X. UP THE WINDING RIVER…

X. UP THE WINDING RIVER

ALONG THE ALLEGHENY FROM OIL CREEK—THE FIRST PETROLEUM COMPANY’S BIG STRIKE—RULER OF PRESIDENT—FAGUNDAS, TIDIOUTE AND TRIUMPH HILL—THE ECONOMITES—WARREN AND FOREST—CHERRY GROVE’S BOMBSHELL—SCOUTS AND MYSTERY WELLS—EXCITING EXPERIENCES IN THE MIDDLE FIELD—DRAINING A JUICY SECTION OF OILDOM.

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“The ocean is vast and our craft is small.”—Norman Gunnison.

“Heaven sends us good meat, but the devil sends cooks.”—Garrick.

“Stay, stay thy crystal tide, Sweet Allegheny! I would by thee abide, Sweet Allegheny.”—Marjorie Meade.

“Keep account of crises and transactions in this life.”—Mrs. Browning.

“Five minutes in a crisis is worth years.”—Freeman Hunt.

“It does upset a man’s calculations most confoundedly.”—Grant Allen.

“Run if you like, but try to keep your breath.”—Holmes.

“Then it was these Philistine sinners’ turn to be skeered and they broke for the brush.”—Dr. Pierson.

“And all may do what has by man been done.”—Edward Young.

“Spurr’d boldly on and dashed through thick and thin.”—Dryden.

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In transforming the unfruitful, uninteresting Valley of Oil Creek into the rich, attractive Valley of Petroleum the course of developments was southward from the Drake well. Although some persons imagined that a pool or a strip bordering the stream would be the limit of successful operations, others entertained broader ideas and believed the petroleum-sun was not doomed to rise and set on Oil Creek. The Evans well at Franklin confirmed this view. Naturally the Allegheny River was regarded with favor as the base of further experiments. Quite as naturally the town at the junction of the river and the creek was benefited. The Michigan Rock-Oil-Company laid out building-lots and Oil City grew rapidly in wealth, ambition, enterprise and population. From a half-dozen dwellings, two unbridged streams, the remnants of an iron-furnace and a patch of cleared land on the flats it speedily advanced to a hustling settlement of five-thousand souls, “out for the stuff” and all eager for profit. Across the Allegheny, on the Downing and Bastian farms, William L. Lay laid out the village of Laytonia in 1863 and improved the ferriage. Phillips & Vanausdall, who struck a thirty-barrel well on the Downing farm in 1861, established a ferry above Bastian’s and started the suburbs of Albion and Downington. In 1865 these were merged into Imperial City, which in 1866 was united with Laytonia and Leetown to form Venango City. In 1871 the boroughs of Venango City and Oil City were incorporated as the city of Oil City, with William M. Williams as mayor. Three passenger-bridges, one railroad bridge and an electric street-railway connect the north and south sides of the “Hub of Oildom.” Beautiful homes, first-class schools and churches, spacious business-blocks, paved streets, four railroads, electric-lights, water-works, pipe-line offices, strong banks, enormous tube-works, huge refineries, bright newspapers, a paid fire-department, all the modern conveniences and twelve-thousand clever people make Oil City one of the busiest and most desirable towns in or out of Pennsylvania.

The largest of twenty-five or thirty wells drilled around Walnut Bend, six miles up the river, in 1860-65, was rated at two-hundred barrels. Four miles farther, two miles north-east of the mouth of Pithole Creek, John Henry settled on the north bank of the river in 1802. Henry’s Bend perpetuates the name of this brave pioneer, who reared a large family and died in 1858. The farm opposite Henry’s, at the crown of the bend, Heydrick Brothers, of French Creek township, leased in the fall of 1859. Jesse Heydrick organized the Wolverine Oil-Company, the second ever formed to drill for petroleum. Thirty shares of stock constituted its capital of ten-thousand-five-hundred dollars. The first well, one-hundred-and-sixty feet deep, pumped only ten barrels a day, giving Wolverine shares a violent chill. The second, also sunk in 1860, at three-hundred feet flowed fifteen-hundred barrels! Beside this giant the Drake well was a midget. The Allegheny had knocked out Oil Creek at a stroke, the production of the Heydrick spouter doubling that of all the others in the region put together. It was impossible to tank the oil, which was run into a piece of low ground and formed a pond through which yawl-boats were rowed fifty rods! By this means seven-hundred barrels a day could be saved. At last the tubing was drawn, which decreased the yield and rendered pumping necessary. The well flowed and pumped about one-hundred-thousand barrels, doing eighty a day in 1864-5, when the oldest producer in Venango county. It was a celebrity in its time and proved immensely profitable. In December of 1862 Jesse Heydrick went to Irvine, forty miles up the river, to float down a cargo of empty barrels. Twenty-five miles from Irvine, on the way back, the river was frozen from bank to bank. He sawed a channel a mile, ran the barrels to the well, filled them, loaded them in a flat-boat and arrived at Pittsburg on a cold Saturday before Christmas. Oil was scarce, the zero-weather having prevented shipments, and he sold at thirteen dollars a barrel. A thaw set in, the market was deluged with crude and in four days the price dropped to two dollars! Stock-fluctuations had no business in the game with petroleum.

Wolverine shares climbed out of sight. Mr. Heydrick bought the whole batch, the lowest costing him four-thousand dollars and the highest fifteen-thousand. He sold part of his holdings on the basis of fifteen-hundred-thousand dollars for the well and farm of two-hundred acres, forty-three-thousand times the original value of the land! Heydrick Brothers bored seventy wells on three farms in President township, one of which cost eighteen months’ labor and ten-thousand dollars in money and produced nine barrels of oil. They disposed of it, the new owner fussed with it and for five years received fifteen barrels of oil a day.

Accidents and incidents resulting from the Wolverine operations would fill a dime-novel. Jesse Heydrick, organizer of the company, went east with two or three-hundred-thousand dollars, presumably to “play Jesse” with the bulls and bears of Wall Street. He returned in a year or more destitute of cash, but loaded with entertaining tales of adventure. He told a thrilling story of his abduction from a New-York wharf and shipment to Cuba by a band of kidnappers, who stole his money and treated him harshly. He endured severe hardships and barely escaped with his life and a mine of experience. Working his way north, he resumed surveying, prepared valuable maps of the Butler field and was a standard authority on oil-matters in the district. For years he was connected with a pipe-line in Ohio, returning thence to Butler, his present residence, to engage in oil-operations. Mr. Heydrick is cultured and social, brimful of information and interesting recitals, and not a bilious crank who thinks the world is growing worse because he lost a fortune. A brother at Franklin was president of the Oil-City Bank, incorporated in 1864 as a bank of issue and forced to the wall in 1866, and served a year on the Supreme Bench. James Heydrick was a skilled surveyor and Charles W. resided at the old homestead on French Creek. Heydrick Brothers were “the Big Four” in developments that brought the Allegheny-River region into the petroleum-column. It is singular that the Heydrick well, located at random thirty-seven years ago, was the largest ever struck on the banks of the zig-zagged, ox-bowed stream.

It set the pace to serve as an example, But not another could come up to sample.

Eight rods square on the Heydrick tract leased for five-thousand dollars and fifty per cent. of the oil, while the Wolverine shares attested the increasing wealth of the oil-interest and the pitch to which oil-stocks might rise. Hussey & McBride secured the Henry farm and obtained a large production in 1860-1. The Walnut Tree and Orchard wells headed the list. Warren & Brother pumped oil from Pithole to Henryville, a small town on the flats, of whose houses, hotels, stores and shipping-platforms no scrap survives. The Commercial Oil-Company bought the Culbertson farm, above Henry, and drilled extensively on Muskrat and Culbertson Runs. Patrick McCrea, the first settler on the river between Franklin and Warren, the first Allegheny ferryman north of Franklin and the first Catholic in Venango county, migrated from Virginia in 1797 to the wilds of North-western Pennsylvania. C. Curtiss purchased the McCrea tract of four-hundred acres in 1861 and stocked it in the Eagle Oil-Company of Philadelphia. Fair wells were found on the property and the town of Eagle Rock attained the dignity of three-hundred buildings. An eagle could fly away with all that is left of the town and the wells.

Farther along Robert Elliott, who removed from Franklin, owned one-thousand acres on the south side of the river and built the first mill in President township. Rev. Ralph Clapp built a blast-furnace in 1854-5, a mile from the mouth of Hemlock Creek, at the junction of which with the Allegheny a big hotel, a store and a shop are situated. Mr. Clapp gained distinction in the pulpit and in business, served in the Legislature and died in 1865. His son, Edwin E. Clapp, had a block of six-thousand acres, the biggest slice of undeveloped territory in Oildom. Productive wells have been sunk on the river-front, but Clapp invariably refused to sell or lease except once. To Kahle Brothers, for the sake of his father’s friendship for their father, he leased two-hundred acres, on which many good wells are yielding nicely. Preferring to keep his own lands untouched until he “got good and ready,” he operated largely at Tidioute, he and his brother, John M. Clapp, acquiring great wealth. He was chairman of the Producers’ Council and active in the memorable movements of 1871-3. He built for his home the President Hotel, furnishing it with every comfort and luxury except the one no bachelor can possess. From him Macadam, Talbot and Nicholson could have learned much about road-making. At his own expense he constructed many a mile of first-class roads in President, grading, ditching and leveling in a fashion to make a bicycler’s mouth water. There was not a scintilla of pride or affectation in his composition. It is told that an agent of the Standard Oil-Company appointed a time to meet him “on important business.” The interview lasted two minutes. “What is the business?” interrogated Clapp. “Our company authorizes me to offer you one-million dollars for your lands in President and I am prepared to pay you the money.” “Anything else?” “No.” “Well, the land isn’t for sale; good-morning!” Off went Clapp as coolly as though he had merely received a bid for a bushel of potatoes. Whether true or not, the story is characteristic. As a friend to swear by, a helper of the poor, a believer in fair-play, a prime joker and an inimitable weaver of comic yarns few could equal, none excel, the “President of President.” He died in July, 1897.

Around Tionesta, the county-seat of Forest, numerous holes were punched. Thomas Mills, who operated in Ohio and missed opening the Sistersville field by a scratch, drilled in 1861-2. The late George S. Hunter—he built Tionesta’s first bridge and ought to have a monument for enterprise—hunted earnestly for paying territory. Up Tionesta Creek operations extended slowly, but developments in 1882-3 atoned for the delay. Then Forest county was “the cynosure of all eyes,” each week springing fresh surprises. Balltown had a crop of dry-holes, followed by wells of all grades from twenty barrels to fifteen-hundred. At Henry’s Mills and on the Cooper lands, north-east of Balltown and running into Warren county, spouters were decidedly in vogue. Reno No. 1 well, finished in December of 1882, flowed twenty-eight-hundred barrels! Reno No. 2, McCalmont Oil-Company’s No. 1, Patterson’s and the Anchor Oil-Company’s No. 14 went over the fifteen-hundred mark. In the midst of these gushers Melvin, Walker & Shannon’s duster indicated spotted territory, uncertain as the verdict of a petit jury. The Forest splurge held the entire oil-trade on the ragged edge for months. Every time one or more fellows took to the woods to manipulate a wildcat-well oil took a tumble. Notwithstanding the magnitude of the business, with thirty-six-million barrels of oil in stock and untold millions of dollars invested, the report from Balltown or Cooper of a new strike caused a bad break. Some owners of important wells worked them as “mysteries” to “milk the trade.” Derricks were boarded tightly, armed men kept intruders from approaching too near and information was withheld or falsified until the gang of manipulators “worked the market.” To offset this leading dealers employed “scouts,” whose mission was to get correct news at all hazards. The duties of these trusty fellows involved great labor, night watches, incessant vigilance and sometimes personal danger. The “mystery” racket and the introduction of “scouts” were new elements in the business, necessitated by the peculiar tactics of a small clique whose methods were not always creditable. The passing of the Forest field, which declined with unprecedented rapidity, practically ended the system that had terrorized the oil-exchanges in New York, Oil City, Bradford and Pittsburg. The collapse of the Cooper pool was more unexpected than the striking of a gusher would be under any circumstances. Its influence upon oil-values was ridiculously disproportionate to its merits, just as the tail sometimes wags the dog.

Closely allied to Balltown and Cooper in its principal features, its injurious effects and sudden depreciation, was the field that taught the Forest lesson. On May nineteenth, 1882, the oil-trade was paralyzed by the report of a big well in Cherry-Grove township, Warren county, miles from previous developments. The general condition of the region was prosperous, with an advancing market and a favorable outlook. The new well—the famous “646”—struck the country like a cyclone. Nobody had heard a whisper of the finding of oil in the hole George Dimick was drilling near the border of Warren and Forest. The news that it was flowing twenty-five-hundred barrels flashed over the wires with disastrous consequences. The excitement in the oil-exchanges, as the price of certificates dropped thirty to fifty per cent. in a few moments, was indescribable. Margins and small-fry holders were wiped out in a twinkling and the losses aggregated millions. It was a panic of the first water, far-reaching and ruinous. A plunge from one-thirty to fifty-five cents for crude meant distress and bankruptcy to thousands of producers and persons carrying oil. Men comfortably off in the morning were beggared by noon. Other wells speedily followed “646.” The Murphy, the Mahoopany and scores more swelled the daily yield to thirty-thousand barrels. Five-hundred wells were rushed down with the utmost celerity. Big companies bought lands at big prices and operated on a big scale. Pipe-lines were laid, iron-tanks erected and houses reared by the hundred. Cherry Grove dwarfed the richest portions of the region into insignificance. It bade fair to swamp the business, to flood the world with cheap oil, to compel the abandonment of entire districts and to crush the average operator. But if the rise of Cherry Grove was vividly picturesque, its fall was startlingly phenomenal. One dark December morning the workmen noticed that the Forest Oil-Company’s largest gusher had stopped flowing. Within a week the disease had spread like an epidemic. Spouters ceased to spout and obstinately declined to pump. The yield was counted by dozens of barrels instead of thousands. In January one-fourth the wells were deserted and the machinery removed. Three-hundred wells on April first yielded hardly two-thousand barrels, three-quarters what “646” or the Murphy had done alone! The suddenness of the topple cast Oil Creek into the shade and eclipsed Pithole itself. Piles of junk represented miles of pipe-lines and acres of tanks. The Cooper fever was breaking out and, with Henry’s Mills and Balltown, repeated in 1883 the hurrah of 1882. For eleven months the Forest-Warren pools fretted and fumed, producing five-million barrels of oil and having the trade by the throat. In that brief period Cherry Grove came and went, Cooper threatened and subsided, and Balltown was bowled out. Nine-tenths of the operators figured as heavy losers. Pennsylvania’s production shrank from ninety-thousand barrels to sixty-thousand and a healthy reaction set in. Petroleum-developments often presented remarkable peculiarities, but the strangest of all was the readiness with which speculators time and again fell a prey to the schemes of Forest-Warren jobbers, whose “picture is turned to the wall.”

The professional “oil-scout” first became prominent at Cherry Grove. He was neither an Indian fighter nor a Pinkerton detective, although possessing the courage and sharpness of both. He combined a knowledge of woodcraft and human-nature with keen discernment, acute judgment and infinite patience. S. B. Hughes, J. C. Tennent, P. C. Boyle, J. C. McMullen, Frank H. Taylor, Joseph Cappeau, James Emery and J. H. Rathbun were captains in the good work of worrying and circumventing the “mystery” men. Hughes rendered service that won the confidence of his employers and brought him a competence. Never caught napping, for one special feat he was said to have received ten-thousand dollars. It was not uncommon for him and his comrades to keep their boots on a week at a stretch, to snatch a nap under a tree or on a pile of casing, to creep on all-fours inside the guard-lines and watch pale Luna wink merrily and the bright stars twinkle while reclining on the damp ground to catch the faintest sound from a mystified well. Boyle and Tennent made brilliant plays in the campaign of 1882-3. Captain J. T. Jones, failing to get correct information regarding “646,” lost heavily on long oil when the Cherry-Grove gusher hypnotized the market and sent Tennent from Bradford to size up the wells and the movements of those manipulating them. Michael Murphy, learning that Grace & Dimick were quietly drilling a wildcat-well on lot 646, smelled a large-sized rodent and concluded to share in the sport. For one-hundred dollars an acre and one-eighth the usufruct Horton, Crary & Co., the Sheffield tanners, sold him lot 619, north-east of 646. Murphy had cut his eye-teeth as an importer—John S. Davis was his partner—of oil-barrels, an exporter of crude and an operator at Bradford. He pushed a well on the south-west corner of his purchase and secured lands in the vicinity. Grace & Dimick held back their well a month to tie up lots and complete arrangements regarding the market. Everything was managed adroitly. The trade had not a glimmer of suspicion that a bombshell might be fired at any moment. Murphy’s rig burned down on May fifteenth, he was in Washington trying to close a deed for another tract and “646” was put through the sand. On June second Murphy’s No. 1, which he guarded strictly after rebuilding the rig, flowed sixteen-hundred barrels. His No. 2, finished on July third, flowed thirty-six-hundred barrels in twenty-four hours! The Mahoopany and a half-dozen others aided in the demoralization of prices. Murphy sold eighty acres of lot 619 for fifty-thousand dollars to the McCalmont Oil-Company. The Anchor Oil-Company’s gusher on lot 647 caught fire, without curtailing the flow, and was burning furiously as “Jim” Tennent arrived from Bradford. The scouts had their hands full, with the “white-sand pools” and the keenest masters of “mystery wells” to demand their best licks.

Watching Murphy’s dry-hole on lot 633 was Tennent’s initial job. The Whale Oil-Company’s duster on lot 648 next claimed the attention of the scouts. It had been drilled below the sand-level and the tools left at the bottom. On Sunday night, July ninth, 1882, Boyle, Tennent and two companions raised the tools by hand, measured the well with a steel-line and telegraphed their principals that it was dry. This report jumped the market on Monday morning from forty-nine cents to sixty. The Shannon well on the Cooper tract needed constant care and the scouts divided the labor. Tennent and Rathbun one night sought to crawl near the well. A twig snapped off and a guard fired, the ball grazing “Jim’s” ear. In December Boyle and W. C. Edwards drilled Grandin No. 4 below the sand before the owners knew the rock had been reached. Its failure surprised the trade as much as the success of “646.” Boyle actually posted the guards to keep intruders away and they refused to let W. W. Hague, an owner of the well, inside the line until the contractor appeared and permitted him to pass! Boyle and Tennent did fine work north of the Cooper field. At the Shultz well Tennent, in order to make a quick trip of a half-mile to the pipe-line telegraph, clung to the tail of Cappeau’s horse and kept up with the animal’s gallop. Mercury might not have endorsed that style of locomotion, but it served the purpose and got the news to Jones ahead of everybody else. Tennent played the market skillfully, cleared twenty-five-thousand dollars on Macksburg lands and operated with tolerable success in McKean county. Nine years ago he removed to his thousand-acre prairie-farm in Kansas, the land of sockless statesman and nimble grasshoppers.

Boyle, brimful of novel resources, puzzled the “mystery” chaps by his bold ingenuity and usually beat them at their own game. He squarely overmatched the field-marshals of manipulation. His fertile brain originated the plan of drilling Grandin No. 4 and other test wells. The night he went to drill the Grace well through the sand he paid the ferryman at Dunham’s Mills not to answer any calls until morning, thus cutting off all chance of pursuit and surprise. At the well Boyle wrote an order to deliver the well to Tennent, signing it Pickwick, and the drillers retired to bed! Somebody had been there before them and poured back the sand-pumpings. At the Patterson well Boyle devised a code of tin-horn signals that outwitted the men inside the derrick and flashed the result to Gusher City. The number of expedients continually devised was a marvel. Thanks to the energy and ability of these tireless scouts, of whose midnight exploits, wild rides, hairbreadth escapes and queer adventures many pages could be written, the effect of “mysteries” was frequently neutralized and at length the whole system of guarded wells, bull-dogs and shot-guns was eliminated.

The Forest-Warren white-sand pools marked a new era in developments, with new ideas and new methods to hoodoo speculation. Cherry Grove had wilted from twenty-five-thousand barrels in September to three-thousand in December, when Cooper Hill loomed above the horizon and Balltown appeared on deck. Shallow wells had been sunk far up Tionesta Creek in 1862-3. Near the two dwellings, saw-mill, school-house and barn dubbed Foxburg, the stamping-ground of deer-hunters and bark-peelers, Marcus Hulings—his name is a synonym for successful wildcatting—in 1876 drilled a well that smacked of oil. The derrick stood ten years and globules of grease bubbled up from the depths, a thousand feet beneath. C. A. Shultz, a piano-tuner, taking his cue from the Hulings well, interested Frederick Morck, a Warren jeweler, and leased the Fox estate and contiguous lands in 1881. The Blue-Jay and two Darling wells, small producers, created a ripple which dry-holes evaporated. They were on Warrant 2991, Howe township, known to fame as the Cooper tract, north-west of Foxburg. The conditions of the lease required a well at the western end of the warrant. Cherry Grove was at its zenith, crude was flirting with the fifties and operators considered the Blue-Jay chick a lean bird. J. Mainwaring leased one-hundred acres from Morck & Shultz and built a rig at the head of a wild ravine, in the sunless woodland, a half-mile from Tionesta Creek. He lost faith and the Mainwaring lease and rig passed to P. M. Shannon, of Bradford. Born in Clarion county, Philip Martin Shannon enlisted at fourteen, served gallantly through the war, traveled as salesman for a Pittsburg house and in 1870 cast his lot with the oilmen at Parker. A pioneer at Millerstown and its burgess in 1874, he filled the office capably and in 1876 received a big majority at the Republican primary for the legislative nomination. The county-ring counted him out. He drifted with the tide to Bullion, removed to Bradford in 1879, was elected mayor in 1885 and discharged his official duties with excellent discretion. Temperate in habits and upright in conduct, Mayor Shannon had been an observer and not a participant in the nether side of oil-region life and knew where to draw the line. He was a favorite in society, high in Masonic circles and efficient in securing lands for firms with which he had become connected. Pittsburg is now his home and he manages the company that is developing the Wyoming field. Mr. Shannon is always generous and courteous. He could give a scout “the marble heart,” lecture an offender, denounce a wrong or decline to furnish points regarding his mystery-well in a good-natured way that disarmed criticism. He retains his old-time geniality and prosperity has not compelled him to buy hats three sizes larger than he wore at Parker and Millerstown “in the days of auld lang-syne.”

