Dr. John David Schopf, a surgeon in the British service, visited Pittsburg in 1783 and in an account of his journey remarked:
“Petroleum was found at several places up the Allegheny, particularly at a spring and a creek, which were covered with this floating substance.”
General William Irvine, in a letter to John Dickinson, dated “Carlisle, August 17, 1785,” tells of exploring the western part of Pennsylvania. He says:
“Oil Creek takes its name from an oily or bituminous matter being found floating on its surface. Many cures are attributed to this oil. * * * It rises in the bed of the creek at very low water. In a dry season I am told it is found without any mixture of water and is pure oil. It rises when the creek is high from the bottom in small globules.”
George Henry Loskiel, in his “Geschichte der Mission der Evangelischen Bruder unter der Indianen in Nordamerika,” published in 1789, noted:
“One of the most favorite medicines used by the Indians is Fossil-oil exuding from the earth, commonly with water * * * This oil is of a brown color and smells like tar. * * * They use it chiefly in external complaints. Some take it inwardly and it has not been found to do harm. It will burn in a lamp. The Indians sometimes sell it to the white people at four guineas a quart.”
An officer of the United States Army, who descended the Ohio River in 1811, wrote a book of travels in which he remarks:
“Not far from the mouth of the Little Beaver a spring has been found, said to rise from the bottom of the river, from which issues an oil which is highly inflammable and is called Seneca oil. It resembles Barbadoes tar and is used as a remedy for rheumatic pains.”
NOTABLE WELLS ON OIL CREEK IN 1861-2-3.