“It is understood and represented that this product exists in great

abundance on the property; that it can be gathered wherever a well is

sunk, over a great number of acres, and that it is unfailing in its

yield from year to year. The question naturally arises, Of what value is

it in the arts and for what uses can it be employed? * * * The Crude-Oil

was tried as a means of illumination. For this purpose a weighed

quantity was decomposed by passing it through a wrought-iron retort

filled with carbon and ignited to redness. It produced nearly pure

carburetted hydrogen gas, the most highly illuminating of all carbon

gases. In fact, the oil may be regarded as chemically identical with

illuminating gas in a liquid form. It burned with an intense flame. * *

* The light from the rectified Naphtha is pure and white, without odor,

and the rate of consumption less than half that of Camphene or

Rosin-Oil. * * * Compared with Gas, the Rock-Oil gave more light than

any burner, except the costly Argand, consuming two feet of gas per

hour. These photometric experiments have given the Oil a much higher

value as an illuminator than I had dared to hope. * * * As this oil does

not gum or become acid or rancid by exposure, it possesses in that, as

well as in its wonderful resistance to extreme cold, important qualities

for a lubricator. * * * It is worthy of note that my experiments prove

that nearly the _whole_ of the raw product may be manufactured without

waste, solely by one of the most simple of all chemical processes.”

Notwithstanding these researches, which he spent five months in

prosecuting, the idea of artesian-boring for petroleum—naturally

suggested by the oil in the salines of the Muskingum, Kanawha,

Cumberland and Allegheny—never occurred to the learned Professor of

Chemistry in Yale! If he had been the Yale football, with Hickok

swatting it five-hundred pounds to the square inch, the idea might have

been pummeled into the man of crucibles and pigments! Once more was

nature frustrated in the endeavor to “bring out” a favorite child. The

faithful dog that attempted to drag a fat man by the seat of his pants

to the rescue of a drowning master, or Diogenes in his protracted quest

for an honest Athenian, had an easier task. The “spring” which furnished

the material for Silliman’s experiments was on the Willard farm, part of

the lands of Brewer, Watson & Co.—Ebenezer Brewer and James Rynd,

Pittsburg, Jonathan Watson, Rexford Pierce and Elijah Newberry,

Titusville—extensive lumbermen on Oil Creek. They ran a sawmill on an

island near the east bank of the creek, at a bend in the stream, a few

rods south of the boundary-line between Venango and Crawford counties.

Close to the mill was the rusty-looking “spring” from which the oil to

burn in rude lamps, smoky and chimneyless, and to lubricate the circular

saw was derived. The following document explains the first action

retarding the care and development of the “spring.”

“Agreed this fourth day of July, A.D. 1853, with J. D. Angier, of

Cherrytree Township, in the County of Venango, Pa., that he shall repair

up and keep in order the old oil-spring on land in said Cherrytree

township, or dig and make new springs, and the expenses to be deducted

out of the proceeds of the oil and the balance, if any, to be equally

divided, the one-half to J. D. Angier and the other half to Brewer,

Watson & Co., for the full term of five years from this date, if

profitable.”

All parties signed this agreement, pursuant to which Angier, for many

years a resident of Titusville, dug trenches centering in a basin from

which a pump connected with the sawmill raised the water into shallow

troughs that sloped to the ground. Small skimmers, nicely adjusted to

skim the oil, collected three or four gallons a day, but the experiment

did not pay and it was dropped. In the summer of 1854 Dr. F. B. Brewer,

son of the senior member of the firm owning the mill and “spring,”

visited relatives at Hanover, New Hampshire, carrying with him a bottle

of the oil as a gift to Professor Crosby, of Dartmouth College. Shortly

after George H. Bissell, a graduate of the college, practicing law in

New York with Jonathan G. Eveleth, while on a visit to Hanover called to

see Professor Crosby, who showed him the bottle of petroleum. Crosby’s

son induced Bissell to pay the expenses of a trip to inspect the

“spring” and to agree, in case of a satisfactory report, to organize a

company with a capital of a quarter-million dollars to purchase lands

and erect such machinery as might be required to collect all the oil in

the vicinity.