A. B. Walker and T. J. Melvin joined Shannon in his Cooper venture. A road was cut through the dense forest from the Fox farm-house up the steep hill to the Mainwaring derrick. An engine and boiler were dragged to the spot and Captain Haight contracted to drill the hole. Melvin and Walker, believing the well a failure at eighteen-hundred feet, went to Cherry Grove on July twenty fifth, 1882. Shannon stayed to urge the drill a trifle farther and it struck the sand at one o’clock next day. He drove in two pine-plugs, sent a messenger for his partners and filled the well with water to shut in the oil. The well wouldn’t consent to be plugged and drowned. The stream broke loose at three o’clock, hurling the tools and plugs into the Forest ozone. Shannon and Haight, standing in the derrick, narrowly escaped death as the tools crashed through the roof and fell to the floor. More plugs, sediment and old clothes were jammed down to conceal the true inwardness of the well, news of which was expected to pulverize the market. Heavy flows following the expulsion of the tools led the owners to anticipate a big strike. Outposts were established and guards, each armed with a Winchester rifle, were changed every six hours. The wildcat-well, eight miles from a telegraph-wire, became an entrenched camp with a half-dozen wakeful scouts besieging the citadel. Vicksburg was not guarded more vigilantly. If a twig cracked or an owl hooted a shower of bullets whizzed in the direction of the noise. Through August the well was permitted to slumber, oil that forced a passage in spite of the obstructions running into pits inside “the dead-line.” The trade staggered under the adverse fear of the mystery. Bradford operators formed a syndicate with the owners in lands and speculation and sold a million barrels of crude short. When everything was ready to spring the trap some of the parties went to drill out the plugs and usher in the market-crusher. “We have a jack-pot to open at our pleasure” remarked one of them, voicing the sentiment of all. None looked for anything smaller than fifteen-hundred barrels. The four drillers were discharged and two trusted lieutenants turned the temper-screw and dressed the bits. Ten plugs and a mass of dirt must be cleaned out. From a distance the scouts timed every motion of the walking-beam, gluing their eyes to field-glasses that not a symptom of a flow might slip their eager gaze, “like stout Cortez when he stared at the Pacific upon a peak in Darien.” Swift horses were fastened to convenient trees, saddled and bridled for a race to the telegraph-office. A slice of bread and a can of beans served for food. For days the drilling continued. On September fourteenth the last splinter of the plugs was extracted, the sand was cut deeper and—the well didn’t respond worth a cent! The faithful scouts, who had stood manfully between the trade and the manipulators, rushed the report. It was a bracer to the market. Bears who pinned their hopes to the Shannon well, the pivot upon which petroleum hinged, scrambled to cover their shorts at heavy loss. Balltown duplicated some of the Cooper experiences, mystery-wells on Porcupine Run agitating the trade in the spring of 1883. The Cherry-Grove, Cooper-Hill and Balltown pools yielded eight or nine-million barrels. Operations extended to Sheffield and the cream was soon skimmed off. The middle field had enjoyed a very lively inning.

Two miles back of Trunkeyville, on the west side of the Allegheny, Calvert, Gilchrist & Risley drilled the Venture well in April, 1870, on the Tuttle farm. Fisher Brothers, of Oil City, and O. D. Harrington, of Titusville, bought the well for fifteen-thousand dollars when it touched the third sand. It was eight-hundred feet deep, flowed three-hundred barrels and started the Fagundas field. The day after it began flowing the Fishers, Adnah Neyhart, Grandin Brothers and David Bently paid one-hundred-and-twenty-thousand dollars for the Fagundas farm of one-hundred-and-sixty acres. Mrs. Fagundas, one son and one daughter died within three months of the sale. Neyhart & Grandin bought a half-interest in David Beatty’s farm for ninety-thousand dollars. The Lady Burns well, on the Wilkins farm, finished in June, seconded the Venture. A daily production of three-thousand barrels and a town of twenty-five-hundred population followed quickly. A mile from Fagundas operations on the Hunter, Pearson, Guild and Berry farms brought the suburb of Gillespie into being. The territory lasted and a small yield is obtained to-day. A half-dozen houses, the Venture derrick, Andrews & Co.’s big store and the office in which whole-souled M. Compton—he’s in Pittsburg with the Forest Oil-Company now—labored as secretary of the Producers’ Council, hold the fort on the site of well-nigh-forgotten Fagundas. William H. Calvert, who projected the Venture well, died at Sistersville, West Virginia, on February seventeenth, 1896. He had drilled on Oil Creek and at Pithole, operated in the southern field and was negotiating for a block of lands near Sistersville when a clot of blood on the brain cut short his active life.

David Beatty had drilled on Oil Creek in 1859-60 with John Fertig. He settled on a farm in Warren county “to get away from the oil.” His farm was smothered in oil by the Fagundas development. He removed to the pretty town of Warren, building an elegant home on the bank of Conewango Creek. Fortune hounded him and insisted upon heaping up his riches. John Bell drilled a fifty-barrel well eighty rods above the mansion. Wells surrounding his lot and in his yard emitted oil. Mr. Beatty resigned himself to the inevitable and lived at Warren until called to his final rest some years ago. His case resembled the heroine in Milton Nobles’s Phenix, where “the villain still pursued her.” The boys used to relate how a negro, the first man to die at Oil City after the advent of petroleum, was buried in a lot on the flats. Somebody wanted that precise spot next day to drill a well and the corpse was planted on the hill-side. The next week that particular location was selected for a well and the body was again exhumed. To be sure of getting out of reach of the drill the friends of the deceased boated his remains down the river to Butler county. Twelve years later the bones were disinterred—an oil-company having leased the old graveyard—and put in the garden of the dead man’s son, to be handy for any further change of base that may be required.

At East Hickory the Foster well, drilled in 1863, flowed three-hundred barrels of amber oil. Two-hundred wells were sunk in the Hickory district, which proved as tough as Old Hickory to nineteen-twentieths of the operators. Three Hickory Creeks—East Hickory and Little Hickory on the east and West Hickory—enter the river within two miles. Near the mouth of West Hickory three Scotchmen named McKinley bored a well two-hundred-and-thirty feet in 1861. They found oil and were preparing to tube the well when the war broke out and they abandoned the field. A well on the flats, drilled in 1865, flowed two-hundred barrels of lubricating oil, occasioning a furore. One farm sold for a hundred-thousand dollars and adjacent lands were snapped up eagerly.

Ninety-five years ago hardy lumbermen settled permanently in Deerfield township, Warren county, thirty miles above the mouth of Oil Creek. Twenty years later a few inhabitants, supported by the lumber trade, had collected near the junction of a small stream with the Allegheny. Bold hills, grand forests, mountain rills and the winding river, sprinkled with green islets, invested the spot with peculiar charms. Upon the creek and hamlet the poetic Indian name of Tidioute, signifying a cluster of islands, was fittingly bestowed. Samuel Grandin, who located near Pleasantville, Venango county, in 1822, removed to Tidioute in 1839. He owned large tracts of timber-lands and increased the mercantile and lumbering operations that gave him prominence and wealth. Mr. Grandin maintained a high character and died at a ripe age. His oldest son, John Livingston Grandin, returned from college in 1857 and engaged in business with his father, assuming almost entire control when the latter retired from active pursuits. News of Col. Drake’s well reached the four-hundred busy residents of the lumber-center in two days. Col. Robinson, of Titusville, rehearsed the story of the wondrous event to an admiring group in Samuel Grandin’s store. Young J. L. listened intently, saddled his horse and in an hour purchased thirty acres of the Campbell farm, on Gordon Run, below the village, for three-hundred dollars. An “oil-spring” on the property was the attraction. Next morning he contracted with H. H. Dennis, a man of mechanical skill, to drill a well “right in the middle of the spring.” The following day a derrick—four pieces of scantling—towered twenty feet, a spring-pole was procured, the “spring” was dug to the rock, and the “tool” swung at the first oil-well in Warren county and among the first in Pennsylvania. Dennis hammered a drilling-tool from a bar of iron three feet long, flattening one end to cut two-and-a-half inches, the diameter of the hole. In the upper end of the drill he formed a socket, to hold an inch-bar of round iron, held by a key riveted though and lengthened as the depth required. Two or three times a day, when the “tool” was drawn out to sharpen the bit and clean the hole, the key had to be cut off at each joint! With this rude outfit drilling began the first week of September, 1859, and the last week of October the well was down one-hundred-and-thirty-four feet. Tubing would not go into the hole and it was enlarged to four inches. The discarded axle of a tram-car, used to carry lumber from Gordon Run to the river, furnished iron for the reamer. Days, weeks and months were consumed at this task. At last, when the hole had been enlarged its full depth, the reamer was let down “to make sure the job was finished.” It stuck fast, never saw daylight again and the well sunk with so much labor had not one drop of oil!

Other wells in the locality fared similarly, none finding oil nearer than Dennis Run, a half-mile distant. There scores of large wells realized fortunes for their owners. In two years James Parshall was a half-million ahead. He settled at Titusville and built the Parshall House—a mammoth hotel and opera-house—which fire destroyed. The “spring” on the Campell farm is in existence and the gravel is impregnated with petroleum, supposed to percolate through fissures in the rocks from Dennis Run.

During the summer of 1860 developments extended across and down the river a mile from Tidioute. The first producing well in the district, owned by King & Ferris, of Titusville, started in the fall at three-hundred barrels and boomed the territory amazingly. It was on the W. W. Wallace lands—five-hundred acres below town—purchased in 1860 by the Tidioute & Warren Oil-Company, the third in the world. Samuel Grandin, Charles Hyde and Jonathan Watson organized it. J. L. Grandin, treasurer and manager of the company, in eight years paid the stockholders twelve-hundred-thousand dollars dividends on a capital of ten-thousand! He leased and sub-leased farms on both sides of the Allegheny, drilling some dry-holes, many medium wells and a few large ones. He shipped crude to the seaboard, built pipe-lines and iron-tanks and became head of the great firm of Grandins & Neyhart. Elijah Bishop Grandin—named from the father of C. E. Bishop, founder of the Oil-City Derrick—who had carried on a store at Hydetown and operated at Petroleum Centre, resumed his residence at Tidioute in 1867 and associated with his brother and brother-in-law, Adnah Neyhart, in producing, buying, storing and transporting petroleum. Mr. Neyhart and Joshua Pierce, of Philadelphia, had drilled on Cherry Run, on Dennis Run and at Triumph and engaged largely in shipping oil to the coast. Pierce & Neyhart—J. L. Grandin was their silent partner—dissolved in 1869. The firm of Grandins & Neyhart, organized in 1868, was marvelously successful. Its high standing increased confidence in the stability of financial and commercial affairs in the oil-regions. The brothers established the Grandin Bank and Neyhart, besides handling one-fourth of the crude produced in Pennsylvania, opened a commission-house in New York to sell refined, under the skilled management of John D. Archbold, now vice-president of the Standard Oil-Company. They and the Fisher Brothers owned the Dennis Run and Triumph pipe-lines and piped the oil from Fagundas, where they drilled a hundred prolific wells and were the largest operators. They bought properties in different portions of the oil-fields, extended their pipe-lines to Titusville and erected tankage at Parker and Miller Farm. The death of Mr. Neyhart terminated their connection with oil-shipments.

“There is no parley with death.”

Owning thousands of acres in Warren and Forest counties, the Grandins were heavily interested in developments at Cherry Grove, Balltown and Cooper. As those sections declined they gradually withdrew from active oil-operations, sold their pipe-lines and wound up their bank. J. L. Grandin removed to Boston and E. B. to Washington, to embark in new enterprises and enjoy, under most favorable conditions, the fruits of their prosperous career at Tidioute. Their business for ten years has been chiefly loaning money, farming and lumbering in the west. They purchased seventy-two-thousand acres in the Red-River Valley of Dakota—known the world over as “the Dalrymple Farm”—and in 1895 harvested six-hundred-thousand bushels of wheat and oats. They employ hundreds of men and horses, scores of ploughs and reapers and steam-threshers and illustrate how to farm profitably on the biggest scale. With Hunter & Cummings, of Tidioute, and J. B. White, of Kansas City, as partners, they organized the Missouri-Lumber-and-Mining-Company. The company owns two-hundred-and-forty-thousand acres of timber-land in Missouri and cut fifty-million feet of lumber last year in its vast saw-mills at Grandin, Carter county. Far-seeing, clear-headed, of unblemished repute and liberal culture, such men as J. L. and E. B. Grandin reflect honor upon humanity and deserve the success an approving conscience and the popular voice commend heartily.

Above Tidioute a number of “farmers’ wells”—shallow holes sunk by hand and soon abandoned—flickered and collapsed. On the islands in the river small wells were drilled, most of which the great flood of 1865 destroyed. Opposite the town, on the Economite lands, operations began in 1860. Steam-power was used for the first time in drilling. The wells ranged from five barrels to eighty, at one-hundred-and-fifty feet. They belonged to the Economites, a German society that enforced celibacy and held property in common. About 1820 the association founded the village of Harmony, Butler county, having an exclusive colony and transacting business with outsiders through the medium of two trustees. The members wore a plain garb and were distinguished for morality, simplicity, industry and strict religious principles. Leaving Harmony, they located in the Wabash Valley, lost many adherents, returned to Pennsylvania and built the town of Economy, in Beaver county, fifteen miles below Pittsburg. They manufactured silks and wine, mined coal and accumulated millions of dollars. A loan to William Davidson, owner of eight-thousand acres in Limestone township, Warren county, obliged them to foreclose the mortgage and bid in the tract. Their notions of economy applied to the wells, which they numbered alphabetically. The first, A well, yielded ten barrels, B pumped fifty and C flowed seventy. The trustees, R. L. Baker and Jacob Henrici, erected a large boarding-house for the workmen, whose speech and manners were regulated by printed rules. Pine and oak covered the Davidson lands, which fronted several miles on the Allegheny and stretched far back into the township. Of late years the Economite Society has been disintegrating, until its membership has shrunk to a dozen aged men and women. Litigation and mismanagement have frittered away much of its property. It seems odd that an organization holding “all things in common” should, by the perversity of fate, own some of the nicest oil-territory in Warren, Butler and Beaver counties. A recent strike on one of the southern farms flows sixty barrels an hour. Natural gas lighted and heated Harmony and petroleum appears bound to stick to the Economites until they have faded into oblivion.

Below the Economite tract numerous wells strove to impoverish the first sand. G. I. Stowe’s, drilled in 1860, pumped eight barrels a day for six years. The Hockenburg, named from a preacher who wrote an essay on oil, averaged twelve barrels a day in 1861. The Enterprise Mining-and-Boring-Company of New-York leased fifteen rods square on the Tipton farm to sink a shaft seven feet by twelve. Bed-rock was reached at thirty feet, followed by ten feet of shale, ten of gray sand, forty of slate and soap-rock and twenty of first sand. The shaft, cribbed with six-inch plank to the bottom of the first sand, tightly caulked to keep out water, was abandoned at one-hundred-and-sixty feet, a gas-explosion killing the superintendent and wrecking the timbers. Of forty wells on the Tipton farm in 1860-61 not a fragment remained in 1866.

Tidioute’s laurel wreath was Triumph Hill, the highest elevation in the neighborhood. Wells nine-hundred feet deep pierced sixty feet of oil-bearing sand, which produced steadily for years. Grandins, Fisher Brothers, M. G. Cushing, E. E. Clapp, John M. Clapp and other leading operators landed bounteous pumpers. The east side of the hill was a forest of derricks, crowded like trees in a grove. Over the summit and down the west side the sand and the development extended. For five years Triumph was busy and prosperous, yielding hundreds-of-thousands of barrels of oil and advancing Tidioute to a town of five-thousand population. Five churches, the finest school-buildings in the county, handsome houses, brick blocks, superior hotels and large stores greeted the eye of the visitor. The Grandin Block, the first brick structure, built of the first brick made in Deerfield township, contained an elegant opera-house. Three banks, three planing-mills, two foundries and three machine-shops flourished. A dozen refineries turned out merchantable kerosene. Water-works were provided and an iron bridge spanned the river. Good order was maintained and Tidioute—still a tidy village—played second fiddle to no town in Oildom for intelligence, enterprise and all-round attractiveness.

The tidal wave effervesced at intervals clear to the Colorado district. Perched on a hill in the hemlock woods, Babylon was the rendezvous of sports, strumpets and plug-uglies, who stole, gambled, caroused and did their best to break all the commandments at once. Could it have spoken, what tales of horror that board-house under the evergreen tree might recount! Hapless wretches were driven to desperation and fitted for the infernal regions. Lust and liquor goaded men to frenzy, resulting sometimes in homicide or suicide. In an affray one night four men were shot, one dying in an hour and another in six weeks. Ben. Hogan, who laughed at the feeble efforts of the township-constable to suppress his resort, was arrested, tried for murder and acquitted on the plea of self-defence. The shot that killed the first victim was supposed to have been fired by “French Kate,” Hogan’s mistress. She had led the demi-monde in Washington and led susceptible congressmen astray. Ben met her at Pithole, where he landed in the summer of 1865 and ran a variety-show that would make the vilest on the Bowery blush to the roots of its hair. He had been a prize-fighter on land, a pirate at sea, a bounty-jumper and blockade-runner, and prided himself on his title of the “Wickedest Man in the World.” Sentenced to death for his crimes against the government, President Lincoln pardoned him and he joined the myriad reckless spirits that sought fresh adventures in the Pennsylvania oil-fields. In a few months the Scripture legend—“Babylon has fallen”—applied to the malodorous Warren town. The tiger can “change his spots”—by moving from one spot to another—and so could Hogan. He was of medium height, square-shouldered, stout-limbed, exceedingly muscular and trained to use his fists. He fought Tom Allen at Omaha, sported at Saratoga and in 1872 ran “The Floating Palace”—a boat laden with harlots and whiskey—at Parker. The weather growing too cold and the law too hot for comfort, he opened a den and built an opera-house at Petrolia. In “Hogan’s Castle” many a clever young man learned the short-cut to disgrace and perdition. Now and then a frail girl met a sad fate, but the carnival of debauchery went on without interruption. Hogan put on airs, dressed in the loudest style and would have been the burgess had not the election-board counted him out! A fearless newspaper forcing him to leave Petrolia, Hogan went east to engage in “the sawdust swindle,” returned to the oil-regions in 1875, built an opera-house at Elk City, decamped from Bullion, rooted at Tarport and Bradford and departed by night for New York. Surfeited with revelry and about to start for Paris to open a joint, he heard music at a hall on Broadway and sat down to wait for the show to begin. Charles Sawyer, “the converted soak,” appeared shortly, read a chapter from the Bible and told of his rescue from the gutter. Ben was deeply impressed, signed the pledge at the close of the service, agonized in his room until morning and on his knees implored forgiveness. How surprised the angels must have been at the spectacle of the prodigal in this attitude! After a fierce struggle, to quote his own words, “peace filled my soul chock-full and I felt awful happy.” He claimed to be converted and set to work earnestly to learn the alphabet, that he might read the Scriptures and be an evangelist. He married “French Kate,” who also professed religion, but it didn’t strike in very deep and she eloped with a tough. Mr. Moody welcomed Hogan and advised him to traverse the country to offset as far as possible his former misdeeds. Amid the scenes of his grossest offenses his reception varied. High-toned Christians, who would not touch a down-trodden wretch with a ten-foot pole, turned up their delicate noses and refused to countenance “the low impostor.” They forgot that he sold his jewelry and most of his clothes, lived on bread and water and endured manifold privations to become a bearer of the gospel-message. Even ministers who proclaimed that “the blood of Christ cleanses from all sin” doubted Hogan’s salvation and showed him the cold shoulder in the chilliest orthodox fashion. He stuck manfully and for eighteen years has labored zealously in the vineyard. Judging from his struggles and triumphs, is it too much to believe that a front seat and a golden crown are reserved for the reformed pugilist, felon, robber, assassin of virtue and right bower of Old Nick? Unlike straddlers in politics and piety, who want to go to Heaven on velvet-cushions and pneumatic tires,

“He doesn’t stand on one foot fust, An’ then stand on the other, An’ on which one he feels the wust He couldn’t tell you nuther.”

The expectation of an extension of the belt northward was not fulfilled immediately. Wells at Irvineton, on the Brokenstraw and tributary runs, failed to find the coveted fluid. Captain Dingley drilled two wells on Sell’s Run, three miles east of Irvineton, in 1873, without slitting the jugular. A test well at Warren, near the mouth of Conewango Creek, bored in 1864 and burned as pumping was about to begin, had fair sand and a mite of oil. John Bell’s operations in 1875 opened an amber pool up the creek that for a season crowded the hotels three deep with visitors. They bored dozens of wells, yet the production never reached one-thousand barrels and in four months the patch was cordoned by dry holes and as quiet as a cemetery. The crowds exhaled like morning dew. Warren is a pretty town of four-thousand population, its location and natural advantages offering rare inducements to people of refinement and enterprise. Its site was surveyed in 1795 and the first shipment of lumber to Pittsburg was made in 1801. Incorporated as a borough in 1832, railroad communication with Erie was secured in 1859, with Oil City in 1867 and with Bradford in 1881. Many of the private residences are models of good taste. Massive brick-blocks, solvent banks, churches, stores, high-grade schools, shaded streets and modern conveniences evidence its substantial prosperity. Hon. Thomas Struthers—he built sections of the Philadelphia & Erie and the Oil-Creek railroads and established big iron-works—donated a splendid brick building for a library, opera-house and post-office. His grandson, who inherited his millions and died in February, 1896, was a mild edition of “Coal-Oil Johnnie” in scattering money. Lumbering, the principal industry for three generations, enriched the community. Col. Lewis F. Watson represented the district twice in Congress and left an estate of four-millions, amassed in lumber and oil. He owned most of the township bearing his name. Hon. Charles W. Stone, his successor, ranks with the foremost members of the House in ability and influence. A Massachusetts boy, he set out in life as a teacher, came to Warren to take charge of the academy, was county-superintendent, studied law and rose to eminence at the bar. He was elected Lieutenant-Governor of the State, served as Secretary of the Commonwealth and would be Governor of Pennsylvania to-day had “the foresight of the Republicans been as good as their hindsight.” He has profitable oil-interests, is serving his fourth term in Congress and may be nominated the fifth time. Alike fortunate in his political and professional career, his social relations, his business connections and his personal friendships, Charles W. Stone holds a place in public esteem few men are privileged to attain.

