One of the first persons to reach the spot and gather the remains of William Pine was his friend James Barnum, who died in the same manner at St. Petersburg eighteen months later. Barnum was the Roberts agent in Clarion county. On February twenty-third, 1876, he drove to Edenburg for three-hundred pounds of glycerine, to store in the magazine a mile from St. Petersburg. A fearful concussion, which the writer can never forget, broke hundreds of windows and rocked houses to their foundations at six o’clock that evening. To the magazine, on a slope sheltered by trees, people hastened. A huge iron-safe, imbedded in a cave dug into the hill, was the repository of the explosives. Barnum had tied his team to a small tree and must have been taking the cans from the wagon to the safe. A yawning cavity indicated the site of the magazine. Both horses lay dead and disemboweled. The biggest piece of the luckless agent would not weigh two pounds. One of his ears was found next morning a half-mile away. The few remnants were collected in a box and buried at Franklin. A wife and several children mourned poor “Jim,” who was a lively, active young man and had often been warned not to be so careless with the deadly stuff. Mrs. Barnum heard the explosion, uttered a piercing shriek and ran wildly from her house towards the magazine, sure her husband had been killed.
W. H. Harper, who received a patent for improvements in torpedoes, went to his doom at Keating’s Furnace, two miles from St. Petersburg, in July of 1876. Drawing an unexploded shell from a well, precisely as West and Taylor had done, he stooped down to examine the priming. The contents exploded and drove pieces of the tin-shell deep into his flesh and through his body. How he survived nine days was a wonder to all who saw the dreadful wounds of the unlucky inventor.
McKean county supplied the next instance. Repeated attempts were made to rob a large magazine on the Curtis farm, two miles south of Bradford. Incredible as it may seem, the key-hole of the ponderous iron-safe in the hillside was several times stuffed with Nitro-Glycerine and a long fuse and a slow match applied to burst the door. None of these foolhardy attempts succeeding, on the night of September fifteenth, 1877, A. V. Pulser, J. B. Burkholder, Andrew P. Higgins and Charles S. Page, two of them “moonlighters,” it is supposed tried pounding the lock with a hammer. At any rate, they exploded the magazine and were blown to fragments, with all the gruesome accompaniments incident to such catastrophes. That men would imperil their lives to loot a safe of Nitro-Glycerine in the dark beats the old story of the thief who essayed to steal a red-hot stove. In this case retribution was swift and terrible, but a magazine at St. Petersburg was broken open and plundered successfully.
Seventeen days later J. T. Smith, of Titusville, who had charge of a magazine on Bolivar Run, four miles from Bradford, lost his life experimenting with glycerine. Col. E. A. L. Roberts and his nephew, Owen Roberts, stood fifty yards from the magazine as Smith was thrown into the air and frightfully mangled. They escaped with slight bruises, a lively shaking up and a hair-raising fright.
The summer of 1878 was a busy season in the northern field. Foster-Brook Valley was at the hey-day of activity, with hundreds of wells drilling and well-shooters very much in evidence. Among the most expert men in the employ of the Roberts Company was J. Bartlett, of Bradford. He went to Red Rock, an ephemeral oil-town six miles north-east of Bradford, to torpedo a well in rear of the McClure House, the principal hostelry. Although Bartlett’s recklessness was the source of uneasiness, he had never met with an accident and was considered extremely fortunate. It was a rule to explode the cans that had held the glycerine before pouring it into the shell. Bartlett torpedoed the well, piled wood around the empty cans and set it on fire. He and a party of friends waited at the hotel for the cans to explode. The fire had burned low and Bartlett proceeded to investigate. He lifted a can and turned it over, to see if it contained any glycerine. The act was followed by an explosion that shook every house in the town and shattered numberless windows. Bartlett’s companions were knocked senseless and the shooter was blown one-hundred feet. When picked up by several men, who hurried to the scene, he presented a horrible sight. His clothing was torn to ribbons and his body riddled by pieces of tin. The right arm was off close to the shoulder and the right leg was a pulp. He was removed to a boarding-house and died in great agony three hours after.