“Great minds never limit their designs in their plans.”

Complications and misunderstandings retarded matters. Everything was

adjusted at last. Brewer, Watson & Co. conveyed in fee-simple to George

H. Bissell and Jonathan G. Eveleth one-hundred-and-five acres of land in

Cherrytree township, embracing the island at the junction of Pine Creek

and Oil Creek, on which the mill of the firm and the Angier ditches were

situated. The deed was formally executed on January first, 1855. Eveleth

and Bissell gave their own notes for the purchase-money—five-thousand

dollars—less five-hundred dollars paid in cash. The consideration

mentioned in the deed was twenty-five-thousand dollars, five times the

actual sum, in order not to appear such a small fraction of the total

capital—two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars—as to injure the sale of

stock. On December thirtieth, 1854, articles of incorporation of The

Pennsylvania Rock-Oil-Company were filed in New York and Albany. The

stock did not sell, owing to the prostration of the money-market and the

fact that the company had been organized in New York, by the laws of

which state each shareholder in a joint-stock company was liable for its

debts to the amount of the par value of the stock he held. New-Haven

parties agreed to subscribe for large blocks of stock if the company

were reorganized under the laws of Connecticut. A new company was formed

with a nominal capital of three-hundred-thousand dollars, to take the

name and property of the one to be dissolved and levy an assessment to

develop the island “by trenching” on a wholesale plan.

Eveleth & Bissell retained a controlling interest and Ashael Pierpont,

James M. Townsend and William A. Ives were three of the New-Haven

stockholders. Bissell visited Titusville to complete the transfer. On

January sixteenth he and his partner had given a deed, which was not

recorded, to the trustees of the original company. At Titusville he

learned that lands of corporations organized outside of Pennsylvania

would be forfeited to the state. The new company was notified of this

law and to avoid trouble, on September twentieth, 1855, Eveleth &

Bissell executed a deed to Pierpont and Ives, who gave a bond for the

value of the property and leased it for ninety-nine years to a company

formed two days before under certain articles of association. It really

seemed that something definite would be done. The first oil-company in

the history of nations had been organized. Pierpont, an eminent

mechanic, was sent to examine the “spring,” with a view to improve

Angier’s machinery. Silliman’s reports had a stimulating effect and the

Professor was president of the company. But the monkey-and-parrot time

was renewed. Dissensions broke out, Angier was fired and the enterprise

looked to be “as dead as Julius Cæsar,” ready to bury “a hundred fathoms

deep.”

[Illustration: FAC-SIMILE OF LABEL ON KIER’S PETROLEUM.]

One scorching day in the summer of 1856 Mr. Bissell, standing beneath

the awning of a Broadway drug-store for a moment’s shade, noticed a

bottle of Kier’s Petroleum and a queer show-bill, or label, in the

window. It struck him as rather odd that a four-hundred-dollar bill—such

it appeared—should be displayed in that manner. A second glance proved

that it was an advertisement of a substance that concerned him deeply.

He stepped inside and requested permission to scan the label. The

druggist told him to “take it along.” For an instant he gazed at the

derricks and the figures—four-hundred feet! A thought flashed upon

him—bore artesian wells for oil! Artesian wells! Artesian wells! rang in

his ears like the Trinity chimes down the street, the bells of London

telling “Dick” Whittington to return or the pibroch of the Highlanders

at Lucknow. The idea that meant so much was born at last. Patient nature

must have felt in the mood to turn somersaults, blow a tin-horn and

dance the fandango. It was a simple thought—merely to bore a hole in the

rock—with no frills and furbelows and fustian, but pregnant with

astounding consequences. It has added untold millions to the wealth of

the country and conferred incalculable benefits upon humanity. To-day

refined petroleum lights more dwellings in America, Europe, Asia, Africa

and Australia than all other agencies combined.