At Clarendon and Stoneham hundreds of snug wells yielded three-thousand barrels a day from a regular sand that did not exhaust readily. Southward the Garfield district held on fairly and a narrow-gauge railroad was built to Farnsworth. The Wardwell pool, at Glade, four miles east of Warren, fizzed after the manner of Cherry Grove, rich in buried hopes and dissipated greenbacks. P. M. Smith and Peter Grace drilled the first well—a sixty-barreler—close to the ferry in July of 1873. Dry-holes and small wells alternated with provoking uncertainty until J. A. Gartland’s twelve-hundred-barrel gusher on the Clark farm, in May of 1885, inaugurated a panic in the market that sent crude down to fifty cents. The same day the Union Oil-Company finished a four-hundred-barrel spouter and May ended with fifty-six wells producing and a score of dusters. June and July continued the refrain, values see-sawing as reports of dry-holes or fifteen-hundred-barrel-strikes, some of them worked as “mysteries,” bamboozled the trade. Wardwell’s production ascended to twelve-thousand barrels and fell by the dizziest jumps to as many hundred, the porous rock draining with the speed of a lightning-calculator. Tiona developed a lasting deposit of superior oil. Kane has a tempting streak, in which Thomas B. Simpson and other Oil-City parties are interested. Gas has been found at Wilcox, Johnsonburg and Ridgway, Elk county, taking a slick hand in the game. Kinzua, four miles north-east of Wardwell, revealed no particular cause why the spirit of mortal ought to be proud. Although Forest and Warren, with a slice of Elk thrown in, were demoralizing factors in 1882-3-4, their aggregate output would only be a light luncheon for the polar bear in McKean county.

The Tidioute belt, varying in narrowness from a few rods to a half-mile, was one of the most satisfactory ever discovered. When lessees fully occupied the flats Captain A. J. Thompson drilled a two-hundred-barrel well on the point, at the junction of Dingley and Dennis Runs. Quickly the summit was scaled and amid drilling wells, pumping wells, oil-tanks and engine-houses the town of Triumph was created. Triumph Hill turned out as much money to the acre as any spot in Oildom. The sand was the thickest—often ninety to one-hundred-and-ten feet—and the purest the oil-region afforded. Some of the wells pumped twenty years. Salt-water was too plentiful for comfort, but half-acre plots were grabbed at one-half royalty and five-hundred dollars bonus. Wells jammed so closely that a man could walk from Triumph to New London and Babylon on the steam-boxes connecting them. Percy Shaw—he built the Shaw House—had a “royal flush” on Dennis Run that netted two-hundred-thousand dollars. From an investment of fifteen-thousand dollars E. E. and J. M. Clapp cleared a half-million.

“Spirits” located the first well at Stoneham and Cornen Brothers’ gasser at Clarendon furnished the key that unlocked Cherry Grove. Gas was piped from the Cornen well to Warren and Jamestown. Walter Horton was the moving spirit in the Sheffield field, holding interests in the Darling and Blue Jay wells and owning forty-thousand acres of land in Forest county. McGrew Brothers, of Pittsburg, spent many thousands seeking a pool at Garland. Grandin & Kelly’s operations below Balltown exploded the theory that oil would not be found on the south side of Tionesta Creek. Cherry Grove was at its apex when, in July of 1884, with Farnsworth and Garfield boiling over, two wells on the Thomas farm, a mile south-east of Richburg, flowed six-hundred barrels apiece. They were among the largest in the Allegany district, but a three-line mention in the Bradford Era was all the notice given the pair.

To the owner of a tract near “646,” who offered to sell it for fifty-thousand dollars, a Bradford operator replied: “I would take it at your figure if I thought my check would be paid, but I’ll take it at forty-five-thousand whether the check is paid or not!” The check was not accepted.

Tack Brothers drilled a dry-hole twenty-six-hundred feet in Millstone township, Elk county. Grandin & Kelly drilled four-thousand feet in Forest county and got lots of geological information, but no oil.

Get off the train at Trunkeyville—a station-house and water-tank—and climb up the hill towards Fagundas. After walking through the woods a mile an opening appears. A man is plowing. The soil looks too poor to raise grasshoppers, yet that man during the oil-excitement refused an offer of sixty-thousand dollars for this farm. His principal reason was that he feared a suitable house into which to move his family could not be obtained! On a little farther a pair of old bull-wheels, lying unused, tells that the once productive Fagundas pool has been reached. A short distance ahead on an eminence is a church. This is South Fagundas. No sound save the crowing of a chanticleer from a distant farm-yard breaks the silence. The merry voices heard in the seventies are no longer audible, the drill and pump are not at work, the dwellings, stores and hotels have disappeared. The deserted church stands alone. A few landmarks linger at Fagundas proper. There is one store and no place where the weary traveler can quench his thirst. The nearest resemblance to a drinking-place is a boy leaning over a barrel drinking rain-water while another lad holds him by the feet. Fagundas is certainly “dry.” The stranger is always taken to the Venture well. Its appearance differs little from that of hundreds of other abandoned wells. The conductor and the casing have not been removed. Robert W. Pimm, who built the rig, still lives at Fagundas. He will be remembered by many, for he is a jovial fellow and was “one of the boys.” The McQuade—the biggest in the field—the Bird and the Red Walking-beam were noted wells. If Dr. Stillson were to hunt up the office where he extracted teeth “without pain” he would find the building used as a poultry-house. Men went to Fagundas poor and departed with sufficient wealth to live in luxury the rest of their lives; others went wealthy and lost everything in a vain search for the greasy fluid. Passing through what was known as Gillespie and traversing three miles of a lonely section, covered with scrub-oak and small pine, Triumph is reached. It is not the Triumph oil-men knew twenty-five years ago, when it had four-thousand population, four good hotels, two drug-stores, four hardware-stores, a half-dozen groceries and many other places of business. No other oil-field ever held so many derricks upon the same area. The Clapp farm has a production of twelve barrels per day. Traces of the town are almost completely blotted out. The pilgrim traveling over the hill would never suspect that a rousing oil-town occupied the farm on which an industrious Swede has a crop of oats. Along Babylon hill, once dotted with derricks thickly as trees in the forest, nothing remains to indicate the spot where stood the ephemeral town.

“We are such stuff as dreams are made of.”

John Henderson, a tall, handsome man, came from the east during the oil-excitement in Warren county and located at Garfield. In a fight at a gambling-house one night George Harkness was thrown out of an upstairs-window and his neck broken. Foul play was suspected, although the evidence implicated no one, and the coroner’s jury returned a verdict of accidental death. Harkness had left a young bride in Philadelphia and was out to seek his fortune. Henderson, feeling in a degree responsible for his death, began sending anonymous letters to the bereaved wife, each containing fifty to a hundred dollars. The letters were first mailed every month from Garfield, then from Bradford, then from Chicago and for three years from Montana. In 1893 she received from the writer of these letters a request for an interview. This was granted, the acquaintance ripened into love and the pair were married! Henderson is a wealthy stockman in Montana. In 1867 an English vessel went to pieces in a terrible storm on the coast of Maine. The captain and many passengers were drowned. Among the saved were two children, the captain’s daughters. One was adopted by a merchant of Dover, N. H. He gave her a good education, she grew up a beautiful woman and it was she who married George Harkness and John Henderson.

Balltown was the chief pet of T. J. Vandergrift, now head and front of the Woodland Oil-Company, and he harvested bushels of money from the middle-field. “Op” Vandergrift is not an apprentice in petroleum. He added to his reputation in the middle-field leading the opposition to the mystery-dodge. Napoleon or Grant was not a finer tactician. His clever plans were executed without a hitch or a Waterloo. He neither lost his temper nor wasted his powder. The man who “fights the devil with fire” is apt to run short of ammunition, but Vandergrift knew the ropes, kept his own counsel, was “cool as a cucumber” and won in an easy canter. He is obliging, social, manfully independent and a zealous worker in the Producers’ Association. It is narrated that he went to New York three years ago to close a big deal for Ohio territory he had been asked to sell. He named the price and was told a sub-boss at Oil City must pass upon the matter. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I am not going to Oil City on any such errand. I came prepared to transfer the property and, if you want it, I shall be in the city until noon to-morrow to receive the money!” The cash—three-hundred-thousand dollars—was paid at eleven o’clock. Mr. Vandergrift has interests in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West-Virginia and Kentucky. He knows a good horse, a good story, a good lease or a good fellow at sight and a wildcat-well does not frighten him off the track. His home is at Jamestown and his office at Pittsburg.

The Anchor Oil-Company’s No. 1, the first well finished near “646,” in Warren county, flowed two-thousand barrels a day on the ground until tanks could be provided. It burned when flowing a thousand barrels and for ten days could not be extinguished. One man wanted to steam it to death, another to drown it, another to squeeze its life out, another to smother it with straw, another to dig a hole and cut off the flow, another to roll a big log over it, another to blow out its brains with dynamite, another to blind it with carbolic acid, another to throw up earth-works and so on until the pestered owners wished five-hundred cranks were in the asylum at North Warren. Pipes were finally attached in such a way as to draw off the oil and the flame died out.

The first funeral at Fagundas was a novelty. A soap-peddler, stopping at the Rooling House one night, died of delirium-tremens. He was put into a rough coffin and a small party set off to inter the corpse. Somebody thought it mean to bury a fellow-creature without some signs of respect. The party returned to the hotel with the body, a large crowd assembled in the evening, flowers decorated the casket, services were conducted and at dead of night two-hundred oil-men followed the friendless stranger to his grave.

This year, at a drilling well near Tiona, the workmen of Contractor Meeley were surprised to strike oil three feet from the surface. A stream of the real stuff flowed over the top of the derrick, scattering seven men who happened to be standing on the floor. Fortunately no fire was about the structure, hence a thorough soaking with seventy-cent crude was the chief damage to the crew and the spectators. Visions of a new sand close to the grass-roots filled the minds of all beholders. At that rate every man, woman, boy, girl and baby who could burrow a yard into the earth might have a paying well. The cool-headed foreman, R. G. Thompson, decided to investigate before ordering tankage and taking down the tools. He discovered that the derrick had been set directly above a six-inch pipe-line, which the bit had punctured, thus letting the oil escape under the heavy pressure of a fifty-ton pump. Word was sent to the pump-station to shut off the flow, a new joint of pipe was put in and drilling proceeded to the third sand without further disturbance.

One bright day in the summer of 1873 an active youth, beardless and boyish in appearance, dropped into Fagundas. With little cash, but no end of energy and pluck, he soon picked up a lease. Fortune smiled upon him and he followed the surging tide to the different pastures as they came into line. He operated at Bradford, Tiona, Clarendon, in Clarion county, in Ohio and Indiana. West Virginia has been his best hold for some years, and the boys all know W. H. Staley as a live oilman, who has stayed with the procession two-dozen years.

Stories of the late E. E. Clapp’s rare humor and rare goodness of heart might be recited by the score. He never grew weary helping the poor and the unfortunate. Once a zealous Methodist minister, whose meagre salary was not half-paid, thought of leaving his mission from lack of support. Clapp heard the tale and handed the good man a sealed envelope, telling him not to open it until he reached home and gave it to his wife. It contained a check for five-hundred-dollars. Like thousands of producers, Clapp was sued by the torpedo-monopoly for alleged infringement of the Roberts patent. Meeting Col. E. A. L. Roberts at Titusville while the suit was pending, he was invited to go through the great building Roberts Brothers were completing. The delegate from President peered into the corners of the first room as though looking for something. The Colonel’s curiosity was aroused and he inquired what the visitor meant. “Oh,” came the quick rejoinder, “I’m only trying to find where the twenty-thousand-dollars I’ve paid you for torpedoes may be built in these walls!” A laugh followed and Roberts proposed to square the suit, which was done forthwith. At a country-fair E. Harvey, the Oil-City music-dealer, played and sang one of Gerald Massey’s sublime compositions with thrilling effect. Among the eager listeners was E. E. Clapp, beside whom stood a farmer’s wife. The woman shouted to Harvey: “Tech it off agin, stranger, but don’t make so much noise yerself!” Poor Harvey—dead long ago—subsided and Clapp took up the expression, which he often quoted at the expense of loquacious acquaintances. Humanity lost a friend when Edwin Emmett Clapp left the smooth roads of President to walk the golden streets of the New Jerusalem.

Up the winding river proved in not a few instances the straight path to a handsome fortune, while some found only shoals and quicksands.

THE AMEN CORNER.

Better a kink in the hair than a kink in the character.

Good creeds are all right, but good deeds are the stuff that won’t shrink in the washing.

Domestic infidelity does more harm than unbelieving infidelity and hearsay knocks heresy galley-west as a mischief-maker.

Stick to the right with iron nerve, Nor from the path of duty swerve, Then your reward you will deserve.

The Baptists of Franklin offered Rev. Dr. Lorimer, the eminent Chicago divine, a residence and eight-thousand dollars a year to become their pastor. How was that for a church in a town of six-thousand population?

“Pray—pray—pray for—” The good minister bent down to catch the whisper of the dying operator, whom he had asked whether he should petition the throne of grace—“pray for five-dollar oil!”

St. Joseph’s church, Oil City, is the finest in the oil-region and has the finest altar in the state. Father Carroll, for twenty years in charge of the parish, is a priest whose praises all denominations carol.

You “want to be an angel?” Well, no need to look solemn; If you haven’t got what you desire, Put an ad. in the want column.

The Presbyterian church at Rouseville, torn down years ago, was built, paid for, furnished handsomely and run nine months before having a settled pastor. Not a lottery, fair, bazaar or grab-bag scheme was resorted to in order to raise the funds.

The Salvation Army once scored a sensational hit in the oil-regions. A lieutenant struck a can of nitro-glycerine with his little tambourine and every house in the settlement entertained more or less Salvation-Army soldier for a month after the blow-up.

“Like a sawyer’s work is life— The present makes the flaw, And the only field for strife Is the inch before the saw.”

“What are the wages of sin?” asked the teacher of Ah Sin, the first Chinese laundryman at Bradford, who was an attentive member of a class in the Sunday-school. Promptly came the answer: “Sebenty-flive cente a dozen; no checkee, no washee!”

The first sound of a church-bell at Pithole was heard on Saturday evening, March 24, 1866, from the Methodist-Episcopal belfry. The first church-bell at Oil City was hung in a derrick by the side of the Methodist church, on the site of a grocery opposite the Blizzard office. At first Sunday was not observed. Flowing-wells flowed and owners of pumping wells pumped as usual. Work went right along seven days in the week, even by people who believed the highest type of church was not an engine-house, with a derrick for its tower, a well for its Bible and a tube spouting oil for its preacher.

“If you have gentle words and looks, my friends, To spare for me—if you have tears to shed That I have suffered—keep them not I pray Until I hear not, see not, being dead.”

Many people regard religion as they do small-pox; they desire to have it as light as possible and are very careful that it does not mark them. Most people when they perform an act of charity prefer to have it like the measles—on the outside where it can be seen. Oil-region folks are not built that way.

-RICHBURG, N.Y. 1879- -TARPORT AND TUNA VALLEY- GENERAL VIEW OF BRADFORD. ECONOMITE WELLS OPPOSITE TIDIOUTE A GLIMPSE OF WARREN -BABYLON- EXCHANGE HOTEL TIDIOUTE 1863 TIDIOUTE 1876

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XI. A BEE-LINE FOR THE NORTH

THE GREAT BRADFORD REGION LOOMS UP—MILES OF FIRST-CLASS TERRITORY—LEADING OPERATORS—JOHN MCKEOWN’S MILLIONS—MANY LIVELY TOWNS—OVER THE NEW-YORK BORDER—ALL ABOARD FOR RICHBURG—CROSSING INTO CANADA—SHAW’S STRIKE—THE POLAR REGION PLAYS A STRONG HAND IN THE GAME OF TAPPING NATURE’S LABORATORY.

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“Like youthful steers unyoked, they take their courses north.”—Shakespeare.

“Be sure you’re right, then go ahead.”—Davy Crockett.

“Jes foller de no’th star an’ yu’ll come out right, shuah.”—Joel Chandler Harris.

“Better a year of Bradford than a cycle of Cathay.”—L. M. Morton.

“He did it with all his heart, and prospered.”—II Chronicles xxxi: 21.

“The Temple of Fame has, you see, many departments.”—Walter Besant.

“Bid the devil take the hindmost.”—Butler.

“When Greeks joined Greeks then was the tug of war.”—Lee.

“Nature must give way to art.”—Dean Swift.

“The wise and active conquer by daring to attempt.”—Rowe.

“God helps them that help themselves.”—Franklin.

“The north breathes steadily beneath the stars.”—Shelley.

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Oil Creek and its varied branches, Pithole and its suburbs, Forest and Warren had figured creditably in oil-developments, but the Mastodon of the North was yet to come. “The goal of yesterday shall be the starting point of to-morrow” is especially true of oil-operations. At times men have supposed the limits of juicy territory had been reached, only to be startled by the unexpected opening of a larger, grander field than any that preceded it. Guessing the weather a month ahead is child’s play in comparison with guessing where oil may be found in paying quantity. Geology is liable to shoot wide of the mark, so that the drill is the one indisputable test, from which there is no appeal for an injunction or a reversal of the verdict. Years of waiting sharpened the appetite of the polar bear for the feast to be spread in McKean county and across the New-York border. Tempting tidbits prepared the hungry animal to digest the rich courses that were to follow in close succession, until the whole world was cloyed and gorged, and surfeited with petroleum. It could not hold another mouthful, and the surplus had to be stored in huge tanks ready for the demand certain to come some day and empty the vast receptacles of their last drop.

“Still linger, in our northern clime, Some remnants of the good old time.”

The United States Land-Company, holding a quarter-million acres in McKean and adjoining counties, in 1837 sent Col. Levitt C. Little from New Hampshire to look after its interests. He located on Tuna Creek, eight miles from the southern border of New-York state. The Websters arrived in 1838, journeying by canoe from Olean. Other families settled in the valley, founding the hamlet of Littleton, which in 1858 adopted the name of Bradford and became a borough in 1872, with Peter T. Kennedy as burgess. The vast forests were divided into huge blocks, such as the Bingham, Borden, Clark & Babcock, Kingsbury and Quintuple tracts. Lumber was rafted to distant points and thousands of hardy woodmen “shantied” in rough huts each winter. They beguiled the long evenings singing coarse songs, playing cards, imbibing the vintage of Kentucky or New England from a black jug and telling stories so bald the mules drooped their ears to hide their blushes. But they were open-hearted, sternly honest, sticklers for fair-play, hard-working and admirable forerunners of the approaching civilization. To the sturdy blows of the rugged chopper and raftsman all classes are indebted for fuel, shelter and innumerable comforts. Like the rafts they steered to Pittsburg and the wild beasts they hunted, most of these brave fellows have drifted away never to return.

Six-hundred inhabitants dwelt peacefully at Bradford ten years after the Pithole bubble had been blown and pricked. The locomotive and track of a branch of the Erie Railroad had supplanted A. W. Newell’s rude engine, which transported small loads to and from Carrollton. An ancient coach, weather-beaten and worm-eaten, sufficed for the scanty passenger-traffic and the quiet borough bade fair to stay in the old rut indefinitely. The collection of frames labeled Tarport—a suit of tar and feathers presented to a frisky denizen begot the name—snuggled on a muddy road a mile northward. Seven miles farther, at Limestone, the “spirits” directed Job Moses to buy ten-thousand acres of land. He bored a half-dozen shallow wells in 1864, getting some oil and gas. Jonathan Watson skirmished two miles east of Limestone, finding slight tinges of greasiness. A mile south-west of Moses the Crosby well was dry. Another mile south the Olmsted well, on the Crooks farm, struck a vein of oil at nine-hundred feet and flowed twenty barrels on July fourteenth, 1875. The sand was poor and dry-holes south and west augured ill for the territory. Frederick Crocker drilled a duster early in 1875 on the Kingsbury lands, east side of Tuna Creek. He had grit and experience and leased an angular piece of ground formed by a bend of the creek for his second venture. It was part of the Watkins farm, a mile above Tarport. A half-mile south-west, on the Hinchey farm, the Foster Oil-Company had sunk a twenty-barrel well in 1872, which somehow passed unnoticed. On September twenty-sixth, 1875, from a shale and slate at nine-hundred feet, the Crocker well flowed one-hundred-and-seventy barrels. This opened the gay ball which was to transmute the Tuna Valley from its arcadian simplicity to the intense bustle of the grandest petroleum-region the world has ever known. The valley soon echoed and re-echoed the music of the tool-dresser and rig-builder and the click of the drill as well as the vigorous profanity of the imported teamster. Frederick Crocker, who drilled on Oil Creek in 1860 and devised the valve which kept the Empire well alive, had won another victory and the great Bradford field was born. He lived at Titusville fifteen years, erected the home afterwards occupied by Dr. W. B. Roberts, sold his Bradford property, operated in the Washington district and died at Idlewild on February twenty-second, 1895. Mr. Crocker possessed real genius, decision and the qualities which “from the nettle danger pluck the flower success.” Active to the close of his long and useful eighty-three years, he met death calmly and was laid to rest in the cemetery at Titusville.

Scarcely had the Crocker well tanked its initial spurt ere “the fun grew fast and furious.” Rigs multiplied like rabbits in Australia. Train-loads of lively delegates from every nook and cranny of Oildom crowded the streets, overran the hotels and taxed the commissary of the village to the utmost. Town-lots sold at New-York prices and buildings spread into the fields. At B. C. Mitchell’s Bradford House, headquarters of the oil-fraternity, operators and land-holders met and drillers “off tour” solaced their craving for “the good things of this life” playing billiards and practising at the hotel-bar. Hundreds of big contracts were closed in the second-story room where Lewis Emery, “Judge” Johnson, Dr. Book and the advance-guard of the invading hosts assembled. Main street blazed at night with the light of dram-shops and the gaieties incidental to a full-fledged frontier-town. Noisy bands appealed to lovers of varieties to patronize barnlike-theatres, strains of syren music floated from beer-gardens, dance-halls of dubious complexion were thronged and gambling-dens ran unmolested. The free-and-easy air of the community, too intent chasing oil and cash to bother about morality, captivated the ordinary stranger and gained “Bad Bradford” notoriety as a combination of Pithole and Petroleum Centre, with a dash of Sodom and Pandemonium, condensed into a single package. In February of 1879 a city-charter was granted and James Broder was elected mayor. Radical reforms were not instituted with undue haste, to jar the sensitive feelings of the incongruous masses gathered from far and near. Their accommodating nature at last adapted itself to a new state of affairs and accepted gracefully the restrictions imposed for the general welfare. Checked temporarily by the Bullion spasm in 1876-7, the influx redoubled as the lower country waned. Fires merely consumed frame-structures to hasten the advent of costly brick-blocks. Ten churches, schools, five banks, stores, hotels, three newspapers, street-cars, miles of residences and fifteen-thousand of the liveliest people on earth attested the permanency of Bradford’s boom. Narrow-gauge railroads circled the hills, traversed spider-web trestles and brought tribute to the city from the outlying districts. The area of oil-territory seemed interminable. It reached in every direction, until from sixteen-thousand mouths seventy-five thousand acres poured their liquid treasure. The daily production waltzed to one-hundred-thousand barrels! Iron-tanks were built by the thousand to store the surplus crude. Two, three or four-thousand-barrel gushers were lacking, but wells that yielded twenty-five to two-hundred littered the slopes and valleys. The field was a marvel, a phenomenon, a revelation. Bradford passed the mushroom-stage safely and was not snuffed out when developments receded and the floaters wandered south in quest of fresh excitement. To-day it is a thriving railroad and manufacturing centre, the home of ten-thousand intelligent, independent, go-ahead citizens, proud of its past, pleased with its present and confident of its future.

