubing was replaced in the well and the young pumper went to turn on the steam to start the engine, carrying a pair of tongs with him. He threw the tongs into the tub of water. In an instant the engine-house was demolished by a fierce explosion. The luckless youth was killed and his body mangled. A small amount of glycerine must have leaked from the cans while they were thawing, as the result of which a soul was hurried into the presence of its Maker with alarming suddenness.
In August of 1871 Charles Clarke started towards Enterprise, a small village in Warren county, ten miles east of Titusville, with a lot of glycerine in a vehicle drawn by one horse. The trip was destined never to be accomplished. By the side of a high hill a piece of very rough road had to be traveled. There the charge exploded. Likely some of the liquid had leaked over the buggy and springs and been too much jolted. The concussion was awful. Pieces of the woodwork and tires were carried hundreds of yards. Half of one wheel lodged near the top of a large tree and for many rods the forest was stripped of its foliage and branches. Part of the face, with the mustache and four teeth adhering, was the largest portion of the driver recovered from the debris. The horse was disemboweled and to numerous trees lots of flesh and clothing were sticking. From the ghastly spectacle the beholders turned away shuddering. The handful of remains was buried reverently at Titusville, crowds of people uniting in the last tribute of respect to “Charlie,” whose youth and intelligence had made him a general favorite.
A case similar to Thompson’s followed a few weeks after, near Rouseville. Descending a steep hill on his way from torpedoing a well on the Shaw farm, William Pine was sent out of the world unwarned. He had a torpedo-shell and some cans of glycerine in a light wagon drawn by two horses. No doubt, the extreme roughness of the road exploded the dangerous freight. The body of the driver was distributed in minute fragments over two acres and the buggy was destroyed, but the horses escaped with slight injury, probably because the force of the shock passed above them as they were going down the hill. Pine had a premonition of impending disaster. When leaving home he kissed his wife affectionately and told her he intended, should he return safely, to quit the torpedo-business forever next day. He was an industrious, competent young man, deserving of a better fate.
In October of the same year Charles Palmer was blown to pieces at the Roberts magazine, near Titusville, where Brophy died two years before. With Captain West, agent of the company, he was removing cans of glycerine from a wagon to the magazine. He handled the cans so recklessly that West warned him to be more careful. He made thirteen trips from the wagon and entered the magazine for the fourteenth time. Next instant the magazine disappeared in a cloud of dust and smoke, leaving hardly a trace of man or material. West happened to be beside the wagon and escaped unhurt. The horses galloped furiously through Titusville, the cans not taken out bounding around in the wagon. Why they did not explode is a mystery. Had they done so the city would have been leveled and thousands of lives lost. Palmer paid dearly for his carelessness, which was characteristic of the rollicking, light-hearted fellow whose existence terminated so shockingly.
This thrilling adventure decided Captain West, who lived at Oil City, to engage in pursuits more congenial to himself and agreeable to his devoted family. He was finely educated, past the meridian and streaks of gray tinged his dark hair and beard. In November he torpedoed a well for me on Cherry Run. The shell stuck, together we drew it up, the Captain adjusted the cap and it was then lowered and exploded successfully. At parting he shook my hand warmly and remarked: “This is the last torpedo I shall put in for you. My engagement with the company will end next week. Good-bye. Come and see me in Oil City.” Three days later he went to shoot a well at Reno, saying to his wife at starting: “This will wind up my work for the company.” Such proved to be the fact, although in a manner very different from what the speaker imagined. The shell was lowered into the well, but failed to explode and the Captain concluded to draw it up and examine the priming. Near the surface it exploded, instantly killing West, who was guiding the line attached to the torpedo. He was hurled into the air, striking the walking-beam and falling upon the derrick-floor a bruised and bleeding corpse. He had, indeed, put in his last torpedo. The main force of the explosion was spent in the well, otherwise the body and the derrick would have been blown to atoms. A tear from an old friend, as he recounts the tragic close of an honorable career, is due the memory of a man whose sterling qualities were universally admired.
Early in 1873 two young lives paid the penalty at Scrubgrass. On a bright February morning “Doc” Wright, the torpedo-agent, stopped at the station to send a despatch. The message sent, he invited the telegraph-operator, George Wolfe, to ride with him to the magazine, a mile up the river. The two set out in high spirits, two dogs following the sleigh. Hardly ten minutes elapsed when a dreadful report terrified the settlement. From the magazine on the river-bank a light smoke ascended. Two rods away stood the trembling horse, one eye torn from its socket and his side lacerated. Beside him one dog lay lifeless. Fragments of the cutter and the harness were strewn around promiscuously. Through the bushes a clean lane was cut and a large chestnut-tree uprooted. A deep gap alone remained of the magazine and scarcely a particle of the two men could be found. Dozens of splintered trees across the Allegheny indicated alike the force and general direction of the concussion. A boot containing part of a human foot was picked up fifty rods from the spot. Wright’s gold-watch, flattened and twisted, was fished out of the Allegheny, two-hundred yards down the stream, in May. The remains, which two cigar-boxes would have held, were interred close by. A marble shaft marks the grave, which Col. William Phillips, then president of the Allegheny-Valley Railroad, enclosed with a neat iron-railing. It is very near the railway-track and the bank of the river, a short distance above Kennerdell Station. The disaster was supposed to have resulted from Wright’s using a hatchet to loosen a can of glycerine from the ice that held it fast. A pet spaniel, which had a habit of rubbing against his legs and trying to jump into his arms, accompanied him from his boarding-house. The animal may have diverted his attention momentarily, causing him to miss the ice and strike the can. The horse lived for years, not much the worse except for the loss of one eye. Wright and Wolfe were lively and jocular and their sad fate was deeply regretted. Many a telegram George Wolfe sent for me when Scrubgrass was at full tide.