To put the idea to the test was the next wrinkle. Mr. Eveleth agreed

with Bissell’s theory. Their first impulse was to bore a well

themselves. Reflection cooled their ardor, as this course would involve

the loss of their practice for an uncertainty. Mr. Havens, a Wall-street

broker, whom they consulted, offered them five-hundred dollars for a

lease from the Pennsylvania Rock-Oil Company. A contract with Havens, by

the terms of which he was to pay “twelve cents a gallon for all oil

raised for fifteen years,” financial reverses prevented his carrying

out. The idea of artesian boring was too fascinating to lie dormant. Mr.

Townsend, president of the company, Silliman having resigned, employed

Edwin L. Drake, to whom in the darker days of its existence he had sold

two-hundred-dollars’ worth of his own stock, to visit the property and

report his impressions. Mrs. Brewer and Mrs. Rynd had not joined in the

power-of-attorney by which the agent conveyed the Brewer-Watson lands to

the company, hence they would be entitled to dower in case the husbands

died. Drake was instructed to return by way of Pittsburg and procure

their signatures. Illness had forced him to quit work—he was conductor

on the New-York & New-Haven Railroad—for some months and the opportunity

for change of air and scene was embraced gladly. Shrewd, far-seeing

Townsend, who still lives in New Haven and has been credited with “the

discovery” of petroleum, addressed legal documents and letters to

“Colonel” Drake, no doubt supposing this would enhance the importance of

his representative in the eyes of the Oil-Creek backwoodsmen. The

military title stuck to the diffident civilian whose name is interwoven

with the great events of the nineteenth century.

[Illustration: JONATHAN TITUS.]

Stopping on his way from New Haven to view the salt-wells at Syracuse,

about the middle of December, 1857, Colonel Drake was trundled into

Titusville—named from Jonathan Titus—on the mail-wagon from Erie. The

villagers received him cordially. He lodged at the American Hotel, the

home-like inn “Billy” Robinson, the first boniface, and Major Mills,

king of landlords, rendered famous by their bountiful hospitality. The

old caravansary was torn down in 1880 to furnish a site for the Oil

Exchange. Drake stayed a few days to transact legal business, to examine

the lands and the indications of oil and to become familiar with the

general details. Proceeding to Pittsburg, he visited the salt-wells at

Tarentum, the picture of which on Kier’s label suggested boring for oil,

and hastened back to Connecticut to conclude a scheme of operating the

property. On December thirtieth the three New-Haven directors executed a

lease to Edwin E. Bowditch and Edwin L. Drake, who were to pay the

Pennsylvania Rock-Oil-Company “five-and-a-half cents a gallon for the

oil raised for fifteen years.” Eight days later, at the annual meeting

of the directors, the lease was ratified, George H. Bissell and Jonathan

Watson, representing two-thirds of the stock, protesting. Thereupon the

consideration was placed at “one-eighth of all oil, salt or paint

produced.” The lease was sent to Franklin and recorded in Deed Book P,

page 357. A supplemental lease, extending the time to forty-five years

on the conditions of the grant to Havens, was recorded, and on March

twenty-third, 1858, the Seneca Oil-Company was organized, with Colonel

Drake as president and owner of one-fortieth of the “stock.” No stock

was issued, for the company was in reality a partnership working under

the laws governing joint-stock associations.

[Illustration: THE FIRST DRAKE WELL, ITS DRILLERS AND ITS COMPLETE RIG.]

Provided with a fund of one-thousand dollars as a starter, Drake was

engaged at one-thousand dollars a year to begin operations. Early in

May, 1858, he and his family arrived in Titusville and were quartered at

the American Hotel, which boarded the Colonel, Mrs. Drake, two children

and a horse for six-dollars-and-a-half per week! Money was scarce,

provisions were cheap and the quiet village put on no extravagant airs.

Not a pick or shovel was to be had in any store short of Meadville,

whither Drake was obliged to send for these useful tools! Behold, then,

“the man who was to revolutionize the light of the world,” his mind full

of a grand purpose and his pockets full of cash, snugly ensconced in the

comfortable hostelry. Surely the curtain would soon rise and the drama

of “A Petroleum-Hunt” proceed without further vexatious delays.