To trace operations minutely would be an endless task. Crocker sold a half-interest in his well and drilled on an adjacent farm. Gillespie, Buchanan & Kelly came from Fagundas in 1874 and sank the two Fagundas wells—twenty and twenty-five barrels—a half-mile west of Crocker, in the fall and winter. Butts No. 1, a short distance north, actually flowed sixty barrels in November of 1874. Jackson & Walker’s No. 1, on the Kennedy farm, north edge of town, on July seventeenth, 1875, flowed twenty barrels at eleven-hundred feet. The dark, pebbly sand, the best tapped in McKean up to that date, encouraged the belief of better strata down the Tuna. On December first, two months after Crocker’s strike, the yield of the Bradford district was two-hundred-and-ten barrels. The Crocker was doing fifty, the Olmsted twenty-five, the Butts fifteen, the Jackson & Walker twenty and all others from one to six apiece. The oil, dark-colored and forty-five gravity, was loaded on Erie cars direct from the wells, most of which were beside the tracks. The Union Company finished the first pipe-line and pumped oil to Olean the last week of November. Prentice, Barbour & Co. were laying a line through the district and 1875 closed with everything ripe for the millenium these glimmerings foreshadowed.

Lewis Emery, richly dowered with Oil-Creek experience and the get-up-and-get quality that forges to the front, was an early arrival at Bradford. He secured the Quintuple tract of five-thousand acres and drilled a test well on the Tibbets farm, three miles south of town. Its success confirmed his judgment of the territory and began the wonderful Quintuple development. The Quintuple rained staying wells on the lucky, plucky graduate from Pioneer, quickly placing him in the millionaire-class. He built blocks and refineries, opened an immense hardware-store, constructed pipe-lines, established a daily-paper, served two terms in the Senate and opposed the Standard “tooth and toe-nail.” Thoroughly earnest, he champions a cause with unflinching tenacity. He owns a big ranche in Dakota, big lumber-tracts and saw-mills in Kentucky, a big oil-production and a big share in the United-States Pipe-Line. He has traveled over Europe, inspected the Russian oil-fields and gathered in his private museum the rarest collection of curiosities and objects of interests in the state. Senator Emery is a staunch friend, a fighter who “doesn’t know when he is whipped,” liberal, progressive, fluent in conversation and firm in his convictions.

“A prince can mak’ a belted knight, A marquis, duke and a’ that; But an honest man’s aboon his might— Guid faith, he maunna fa’ that.”

Hon. David Kirk sticks faithfully to Emery in his hard-sledding to array petroleumites against the Standard. He manages the McCalmont Oil-Company, which operated briskly in the Forest pools, at Bradford and Richburg. Mr. Kirk is a rattling speaker, positive in his sentiments and frank in expressing his views. He extols Pennsylvania petroleum, backs the outside pipe-lines and is an influential leader of the Producers’ Association.

Dr. W. P. Book, who started at Plumer, ran big hotels at Parker and Millerstown and punched a hole in the Butler field occasionally, leased nine-hundred acres below Bradford in the summer of 1875. He bored two-hundred wells, sold the whole bundle to Captain J. T. Jones and went to Washington Territory with eight-hundred-thousand dollars to engage in lumbering and banking. Captain Jones landed on Oil Creek after the war, in which he was a brave soldier, and drilled thirteen dry-holes at Rouseville! Repulses of this stripe would wear out most men, but the Captain had enlisted for the campaign and proposed to stand by his guns to the last. His fourteenth attempt—a hundred-barreler on the Shaw farm—recouped former losses and inaugurated thirty years of remarkable prosperity. Fortune smiled upon him in the Clarion field. Pipe-lines, oil-wells, dealings in the exchanges, whatever he touched turned into gold. Not handicapped by timid partners, he paddled his own canoe and became the largest individual operator in the northern region. Acquiring tracts that proved to be the heart of the Sistersville field, he is credited with rejecting an offer last year of five-million dollars for his West-Virginia and Pennsylvania properties! From thirteen wells, good only for post-holes if they could be dug up and retailed by the foot, to five-millions in cash was a pretty stretch onward and upward. He preferred staying in the harness to the obscurity of a mere coupon-clipper. He lives at Buffalo, controls his business, enjoys his money, remembers his legions of old friends and does not put on airs because of marching very near the head of the oleaginous procession.

Theodore Barnsdall has never lagged behind since he entered the arena in 1860. He operated on Oil Creek and has been a factor in every important district. Marcus Hulings, reasoning that a paying belt intersected it diagonally, secured the Clark & Babcock tract of six-thousand acres on Foster Brook, north-east of Bradford. Hundreds of fine wells verified his theory and added a half-million to his bank-account. Sitting beside me on a train one day in 1878, Mr. Hulings refused three-hundred-thousand dollars, offered by Marcus Brownson, for his interest in the property. He projected the narrow-gauge railroad from Bradford to Olean and a bevy of oil-towns—Gillmor, Derrick City, Red Rock and Bell’s Camp—budded and bloomed along the route. Frederic Prentice built pipe-lines and tanks, leased a half-township, started thirty wells in a week on the Melvin farm and organized the Producers’ Consolidated Land-and-Petroleum-Company, big in name, in quality and in capital. The American Oil-Company’s big operations wafted the late W. A. Pullman a million and the presidency of the Seaboard Bank in New York, filled Joseph Seep’s stocking and saddled a hundred-thousand dollars on James Amm. The Hazlewood Oil-Company, guided by Bateman Goe’s prudent hand, drilled five-hundred wells and counted its gains in columns of six figures. Robert Leckey, a first-class man from head to foot, was a royal winner. Frederick Boden—true-blue, clear-grit, sixteen ounces to the pound—forsook Corry to extract a stream of wealth from the Borden lands, six miles east of Tarport. Prompt, square and manly, he merited the good luck that rewarded him in Pennsylvania and followed him to Ohio, where for four years he has been operating extensively. Boden’s wells boosted the territory east and north. From its junction with the Tuna at Tarport—Kendall is the post-office—to its source off in the hills, Kendall Creek steamed and smoked. Tarport expanded to the proportions of a borough. Two narrow-gauge roads linked Bradford and Eldred, Sawyer City, Rew City, Coleville, Rixford and Duke Centre—oil-towns in all the term implies—keeping the rails from rusting. Other narrow-gauges diverged to Warren, Mt. Jewett and Smethport. The Erie extended its branch south and the Rochester & Pittsburg crossed the Kinzua gorge over the highest railway viaduct—three-hundred feet—in this nation of tall projects and tall achievements.

Twenty-nine years ago a stout-hearted, strong-limbed, wiry youth, fresh from the Emerald Isle, asked a man at Petroleum Centre for a job. Given a pick and shovel, he graded a tank-bottom deftly and swiftly. He dug, pulled tubing, drove team and earned money doing all sorts of chores. Reared in poverty, he knew the value of a dollar and saved his pennies. To him Oildom, with its “oil-princes”—George K. Anderson, Jonathan Watson, Dr. M. C. Egbert, David Yanney, Sam Woods, Joel Sherman and the Phillips Brothers were in their glory—was a golden dream. He learned to “run engine,” dress tools, twist the temper-screw and handle drilling and pumping-wells expertly. Although neither a prohibitionist nor a prude, he never permitted mountain-dew, giddy divinities in petticoats or the prevailing follies to get the better of him in his inordinate desire for riches. Drop by drop for three years his frugal store increased and he migrated to Parker early in the seventies. Such was the young man who “struck his gait” in the northern end of Armstrong county, who was to outshine the men he may have envied on Oil Creek, to scoop the biggest prize in the petroleum-lottery and weave a halo of glittering romance around the name of John McKeown.

Working an interest in an oil-well, he hit a paying streak and joined the pioneers who had sinister designs on Butler county, proverbial for “buckwheat-batter” and “soap-mines.” At Lawrenceburg, a suburb of Parker, he boarded with a comely widow, the mother of two bouncing kids and owner of a little cash. He married the landlady and five boys blessed the union of loyal hearts. His wife’s money aided him to develop the Widow Nolan farm, east of the coal-bank near Millerstown. Regardless of Weller’s advice to “beware of vidders,” he wedded one and from another obtained the lease of a farm on which his first well produced one-hundred-and-fifty barrels a day for a year, a fortune in itself. This was the beginning of McKeown’s giant strides. In partnership with William Morrisey, a stalwart fellow-countryman—dead for years—he drilled at Greece City, Modoc and on the Cross-Belt. He held interests with Parker & Thompson and James Goldsboro, played a lone hand at Martinsburg, invested in the Karns Pipe-Line and avoided speculation. He agreed with Thomas Hayes, of Fairview, in 1876, to operate in the Bradford field. Hayes went ahead to grab a few tracts at Rixford, McKeown remaining to dispose of his Butler properties. He sold every well and every inch of land at top figures. No slave ever worked harder or longer hours than he had done to gain a firm footing. No task was too difficult, no fatigue too severe, no undertaking too hazardous to be met and overcome. Avarice steeled his heart and hardened his muscles. Wrapped in a rubber-coat and wearing the slouch-hat everybody recognized, he would ride his powerful bay-horse knee-deep in mud or snow at all hours of the night. It was his ambition to be the leading oil-operator of the world. While putting money into Baltimore blocks, bank-stocks and western ranches, he always retained enough to gobble a slice of seductive oil-territory. Plunging into the northern field “horse, foot and dragoons,” he bought out Hayes, who returned to Fairview with a snug nest-egg, and captured a huge chunk of the Bingham lands. Robert Simpson, agent of the Bingham estate, fancied the bold, resolute son of Erin and let him pick what he wished from the fifty-thousand acres under his care. McKeown selected many juicy tracts, on which he drilled up a large production, sold portions at excessive prices and cleared at least a million dollars in two or three years! As Bradford declined he turned his gaze towards the Washington district, bought a thousand acres of land and at the height of the excitement had ten-thousand barrels of oil a day! His object had been attained and John McKeown was the largest oil-producer in the universe.

Down in Washington, as in Butler and McKean, he attended personally to his wells, hired the workmen, negotiated for all materials and managed the smallest details. He removed his family to the county-seat and lived in a plain, matter-of-fact way. It had been his intention to erect a forty-thousand-dollar house and reside at Jamestown, N. Y. Ground was purchased and the foundation laid. The local papers spoke of the acquisition he would be to the town, one suggesting to haul him into politics and municipal improvements, and McKeown resented the notoriety by pulling up stakes and locating at Washington. It often amused me to hear him denounce the papers for calling him rich. He was more at home in a derrick than in a drawing-room. The din of the tools boring for petroleum was sweeter to his ears than “Lohengrin” or “The Blue Danube.” Watching oil streaming from his wells delighted his eye more than a Corot or a Meissonier in a gilt frame. For claw-hammer coats, tooth-pick shoes and vulgar show he had no earthly use. Democratic in his habits and speech, he heard the poor man as patiently as the banker or the schemer with a “soft snap.” Clothes counted for nothing in his judgment of people. He enjoyed the hunt for riches more than the possession. In no sense a liberal man, sometimes he thawed out to friends who got on the sunny side of his frosty nature and wrote checks for church or charity. Hard work was his diversion, his chief happiness. His wells and lands and income grew to dimensions it would have strained the nerves and brains of a half-dozen men to supervise. He had mortgaged his robust constitution by constant exposure and the foreclosure could not always be postponed. Repeated warnings were unheeded and the strong man broke down just when he most needed the vitality his lavish drafts exhausted. Eminent physicians hurried from Pittsburg and Philadelphia to his relief, but the paper had gone to protest and on Sunday forenoon, February eighth, 1891, at the age of fifty-three, John McKeown passed into eternity. Father Hendrich administered the last rites to the dying man. He sank into a comatose state and his death was painless. The remains were interred in the Catholic cemetery at Lawrenceville, in presence of a great multitude that assembled to witness the curtain fall on the most eventful life in the oil-regions.

One touching little tale about McKeown, which might adorn the pages of a Sunday-school library, has drifted out of Bradford. Landing on the platform of the dilapidated Erie-Railroad station, upon his first visit to the metropolis of mud and oil, John McKeown, wearing his greasiest suit, asked a group of boys to direct him to the Parker House. “I’ll tell you for a quarter,” said one. “I’ll show you where it is for ten cents,” chimed in another. “Say, I’ll do it for five cents,” remarked a third. “Mister,” said bright-eyed Jimmie Duffy, “I will show you the place for nothing.” So the stranger went with Jimmie. He took the lad to a clothing-store, arrayed him sumptuously in the best hand-me-downs that Bradford could afford and sent the boy away with a five-dollar gold-piece. Jimmie bought a shoeblack-outfit and began to “shine ’em up” at ten cents a clip. His good work, cheerfulness and ready wit brought him many a quarter. Soon he hired a number of assistants, built a “parlor,” controlled every stand in town and at nineteen went west with seven-thousand dollars in his pockets. Jimmie Duffie’s luck set all the Bradford urchins to lying in wait for strangers in greasy garments lined with gold-pieces.

Estimates of McKeown’s wealth ranged from three-millions to ten. A guess midway would probably be near the mark. When asked by Dun or Bradstreet how he should be rated, his invariable answer was: “I pay cash for all I get.” O. D. Bleakley, of Franklin, was appointed guardian of the sons and Hon. J. W. Lee is Mrs. McKeown’s legal adviser. The oldest boy has married, has received his share of the estate and is spending it freely. A younger son was drowned in a pond at the school to which his mother sent the bright lad. Once McKeown, desiring to have Dr. Agnew’s candid opinion at the lowest cost, put on his poorest garb and secured a rigid examination upon his promise to pay the great Philadelphia practitioner ten dollars “as soon as he could earn the money.” He thanked the doctor, returned in a business-suit, told of the ruse he had adopted and cemented the acquaintance with a check for one-hundred dollars. In Baltimore he posed as a hayseed at a forced sale of property the mortgagors calculated to bid in at a fraction of its value. He deposited a million dollars in a city-bank and appeared at the sale in the old suit and slouched hat he had packed in his satchel for the occasion. Stylish bidders at first ignored the seedy fellow whose winks to the auctioneer elevated the price ten-thousand dollars a wink. One of them hinted to the stranger that he might be bidding beyond his limit. “I guess not,” replied John, “I pay cash for what I get.” The property was knocked down to him for about six-hundred-thousand dollars. He requested the attorney to telephone to the bank whether his check would be honored. “Good for a million!” was the response. Now his triumphs and his spoils have shrunk to the little measure of the grave!

“Through the weary night on his couch he lay With the life-tide ebbing fast away. When the tide goes out from the sea-girt lands It bears strange freight from the gleaming sands: The white-winged ships, which long may wait For the foaming wave and the wind that’s late; The treasures cast on a rock-bound shore From stranded ships that shall sail no more, And hopes that follow the shining seas— Oh! the ocean wide shall win all these. But saddest of all that drift to the sea Is the human soul to eternity, Floating away from a silent shore, Like a fated ship, to return no more.”

The Bradford Oil-Company—J. T. Jones, Wesley Chambers, L. G. Peck and L. F. Freeman were the principal stockholders—owned a good share of the land on which Greater Bradford was built and ten-thousand acres in the northern field. The company drilled three-hundred wells in McKean and Allegany, realized fifty-thousand dollars from city-lots and its stock rose to two-thousand dollars a share. In 1881 Captain Jones bought out his copartners. The Enterprise Transit-Company, managed by John Brown, achieved reputation and currency. The McCalmont Oil-Company—organized during the Bullion phantom by David Kirk, I. E. Dean, Tack Brothers and F. A. Dilworth—humped itself in the middle and northern fields, sometimes paying three-hundred-thousand dollars a year in dividends. Kirk & Dilworth founded Great Belt City, in Butler county, cutting up a farm and selling hundreds of lots. “Farmer” Dean, manager of the company, operated in the lower fields, lived two years at Richburg, toured the country to preach the gospel according to the Greenbackers and won laurels on the rostrum. Frank Tack—frank and trustworthy—was vice-president of the New-York Oil-Exchange and his brother is dead. The Emery Oil-Company, the Quintuple, Mitchell & Jones, Whitney & Wheeler, Melvin and Fuller, George H. Vanvleck, George V. Forman, John L. McKinney & Co., Isaac Willets and Peter T. Kennedy were shining lights in the McKean-Allegany firmament. Kennedy owned the saw-mill when Bradford was a lumber camp and his estate—he died at fifty—inventoried eleven-hundred-thousand dollars. Hundreds of small operators left Bradford happy as men should be with as much money as their wives could spend; other hundreds dumped their well-earnings into the insatiable maw of speculation.

The Bradford field was young when Col. John J. Carter, of Titusville, paid sixty-thousand dollars for the Whipple farm, on Kendall Creek. Friends shook their heads over the purchase, up to that time the largest by a private individual in the district, but the farm produced fifteen-hundred-thousand barrels of oil and demonstrated the wisdom of the deed. Other properties were developed by this indefatigable worker, until his production was among the largest in the northern region and he could have sold at a price to number him with the millionaires. Unanimously chosen president of the Bradford, Bordell & Kinzua Railroad-Company, he completed the line in ninety days from the issue of the charter and in eighteen months returned the stockholders eighty per cent. in dividends. President Carter’s ability in handling the property saved it to its owners, while every other narrow-gauge in the system fell into the clutches of receivers or sold as junk to meet court-charges for costly litigation.

All “Old-Timers” remember the “Gentlemen’s Furnishing-House of John J. Carter,” the finest establishment of the kind west of New York. Young Carter, with a splendid military record, located at Titusville in the summer of 1865, immediately after being mustered out of the service, and engaged in mercantile pursuits ten years. Like other progressive men, he took interests in the wild-cat ventures that made Pithole, Shamburg, Petroleum Centre and Pleasantville famous. From large holdings in Venango, Clarion and Forest he reaped a rich harvest. One tract of four-thousand acres in Forest, purchased in 1886 and two-thirds of it yet undrilled, he expects to hand down to his children as a proof of their father’s business-foresight. He scanned the petroleum-horizon around Pittsburg carefully and retained his investments in the middle and upper fields. Taylorstown and McDonald, with their rivers of oil, burst forth with the fury of a flood and disappeared. Sistersville, in West Virginia, had given the trade a taste of its hidden treasures from a few scattered wells. Much salt-water, little oil and deep drilling discouraged operators. How to produce oil at a profit, with such quantities of water to be pumped out, was the problem. Col. Carter visited the scene, comprehended the situation, devised his plans and bought huge blocks of the choicest territory before the oil-trade thought Sistersville worth noticing. This bold stroke added to the value of every well and lease in West Virginia, inspired the faltering with courage and rewarded him magnificently. Advancing prices rendered the princely yield of his scores of wells immensely profitable. Purchases based on fifty-cent oil—the trade had small faith in the outcome—he sold on the basis of dollar-fifty oil. Col. Carter is in the prime of vigorous manhood, ready to explore new fields and surmount new obstacles. He occupies a beautiful home, has a superb library, is a thorough scholar and a convincing speaker. His recent argument before the Ohio Legislature, in opposition to the proposed iniquitous tax on crude-petroleum, was a masterpiece of effective, pungent, unanswerable logic. None who admire a brave, manly, generous character will say that his success is undeserved.

Five townships six miles square—Independence, Willing, Alma, Bolivar and Genesee, with Andover, Wellsville, Scio, Wirt and Clarksville north—form the southern border of Allegany county, New York. The first well bored for oil in the county—the Honeyoe—was the Wellsville & Alma Oil Company’s duster in Independence township, drilled eighteen-hundred feet in September, 1877. Gas at five-hundred feet caught fire and burned the rig, and signs of oil were found at one-thousand feet. The second was O. P. Taylor’s Pikeville well, Alma township, finished in November, 1878. Taylor, the father of the Allegany field, decided to try north of Alma, and in July of 1879 completed the Triangle No. 1, in Scio township, the first in Allegany to produce oil. It originated the Wellsville excitement and first diverted public attention from Bradford. Triangle No. 2, drilled early in 1880, pumped twelve barrels a day. S. S. Longabaugh, of Duke Centre, sank a dry-hole, the second well in Scio, three miles north-east of Triangle No. 1. Operations followed rapidly. Richburg No. 1, Wirt township, in which Taylor enlisted three associates, responded at a sixty barrel gait in May of 1881 to a huge charge of glycerine. Samuel Boyle, who had struck the first big well at Sawyer City, completed the second well at Richburg in June, manipulated it as a “mystery” and torpedoed it on July thirteenth. It flowed three-hundred barrels of blue-black oil, forty-two gravity, from fifty feet of porous sand and slate. Taylor’s exertions and perseverance showed indomitable will, bravery and pluck. He was a Virginian by birth, a Confederate soldier and a cigar-manufacturer at Wellsville. It is related that while drilling his first Triangle well the tools needed repairs and he had not money to send them to Bradford. His Wellsville acquaintances seemed amazingly “short” when he attempted a loan. His wife had sold her watch to procure food and she gave him the cash. The tools were fixed, the well was completed and it started Taylor on the road to the fortune he and his helpmeet richly earned. The pioneer died in the fall of 1883. The record of his adventures, trials and tribulations in opening a new oil-district would fill a volume. He was prepared for the message: “Child of Earth, thy labors and sorrows are done.”

Eighteen lively months sufficed to define the Allegany field, which was confined to seven-thousand acres. Twenty-nine-hundred wells were bored and the maximum yield of the district was nineteen-thousand barrels. Richburg and Bolivar, both old villages, quadrupled their size in three months. Narrow-gauge railroads soon connected the new field with Olean, Friendship and Bradford. The territory was shallow in comparison with parts of McKean, where eighteen-hundred feet was not an uncommon depth for wells. Timber and water were abundant, good roads presented a pleasing contrast to the unfathomable mud of Clarion and Butler and the country was decidedly attractive. Efforts to find an outlet to the belt failed in every instance. The climax had been reached and a gradual decline set in. Allegany was the northern limit of remunerative developments in the United States, which the next turn of the wheel once more diverted southward. The McCalmont Oil-Company and Phillips Brothers were leaders in the Richburg field. The country had been settled by Seventh-day Baptists, whose “Sunday was on Saturday.” Not to offend these devout people by discriminating in favor of Sunday, operators “whipped the devil around the stump” by drilling and pumping their wells seven days a week!