One morning in April of 1873 Dennis Run, a half-mile from Tidioute, experienced a fierce explosion, which vibrated buildings, upset dishes and broke windows long distances off. It occurred at a frame structure on the side of a hill, occupied by Andrew Dalrymple as a dwelling and engine-house. He was a “moonlighter,” putting in torpedoes at night to avoid detection by the Roberts spotters, and was probably filling a shell at the moment of the explosion. It knocked the tenement into toothpicks and killed Dalrymple, jamming his head and the upper portion of the trunk against an adjacent engine-house, the roof of which was smeared with blood and particles of flesh. One arm lay in the small creek four-hundred feet away, but not a vestige of the lower half of the body could be discovered. A feeble cry from the ruins of the building surprised the first persons to reach the place. Two feet beneath the rubbish a child twenty months old was found unhurt. Farther search revealed Mrs. Dalrymple, badly mangled and unconscious. She lingered two hours. The little orphan, too young to understand the calamity that deprived her of both parents, was adopted by a wealthy resident of Tidioute and grew to be a beautiful girl. Thousands viewed the sad spectacle and followed the double funeral to the cemetery. It has been my fortune to witness many sights of this description, but none comprised more distressing elements than the sudden summons of the doomed husband and wife. Mrs. Dalrymple was the only woman in the oil-region whom Nitro-Glycerine slaughtered.
Is there a sixth sense, an indefinable impression that prompts an action without an apparent reason? At Petrolia one forenoon something impelled me to go to Tidioute, a hundred miles north, and spend the night. Rising from breakfast at the Empire House next morning, a loud report, as though a battery of boilers had burst, hurried me to the street. Ten minutes later found me gazing upon the Dalrymple horror. Was the cause of the impulse that started me from Petrolia explained? An hour sufficed to help rescue the child from the debris, inspect the wreck, glean full particulars and board the train for Irvineton. Writing the account for the Oil-City Derrick at my leisure, Postmaster Evans was on hand with a report of the inquest when the evening-train reached Tidioute. The Tidioute Journal didn’t like the Derrick a little bit and the sight of a young man running from its office towards the train, with copies of the paper—not dry from the press—attracted my attention. Mr. Evans said two Titusville reporters had come over during the day. A newspaper-man clearly relishes a “scoop” and it struck me at once that the Journal was rushing the first sheets of its edition to the Titusville delegates. Squeezing through the jam, A. E. Fay, of the Courier, and “Charlie” Morse, of the Herald, were pocketing the copies handed them by the Journal youth. Fay laughed out loud and said: “Well, boys, I guess the Derrick’s left this time!” A pat on the shoulder and my hint to “guess again” fairly paralyzed the trio. The conductor shouted “all aboard” and the train moved off. Dropping into the seat in front of Fay, his annoyance could not be concealed. It relieved him to hear me tell of coming through from the north and ask why such a crowd had gathered at Tidioute. He told a fairy-story of a ball-game and his own and Morse’s visit to meet a friend! A wish for a glance at the Tidioute paper he parried by answering: “It’s yesterday’s issue!” Fay was a good fellow and his clumsy falsifying would have shamed Ananias. Keeping him on the rack was rare sport. Clearly he believed me ignorant of the torpedo-accident. The moment to undeceive him arrived. A big roll of manuscript held before his eyes, with a “scare-head” and minute details of the tragedy, prefaced the query: “Do you still think the Derrick is badly left?” Many friends have asked me: “In your travels through the oil-region what was the funniest thing you ever saw?” Here is the answer: The dazed look of Fay as he beheld that manuscript, turned red and white, clenched his fists, gritted his teeth and hissed, “Damn you!”
John Osborne, a youth well-known and well-liked, in July of 1874 drove a buckboard loaded with glycerine down Bear-Creek Valley, two miles below Parker. The cargo let go at a rough piece of road in a woody ravine, scattering Osborne, the horse and the vehicle over acres of tree-tops. The concussion was felt three miles. Venango, Crawford, Warren and Armstrong counties had furnished nearly a score of sacrifices and Butler was to supply the next. Alonzo Taylor, young and unmarried, went in the summer of 1875 to torpedo a well at Troutman. The drop-weight failed to explode the percussion-cap and Taylor drew up the shell, a process that had cost Captain West his life and was always risky. He got it out safely and bore the torpedo to a hill to examine the priming. An instant later a frightful explosion stunned the neighborhood. Taylor was not mangled beyond recognition, as the charge was giant-powder instead of Nitro-Glycerine. Nor was the damage to surrounding objects very great, owing to the tendency of the powder to expend its strength downward. This was the only torpedo-fatality of the year, the number of casualties having induced greater caution in handling explosives.