Drake’s first step was to repair and start up Angier’s system of

trenches, troughs and skimmers. By the end of June he had dug a shallow

well on the island and was saving ten gallons of oil a day. He found it

difficult to get a practical “borer” to sink an artesian-well. In August

he shipped two barrels of oil to New Haven and bargained for a

steam-engine to furnish power for drilling. The engine was not furnished

as agreed, the “borer” Dr. Brewer hired at Pittsburg had another

contract and operations were suspended for the winter. In February,

1859, Drake went to Tarentum and engaged a driller to come in March. The

driller failed to materialize and Drake drove to Tarentum in a sleigh to

lasso another. F. N. Humes, who was cleaning out salt-wells for

Peterson, informed him that the tools were made by William A. Smith,

whom he might be able to secure for the job. Smith accepted the offer to

manufacture tools and bore the well. Kim Hibbard, favorably known in

Franklin, was dispatched with his team, when the tools were completed,

for Smith, his two sons and the outfit. On May twentieth the men and

tools were at the spot selected for the hole. A “pump-house” had been

framed and a derrick built. A room for “boarding the hands” almost

joined the rig and the sawmill. The accompanying illustration shows the

well as it was at first, with the original derrick enclosed to the top,

the “grasshopper walking-beam,” the “boarding-house” and part of the

mill-shed. “Uncle Billy” Smith is seated on a wheelbarrow in the

foreground. His sons, James and William, are standing on either side of

the “pump-house” entrance. Back of James his two young sisters are

sitting on a board. Elbridge Lock stands to the right of the Smiths.

“Uncle Billy’s” brother is leaning on a plank at the corner of the

derrick and his wife may be discerned in the doorway of the

“boarding-house.” This interesting and historic picture has never been

printed until now. The one with which the world is acquainted depicts

the _second_ rig, with Peter Wilson, a Titusville druggist, facing

Drake. In like manner, the portrait of Colonel Drake in this volume is

from the first photograph for which he ever sat. The well and the

portrait are the work of John A. Mather, the veteran artist and Drake’s

bosom-friend, who ought to receive a pension and no end of gratitude for

preserving “counterfeit presentments” of a host of petroleum-scenes and

personages that have passed from mortal sight.

Delays and tribulations had not retreated from the field. In

artesian-boring it is necessary to drill in rock. Mrs. Glasse’s old-time

cook-book gained celebrity by starting a recipe for rabbit-pie: “First

catch your hare.” The principle applies to artesian-drilling: “First

catch your rock.” The ordinary rule was to dig a pit or well-hole to the

rock and crib it with timber. The Smiths dug a few feet, but the hole

filled with water and caved-in persistently. It was a fight-to-a-finish

between three men and what Stow of Girard—he was Barnum’s hot-stuff

advance agent—wittily termed “the cussedness of inanimate things.” The

latter won and a council of war was summoned, at which Drake recommended

driving an iron-tube through the clay and quicksand to the rock. This

was effectual. Colonel Drake should have patented the process, which was

his exclusive device and decidedly valuable. The pipe was driven

thirty-six feet to hard-pan and the drill started on August fourteenth.

The workmen averaged three feet a day, resting at night and on Sundays.

Indications of oil were met as the tools pierced the rock. Everybody

figured that the well would be down to the Tarentum level in time to

celebrate Christmas. The company, tired of repeated postponements, did

not deluge Drake with money. Losing speculations and sickness had

drained his own meagre savings. R. D. Fletcher, the well-known

Titusville merchant, and Peter Wilson endorsed his paper for six-hundred

dollars to tide over the crisis. The tools pursued the downward road

with the eagerness of a sinner headed for perdition, while expectation

stood on tiptoe to watch the progress of events.

On Saturday afternoon, August twenty-eighth, 1859, the well had reached

the depth of sixty-nine feet, in a coarse sand. Smith and his sons

concluded to “lay off” until Monday morning. As they were about to quit

the drill dropped six inches into a crevice such as was common in

salt-wells. Nothing was thought of this circumstance, the tools were

drawn out and all hands adjourned to Titusville. Mr. Smith went to the

well on Sunday afternoon to see if it had moved away or been purloined

during the night. Peering into the hole he saw fluid within eight or ten

feet. A piece of tin-spouting was lying outside. He plugged one end of

the spout, let it down by a string and pulled it up. Muddy water? No! It

was filled with PETROLEUM!