The Chipmunk pool, a dozen miles north of Bradford, was trotted out in 1895. For a season its shallow wells promised a glut of real oil, the daily production rising to twenty-six-hundred barrels. The area of creamy territory was quickly defined. Captain E. H. Barnum, long an enterprising Bradford operator, drilled a test-well near Arkwright, Chautauqua County, N.Y., in 1897. He put twenty-five-hundred feet of six-inch and three-hundred feet of eight-inch casing in the hole, which proved barren of oil or gas and was abandoned when three-thousand feet deep. The Watsonville pool, south-west of Bradford, lively drilling brought to the nine-thousand-barrel notch for a time this season.

The town of Ceres, which celebrated its one-hundredth birthday this year, has had some peculiar experiences. Located on the state-line between New York and Pennsylvania, the boundary has figured in many curious ways since the pioneers erected the first log-cabin in 1797. The first squabble related to the post-office, which was established on the south-side of the line, in Pennsylvania, with a basket to hold the mail. By some hocus-pocus the department permitted the office to be removed to the north-side, in New York, fifty or more years ago. Every President from Andrew Jackson to William McKinley has been importuned to change it back again, but the population is so nearly divided that the question bids fair, like Tennyson’s brook, “to go on forever.” Ceres was strictly in it as a Gretna Green. The little Methodist church, the only one in the village, is built against the line, the porch extending into New York. The parsonage is in the same fix. To avoid securing a license, Pennsylvania couples had merely to step out of the parsonage to the porch and be married in New York. Eloping couples have had some lively rides to Ceres. For many years Justice Peabody was very popular at knot-tying. He was aroused one midnight by a man who wanted a warrant for the arrest of a pair of elopers. The judge was friendly to the young fellow in love. As he was making out the papers a rap at the door interrupted him. The caller was the young man himself. The judge stepped outside behind a stump-fence, across the state-line, married the eloping couple and then returned to the house to finish making out the warrant. A hotel built by a bright genius close to the line had an addition for a barroom. The barroom extended over the line and its sole entrance was from the Pennsylvania side. The bartender, by stepping a foot either way from the center of the bar, could pass from one state to another. He was arrested for illegal selling many times, but in each instance he would swear that the whisky he sold was disposed of in the other state. One day a Pennsylvania prisoner slipped his handcuffs when the sheriff was not looking, jumped out of the dining-room into New York, made faces at the minion of the law and defied arrest. For fifty years state-pride kept the people apart on the school-question. They had a small district-school on each side of the line in preference to a graded school, because the latter would demand a surrender of state-pride. Four years ago the differences were patched up and a graded-school was provided. The engine of the steam saw-mill is in Pennsylvania and the boiler in New York. The logs enter the mill in Pennsylvania and are sawed in New York, the boards are edged in Pennsylvania and the lumber is piled up crosswise on the state-line. At the grist-mill the grain entered on the New-York side, was ground in Pennsylvania and carried back into New York by the bolting-machinery. When the oil-boom was on at Bolivar and Richburg two narrow-gauge railroads passed through Ceres. One station was in New York and the other in Pennsylvania, with tracks parallel to Bolivar. The schedules of the passenger-trains were alike and some of the fastest rides ever taken on a narrow-gauge road resulted. Oil-developments did not hit Ceres hard, wells around the tidy village failing to tap the greasy artery. Possibly Nature thought the folks had enough fun over the boundary complications to compensate for the lack of petroleum.

Canada has oil-fields of considerable importance. The largest and oldest is in Enniskillen township, Lambton county, a dozen miles from Port Sarnia, at the foot of Lake Huron. Black Creek, a small tributary of the Detroit river, flows through this township and for many years its waters had been coated with a greasy liquid the Indians sold as a specific for countless diseases. The precious commodity was of a brown color, exceedingly odorous, unpleasant to the taste and burned with great intensity. In 1860 several wells were started, the projectors believing the floating oil indicated valuable deposits within easy reach of the surface. James Williams, who had previously garnered the stuff in pits, finished the first well that yielded oil in paying quantity. Others followed in close succession, but months passed without the sensation of a genuine spouter. Late in the summer of the same year that operations commenced, John Shaw, a poor laborer, managed to get a desirable lease on the bank of the creek. He built a cheap rig, provided a spring-pole and “kicked down” a well, toiling all alone at his weary task until money and credit and courage were exhausted. Ragged, hungry and barefooted, one forenoon he was refused boots and provisions by the village-merchant, nor would the blacksmith sharpen his drills without cash down. Reduced to the verge of despair, he went back to his derrick with a heavy heart, ate a hard crust for dinner and decided to leave for the United States next morning if no signs of oil were discovered that afternoon. He let down the tools and resumed his painful task. Twenty minutes later a rush of gas drove the tools high in the air, followed the next instant by a column of oil that rose a hundred feet! The roar could be heard a mile and the startled populace rushed from the neighboring hamlet to see the unexpected marvel. Canada boasted its first flowing-well and the tidings flew like wild-fire. Before dark hundreds of excited spectators visited the spot. For days the oil gushed unchecked, filling a natural basin an acre in extent, then emptying into the creek and discoloring the waters as far down as Lake St. Clair. None knew how to regulate its output and bring the flow under control. Thus it remained a week, when a delegate from Pennsylvania showed the owner how to put in a seed-bag and save the product. The first attempt succeeded and thenceforth the oil was cared for properly. Opinions differ as to the actual production of this novel strike, although the best judges placed it at five-thousand barrels a day for two or three weeks! The stream flowed incessantly the full size of the hole, a strong pressure of gas forcing it out with wonderful speed. The well produced generously four months, when it “stopped for keeps.” Persons who visited the well at its best will recall the surroundings. A pond of oil large enough for a respectable regatta lay between it and Black Creek, whose greasy banks for miles bore traces of the lavish inundation of crude. The locality was at once interesting and high-flavored and a conspicuous feature was Shaw himself. Radiant in a fresh suit of store-clothes, he moved about with the complacency incident to a green ruralist who has “struck ile.”

One of the persons earliest on the ground after the well began to flow was the storekeeper who had refused the proprietor a pair of boots that morning. With the cringing servility of a petty retailer he hurried to embrace Shaw, coupling this outbreak of affection with the assurance that everything in the shop was at his service. It is gratifying to note that Shaw had the spirit to rebuke this puppyism. Bringing his ample foot into violent contact with the dealer’s most vital part, he accompanied a heavy kick with an emphatic command to go to the place Heber Newton and Pentecost have ruled out. Shaw was uneducated and fell a ready prey to sharpers on the watch for easy victims. Cargoes of oil shipped to England brought small returns and his sudden wealth slipped away in short order. Ere long the envied possessor of the big well was obliged to begin life anew. For a few years he struggled along as an itinerant photographer, traveling with a “car” and earning a precarious substance taking “tin-types.” Death closed the scene in 1872, the luckless pioneer expiring at Petrolea in absolute want. Thus sadly ended another illustration of the adverse fortune which frequently overtakes men whose energy and grit confer benefits upon mankind that surely entitle them to a better fate. Mr. Williams saved money, served in parliament and died in the city of Hamilton years ago. He was the intimate friend of Hon. Isaac Buchanan, the distinguished Canadian statesman, whose sons are well-known operators at Oil City and Pittsburg.

“The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age and nature sink in years; But thou shall flourish in immortal youth.”

As might be imagined, Shaw’s venture gave rise to operations of great magnitude. Hosts flocked to the scene in quest of lands and developments began on an extensive scale. Among others a rig was built and a well drilled without delay as close to the Shaw as it was possible to place the timbers. The sand was soon reached by the aid of steam-power and once more the oil poured forth enormously, the new strike proving little inferior to its neighbor. It was named the Bradley, in honor of the principal owner, E. C. Bradley, afterwards a leading operator in Pennsylvania, president of the Empire Gas-Company and still a resident of Oildom. The yield continued large for a number of months, then ceased entirely and both wells were abandoned. Of the hundreds in the vicinity a good percentage paid nicely, but none rivalled the initial spouters. The influx of restless spirits led to an “oil-town,” which for a brief space presented a picture of activity rarely surpassed. Oil Springs, as the mushroom city was fittingly termed, flourished amazingly. The excessive waste of oil filled every ditch and well, rendering the water unfit for use and compelling the citizens to quench their thirst with artificial drinks. The bulk of the oil was conveyed to Mandaumin, Wyoming or Port Sarnia, over roads of horrible badness, giving employment to an army of teamsters. A sort of “mud canal” was formed, through which the horses dragged small loads on a species of flat-boats, while the drivers walked along the “tow-path” on either side. The mud had the consistency of thin batter and was seldom under three feet deep. To those who have never seen this unique system of navigation the most graphic description would fail to convey an adequate idea of its peculiar features. Unlike the Pennsylvania oil-fields, the petroleum-districts of Canada are low and swampy, a circumstance that added greatly to the difficulty of moving the greasy staple during the wet season. Ultimately roads were cut through the soft morasses and railways were constructed, although not before Oil Springs had seen its best days and begun a rapid descent on the down grade. Salt-water quickly put a stop to many wells, the production declined rapidly and the town was depopulated. Operations extended towards the north-west, where Petrolea, which is yet a flourishing place, was established in 1864. Bothwell, twenty-six miles south of Oil Springs, had a short career and light production. Canadian operators were slower than the Yankees of the period and the tireless push of the Americans who crowded to the front at the beginning of the developments around Oil Springs was a revelation to the quiet plodders of Enniskillen and adjacent townships. The leading refineries are at London, fifty miles east of Wyoming and one of the most attractive cities in the Dominion.

Petroleum has long been known to exist in considerable quantity in the Gaspe Peninsula, at the extreme eastern end of Quebec. The Petroleum Oil-Trust, organized by a bunch of Canadians to operate the district, put down eight wells in 1893, finding a light green oil. The Trust continued its borings in 1894, on the left bank of the York River, south of the anticlinal of Tar Point. Several of the ten wells yielded moderately, and operations extended to the portion of Gaspe Basin called Mississippi Brook. One well in that section, completed in July of 1897, flowed from a depth of fifteen-hundred feet. Hundreds of barrels were lost before the well could be controlled. Its first, pumping produced forty barrels, and two others in the vicinity are of a similar stripe. The results thus far are deemed sufficiently encouraging to warrant further tests in hope of developing an extensive field. The oil comes from a coarse rock of sandy texture, and in color and gravity resembles the Pennsylvania article. The formation around the newest strikes is nearly flat, while the shallow wells in the section first prospected were bored at a sharp angle, to keep in touch with the dip of the rock, just as diamond drills follow the gold-bearing ledges in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Crossing the continent, oil has been tapped in the gold-diggings of British Columbia, although in amounts too small to be important commercially.

John Shaw, whose gusher brought the “gum-beds” of Enniskillen into the petroleum-column, narrowly escaped anticipating Drake three years. Shaw removed from Massachusetts to Canada in 1838, and was regarded as a visionary schemer. In 1856 he sought to interest his neighbors in a plan to drill a well through the rock in search of the reservoir that supplied Bear Creek with a thick scum of oil. They hooted at the idea and proposed to send Shaw to the asylum. This tabooed the subject and postponed the advent of petroleum until the end of August, 1859.

Not content to crown Alaska with mountains of gold and valleys of yellow nuggets, inventors of choice fables have invested the hyperborean region with an exhaustless store of petroleum. In July of 1897 this paragraph, dated Seattle, went the rounds of the press:

“What is said to be the greatest discovery ever made is reported from Alaska. Some gold-prospectors several months ago ran across what seemed to be a lake of oil. It was fed by innumerable springs and the surrounding mountains were full of coal. They brought supplies to Seattle and tests proved it to be of as high grade as any ever taken out of Pennsylvania wells. A local company was formed and experts sent up. They have returned on the steamer Topeka, and their report has more than borne out first reports. It is stated there is enough oil and coal in the discovery to supply the world. It is close to the ocean; in fact, the experts say that the oil oozes out into the salt-water.”

William H. Seward’s purchase from Russia, for years ridiculed as good only for icebergs and white-bears, may be credited with Klondyke placers and vast bodies of gold-bearing quartz, but a “lake of oil” is too great a stretch of the long bow. If “a lake of oil” ever existed, the lighter portions would have evaporated and the residue would be asphaltum. The story “won’t hold water” or oil.

A thief broke into a Bradford store and pilfered the cash-drawer. Some months later the merchant received an unsigned letter, containing a ten-dollar bill and this explanatory note: “I stole seventy-eight dollars from your money-drawer. Remorse gnaws at my conscience. When remorse gnaws again I will send you some more.”

It is not surprising that evil travels faster than good, since it takes only two seconds to fight a duel and two months to drill an oil-well at Bradford.

“The Producers’ Consolidated Land-and-Petroleum-Company,” the formidable title over the Bradford office of the big corporation, is apt to suggest to observant readers the days of old long sign.

Hon. Reuben Carroll, a pioneer-operator, was born in Mercer county in 1823, went to Ohio to complete his education, settled in the Buckeye State, and was a member of the Legislature when developments began on Oil Creek. Solicited by friends to join them in an investment that proved fortunate, he removed to Titusville and cast his lot with the producers. He operated extensively in the northern fields, residing at Richburg during the Allegheny excitement. He took an active interest in public affairs, and contributed stirring articles on politics, finance and good government to leading journals. He opposed Wall-street domination and vigorously upheld the rights of the masses. Upon the decline of Richburg he located at Lily Dale, New York. As a representative producer he was asked to become a member of the South Improvement-Company in 1872. The offer aroused his inflexible sense of justice and was indignantly spurned. He knew the sturdy quality and large-heartedness of the Oil-Creek operators and did not propose to assist in their destruction. At seventy-four, Mr. Carroll is vigorous and well-preserved, ready to combat error and champion truth with tongue and pen. An intelligent student of the past and of current events, a close observer of the signs of the times and a keen reasoner, Reuben Carroll is a fine example of the men who are mainly responsible for the birth and growth of the petroleum-development.

There is much uncertainty as to the youngest soldier in the civil-war, the oldest Mason, the man who first nominated McKinley for President, and who struck Billie Patterson, but none as to the youngest dealer in oil-well supplies in the oil-region. This distinction belongs to Ralph W. Carroll, a native of Youngstown, Ohio, and son of Hon. Reuben Carroll. Born in 1860, at eighteen he was at the head of a large business at Rock City, in the Four-Mile District, five miles south-west of Olean. Three brothers were associated with him. The firm was the first to open a supply-store at Richburg, with a branch at Allentown, four miles east, and an establishment later at Cherry Grove. In 1883 Ralph W. succeeded the firm, his brothers retiring, and located at Bradford. In 1886 he opened offices and warehouses at Pittsburg and in 1894 removed to New York to engage in placing special investments. The young merchant was secretary of the Producers’ Protective Association, organized at Richburg in 1891, and a member of the executive committee that conducted the fight against the Roberts Torpedo-Company. Hon. David Kirk, Asher W. Milner, J. E. Dusenbury and “Farmer” Dean were his four associates on this important committee. Roscoe Conkling, for the Roberts side, and General Butler, for the Producers’ Association, measured swords in this legal warfare. Mr. Carroll has a warm welcome for his oil-region friends, a class of men the like of whom for geniality, sociability, liberality and enterprise the world can never duplicate.

The Beardsleys, Fishers, Dollophs and Fosters were the first inhabitants in the wilds of Northern McKean. Henry Bradford Dolloph, whose house above Sawyer City was shattered by a glycerine-explosion, was the first white child who saw daylight and made infantile music in the Tuna Valley. One of the first two houses where Bradford stands was occupied by the Hart family, parents and twelve children. When the De Golias settled up the East Branch a road had to be cut through the forest from Alton. Hon. Lewis Emery’s No. 1, on the Tibbets farm, the first good well up the Branch, produced oil that paid two or three times the cost of the entire property.

The United-States Pipe-Line has overcome legal obstructions, laid its tubes under railroads that objected to its passage to the sea and will soon pump oil direct to refineries on the Jersey coast. Senator Emery, the sponsor of the line, is not the man to be bluffed by any railroad-popinjay who wants him to get off the earth. The National-Transit Line has ample facilities to transport all the oil in Pennsylvania to the seaboard, but Emery is a true descendant of the proud Highlander who wouldn’t sail in Noah’s ark because “ilka McLean has a boat o’ his ain.” He was born in New-York State, reared in Michigan, whither the family removed in his boyhood, and learned to be a miller. Arriving at Pioneer early in the sixties, he cut his eye-teeth as an oil-operator on Oil Creek and had much to do with bringing the great Bradford district to the front. He served one term in the Legislature and two in the Senate, gaining a high reputation by his fearless opposition to jobbery and corruption.

Michael Garth, a keen-witted son of the Emerald Isle, has the easiest snap in the northern region. Scraping together the funds to put down a well on his rocky patch of ground near Duke Centre, he rigged a water-wheel to pump the ten barrels of crude the strike yielded daily. Another well of similar stripe was drilled and the faithful creek drives the wooden-wheel night and day, without one cent of expense or one particle of attention on the part of the owner. Garth can go fishing three days at a lick, to find the wells producing upon his return just as when he left. Such a picnic almost compels a man to be lazy.

The Devonian Oil Company, of which Charles E. Collins is the clear-brained president and guiding star, has operated on the wholesale plan in the northern region and in West Virginia. In October of 1897 the Devonian, the Watson and the Emery companies sold a part of their holdings north and south to the West Penn, a producing wing of the Standard, for fourteen-hundred-thousand dollars in spot cash. The largest cash sale of wells and territory on record, this transaction was negotiated by John L. and J. C. McKinney acting in behalf of the buyer, and Charles E. Collins and Lewis Emery representing the sellers.

“Hell in harness!” Davy Crockett is credited with exclaiming the first time he saw a railroad train tearing along one dark night. Could he have seen an oil-train on the Oil-Creek Railroad, blazing from end to end and tearing down from Brocton at sixty miles an hour, the conception would have been yet more realistic. Engineer Brown held the throttle, which he pulled wide open upon discovering a car of crude on fire. Mile after mile he sped on, thick smoke and sheets of flame each moment growing denser and fiercer. At last he reached a long siding, slackened the speed for the fireman to open the switch and ran the doomed train off the main track. He detached the engine and two cars, while the rest of the train fell a prey to the fiery demon. A similar accident at Bradford, caused by a tank at the Anchor Oil-Company’s wells overflowing upon the tracks of the Bradford & Bordell narrow-gauge, burned two or three persons fatally. The oil caught fire as the locomotive passed the spot and enveloped the passenger-coach in flames so quickly that escape was cut off.

Bradford, Tarport, Limestone, Sawyer, Gillmor, Derrick, Red Rock, State Line, Four-Mile, Duke Centre, Rexford, Bordell, Rew City, Coleville, Custer and De Golia, with their thousands of wells, their hosts of live people, their boundless activity, their crowded railways, their endless procession of teams and their unlimited energy, were for the nonce the brightest galaxy of oil-towns that ever flourished in the busy realm of petroleum. Some have vanished, others are mere skeletons and Bradford alone retains a fair semblance of its pristine greatness.

The bee-line for the north was fairly and squarely “on the belt.”

THE SEX MEN ADORE.

A little girl at Titusville, when she prayed to have herself and all of her relations cared for during the night, added: “And, dear God, do try and take good care of yourself, for if anything should happen to you we should all go to pieces. Amen.”

A young lady at Sawyer City accepted a challenge to climb a derrick on the Hallenback farm, stand on top and wave her handkerchief. She was to receive a silk-dress and a ten-dollar greenback. The feat was performed in good shape. It is probably the only instance on record where a woman had the courage to climb an eighty-foot derrick, stand on top and wave her handkerchief to those below. It was done and the enterprising girl gathered in the wager.

Mrs. Sands, formerly a resident of Oil City, built the Sands Block and owned wells on Sage Run. McGrew Brothers, of Pittsburg, struck a spouter in 1869 that boomed Sage Run a few months. A lady at Pleasantville, who had coined money by shrewd speculations in oil-territory, purchased two-hundred acres near the McGrew strike, while the well was drilling and nobody thought it worth noticing. The lady was Mrs. Sands, who enacted the role of “a poor lone widow,” anxious to secure a patch of ground to raise cabbage and garden-truck, to get the property. She worked so skillfully upon the sensibilities of the Philadelphians owning the land that they sold it for a trifle “to help a needy woman!” Her first well, finished the night before the “thirty-day shut down,” flowed five-hundred barrels each twenty-four hours. The “poor lone widow” valued the tract at a half-million dollars and at one time was rated at six-hundred-thousand, all “earned by her own self.” Yet weak-minded men and strong-minded women talk of the suppressed sex!

A Franklin lady asked her husband one morning to buy five-thousand barrels of oil on her account, saying she had an impression the price would advance very soon. To please her he promised to comply. At dinner she inquired about it and was told the order had been filled by an Oil-City broker. In the afternoon the price advanced rapidly. Next morning the lady asked hubby to have the lot sold and bring her the profits. The miserable husband was in for it. He dared not confess his deception and the only alternative was to pay the difference and keep mum. His sickly smile, as he drew fifteen-hundred dollars out of the bank to hand his spouse, would have cracked a mirror an inch thick. Solomon got a good deal of experience from his wives and that Franklin husband began to think “a woman might know something about business after all.”

Mrs. David Hanna, of Oil City, is not one of the women whose idea of a good time is to go to a funeral and cry. She tried a bit of speculation in certificates and the market went against her. She tried again and again, but the losses exceeded the profits by a large majority. The phenomenal spurt in April of 1895 was her opportunity. She held down a seat in the Oil-Exchange gallery three days, sold at almost the top notch and cleared twelve-thousand dollars. People applauded and declared the plucky little woman “had a great head.”

SCHRUBRASS FERRY 1873 SUMMIT CITY ACROSS THE BELT AT BARRINGER TURKEY CITY IN 1874 FIRST HOUSE AT TRIANGLE CITY MAIN STREET, ST. PETERSBURG. VIEW IN EDENBURG.

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XII. DOWN THE ZIG-ZAGGED STREAM

WHERE THE ALLEGHENY FLOWS—RENO CONTRIBUTES A GENEROUS MITE—SCRUBGRASS HAS A SHORT INNING—BULLION LOOMS UP WITH DUSTERS AND GUSHERS—A PEEP AROUND EMLENTON—FOXBURG FALLS INTO LINE—THROUGH THE CLARION DISTRICT—ST. PETERSBURG, ANTWERP, TURKEY CITY AND DOGTOWN—EDENBURG HAS A HOT TIME—PARKER ON DECK.

