Provided with a fund of one-thousand dollars as a starter, Drake was engaged at one-thousand dollars a year to begin operations. Early in May, 1858, he and his family arrived in Titusville and were quartered at the American Hotel, which boarded the Colonel, Mrs. Drake, two children and a horse for six-dollars-and-a-half per week! Money was scarce, provisions were cheap and the quiet village put on no extravagant airs. Not a pick or shovel was to be had in any store short of Meadville, whither Drake was obliged to send for these useful tools! Behold, then, “the man who was to revolutionize the light of the world,” his mind full of a grand purpose and his pockets full of cash, snugly ensconced in the comfortable hostelry. Surely the curtain would soon rise and the drama of “A Petroleum-Hunt” proceed without further vexatious delays.
Drake’s first step was to repair and start up Angier’s system of trenches, troughs and skimmers. By the end of June he had dug a shallow well on the island and was saving ten gallons of oil a day. He found it difficult to get a practical “borer” to sink an artesian-well. In August he shipped two barrels of oil to New Haven and bargained for a steam-engine to furnish power for drilling. The engine was not furnished as agreed, the “borer” Dr. Brewer hired at Pittsburg had another contract and operations were suspended for the winter. In February, 1859, Drake went to Tarentum and engaged a driller to come in March. The driller failed to materialize and Drake drove to Tarentum in a sleigh to lasso another. F. N. Humes, who was cleaning out salt-wells for Peterson, informed him that the tools were made by William A. Smith, whom he might be able to secure for the job. Smith accepted the offer to manufacture tools and bore the well. Kim Hibbard, favorably known in Franklin, was dispatched with his team, when the tools were completed, for Smith, his two sons and the outfit. On May twentieth the men and tools were at the spot selected for the hole. A “pump-house” had been framed and a derrick built. A room for “boarding the hands” almost joined the rig and the sawmill. The accompanying illustration shows the well as it was at first, with the original derrick enclosed to the top, the “grasshopper walking-beam,” the “boarding-house” and part of the mill-shed. “Uncle Billy” Smith is seated on a wheelbarrow in the foreground. His sons, James and William, are standing on either side of the “pump-house” entrance. Back of James his two young sisters are sitting on a board. Elbridge Lock stands to the right of the Smiths. “Uncle Billy’s” brother is leaning on a plank at the corner of the derrick and his wife may be discerned in the doorway of the “boarding-house.” This interesting and historic picture has never been printed until now. The one with which the world is acquainted depicts the second rig, with Peter Wilson, a Titusville druggist, facing Drake. In like manner, the portrait of Colonel Drake in this volume is from the first photograph for which he ever sat. The well and the portrait are the work of John A. Mather, the veteran artist and Drake’s bosom-friend, who ought to receive a pension and no end of gratitude for preserving “counterfeit presentments” of a host of petroleum-scenes and personages that have passed from mortal sight.
Delays and tribulations had not retreated from the field. In artesian-boring it is necessary to drill in rock. Mrs. Glasse’s old-time cook-book gained celebrity by starting a recipe for rabbit-pie: “First catch your hare.” The principle applies to artesian-drilling: “First catch your rock.” The ordinary rule was to dig a pit or well-hole to the rock and crib it with timber. The Smiths dug a few feet, but the hole filled with water and caved-in persistently. It was a fight-to-a-finish between three men and what Stow of Girard—he was Barnum’s hot-stuff advance agent—wittily termed “the cussedness of inanimate things.” The latter won and a council of war was summoned, at which Drake recommended driving an iron-tube through the clay and quicksand to the rock. This was effectual. Colonel Drake should have patented the process, which was his exclusive device and decidedly valuable. The pipe was driven thirty-six feet to hard-pan and the drill started on August fourteenth. The workmen averaged three feet a day, resting at night and on Sundays. Indications of oil were met as the tools pierced the rock. Everybody figured that the well would be down to the Tarentum level in time to celebrate Christmas. The company, tired of repeated postponements, did not deluge Drake with money. Losing speculations and sickness had drained his own meagre savings. R. D. Fletcher, the well-known Titusville merchant, and Peter Wilson endorsed his paper for six-hundred dollars to tide over the crisis. The tools pursued the downward road with the eagerness of a sinner headed for perdition, while expectation stood on tiptoe to watch the progress of events.
On Saturday afternoon, August twenty-eighth, 1859, the well had reached the depth of sixty-nine feet, in a coarse sand. Smith and his sons concluded to “lay off” until Monday morning. As they were about to quit the drill dropped six inches into a crevice such as was common in salt-wells. Nothing was thought of this circumstance, the tools were drawn out and all hands adjourned to Titusville. Mr. Smith went to the well on Sunday afternoon to see if it had moved away or been purloined during the night. Peering into the hole he saw fluid within eight or ten feet. A piece of tin-spouting was lying outside. He plugged one end of the spout, let it down by a string and pulled it up. Muddy water? No! It was filled with PETROLEUM!
“The fisherman, unassisted by destiny, could not catch fish in the Tigris.”
That was the proudest hour in “Uncle Billy” Smith’s forty-seven years’ pilgrimage. Not daring to leave the spot, he ran the spout again and again, each time bringing it to the surface full of oil. A straggler out for a stroll approached, heard the story, sniffed the oil and bore the tidings to the village. Darkness was setting in, but the Smith boys sprinted to the scene. When Colonel Drake came down, bright and early next morning, they and their father were guarding three barrels of the precious liquid. The pumping apparatus was adjusted and by noon the well commenced producing at the rate of twenty barrels a day! The problem of the ages was solved, the agony ended and petroleum fairly launched upon its astonishing career.
The news flew like a Dakota cyclone. Villagers and country-folk flocked to the wonderful well. Smith wrote to Peterson, his former employer: “Come quick, there’s oceans of oil!” Jonathan Watson jumped on a horse and galloped down the creek to lease the McClintock farm, where Nathanael Cary dipped oil and a timbered crib had been constructed. Henry Potter, still a citizen of Titusville, tied up the lands for miles along the stream, hoping to interest New York capital. William Barnsdall secured the farm north of the Willard. George H. Bissell, who had arranged to be posted by telegraph, bought all the Pennsylvania Rock-Oil stock he could find and in four days was at the well. He leased farm after farm on Oil Creek and the Allegheny River, regardless of surface-indications or the admonition of meddling wiseacres.
The rush for property resembled the wild scramble of the children when the Pied Piper of Hamelin blew his fatal reed. Titusville was in a whirlpool of excitement. Buildings arose as if by magic, the hamlet became a borough and the borough a city of fifteen-thousand inhabitants. Maxwell Titus sold lots at two-hundred dollars, people acquired homes that doubled in value and speculation held undisputed sway. Jonathan Titus, from whom it was named, lived to witness the farm he cleared transformed into “The Queen City,” noted for its tasteful residences, excellent schools, manufactories, refineries and active population. One of his neighbors in the bush was Samuel Kerr, whose son Michael went to Congress and served as Speaker of the House. Many enterprising men settled in Titusville for the sake of their families. They paved the streets, planted shade-trees, fostered local industries, promoted culture and believed in public improvements. When Christine Nilsson enraptured sixteen-hundred well-dressed, appreciative listeners in the Parshall Opera-House, the peerless songstress could not refrain from saying that she never saw an audience so keen to note the finer points of her performance and so discriminating in its applause. “Praise from Sir Hubert is praise indeed” and the compliment of the Swedish Nightingale compressed a whole encyclopedia into a sentence. Titusville has had its ups and downs, but there is no more desirable place in the State.
“Auld Ayr, wham ne’er a town surpasses.”