“The fisherman, unassisted by destiny, could not catch fish in the

Tigris.”

That was the proudest hour in “Uncle Billy” Smith’s forty-seven years’

pilgrimage. Not daring to leave the spot, he ran the spout again and

again, each time bringing it to the surface full of oil. A straggler out

for a stroll approached, heard the story, sniffed the oil and bore the

tidings to the village. Darkness was setting in, but the Smith boys

sprinted to the scene. When Colonel Drake came down, bright and early

next morning, they and their father were guarding three barrels of the

precious liquid. The pumping apparatus was adjusted and by noon the well

commenced producing at the rate of twenty barrels a day! The problem of

the ages was solved, the agony ended and petroleum fairly launched upon

its astonishing career.

The news flew like a Dakota cyclone. Villagers and country-folk flocked

to the wonderful well. Smith wrote to Peterson, his former employer:

“Come quick, there’s oceans of oil!” Jonathan Watson jumped on a horse

and galloped down the creek to lease the McClintock farm, where

Nathanael Cary dipped oil and a timbered crib had been constructed.

Henry Potter, still a citizen of Titusville, tied up the lands for miles

along the stream, hoping to interest New York capital. William Barnsdall

secured the farm north of the Willard. George H. Bissell, who had

arranged to be posted by telegraph, bought all the Pennsylvania Rock-Oil

stock he could find and in four days was at the well. He leased farm

after farm on Oil Creek and the Allegheny River, regardless of

surface-indications or the admonition of meddling wiseacres.

The rush for property resembled the wild scramble of the children when

the Pied Piper of Hamelin blew his fatal reed. Titusville was in a

whirlpool of excitement. Buildings arose as if by magic, the hamlet

became a borough and the borough a city of fifteen-thousand inhabitants.

Maxwell Titus sold lots at two-hundred dollars, people acquired homes

that doubled in value and speculation held undisputed sway. Jonathan

Titus, from whom it was named, lived to witness the farm he cleared

transformed into “The Queen City,” noted for its tasteful residences,

excellent schools, manufactories, refineries and active population. One

of his neighbors in the bush was Samuel Kerr, whose son Michael went to

Congress and served as Speaker of the House. Many enterprising men

settled in Titusville for the sake of their families. They paved the

streets, planted shade-trees, fostered local industries, promoted

culture and believed in public improvements. When Christine Nilsson

enraptured sixteen-hundred well-dressed, appreciative listeners in the

Parshall Opera-House, the peerless songstress could not refrain from

saying that she never saw an audience so keen to note the finer points

of her performance and so discriminating in its applause. “Praise from

Sir Hubert is praise indeed” and the compliment of the Swedish

Nightingale compressed a whole encyclopedia into a sentence. Titusville

has had its ups and downs, but there is no more desirable place in the

State.

“Auld Ayr, wham ne’er a town surpasses.”

[Illustration: MAIN STREET, TITUSVILLE, IN 1861.]

[Illustration: DANIEL CADY.]

Matches are supposed to be made in Heaven and the inspiration that led

to the choice of such a site for the future city must have been derived

from the same source. Healthfulness and beauty of location attest the

wisdom of the selection. Folks don’t have to climb precipitous hills or

risk life and limb crossing railway-tracks whenever they wish to

exercise their fast nags. Driving is a favorite pastime in fine weather,

the leading thoroughfares often reminding strangers of Central Park on a

coaching-day. Main, Walnut and Perry streets are lined with trees and

residences worthy of Philadelphia or Baltimore. Comfortable homes are

the crowning glory of a community and in this respect Titusville does

not require to take a back-seat. Near the lower end of Main street is

Ex-Mayor Caldwell’s elegant mansion, built by Jonathan Watson in the

days of his prosperity. Farther up are John Fertig’s, the late Marcus

Brownson’s, Mrs. David Emery’s and Mrs. A. N. Perrin’s. Franklin S.