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“He left the barren-beaten thoroughfare.”—Tennyson.

“Who, grown familiar with the sky, will grope * * * among groundlings?”—Browning.

“What lavish wealth men give for trifles light and small!”—W. S Hawkins.

“How soon our new-born light attains to full-aged noon.”—Francis Quarles.

“Liberal as noontide speeds the ambient ray And fills each crevice in the world with day.”—Lytton.

“We must take the current when it serves or lose our ventures.”—Shakespeare.

“Let us battle for elbow-room.”—James Parish Steele.

“Peter Oleum came down like a wolf on the fold.”—Byron Parodied.

“Plunged into darkness or plunged into light.”—Hester M. Poole.

“Lord love us, how we apples swim!”—Mallett.

“The best-laid schemes o’ mice and men gang aft a-gley.”—Robert Burns.

“Fortune turns everything to the advantage of her favorites.”—Rochefoucauld.

“Good, the more communicated, more abundant grows.”—Milton.

“A gorgeous sunset is coloring the whole sky.”—Julius Stinde.

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South and west of Oil Creek for many miles the petroleum-star shed its effulgent luster. Down the Allegheny adventurous operators groped their way patiently, until Clarion, Armstrong, Butler, Washington and West Virginia unlocked their splendid store-houses at the bidding of the drill. Aladdin’s wondrous lamp, Stalacta’s wand or Ali Babi’s magic sesame was not so grand a talisman as the tools which from the bowels of the earth brought forth illimitable spoil. No need of fables to varnish the tales of struggles and triumphs, of disappointments and successes, of weary toil and rich reward that have marked the oil-development from the Drake well to the latest strike in Tyler county. Men who go miles in advance of developments to seek new oil-fields run big chances of failure. They understand the risk and appreciate the cold fact that heavy loss may be entailed. But “the game is worth the powder” in their estimation and impossibility is not the sort of ability they swear by. “Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win” is a maxim oil-operators have weighed carefully. The man who has faith to attempt something is a man of power, whether he hails from Hong Kong or Boston, Johannesburg or Oil City. The man who will not improve his opportunity, whether seeking salvation or petroleum, is a sure loser. His stamina is as fragile as a fifty-cent shirt and will wear out quicker than religion that is used for a cloak only. Muttering long prayers without working to answer them is not the way to angle for souls, or fish, or oil-wells. It demands nerve and vim and enterprise to stick thousands of dollars in a hole ten, twenty, fifty or “a hundred miles from anywhere,” in hope of opening a fresh vein of petroleum. Luckily men possessing these qualities have not been lacking since the first well on Oil Creek sent forth the feeble squirt that has grown to a mighty river. Hence prolific territory, far from being scarce, has sometimes been too plentiful for the financial health of the average producer, who found it hard to cipher out a profit selling dollar-crude at forty cents. As old fields exhausted new ones were explored in every direction, those south of the original strike presenting a very respectable figure in the oil-panorama. If “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” eternal hustling is the price of oil-operations. Maria Seidenkovitch, a fervid Russian anarchist, who would rather hit the Czar with a bomb than hit a thousand-barrel well, has written:

“There is no standing still! Even as I pause The steep path shifts and I slip back apace; Movement was safety; by the journey’s laws No help is given, no safe abiding-place; No idling in the pathway, hard and slow— I must go forward or must backward go!”

Down the Allegheny three miles, on a gentle slope facing bold hills across the river, is the remnant of Reno, once a busy, attractive town. It was named from Gen. Jesse L. Reno, who rose to higher rank than any other of the heroes Venango “contributed to the death-roll of patriotism.” He spent his boyhood at Franklin, was graduated from West Point in the class with George B. McClellan and “Stonewall” Jackson, served in the Mexican war, was promoted to Major-General and fell at the battle of South Mountain in 1862. The Reno Oil-Company, organized in 1865 as the Reno-Oil-and-Land Company, owns the village-site and twelve-hundred acres of adjacent farms. The company and the town owed their creation to the master-mind of Hon. C. V. Culver, to whose rare faculty for developing grand enterprises the oil-regions offered an inviting field. Visiting Venango county early in the sixties, a canvass of the district convinced him that the oil-industry, then an infant beginning to creep, must attain giant proportions. To meet the need of increased facilities for business, he conceived the idea of a system of banks at convenient points and opened the first at Franklin in 1861. Others were established at Oil City, Titusville and suitable trade-centres until the combination embraced twenty banks and banking-houses, headed by the great office of Culver, Penn & Co. in New York. All enjoyed large patronage and were converted into corporate banks. The speculative mania, unequaled in the history of the world, that swept over the oil-regions in 1864-5, deluged the banks with applications for temporary loans to be used in purchasing lands and oil-interests. Philadelphia alone had nine-hundred stock-companies. New York was a close second and over seven-hundred-million dollars were capitalized—on paper—for petroleum-speculations! The production of oil was a new and unprecedented business, subject to no known laws and constantly overturning theories that set limits to its expansion. There was no telling where flowing-wells, spouting thousands of dollars daily without expense to the owners, might be encountered. Stories of sudden fortunes, by the discovery of oil on lands otherwise valueless, pressed the button and the glut of paper-currency did the rest.

Mr. Culver directed the management and employment of fifteen-million dollars in the spring of 1865! People literally begged him to handle their money, elected him to Congress and insisted that he invest their cash and bonds. The Reno Oil-Company included men of the highest personal and commercial standing. Preliminary tests satisfied the officers of the company that the block of land at Reno was valuable territory. They decided to operate it, to improve the town and build a railroad to Pithole, in order to command the trade of Oil Creek, Cherry Run and “the Magic City.” Oil City opposed the railroad strenuously, refusing a right-of-way and compelling the choice of a circuitous route, with difficult grades to climb and ugly ravines to span. At length a consolidation of competing interests was arranged, to be formally ratified on March twenty-ninth, 1866. Meanwhile rumors affecting the credit of the Culver banks were circulated. Disastrous floods, the close of the war and the amazing collapse of Pithole had checked speculation and impaired confidence in oil-values. Responsible parties wished to stock the Reno Company at five-million dollars and Mr. Culver was in Washington completing the railroad-negotiations which, in one week, would give him control of nearly a million. A run on his banks was started, the strain could not be borne and on March twenty-seventh, 1866, the failure of Culver, Penn & Co. was announced. The assets at cost largely exceeded the liabilities of four-million dollars, but the natural result of the suspension was to discredit everything with which the firm had been identified. The railroad-consolidation, confessedly advantageous to all concerned, was not confirmed and Reno stock was withheld from the market. While the creditors generally co-operated to protect the assets and adjust matters fairly, a few defeated measures looking to a safe deliverance. These short-sighted individuals sacrificed properties, instituted harassing prosecutions and precipitated a crisis that involved tremendous losses. Many a man standing on his brother’s neck claims to be looking up far into the sky watching for the Lord to come!

The fabric reared with infinite pains toppled, pulling down others in its fall. The Reno, Oil-Creek & Pithole Railroad, within a mile of completion, crumbled into ruin. The architect of the splendid plans that ten days of grace would have carried to fruition displayed his manly fiber in the dark days of adversity and he has been amply vindicated. Instead of yielding to despair and “letting things take their course,” he strove to realize for the creditors every dollar that could be saved from the wreck. Animated by a lofty motive, for thirty years Mr. Culver has labored tirelessly to discharge the debts of the partnership. No spirit could be braver, no life more unselfish, no line of action more steadfastly devoted to a worthy object. He had bought property and sought to enhance its value, but he had never gambled in stocks, never dealt in shares on the mere hazard of a rise or gone outside the business—except to help customers whose necessities appealed to his sympathy—with which he was intimately connected. Driven to the wall by stress of circumstances and general distrust, he has actually paid off all the small claims and multitudes of large ones against his banks. How many men, with no legal obligation to enforce their payment, would toil for a generation to meet such demands? Thistles do not bear figs and banana-vendors are not the only persons who should be judged by their fruits. It is a good thing to achieve success and better still to deserve it. Gauged by the standard of high resolve, earnest purpose and persistent endeavor—by what he has tried to do and not by what may have been said of him—Charles Vernon Culver can afford to accept the verdict of his peers and of the Omniscient Judge, who “discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

“I will go on then, though the limbs may tire, And though the path be doubtful and unseen; Better with the last effort to expire Than lose the toil and struggle that have been, And have the morning strength, the upward strain, The distance conquered in the end made vain.”

Reorganized in the interest of Culver, Penn & Co.’s creditors, the Reno Company developed its property methodically. No. 18 well, finished in May of 1870, pumped two-hundred barrels and caused a flutter of excitement. Fifty others, drilled in 1870-1, were so satisfactory that the stockholders might have shouted “Keno!” The company declined to lease and very few dry-holes were put down on the tract. Gas supplied fuel and the sand, coarse and pebbly, produced oil of superior gravity at five to six-hundred feet. Reno grew, a spacious hotel was built, stores prospered, two railroads had stations and derricks dotted the banks of the Allegheny. The company’s business was conducted admirably, it reaped liberal profits and operated in Forest county. Its affairs are in excellent shape and it has a neat production today. Mr. Culver and Hon. Galusha A. Grow have been its presidents and Hon. J. H. Osmer is now the chief officer. Mr. Osmer is a leader of the Venango bar and has lived at Franklin thirty-two years. His thorough knowledge of law, sturdy independence, scorn of pettifogging and skill as a pleader gained him an immense practice. He has been retained in nearly all the most important cases before the court for twenty-five years and appears frequently in the State and the United-States Supreme Courts. He is a logical reasoner and brilliant orator, convincing juries and audiences by his incisive arguments. He served in Congress with distinguished credit. His two sons have adopted the legal profession and are associated with their father. A man of positive individuality and sterling character, a friend in cloud and sunshine, a deep thinker and entertaining talker is James H. Osmer.

Cranberry township, a regular petroleum-huckleberry, duplicated the Reno pool at Milton, with a vigorous offshoot at Bredinsburg and nibbles lying around loose. Below Franklin the second-sand sandwich and Bully-Hill successes were special features. A mile up East Sandy Creek—it separates Cranberry and Rockland—was Gas City, on a toploftical hill twelve miles south of Oil City. A well sunk in 1864 had heaps of gas, which caught fire and burned seven years. E. E. Wightman and Patrick Canning drilled five good wells in 1871 and Gas City came into being. Vendergrift & Forman constructed a pipeline and telegraph to Oil City. Gas fired the boilers, lighted the streets, heated the dwellings and great quantities wasted. The pressure could be run up to three-hundred pounds and utilized to run engines in place of steam, were it not for the fine grit with the gas, which wore out the cylinders. Wells that supplied fuel to pump themselves seemed very similar to mills that furnished their own motive-power and grist for the hoppers. A cow that gave milk and provided food for herself by the process could not be slicker. Gas City vaporized a year or two and flickered out. The last jet has been extinguished and not a glimmer of gas or symptom of wells has been visible for many years.

Fifteen of the first sixteen wells at Foster gladdened the owners by yielding bountifully. To drill, to tube, to pump, to get done-up with a dry-hole, “aye, there’s the rub” that tests a fellow’s mettle and changes blithe hope to bleak despair. Foster wells were not of that complexion. They lined the steep cliff that resembles an Alpine farm tilted on end to drain off, the derricks standing like sentries on the watch that nobody walked away with the romantic landscape. Lovers of the sterner moods of nature would revel in the rugged scenery, which discounts the overpraised Hudson and must have fostered sublime emotions in the impassive redmen. Indian-God Rock, inscribed with untranslatable hieroglyphics, presumably tells what “Lo” thought of the surroundings. Six miles south of the huge rock, which somebody proposed to boat to Franklin and set in the park as an interesting memento of the aborigines, was “the burning well.” For years the gas blazed, illuminating the hills and keeping a plot of grass constantly fresh and green. The flood in 1865 overflowed the hole, but the gas burned just as though water were its native element. It was the fad for sleighing parties to visit the well, dance on the sward when snow lay a yard deep ten rods away and hold outdoor picnics in January and February. This practically realized the fancy of the boy who wished winter would come in summer, that he might coast on the Fourth of July in shirt-sleeves and linen-pants. Here and there in the interior of Rockland township morsels of oil have been unearthed and small wells are pumping to-day.

C. D. Angell leased blocks of land from Foster to Scrubgrass in 1870-71 and jabbed them with holes that confirmed his “belt theory.” His first well—a hundred-barreler—on Belle Island, a few rods below the station, opened the Scrubgrass field. On the Rockland side of the river the McMillan and 99 wells headed a list of remunerative producers. Back a quarter-mile the territory was tricky, wells that showed for big strikes sometimes proving of little account. A town toddled into existence. Gregory—the genial host joined the heavenly host long ago—had a hotel at which trains stopped for meals. James Kennerdell ran a general store and the post-office. The town was busy and had nothing scrubby except the name. The wells retired from business, the depot burned down, the people vanished and Kennerdell Station was established a half-mile north. Wilson Cross continued his store at the old stand until his death in March, 1896. Within a year paying wells have been drilled near the station and two miles southward. On the opposite bank Major W. T. Baum, of Franklin, has a half-dozen along the base of the hill that net him a princely return. A couple of miles north-west, in Victory township, Conway Brothers, of Philadelphia, recently drilled a well forty-two hundred feet. The last sixty feet were sand with a flavor of oil, the deepest sand and petroleum recorded up to the present time. Careful records of the strata and temperature were taken. Once a thermometer slipped from Mr. Conway’s hand and tumbled to the bottom of the well, the greatest drop of the mercury in any age or clime.

Sixty farmers combined in the fall of 1859 to drill the first well in Scrubgrass township, on the Rhodabarger tract. They rushed it like sixty six-hundred feet, declined to pay more assessments, kicked over the dashboard and spilled the whole combination. The first productive well was Aaron Kepler’s, drilled on the Russell farm in 1863, and John Crawford’s farm had the largest of the early ventures. On the Witherup farm, at the mouth of Scrubgrass Creek, paying wells were drilled in 1867. Considerable skirmishing was done at intervals without startling results. The first drilling in Clinton township was on. the Kennerdell property, two miles west of the Allegheny, the Big-Bend Oil-Company sinking a dry-hole in 1864-5. Jonathan Watson bored two in 1871, finding traces of oil in a thin layer of sand. The Kennerdell block of nine-hundred acres figured as the scene of milling operations from the beginning of the century. David Phipps—the Phipps families are still among the most prominent in Venango county—built a grist-mill on the property in 1812, a saw-mill and a woolen-factory, operated an iron-furnace a mile up the creek and founded a natty village. Fire destroyed his factory and Richard Kennerdel bought the place in 1853. He built a woolen-mill that attained national celebrity, farmed extensively, conducted a large store and for thirty years was a leading business-man. A handsome fortune, derived from manufacturing and oil-wells on his lands, and the respect of all classes rewarded the enterprise, sagacity and hospitality of this progressive citizen. The factory he reared has been dismantled, the pretty little settlement amid the romantic hills of Clinton is deserted and the man to whom both owed their development rests from his labors. Mr. Kennerdell possessed boundless energy, decision and the masterly qualities that surmount obstacles, build up a community and round out a manly character. Cornen Brothers have a production on the Kennerdell tract, which they purchased in 1892. During the Bullion furore a bridge was built at Scrubgrass and a railroad to Kennerdell was constructed. Ice carried off the bridge and the faithful old ferry holds the fort as in the days of John A. Canan and George McCullough.

Phillips Brothers, who had operated largely on Oil Creek and in Butler county, leased thousands of acres in Clinton and drilled a number of dry-holes. Believing a rich pool existed in that latitude, they were not deterred by reverses that would have stampeded operators of less experience. On August ninth, 1876, John Taylor and Robert Cundle finished a two-hundred-barrel spouter on the George W. Gealy farm, two miles north of Kennerdell. They sold to Phillips Brothers, who were drilling on adjacent farms. The new strike opened the Bullion field, toward which the current turned forthwith. H. L. Taylor and John Satterfield, the biggest operators in Butler, visited the Gealy well and offered a half-million dollars for the Phillips interests in Clinton. A hundred oilmen stood watching the flow that August morning. The parties consulted briefly and Isaac Phillips invited me to walk with him a few rods. He said: “Taylor & Satterfield wish to take our property at five-hundred-thousand dollars. This is a good deal of money, but we have declined it. We think there will be a million in this field for us if we develop it ourselves.” They carried out this programme and the estimate was approximated closely.

The Sutton, Simcox, Taylor, Henderson, Davis, Gealy, Newton and Berringer farms were operated rapidly. Tack Brothers paid ten-thousand dollars to Taylor for thirty acres and Porter Phipps leased fifteen acres, which he sold to Emerson & Brownson, whose first well started at seven-hundred barrels. Phillips Brothers’ No. 3 well, on the Gealy farm, was a four-hundred-barreler. In January, 1877, Frank Nesbit’s No. 2, Henderson farm, flowed five-hundred barrels, and in February the Galloway began at two-hundred. The McCalmont Oil-Company’s Big Medicine, on the Newton Farm, tipped the beam at one-thousand barrels on June seventh. Mitchell & Lee’s Big Injun flowed three-thousand barrels on June eighteenth, the biggest yield in the district. Ten yards away a galaxy of Franklinites drilled the driest kind of a dry-hole. In August the McCalmont No. 31 and the Phillips No. 7 gauged a plump thousand apiece. These were the largest wells and they exhausted speedily. The oil from the Gealy No. 1 was hauled to Scrubgrass until connections could be laid to the United Pipe-Lines. The Bullion field, in which a few skeleton-wells produce a few barrels daily, extended seven miles in length and three-eighths of a mile in width. Like the business-end of a healthy wasp, “it was little, but—oh, my!” It swerved the tide from Bradford and ruled the petroleum-roost eighteen months. Summit City on the Simcox farm, Berringer City on the Berringer farm, and Dean City on the McCalmont farm flourished during the excitement. The first house at Summit was built on December eighth, 1876. In June of 1877 the town boasted two-hundred buildings and fifteen-hundred population. Abram Myers, the last resident, left in April of 1889. All three towns have “faded into nothingness” and of the five-hundred wells producing at the summit of Bullion’s short-lived prosperity not a dozen survive. Westward a new strip was opened, the wells on several farms yielding their owners a pleasant income. J. J. Myers, whose home is now at Hartstown, operated successfully in this district. George Rumsey, an enterprising citizen, is the lucky owner of a number of slick wells. The pretty town of Clintonville has been largely benefited by oil-operations in the vicinity. It is surrounded by a fine agricultural country and possesses many desirable features as a place of residence. Bullion had its turn and others were to follow in short meter.

“’Tis not too late to seek a newer world, Tho’ much is taken, much abides.”

Major St. George—the kindly old man sleeps in the Franklin cemetery—had a bunch of wells and lived in a small house close to the Allegheny-Valley track, near the siding in Rockland township that bears his name. At Rockland Station a stone chimney, a landmark for many years, marked the early abode of Hon. Elisha W. Davis, who operated at Franklin, was speaker of the House of Representatives and the State-Senate five terms and spent the closing years of his active life in Philadelphia. Emlenton, the lively town at the south-eastern corner of Venango county, was a thriving place prior to the oil-development. The wells in the vicinity were generally medium, Ritchey Run having some of the best. This romantic stream, south of the town, borders Clarion county for a mile or two from its mouth. John Kerr, a squatter, cleared a portion of the forest and was drowned in the river, slipping off a flat rock two miles below his bit of land. The site of Emlenton was surveyed and the warrant from the state given in 1796 to Samuel B. Fox, great-grandfather of the late William Logan Fox and J. M. Fox, of Foxburg. Joseph M., son of Samuel B. Fox, settled on the land in 1827. Andrew McCaslin owned the tract above, from about where the Valley Hotel and the public-school now stand. He was elected sheriff in 1832 and built an iron-furnace. As a compliment to Mrs. Fox—Miss Hanna Emlen—he named the hamlet Emlenton. Doctor James Growe built the third house in the settlement. The covered wooden-bridge, usually supposed to have been brought over in the Mayflower, withstood floods and ice-gorges until April of 1883. John Keating, who had the second store, built a furnace near St. Petersburg and held a thousand acres of land. Oil-producers were well represented in the growing town, which has been the home of Marcus Hulings, L. E. Mallory, D. D. Moriarty, M. C. Treat and R. W. Porterfield. James Bennett, a leader in business, built the brick opera-house and the flour-mills and headed the company that built the Emlenton & Shippenville Railroad, which ran to Edenburg at the height of the Clarion development. Emlenton is supplied with natural-gas and noted for good schools, good hotels and get-up-and-get citizens and is wide-awake in every respect.

Dr. A. W. Crawford, of Emlenton, who served in the Legislature, was appointed consul to Antwerp by President Lincoln in 1861. At the time he reached Antwerp a cheap illuminant was unknown on the continent. Gas was used in the cities, but the people of Antwerp depended mainly upon rape-seed oil. Only wealthy people could afford it and the poorer folks went to bed in the dark. From Antwerp to Brussels the country was shrouded in gloom at night. Not a light could be seen outside the towns, in the most populous section on earth. A few gallons of American refined had appeared in Antwerp previous to Dr. Crawford’s arrival. It was regarded as an object of curiosity. A leading firm inquired about this new American product and Dr. Crawford was the man who could give the information. He was from the very part of the country where the new illuminant was produced. The upshot of the matter was that Dr. Crawford put the firm in communication with American shippers, which led to an order of forty barrels by Aug. Schmitz & Son, Antwerp dealers. The article had tremendous prejudice to overcome, but the exporters succeeded in finally disposing of their stock. It yielded them a net return of forty francs. The oil won its way and from the humble beginning of forty barrels in 1861, the following year witnessing a demand for fifteen-hundred-thousand gallons. By 1863 it had come largely into use and since that time it has become a staple article of commerce. Dr. Crawford served as consul at Antwerp until 1866, when he returned home and began a successful career as an oil-producer. It was fortunate that Col. Drake chanced upon the shallowest spot in the oil-regions where petroleum has ever been found, when he located the first well, and equally lucky that a practical oilman represented the United States at Antwerp in 1861. Had Drake chanced upon a dry-hole and some other man been consul at Antwerp, oil-developments might have been retarded for years.

“Oft what seems a trifle, A mere nothing in itself, in some nice situations Turns the scale of Fate and rules important actions.”

It is interesting to note that in the original land-warrants to Samuel M. Fox certain mineral-rights are reserved, although oil is not specified. A clause in each of the documents reads:

* * * “To the use of him, the said Samuel M. Fox, his heirs and assigns forever, free and clear of all restriction and reservation as to mines, royalties, quit-rents or otherwise, excepting and reserving only the fifth part of all gold and silver-ore for the use of this Commonwealth, to be delivered at the pit’s mouth free of all charges.”