Stories of hapless “moonlighters” scattered to the four winds of heaven were recounted frequently. Their business, done largely under cover of darkness, was exceptionally dangerous. The “moonlighter” did not haul his load in a wagon openly by daylight. He would place two ten-quart cans of glycerine in a meal-sack, sling the bag over his shoulder and walk to the scene of his intended operations, generally at night. One evening in the spring of 1879 a “moonlighter” named Reed appeared at Red Rock, somewhat intoxicated and bearing two cans of glycerine in a bag. He handled the bag in a style that struck terror to the hearts of all onlookers, many of whom remembered poor Bartlett. It was unsafe to wrest it from him by force and the Red-Rockers heaved a sigh of relief when he started to climb the hill leading to Summit City. Scores watched him, expecting an accident. At a rough spot Reed stumbled and the cans fell to the ground. A terrific explosion shook the surrounding country. A deep hole, ten feet in diameter, was blown in the earth and houses in the vicinity were badly shaken. The explosion occurred directly under a tree. When an attempt was made to gather up Reed’s remains the greater portion of the body was in the tree, scraps of flesh of various sizes hanging from its branches. The concussion passed above Red Rock, hence the damage to property was small. Reed was dispersed over an acre of brush, a fearful illustration of the incompatibility of whisky and Nitro-Glycerine.
W. O. Gotham, John Fowler and Harry French went to their usual work at Gotham’s Nitro-Glycerine factory, near Petrolia, on the morning of October twenty-seventh, 1878. An explosion during the forenoon tore Fowler to shreds, mutilated French shockingly and landed Gotham’s dead body in the stream with hardly a sign of injury. Petrolia never witnessed a sadder funeral-procession than the long one that followed the unfortunate three to the tomb. Gotham had a family and was widely known; the others were strangers, far from home and loved ones.
On February twentieth, 1880, James Feeney and Leonard Tackett started in a sleigh with six cans under the seat to torpedo a well at Tram Hollow, eight miles east by north of Bradford. The sleigh slipped into a rut on a rough side-hill and capsized. The glycerine exploded, throwing Tackett high in the air and mangling him considerably. Feeney lay flat in the rut, the violence of the shock passing over him and covering him with snow and fence-rails. His face was scorched and his hearing destroyed, but he managed to crawl out, the first man who ever emerged alive from the jaws of a Nitro-Glycerine eruption. He is still a resident of Bradford. A dwelling close to the scene was wrecked, the falling timbers seriously injuring two of the inmates.
At two o’clock on the morning of December twenty-third, 1880, a powerful concussion startled the people of Bradford from their slumbers, caused by a glycerine-explosion just below the city-limits. Alvin Magee was standing over the deadly compound, which had been put in a tub of hot water to thaw. Usually the subtle stuff is stored in a cold place, to congeal or freeze until needed. Magee and the derrick were blown into space, only a few bits of flesh and bone and splintered wood remaining. His two companions were in the engine-house and got off with severe bruises and permanent deafness. Two men named Cushing and Leasure were killed the same way in January, at a well near Limestone. Cushing came to see the torpedo put into the well and was standing near the engine-house, into which Leasure had just gone, when the accident occurred. The glycerine was in hot water to thaw and a jet of steam turned on, with the effect of sending it off prematurely. Cushing’s body did not show a mark, his death probably resulting from concussion, while Leasure was torn to fragments.
E. M. Pearsall, of Oil City, died on July fourteenth, 1880, from the effect of burns a few hours before. In company with two other men he went to torpedo one of his wells on the Clapp farm. The tubing had been drawn out and a large amount of benzine poured into the hole. The torpedo was exploded, when the gas and benzine took fire and enveloped the men and rig in flames. The clothes of Pearsall, who was nearest to the derrick, caught fire and burned from his body. His limbs, face and breast were a fearful sight. His intense suffering he bore like a hero, made a will and calmly awaited death, which came to his relief at nine o’clock in the evening. Pearsall was dark-haired, dark-eyed, slender, wiry and fearless.