“Even the night shall be light about me.”—Psalms cxxxi: 11.
While cannel-coal in the western end of Pennsylvania and other sections of the country, bitumen and shales from the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Huron, chapapote or mineral pitch in Cuba and San Domingo, oozings in Peru and Ecuador, asphaltum in Canada and oil-springs in Columbia and a half-dozen states of the Union from California to New York denoted the presence of petroleum over the greater part of this hemisphere, wells bored for salt were leading factors in bringing about its full development. Scores of these wells pumped more or less oil long before it “entered into the mind of man” to utilize the unwelcome intruder. Indeed, so often were brine and petroleum found in the same geological formation that scientists ascribed to them a kindred origin. The first borings to establish this peculiarity were on the Kanawha River, in West Virginia, a state destined to play an important part in oleaginous affairs. Dr. J. P. Hale, a reputable authority, claims oil caused much annoyance in Ruffner Brothers’ salt-well, begun in 1806, bored sixty feet with an iron-rod and two-inch chisel-bit attached by a rope to a spring-pole, completed in 1808 and memorable as the first artesian-well on this continent. The fluid came from the territory once famous as the “Kanawha Salines,” reputed to produce an unsurpassed table-salt. Before the advent of the white man the Indians made salt from the saline springs a short distance above the site of Charleston. There Daniel Boone had a log-cabin and George Washington, as long ago as 1775, for military services was awarded lands containing a “burning spring.” Fired by the tidings of the saline springs, Joseph Ruffner sold his possessions in the Shenandoah Valley and journeyed beyond the mountains in 1794 to establish salt-works on the Kanawha. He leased the salt-interest to Elisha Brooks, who took brine from the shallow quicksands. Joseph Ruffner dying, his sons, Joseph and David, acquired his lands and salt-springs and resolved to try some better plan of procuring the brine. A section of a hollow sycamore-tree, sunk into the quicksands, suggested the idea of wooden casing and the wisdom of boring a little way from the spring. A piece of oak, bored from end to end as log-pumps used to be, was set in the hole. The ingenious brothers devised a chisel-like drill to pierce the rock, fastened it to a rope fixed to a spring-pole and bounced the tools briskly. To shut out the weak brine above from the strong brine beneath they put in tin-tubing, around which they tied a leather-bag filled with flax-seed. Thus, three generations ago, Joseph and David Ruffner, aided later by William Morris and his invention of “jars” in drilling-tools, stumbled upon the basis of casing, seed-bagging and boring oil-wells. All honor to the memory of these worthy pioneers, groping in the dark to clear the road for the great petroleum-boom! Dr. Hale continues:
“Nearly all the Kanawha salt-wells have contained more or less petroleum, and some of the deeper wells a considerable flow.[flow.] Many persons now think, trusting to their recollections, that some of the wells afforded as much as twenty-five to fifty barrels per day. This was allowed to flow over from the top of the salt-cisterns to the river, where, from its specific gravity, it spread over a large surface, and by its beautiful iridescent hues and not very savory odor could be traced for many miles down the stream. It was from this that the river received the nickname of ‘Old Greasy,’ by which it was long known by Kanawha boatmen[boatmen] and others.”
At the mouth of Hawkinberry Run, three miles north of Fairmount, in Marion county, a well for salt was put down in 1829 to the depth of six-hundred feet. “A stinking substance gave great trouble,” an owner reported, “forming three or four inches on the salt-water tank, which was four feet wide and sixteen feet long.” They discovered the stuff would burn, dipped it off with buckets and consumed it for fuel under the salt-pan. J. J. Burns in 1865 leased the farm, drilled the abandoned well deeper, stuck the tools in the hole and had to quit after penetrating sixty feet of “a fine grit oil-rock.” Mr. Burns wrote in 1871:
“The second well put down in this county was about the year 1835, on the West Fork River, just below what is now known as the Gaston mines. The well was sunk by a Mr. Hill, of Armstrong county, Pa., who found salt-water of the purest quality and in a great quantity, same as in the first well. He died just after the well was finished, so nothing was done with it. About the time this well was completed one was drilled in the Morgan settlement, just below Rivesville. Salt-water was found with great quantities of gas. Twenty-five years since the farmers on Little Bingamon Creek formed a company and drilled a well—I think to a depth of eight-hundred feet—in which they claimed to have found oil in paying quantities. You can go to it to-day and get oil out of it. The president told me he saw oil spout out of the tubing forty or fifty feet, just as they started the pump to test it. The company got to quarreling among themselves, some of the stockholders died and part of the stock got into the hands of minor heirs, so nothing more was done.”
Similar results attended other salt-wells in West Virginia. The first oil-speculators were Bosworth, Wells & Co., of Marietta, Ohio, who as early as 1843 bought shipments of two to five barrels of crude from Virginians who secured it on the Hughes River, a tributary of the Little Kanawha. This was sold for medical purposes in Pittsburg, Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia.
Notable instances of this kind occurred on the Allegheny River, opposite Tarentum, twenty miles above Pittsburg, as early as 1800. Wells sunk for brine to supply the salt-works were troubled with what the owners called “odd, mysterious grease.” Samuel M. Kier, a Pittsburg druggist, whose father worked some of these wells, conceived the idea of saving the “grease,” which for years had run waste, and in 1846 he bottled it as a medicine. He knew it had commercial and medicinal value and spared no exertions to introduce it widely. He believed implicitly in the greenish fluid taken from his salt-wells, at first as a healing agent and farther on as an illuminant. A bottle of the oil, corked and labeled by Kier’s own hands, lies on my desk at this moment, in a wrapper dingy with age and redolent of crude. A four-page circular inside recites the good qualities of the specific in gorgeous language P. T. Barnum himself would not have scorned to father. For example:
“Kier’s Petroleum, or Rock Oil, Celebrated for its Wonderful Curative Powers. A Natural Remedy! Procured from a Well in Allegheny Co., Pa., Four-Hundred Feet below the Earth’s Surface. Put up and Sold by Samuel M. Kier, 363 Liberty Street, Pittsburgh, Pa.