The lands of Joseph M. Fox extended five miles down the Allegheny, to the north bank of the Clarion River. He built a home a mile back of the Allegheny and endeavored to have the county-seat established at the junction of the two streams. The village of Foxburg, which bears the family-name and is four miles below Emlenton, had no existence until long after his death. Contrary to the accepted opinion, he was not a Quaker, nor do his descendants belong to the Society of Friends or any religious denomination in particular.

The prudence and wisdom of his father’s policy left the estate in excellent shape when its management devolved largely upon W. L. Fox. Progressive and far-seeing, the young man possessed in eminent degree the business-qualities needed to handle vast interests successfully. His honored mother and his younger brother aided him in building up and constantly improving the rich heritage. Oil-operations upon and around it added enormously to the value of the property. Hundreds of prolific wells yielded bounteously and the town of Foxburg blossomed into the prettiest spot on the banks of the Allegheny. The Foxes erected a spacious school and hotel, graded the streets, put up dainty residences and fostered the growing community most generously. A bank was established, stores and dwellings multiplied, the best people found the surroundings congenial and the lawless element had no place in the attractive settlement. The master-hand of William Logan Fox was visible everywhere. With him to plan was to execute. He constructed the railroad that connected Foxburg with St. Petersburg, Edenburg and Clarion. The slow hacks gave way to the swift iron-horse that brought the interior towns into close communication with each other and the world outside. It would be impossible to estimate the advantage of this enterprise to the producers and the citizens of the adjacent country.

The narrow-gauge railroad from Foxburg to Clarion was an engineering novelty. It zig-zagged to overcome the big hill at the start, twisted around ravines and crossed gorges on dizzy trestles. Near Clarion was the highest and longest bridge, a wooden structure on stilts, curved and single-tracked. One dark night a drummer employed by a Pittsburg house was drawn over it safely in a buggy. The horse left the wagon-road, got on the railroad-track, walked across the bridge—the ties supporting the rails were a foot apart—and fetched up at his stable about midnight. The drummer, who had imbibed too freely and was fast asleep in the vehicle, knew nothing of the drive, which the marks of the wheels on the approaches and the ties revealed next morning. The horse kept closely to the center of the track, while the wheels on the right were outside the rails. Had the faithful animal veered a foot to the right, the buggy would have tumbled over the trestle and there would have been a vacant chair in commercial ranks and a new voice in the celestial choir. That the horse did not step between the ties and stick fast was a wonder. The trip was as perilous as the Mohammedan passage to Paradise over a slack-wire or Blondin’s tight-rope trip across Niagara.

Mr. Fox’s busy brain conceived even greater things for the benefit of the neighborhood. Millions of capital enabled him to carry out the ideas of his resourceful mind. He created opportunities to invest his wealth in ways that meant the greatest good to the greatest number. The family heartily seconded his efforts to advance the general welfare. He built and operated the only extensive individual pipe-line in the oil-regions. To extend the trade and influence of Foxburg he devised new lines of railway, which would traverse a section abounding in coal, timber and agricultural products. He outlined the plan of an immense refinery, designed to employ a host of skilled workmen and utilize the crude-oil derived from the wells within several miles of his home. In the midst of these and other useful projects, in the very heyday of vigorous manhood, just as the full fruition of his highest hopes seemed about to be grandly realized, the end of his bright career came suddenly. His death, met in the discharge of duty, was almost tragic in its manner and results.

In February of 1880 Conductor W. W. Gaither, of the Foxburg-Clarion Railroad, ejected a peddler named John Clancy from his train, near King’s Mills, for refusing to pay his fare. Clancy shot Gaither, who died in a few days from the wound. W. L. Fox was the president of the road and a warm personal friend of the murdered conductor. He took charge of the pistol and became active in bringing Clancy to punishment. Clancy was placed on trial at Clarion. President Fox was to produce the pistol in court. Leaving home on the early train for Clarion, he had proceeded some distance from Foxburg when he discovered he had forgotten the pistol. He stopped the train and ran back to get the weapon. When he returned he was almost exhausted. W. J. McConnell, beside whom he was sitting, attempted to revive him, but he sank into unconsciousness and expired in the car near the spot where his friend Gaither was shot. Clancy was convicted of murder in the second degree and sentenced to eight years in the penitentiary. His wife and twelve-year-old son were left destitute. The boy went to work for a farmer near St. Petersburg. A week later, it is said, he was crossing a field in which a vicious bull was feeding. The bull attacked him, ripped his side open, tossed him from the field into the road and the boy died in a short time. Besides these fatalities resulting from Clancy’s crime, the business of Foxburg was seriously crippled. The village depended mainly upon the oil-business of the Fox estate, of which Mr. Fox, although only twenty-nine years old, was manager. Its three-thousand acres of oil-territory, but partially developed, yielded forty-five-thousand barrels of crude a month. The refinery was never built, the pipe-line was sold and extensive development of the property practically ceased. The pathetic death of William Logan Fox took the distribution of a million dollars a year from the region about Foxburg. The stricken family erected a splendid church to his memory, but it is seldom used. Much of its trade and population has sought other fields and the pretty town is merely a shadow of the past.

“The massive gates of circumstance Are turned upon the smallest hinge, And thus some seeming pettiest chance Oft gives our life its after tinge.”

Fertig & Hammond drilled numerous wells on the Fox estate in 1870-71 and started a bank. Operations were pressed actively by producers from the upper districts. Foxburg was the jumping off point for pilgrims to the Clarion field, which Galey No. 1 well, on Grass Flats, inaugurated in August, 1871. Others on the Flats, ranging from thirty to eighty barrels, boomed Foxburg and speedily advanced St. Petersburg, three miles inland, from a sleepy village of thirty houses to a busy town of three-thousand population. In September of 1871 Marcus Hulings, whose great specialty was opening new fields, finished a hundred-barrel well on the Ashbaugh farm, a mile beyond St. Petersburg. The town of Antwerp was one result. The first building, erected in the spring of 1872, in sixty days had the company of four groceries, three hotels, innumerable saloons, telegraph-office, school-house and two-hundred dwellings. Its general style was summed up by the victim of a poker-game in the expressive words: “If you want a smell of brimstone before supper go to Antwerp!” Fire in 1873 wiped it off the face of the planet.

Charles H. Cramer, now proprietor of a hotel in Pittsburg, left the Butler field to drill the Antwerp well, in which he had a quarter-interest. James M. Lambing, for whom he had been drilling, jokingly remarked: “When you return ‘broke’ from the wildcat well on the Ashbaugh farm I will have another job for you.” It illustrates the ups and downs of the oil business in the seventies to note that, when the well was completed, Lambing had met with financial reverses and Cramer was in a position to give out jobs on his own hook. Victor Gretter was one of the spectators of the oil flowing over the derrick. The waste suggested to him the idea of the oil-saver, which he patented. This strike reduced the price of crude a dollar a barrel. Antwerp would have been more important but for its nearness to St. Petersburg, which disastrous fires in 1872-3 could not prevent from ranking with the best towns of Oildom. Stages from Foxburg were crowded until the narrow-gauge railroad furnished improved facilities for travel. Schools, churches, hotels, newspapers, two banks and an opera-house flourished. The Pickwick Club was a famous social organization. The Collner, Shoup, Vensel, Palmer and Ashbaugh farms and Grass Flats produced three-thousand barrels a day. Oil was five to six dollars and business strode ahead like the wearer of the Seven-League Boots. Now the erstwhile busy town is back to its pristine quietude and the farms that produced oil have resumed the production of corn and grass.

A jolly Dutchman near St. Petersburg, who married his second wife soon after the funeral of the first, was visited with a two-hours’ serenade in token of disapproval. He expostulated pathetically thus: “I say, poys, you ought to be ashamed of myself to be making all dish noise ven der vas a funeral here purty soon not long ago.” This dispersed the party more effectually than a bull-dog and a revolver could have done.

A girl just returned to St. Petersburg from a Boston high-school said, upon seeing the new fire-engine at work: “Who would evah have dweamed such a vewy diminutive looking apawatus would hold so much wattah!”

“Where are you going?” said mirth-loving Con. O’Donnell to an elderly man in a white cravat whom he overtook on the outskirts of Antwerp and proposed to invite to ride in his buggy. “I am going to heaven, my son. I have been on my way for eighteen years.” “Well, good-bye, old fellow! If you have been traveling toward heaven for eighteen years and got no nearer than Antwerp, I will take another route.”

The course of operations extended past Keating Furnace, up and beyond Turkey Run, a dozen miles from the mouth of the Clarion River. Good wells on the Ritts and Neeley farms originated Richmond, a small place that fizzled out in a year. The Irwin well, a mile farther, flowed three-hundred barrels in September of 1872. The gas took fire and burned three men to death. The entire ravine and contiguous slopes proved desirable territory, although the streak rarely exceeded a mile in breadth. Turkey City, in a nice expanse to the east of the famous Slicker farm, for months was second only to St. Petersburg as a frontier town. It had four stages to Foxburg, a post-office, daily mail-service and two passable hotels. George Washington, who took a hack at a cherry-tree, might have preferred walking to the drive over the rough, cut-up roads that led to and from Turkey City. The wells averaged eleven-hundred feet, with excellent sand and loads of gas for fuel. Richard Owen and Alan Cochran, of Rouseville, opened a jack-pot on the Johnson farm, above town. Wells lasted for years and this nook of the Clarion district could match pennies with any other in the business of producing oil.

Northward two miles was Dogtown, beautifully situated in the midst of a rich agricultural section. The descendents of the first settlers retain their characteristics of their German ancestors. Frugal, honest and industrious, they live comfortably in their narrow sphere and save their gains. The Delo farm, another mile north, was for a time the limit of developments. True to his instincts as a discoverer of new territory, Marcus Hulings went six miles north-east of St. Petersburg, leased B. Delo’s farm and drilled a forty-barrel well in the spring of 1872. Enormous quantities of gas were found in the second sand. The oil was piped to Oil City. A half-mile east, on the Hummell farm, Salem township, Lee & Plumer struck a hundred-barreler in July of 1872. The Hummell farm had been occupied for sixty years by a venerable Teuton, whose rustic son of fifty-five summers described himself as “the pishness man ov the firm.” The new well, twelve-hundred feet deep, had twenty-eight feet of nice sand and considerable gas. Its success bore fruit speedily in the shape of a “town” dubbed Pickwick by Plumer, who belonged to the redoubtable Pickwick Club at St. Petersburg. A quarter-mile ahead, on a three-cornered plot, Triangle City bloomed. The first building was a hotel and the second a hardware store, owned by Lavens & Evans. Charles Lavens operated largely in the Clarion region and in the northern field, lived at Franklin several years and removed to Bradford. He is president of the Bradford Commercial Bank and a tip-top fellow at all times and under all circumstances. Evans may claim recognition as the author, in the muddled days of shut-downs and suspensions in 1872, of the world-famed platform of the Grass-Flats producers: “Resolved that we don’t care a damn!” The three tailors of Tooley street, who issued a manifesto as “We, the people of England,” were outclassed by Evans and his friends. News of their action was flashed to every “council” and “union” in the oil-country, with more stimulating effect than a whole broadside of formal declarations. Triangle, Pickwick and Paris City have passed to the realm of forgetfulness.

Marcus Hulings, a leader in the world of petroleum, was born near Philipsburg, Clarion county, and began his career as a producer in 1860. For some years he had been a contractor and builder and he turned his practical knowledge of mechanics to good account. His earliest oil-venture was a well on the Allegheny River above Oil City, for which he refused sixty-thousand dollars. To be nearer the producing-fields, he removed to Emlenton and resided there a number of years. The Hulings family had been identified with Venango county from the first settlement, one of them establishing a ferry at Franklin a century ago. Prior to that date the family owned and lived on what is now Duncan’s Island, at the junction of the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers, fifteen miles north-west of Harrisburg. Marcus was a pathfinder in Forest county and opened the Clarion region. He leased Clark & Babcock’s six-thousand acres in McKean county and drilled hundreds of paying wells. Deciding to locate at Oil City, he built an elegant home on the South Side and bought a delightful place in Crawford county for a summer residence. His liberality, enterprise and energy seemed inexhaustible. He donated a magnificent hall to Allegheny College, Meadville, aided churches and schools, relieved the poor and was active in political affairs. Besides his vast oil-interests he had mines in Arizona and California, mills on the Pacific coast and huge lumber-tracts in West Virginia. Self-poised and self-reliant, daring yet prudent, brave and trustworthy, he was one of the grandest representatives of the petroleum-industry. Neither puffed up by prosperity nor unduly cast down by adversity, he met obstacles resolutely and accepted results manfully. My last talk with him was at Pittsburg, where he told of his endeavor to organize a company to develop silver-claims in Mexico. He had grown older and weaker, but the earnestness of youth was still his possession. His eyes sparkled and his face lightened as he shook my hand at parting and said: “You will hear from me soon. If this company can be organized I would not exchange my Mexican properties for the wealth of the Astors!”

He died in a few weeks, his dream unfulfilled. Losses in the west had reduced his fortune without impairing his splendid courage, hope and patience. He united the endurance of a soldier with the skill of a commander. Marcus Hulings deserved to enjoy a winter of old age as green as spring, as full of blossoms as summer, as generous as autumn. His son, Hon. Willis J. Hulings, served in the Legislature three terms. He introduced the bills prohibiting railroad-discriminations and was a strong debater on the floor. Senator Quay favored him for State Treasurer and attempted to stampede the convention which nominated William Livsey. This was the beginning of the differences between Quay and the combine which culminated in the rout of the latter and the triumph of the Beaver statesman in 1895-6. Mr. Hulings lives at Oil City, has a beautiful home and is colonel of the Sixteenth Regiment of the National Guards. He practiced law in 1877-81, then devoted his attention to oil-operations, to mining and lumbering, in which he is at present actively engaged.

John Lee drilled his first well on the Hoover farm, near Franklin, in 1860, and he is operating to-day in Clinton and Rockland townships. He has had his share of storm and sunshine, from dusters at Nickelville to a slice of the Big Injun at Bullion, in the shifting panorama of oil-developments for thirty-six years, but his fortitude and manliness never flinched. He is no sour dyspeptic, whose conduct depends upon what he eats for breakfast and who cannot believe the world is O. K. if he drills a dry-hole occasionally.

Frederick C. Plumer and John Lee, partners in the Clarion and Butler fields, were successful operators. Their wells on the Hummell farm netted handsome returns. By a piece of clever strategy they secured the Diviner tract, drilled a well that extended the territory two miles south of Millerstown and sold out for ninety-thousand dollars. Plumer quit with a competence, purchased his former hardware-store at Newcastle, took a flyer in the Bullion district and died at Franklin, his birthplace and boyhood home, in 1879. “Fred” was a thorough man of affairs, prompt, courteous, affable and popular. His long sickness was borne cheerfully and he faced the end—he died at thirty-one—without repining. His wife and daughter have joined him in the land of deathless reunions.

“Over the river! Sailing on waters where lotuses smile, Passing by many a tropical isle, Sighting savannas there mile upon mile, Over the river! Music forever and beauty for aye, Sunlight unending—the sunlight and day, Never a farewell to weep on the way, Over the river!”

East, north and west the area of prolific territory widened. Wells on the Young farm started a jaunty development at Jefferson Furnace. Once the scene of activity in iron-manufacture, the old furnace had been neglected for three decades. Oil awakened the spot from its Rip-Van-Winkle slumber. A narrow-gauge railroad crossed Beaver Creek on a dizzy trestle, which afforded an enticing view of derricks, streams, hills, dales, cleared farms and wooded slopes. The wells have pumped out, the railroad has been switched off and the stout furnace stands again in its solitary dignity. James M. Guffey, J. T. Jones, Wesley Chambers and other live operators kept branching out until Beaver City, Mongtown, Mertina, Edenburg, Knox, Elk City, Fern City and Jerusalem, with Cogley as a supplement, were the centers of a production that aggregated ten-thousand barrels a day. The St. Lawrence well, on the Bowers farm, a mile north of Edenburg, was finished in June of 1872 and directed attention to Elk township. For two years it pumped sixty-nine barrels a day, six days each week, the owners shutting it down on Sunday. Previously Captain Hasson, of Oil City, and R. Richardson, then of Tarr Farm and now of Franklin, had drilled in the vicinity. Ten dusters north of the Bowers farm augured poorly for the St. Lawrence. It disappointed the prophets of evil by striking a capital sand and producing with a regularity surpassed only by one well on Cherry Run. It was not “a lovely toy, most fiercely sought, that lost its charm by being caught.”

The St. Lawrence jumped the northern end of the Clarion district to the front. Hundreds of wells ushered in new towns. Knox, on the Bowers farm, attained a post-office, a hardware store and a dozen dwellings, its proximity to Edenburg preventing larger growth. The cross-roads collection of five houses and a store known as Edenburg progressed immensely. John Mendenhall and J. I. Best’s farm-houses, ’Squire Kribbs’s country-store and justice-mill, a blacksmith-shop and three dwellings constituted the place at the date of the St. Lawrence advent. The nearest hotel—the Berlin House—was three miles northward. In six months the quiet village became a busy, hustling, prosperous town of twenty-five hundred population. It had fine hotels, fine stores, banks and people whom a destructive fire—it eliminated two-thirds of the buildings in one night—could not “send to the bench.” When the flames had been subdued, a crowd of sufferers gathered at two o’clock in the morning, sang “Home, Sweet Home,” and at seven were clearing away the embers to rebuild. Narrow-gauge railroads were built and the folks didn’t scare at the cars. Elk City flung its antlers to the breeze two miles east. Isaac N. Patterson—he is president of the Franklin Savings Bank and a big operator in Indiana—had a creamy patch on the Kaiser farm. Jerusalem’s first arrival—Guffey’s wells created it—was a Clarion delegate with a tent and a cargo of liquids. He dealt the drink over a rough board, improvised as a counter, so briskly that his receipts in two days footed up seven-hundred dollars. He had no license, an officer got on the trail and the vendor decamped. He is now advance-agent of a popular show, wears diamonds the size of walnuts and tells hosts of oil-region stories. The Clarion field was not inflamed by enormous gushers, but the wells averaged nicely and possessed the cardinal virtue of enduring year after year. It is Old Sol, steady and persevering, and not the flashing meteor, “a moment here, then gone forever,” that lights and heats the earth and is the fellow to bank upon.

An Edenburg mother fed her year-old baby on sliced cucumbers and milk, and then desired the prayers of the church “because the Lord took away her darling.” “How is the baby?” anxiously inquired one lady of another at Beaver City. “Oh, baby died last week, I thank you,” was the equivocal reply.

Some of the oilmen were liberally endowed with the devotional sentiment. When the news of a blazing tank of oil at Mertina reached Edenburg, a jolly operator telegraphed the fact to Oil City, with the addendum: “Everything has gone hellward.” A half-hour later came his second dispatch: “The oil is blazing, with big flames going heavenward.” Such a happy blending of the infernal with the celestial is seldom witnessed in ordinary business.

The behavior of some people in a crisis is a wonderful puzzle, sometimes funnier than a pig-circus. At the St. Petersburg fire, which sent half the town up in smoke, an old woman rescued from the Adams House, with a bag of money containing four-hundred dollars, was indignant that her fifty-cent spectacles had been left to burn. A male guest stormed over the loss of his satchel, which a servant had carried into the street, and threatened a suit for damages. The satchel was found and opened. It had a pair of dirty socks, two dirty collars, a comb and a toothbrush! The man with presence of mind to throw his mother-in-law from the fourth-story window and carry a feather-pillow down stairs was not on hand. St. Petersburg had no four-story buildings.

John Kiley and “Ed.” Callaghan headed a circle of jolly jokers at Triangle City and Edenburg. Hatching practical sells was their meat and drink. One evening they employed a stranger to personate a constable from Clarion and arrest a pipe-line clerk for the paternity of a bogus offspring. In vain the astonished victim protested his innocence, although he acknowledged knowing the alleged mother of the alleged kid. The minion of the law turned a deaf ear to his prayers for release, but consented to let him go until morning upon paying a five-dollar note. The poor fellow thought of an everlasting flight from Oildom and was leaving the room to pack up his satchel when the “constable” appeared with a supply of fluids. The joke was explained and the crowd liquidated at the expense of the subject of their pleasantry. Kiley was an oilman and operated in the northern fields. Callaghan slung lightning in the telegraph-office. He married at Edenburg and went to Chicago. His wife procured a divorce and married a well-known Harrisburger.

A letter from his feminine sweetness, advising him to hurry up if he wished her not to marry his rival, so flustrated an Edenburg druggist that he imbibed a full tumbler of Jersey lightning. An irresistible longing to lie down seized him and he stretched himself for a nap on a lounge in a room back of the store. John Kiley discovered the sleeping beauty, spread a sheet over him and prepared for a little sport. He let down the blinds, hung a piece of crape on the door and rushed out to announce that “Jim” was dead. People flocked to learn the particulars. Entering the drug-store a placard met their gaze: “Walk lightly, not to disturb the corpse!” They were next taken to the door of the rear apartment, to see a pair of boots protruding from beneath a sheet. Nobody was permitted to touch the body, on a plea that it must await the coroner, but the friends were invited to drink to the memory of the deceased pill-dispenser and suggest the best time for his funeral. Thus matters continued two hours, when the “corpse” wakened up, kicked off the sheet and walked out! His friends at first refused to recognize him, declaring the apparition was a ghost, but finally consented to renew the acquaintance upon condition that he “set ’em up” for the thirsty multitude.

A Clarion operator, having to spend Sunday in New York, strayed into a fashionable church and was shown to a swell seat. Shortly after a gentleman walked down the aisle, glared at the stranger, drew a pencil from his pocket, wrote a moment and handed him a slip of paper inscribed, “This is my pew.” The unabashed Clarionite didn’t bluff a little bit. He wrote and handed back the paper: “It’s a darned nice pew. How much rent do you ante up for it?” The New-Yorker saw the joke, sat down quietly and when the service closed shook hands with the intruder and asked him to dinner. The acquaintance begun so oddly ripened into a poker-game next evening, at which the oilman won enough from the city clubman to pay ten years’ pew-rent. At parting he remarked: “Who’s in the wrong pew now?” Then he whistled softly: “Let me off at Buffalo!”

Clarion’s products were not confined to prize pumpkins, mammoth corn and oil-wells. The staunch county supplied the tallest member of the National Guard, in the person of Thomas Near, twenty-one years old, six feet eleven in altitudinous measurement and about twice the thickness of a fence-rail. The Clarion company was mustered in at Meadville. General Latta’s look of astonishment as he surveyed the latitude and longitude of the new recruit was exceedingly comical. He rushed to Governor Hartranft and whispered, “Where in the name of Goliath did you pick up that young Anak?” At the next annual review Near stood at the end of the Clarion column. A staff-officer, noticing a man towering a foot above his comrades, spurred his horse across the field and yelled: “Get down off that stump, you blankety-blank son of a gun!” The tall boy did not “get down” and the enraged officer did not discover how it was until within a rod of the line. His chagrin rivaled that of Moses Primrose with the shagreen spectacles. Poor Near, long in inches and short in years, was not long for this world and died in youthful manhood.

Hon. James M. Guffey, one of Pennsylvania’s most popular and successful citizens, began his career as a producer in the Clarion district. Born and reared on a Westmoreland farm, his business aptitude early manifested itself. In youth he went south to fill a position under the superintendent of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. The practical training was put to good use by the earnest young Pennsylvanian. Its opportunities for dash and energy to gain rich rewards attracted him to the oil-region. Profiting by what he learned from the experiences of others in Venango—a careful observer, he did not have to scorch himself to find out that fire is hot—he located at St. Petersburg in 1872. Clarion was budding into prominence as a prospective oil-field. Handling well-machinery as agent of the Gibbs & Sterrett Manufacturing Company brought him into close relations with operators and operations in the new territory. He improved his advantages, leased lands, secured interests in promising farms, drilled wells and soon stepped to the front as a first-class producer. Fortune smiled upon the plucky Westmorelander, whose tireless push and fearless courage cool judgment and sound discretion tempered admirably. While always ready to accept the risks incident to producing oil and developing untried sections, he was not a reckless plunger, going ahead blindly and not counting the cost. He decided promptly, moved forward resolutely and took nobody’s dust. Those who endeavored to keep up with him had to “ride the horse of Pacolet” and travel fast. He invested in pipe-lines and local enterprises, helped every deserving cause, stood by his friends and his convictions, believed in progress and acted strictly on the square. Not one dollar of his splendid winnings came to him in a manner for which he needs blush, or apologize or be ashamed to look any man on earth straight in the face. He did not get his money at the expense of his conscience, of his self-respect, of his generous instincts or of his fellow-men. Of how many millionaires, in this age of shoddy and chicanery, of jobbery and corruption, of low trickery and inordinate desire for wealth, can this be said?

Mr. Guffey is an ardent Democrat, but sensible voters of all classes wished him to represent them in Congress and gave him a superb send-off in the oil-portion of the Clarion district. Unfortunately the fossils in the back-townships prevented his nomination. The uncompromising foe of ring-rule, boss-domination and machine-crookedness, he is a leader of the best elements of his party and not a noisy ward-politician. His voice is potent in Democratic councils and his name is familiar in every corner of the producing-regions. His oil-operations have reached to Butler, Forest, Warren, McKean and Allegheny counties. He furnished the cash that unlocked the Kinzua pool and extended the Bradford field miles up Foster Brook. In company with John Galey, Michael Murphy and Edward Jennings, he drilled the renowned Matthews well and owned the juiciest slice of the phenomenal McDonald field. He started developments in Kansas, putting down scores of wells, erecting a refinery and giving the state of Mary Ellen Lease a product drouths cannot blight nor grasshoppers devour. He was largely instrumental in developing the natural-gas fields of Western Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana, heading the companies that piped it into Pittsburg, Johnstown, Wheeling, Indianapolis and hundreds of small towns. He owns thousands of acres of the famous gas-coal lands of his native county, vast coal-tracts in West Virginia and valuable reality in Pittsburg. He lives in a handsome house at East Liberty, brightened by a devoted wife and four children, and dispenses a bountiful hospitality. Quick to mature and execute his plans, he dispatches business with great celerity, keeping in touch constantly with the details of his manifold enterprises. He is the soul of honor in his dealings, liberal in his benefactions and always approachable. His charm of manner, kindness of heart, keen intuition and rare geniality draw men to him and inspire their confidence and regard. He is a striking personality, his lithe frame, alert movements, flowing hair, luxuriant mustache, rolling collar, streaming tie, frock-coat and broad-brimmed hat suggesting General Custer. When at last the vital fires burn low, when his brave heart beats weak and slow, when the evening shadows lengthen and he enters the deepening dusk at the ending of many happy years, James M. Guffey will have lived a life worth living for its worth to himself, to his family, to the community and to the race.

“The grass is softer to his tread For rest it yields unnumber’d feet; Sweeter to him the wild rose red Because it makes the whole world sweet.”

Wesley S. Guffey, for many years a prominent operator, resembles his brother in enterprise, activity and the manly qualities that win respect. He owns scores of productive wells, and the firm of Guffey & Queen ranks high in the southern fields. He has labored zealously to secure political reform and free Pittsburg, where he has his beautiful home and office, from the odious thraldom of corrupt bossism. Unhappily the last legislature defeated the efforts of good citizens in this direction. Mr. Guffey is a fluent talker, knows lots of rich stories and reckons his friends by whole battalions. Pride and meanness he despises and “his word is his bond.” Another brother, John Guffey, has been sheriff of Westmoreland county and is a leading citizen. The Guffeys are men to trust implicitly, to tie to, to swear by and to bank upon at all times and under all circumstances.

Major Henry Wetter, the embodiment of honor and energy, was the largest operator in the Clarion district until swamped by the low price of oil. Death overtook him while struggling against heavy odds to recuperate his health and fortune. How sad it is that the flower must die before the fruit can bloom. A terrible decline in oil-values caused his failure in 1877 and compelled Merrick & Conley’s Edenburg bank to close.

“I falter where I firmly trod.”

Edenburg, in its prime the liveliest inland town the Clarion district could boast, is in Beaver township, ten miles from Foxburg and Emlenton. It was named by. J. G. Mendenhall, who located on a big farm and opened the Eden Inn fifty years ago. Two farms, one two miles north and the other a mile south-west of his home-farm, he dubbed Jerusalem and Egypt respectively. Mendenhall lived to see all three tracts productive oil-territory, with a busy town occupying part of the central tract. J. I. Best, who died in 1880, was his early neighbor and P. F. Kribbs started a country-store opposite the Mendenhall homestead. In the spring of 1872 Balliet & Co. drilled a duster on the Best farm. Hahn & Co. had similar ill-luck on the Kiser farm, a mile south, following in the wake of W. J. Brundred’s dry-hole on the Eischelman tract a month previous. The St. Lawrence strike changed the aspect of affairs and brought the territory into notice. Wooden buildings were hurried up, wells were rushed through the sand, crowds thronged the streets and Edenburg became the centre of attraction. Page Maplestone had the first hotel, to which Robert Orr quickly succeeded. The Winebrennerians had the first church, chased closely by the Methodists. Two banks, countless stores and shops, plenty of saloons, hundreds of houses and hosts of operators were soon in evidence. Knox, Elk City, Slam Bang, Wentling, Jefferson, Beaver and other suburban oil-towns put in an appearance. Ross Haney, D. J. Wyncoop, Charles Lavens, A. J. Urquhart, Gray Brothers, G. M. Cushing, Clark Hayes, B. F. Painter, J. D. Wolff, G. W. Moltz, Joseph E. Zuver, James Travis, M. E. Hess, Charles Shaw and dozens of others were familiar figures. J. M. Gifford launched the Herald, J. Edd Leslie exploited the Spirit, Campbell Brothers loaded the Oil-Times and Tom Whittaker fired off the malodorous Gattling Gun. Col. J. S. Brown dealt in real-estate and wrote breezily for the Oil-City Derrick. Sam Magee, M. M. Meredith and William Wirt Johnson practised law. Major J. B. Maitland managed the United Pipe-Lines and Goss Brothers owned the best well in the diggings. Narrow-gauge railroads were built from Emlenton and Foxburg, a borough charter was obtained and 1877 saw the town at its highest point. Severe fires scourged it frightfully, the Butler field lured many of the operators and Edenburg relapsed into a tidy village.

Thomas McConnell, Smith K. Campbell, W. D. Robinson and Col. J. B. Finlay, of Kittanning, in 1860 purchased two acres of land on the west bank of the Allegheny, ninety rods above Tom’s Run, from Elisha Robinson. Organizing the Foxburg Oil-Company of sixteen shares, they drilled a well four-hundred-and-sixty feet. An obstruction delayed work a few days, the war broke out and the well was abandoned. The same parties paid Robinson five-thousand dollars in 1865 for one-hundred acres and sold thirty to Philadelphia capitalists. The latter formed the Clarion and Allegheny-River Oil-Company and sunk a well which struck oil on October tenth, the first produced in the upper end of Armstrong county and the beginning of the Parker development. Venango was drooping and operators sought the southern trail. The Robinson farm was not perforated as quickly as “you could say Jack Robinson,” the owners choosing not to cut it into small leases, but other tracts were seized eagerly. Drilled deeper, the original Robinson well was utterly dry! Had it been finished in 1860-1 the territory might have been condemned and the Parker field never heard of!

John Galey’s hundred-barrel well, drilled in 1869 on the island above Parker, relieved the monotony of commonplace strikes—twenty to fifty barrels—on the Robinson and adjacent farms and elevated the district to the top rung of the ladder. Parker’s Landing—a ferry and a dozen houses—named from a pioneer settler, ambled merrily to the head of the procession. The center of operations that stretched into Butler county and demonstrated the existence of three greasy streaks, Parker speedily became a red-hot town of three-thousand inhabitants. Hotels, stores, offices, banks and houses crowded the strip of land at the base of the steep cliff, surged over the hill, absorbed the suburbs of Lawrenceburg and Farrentown and proudly wore the title of “Parker City.” Hosts of capital fellows made life a perpetual whirl of business and jollity. Operators of every class and condition, men of eminent ability, indomitable hustlers, speculators, gamblers and adventurers thronged the streets. It was the vim and spice and vigor of Oil City, Rouseville, Petroleum Centre and Pithole done up in a single package. A hundred of the liveliest laddies that ever capered about a “bull-ring” traded jokes and stories and oil-certificates at the Oil-Exchange. Two fires obliterated nine-tenths of the town, which was never wholly rebuilt. Developments tended southward for years and the sun of Parker set finally when Bradford’s rose in the northern sky. The bridge and a few buildings have held on, but the banks have wound up their accounts, the multitudes have dispersed, the residence-section of the cliff is a waste and the glory of Parker a tradition. As the ghost of Hamlet’s father observed concerning the bicycle academy, where beginners on wheels were plentiful: “What a falling off was there!”

Galey leased lands, sunk wells and sold to Phillips Brothers for a million dollars. He played a strong hand in Butler and Allegheny and removed to Pittsburg, his present headquarters. He possessed nerve, energy and endurance and, like the country-boy applying for a job, “wuz jam’d full ov day’s work.” He would lend a hand to tube his wells, lay pipes, move a boiler or twist the tools. There wasn’t a lazy bone in his anatomy. Rain, mud, storm or darkness had no terrors for the bold rider, who bestrode a raw-boned horse and “took Time by the forelock.” A young lady from New York, whose father was interested with Galey in a tract of oil-land, accompanied him on one of his visits to Millerstown. She had heard a great deal about her father’s partner and the producers, whom she imagined to be clothed in broadcloth and diamonds. When the stage from Brady drew up at the Central Hotel a gorgeous chap was standing on the platform. He sported a stunning suit, a huge gold-chain, a diamond-pin and polished boots, the whole outfit got up regardless of expense. “Oh, papa, I see a producer! That must be Mr. Galey,” exclaimed the girl as this prototype of the dude met her gaze. The father glanced at the object, recognized him as a neighboring bar-tender and spoiled his daughter’s fanciful notion by the curt rejoinder: “That blamed fool is a gin-slinger!” Butler had long been a sort of by-word for poverty and meanness, the settlers going by the nickname of “Buckwheats.” This was an unjust imputation, as the simple people were kind, honest and industrious, in these respects presenting a decided contrast to some of the new elements in the wake of the petroleum-development. The New-York visitor drove out in the afternoon to meet his business-associate. A mile below the Diviner farm a man on horseback was seen approaching. Mud covered the panting steed and his rider. The young lady, anxious to show how much she knew about the country, hazarded another guess. “Oh! papa,” she said earnestly, “I’m sure that’s a Buckwheat!” The father chuckled, next moment greeted the rider warmly and introduced him to his astonished daughter as “My partner, Mr. Galey!” A hearty laugh followed the father’s version of the day’s incidents.

John H. Galey has been engaged in oil-operations for a generation. Coming from Clarion county to Oil Creek in the sixties, he participated in the Pithole excitement, drilled a test-well that broadened the Pleasantville field and started the Parker furore with his island-strike. He is every inch a petroleum-pioneer. To him belongs the honor of ushering in various new districts in Pennsylvania and the oil-developments in Kansas and Texas. Well-earned success has rewarded his persistent, indomitable energy. He owns a fat slice of the finest silver-mine in Idaho and holds a large stake in California, Colorado and Nova-Scotia gold-mines. Mr. Galey is thoroughly practical and companionable, has traveled much and observed closely, nor can any excel him in narrating reminiscences and experiences of life in the oil-regions.

John McKeown drilled on the Farren hill and the slopes bordering the north bank of Bear Creek. Glory Hole popped up on B. B. Campbell’s Bear-Creek farm. Campbell-bluff, whole-souled “Ben”—is a Pittsburg capitalist, big in body and mind, outspoken and independent. “The Campbells are coming” could not have found a better herald. He produced largely, bought stacks of farms, refined and piped oil and was an important factor in the Armstrong-Butler development. At the Ursa Major well, the first on the farm, large casing and heavy tools were first used, with gratifying results. “Charley” Cramer juggled the temper-screw and laughed at the chaps who solemnly predicted the joints would not stand the strain and the engine would not jerk the tools out of the hole. The tool-dresser on Cramer’s “tower”—drilling went on night and day, each “tower” lasting twelve hours and the men changing at noon and midnight—was A. M. Lambing, now the learned and zealous parish-priest at Braddock. The well, completed in June of 1871 and good for a hundred barrels, was owned by James M. Lambing, to whom more than any other man the world is indebted for the extension of the Butler field.

Born in Armstrong county, in 1861 young Lambing concluded to invest some time and labor—his sole capital—in a well at the mouth of Tubb’s Run, two miles above Tionesta. A dry-hole was the poor reward of his efforts. Enlisting in the Eighty-third Regiment, he received disabling injuries, was discharged honorably, returned to Forest county in 1863, superintended the Denver Petroleum-Company, dealt in real estate and in 1866 commenced operating at Tidioute. A vein of bad luck in 1867 exhausting his last dollar, he sold his gold-watch and chain to pay the wages of his drillers. Facing the future bravely, he worked by the day, contracted to bore wells at Pleasantville, Church Run, Shamburg and Red Hot and bore up cheerfully during three years of adversity. In the winter of 1869 he traded an engine for an interest in a well at Parker that smelled of oil. For another interest he drilled the Wilt & Crawford well and secured leases on Tom’s Run. His Pharos, Gipsy Queen and Lady Mary wells enabled him to strike out boldly. In company with his brother—John A. Lambing—C. D. Angell and B. B. Campbell, he ventured beyond the prescribed limits to the Campbell, Morrison and Gibson farms. He “wildcatted” farther south, at times with varying success, pointing the way to Modoc and Millerstown. Reverses beset him temporarily, but hope and courage and integrity remained and he recovered the lost ground. Charitable, enterprising and sincere, no truer, squarer, manlier man than James M. Lambing ever marched in the grand cavalcade of Pennsylvania oil-producers. He and John A. retired from the business years ago to engage in other pursuits. James M. settled at Corry and served so capably as mayor that the citizens wanted to elect him for life. His noble, womanly wife, a real helpmeet always, made his hospitable home an earthly paradise. He had an office in Pittsburg and customers for his Ajax machinery wherever oil is produced. He died in January, 1897. “Who can blot his name with any just reproach?”

Counselled by “spirits,” Abram James selected a block of land on Blyson Run, twenty miles up the Clarion River, as the location of a rich petroleum-field. His luck at Pleasantville induced numbers to believe him an infallible oil-smeller. The test-well that was to deluge Blyson with crude was bored eighteen-hundred feet. It had no sand or oil and the tools were stuck in the hole! The “spirits” couldn’t have missed the mark more widely if they had directed James to mine for gold in a snow-bank.

The Big-Injun well at Bullion, owned originally by Prentice, Wheeler & Crawford, was located in the center of a wheat-patch by William R. Crawford, of Franklin, a member of the firm. His opinion carried against the choice of his partners, who preferred a spot fifteen rods eastward, where a well drilled later was “dry as a powder-horn.” The direction “Smiley’s Frog” might happen to jump was less uncertain than the outcome of many a Bullion well before the tools pierced the sand to the last foot and settled the matter positively.

On October third, 1875, the boiler at the Goss well, J. I. Best farm, exploded, fatally injuring Alonzo Goss and instantly killing A. Wilson, the man in charge.

The first pipe-line in Clarion County was laid in 1871, by Martin & Harms, on lands of the Fox estate. In October of 1877 the Rev. Dr. Newman, President Grant’s pastor in Washington, dedicated the second church the Methodists built at Edenburg. Fire cremated the structure and seriously damaged the third one on the site in 1879. Probably no other town of its size on the face of the earth has suffered so repeatedly and disastrously at the hands of incendiaries as Edenburg. The third great conflagration, on October thirteenth, 1878, destroyed two-hundred buildings and thirteen oil-wells.

Sad accidents happened before drillers learned how to manage a flowing oil-well with casing in it. At Frank Fertig’s well, Antwerp, a man was burned to death. The burning of the Shoup & Vensel well at Turkey City cost three lives and led to an indignation-meeting at St. Petersburg to protest against casing. Danger from its use was soon removed by Victor Gretter’s invention of the oil-saver. Gretter, a small, dark-haired, dark-eyed man, lived at St. Petersburg. He was an inventive genius and a joker of the first water. His oil-saver doubtless saved many lives, by preventing gas and oil from escaping when a vein was tapped and coming in contact with the tool-dresser’s fire in the derrick.

Captain John Kissinger, a pioneer settler, died in 1880 at the age of eighty-five. He was the father of thirty-four children, nine of whom perished by his dwelling taking fire during the absence of the parents from home. His second wife, who survived him ten years, weighed three-hundred pounds.

Lillian Edgarton, the plump and talented platform-speaker, was billed to appear at Franklin. She traveled from Pittsburg by rail. A Parker broker was a passenger on the train and wired to the oil-exchange that Josie Mansfield was on board. The news flew and five-hundred men stood on the platform when the train arrived. The broker jumped off and said the lady had a seat near the center of the coach he had just left. The boys climbed on the car-platform, opened the door and marched in single file along the aisle to get a look at “Josie.” The conductor tore his hair in anguish that the train would not carry such a crowd as struggled to get on, but he was dumbfounded when the long procession began to get off. The sell was not discovered until next morning, by which time the author of the joke had started on his summer-vacation and could not be reached by the vigilance-committee.

Down the zig-zagged stream proved to not a few operators a pleasant voyage to wealth and to others the direct road to disaster. Venango, Clarion and Armstrong counties had been explored, with Butler on deck to surprise mankind by the extent and richness of its amazing territory.

WHERE IGNORANCE IS BLISS.

The first building at Triangle bore in bold letters and bad spelling a sign labeled “Tryangle Hotel.”

“A Black Justice of the Peace” ran the off-color legend, painted by an artist not up in punctuation, on the weather-beaten sign of ’Squire Black, at Shippenville.

An honest Dutchman near Turkey City declined to lease his farm at one-fourth royalty, insisting upon one-eighth as the very lowest he would accept. He did not discover that one-eighth was not twice one-fourth until he received his first instalment of oil, when he fired off the simple expletive, “Kreutzmillionendonnerwetter!”

A farmer rather shy on grammar, who represented Butler county in the Legislature at the outset of developments around Petrolia, “brought down the house” and a unanimous appropriation by his maiden-speech: “Feller citizens, if we’uns up to Butler county wuz yu’uns down to Harrisburg we’uns would give yu’uns what we’uns is after!”

At Oil City in 1863-4 J. B. Allen, of Michigan, a first-class chemist, had charge of the prescription-department in Dr. Colbert and Dr. Egbert’s drug-store. He could read Greek as readily as English, declaim in Latin by the hour, quote from any of the classics and speak three or four modern languages. To raise money to pay off a mortgage on his father’s farm he walked across the Allegheny on a wire thirty feet above the water. He carried a large flag, attached to a frame mounted on a pulley-wheel, which he shoved with one hand, holding a balance-pole in the other. It was a feat Blondin could not excel. Allen was decidedly eccentric and the hero of unnumbered stories. Once a mud-bespattered horseman rushed into the store with a prescription that called for a deadly poison. The horseman was informed it was not safe to fill it, but he insisted upon having it, saying it bore a prominent doctor’s signature and there could be no mistake. Allen filled it and wrote on the label: “Caution—If any damphool takes this prescription it will kill him as dead as the devil!”

General Reed, of Erie, the largest vessel-owner on the lakes, represented his district in Congress and desired a second term. The Democrats nominated Judge Thompson and Clarion county was the pivot upon which the election turned. The contest waxed furious. Near its close the two candidates brought up at a big meeting in the wilds of Clarion to debate. Lumbermen and furnacemen were out in force. Reed led off and on the homestretch told the people how he loved them and their county. He had built the fastest craft on the lakes and named the vessel Clarion. As the craft sailed from Buffalo to Erie, and from Cleveland to Detroit, and from Saginaw to Mackinaw, to Oconomowoc and Manitowoc, Oshkosh, Milwaukee and Chicago, in every port she folded her white wings and told of the county that honored him with a seat in Congress. The people were untutored in nautical affairs and listened with rapt attention. As the General closed his speech the enthusiasm was unbounded. Things looked blue for Judge Thompson. After a few moments required to get the audience out of the seventh heaven of rapture, he stepped to the front of the platform, leaned over it, motioned to the crowd to come up close and said: “Citizens of Clarion, what General Reed has told you is true. He has built a brig and a grand one. But where do you suppose he painted the proud name of Clarion?” Turning to General Reed, he said: “Stand up here, sir, and tell these honest people where you had the painter put the name of Clarion. You never thought the truth would reach back here. I shall tell these people the truth and I challenge you to deny one word of it. Yes, fellow-citizens, he painted the proud name of Clarion under the stern of the brig—under her stern, gentlemen!” The indignation of the people found vent in groans and curses. General Reed sat stunned and speechless. No excuses would be accepted and the vote of proud Clarion made Judge Thompson a Congressman.

PARKER—FROM PROSPECT ROCK ARGYLE CITY-1872. KARNS CITY-1873 GREECE CITY 1873 MILLERSTOWN 1874 PETROLIA 1873

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