Tarbell, a former resident of Rouseville, occupies an attractive house.

Joseph Seep, who has not changed an iota since the halcyon period of

Parker and Foxburg, shows his faith in the town by building a home that

would adorn Cleveland’s aristocratic Euclid Avenue. The host is the

cordial Seep of yore, quick to make a point and not a bit backward in

helping a friend. David McKelvy, whom everybody knew in the lower

oil-fields, remodeled the Chase homestead, a symphony in red brick.

Close by is W. T. Scheide’s natty dwelling, finished in a style

befitting the ex-superintendent of the National-Transit Pipe-Lines.

Byron D. Benson—he died in 1889—nine times elected president of the

Tidewater Pipe-Line-Company, lived on the corner of Oak and Perry

streets. Opposite is John L. McKinney’s luxurious residence, a credit to

the liberal owner and the city. J. C. McKinney’s is “one of the finest.”

James Parshall, W. B. Sterrett, O. D. Harrington, J. P. Thomas, W. W.

Thompson, Charles Archbold and hundreds more erected dwellings that

belong to the palatial tribe. Dr. Roberts—he’s in the cemetery—had a

spacious place on Washington street, with the costliest stable in

seventeen counties. E. O. Emerson’s house and grounds are the admiration

of visitors. The grand fountain, velvet lawns, smooth walks, tropical

plants, profusion of flowers, mammoth conservatory and Marechal-Niel

rose-bushes bewilder the novice whose knowledge of floral affairs stops

at button-hole bouquets. George K. Anderson—dead, too—constructed this

delightful retreat. Col. J. J. Carter, whose record as a military

officer, merchant, railroad-president and oil-operator will stand

inspection, has an ideal home, purchased from John D. Archbold and

refitted throughout. It was built and furnished extravagantly by Daniel

Cady, once a leading spirit in the business and social life of

Titusville. He was a man of imposing presence and indomitable pluck, the

confidant of Jay Gould and “Jim” Fisk, dashing, speculative and popular.

For years whatever he touched seemed to turn into gold and he computed

his dollars by hundreds of thousands. Days of adversity overtook him,

the splendid home was sacrificed and he died poor. To men of the stamp

of Watson, Anderson, Abbott, Emery, Fertig and Cady Titusville owes its

real start in the direction of greatness. Much of the froth and fume of

former days is missing, but the baser elements have been eliminated,

trade is on a solid basis and important manufactures have been

established. There are big refineries, Holly water-works, a race-track,

ball-grounds, top-notch hotels, live newspapers, inviting churches and a

lovely cemetery in which to plant good citizens when they pass in their

checks. Pilgrims who expect to find Titusville dead or dying will be as

badly fooled as the lover whose girl eloped with the other fellow.

Unluckily for himself, Colonel Drake took a narrow view of affairs.

Complacently assuming that he had “tapped the mine”—to quote his own

phrase—and that paying territory would not be found outside the

company’s lease, he pumped the well serenely, told funny stories and

secured not one foot of ground! Had he possessed a particle of the

prophetic instinct, had he grasped the magnitude of the issues at stake,

had he appreciated the importance of petroleum as a commercial product,

had he been able to “see an inch beyond his nose,” he would have gone

forth that August morning and become “Master of the Oil Country!” “The

world was all before him where to choose,” he was literally “monarch of

all he surveyed,” but he didn’t move a peg! Money was not needed, the

promise of one-eighth or one-quarter royalty satisfying the easy-going

farmers, consequently he might have gathered in any quantity of land.

Friends urged him to “get into the game;” he rejected their counsel and

never realized his mistake until other wells sent prices skyward and it

was everlastingly too late for his short pole to knock the persimmons.

Yet this is the man whom numerous writers have proclaimed “the

discoverer of petroleum!” Times without number it has been said and

written and printed that he was “the first man to advise boring for

oil,” that “his was the first mind to conceive the idea of penetrating

the rock in search of a larger deposit of oil than was dreamed of by any

one,” that “he alone unlocked one of nature’s vast storehouses” and “had

visions of a revolution in light and lubrication.” Considering what

Kier, Peterson, Bissell and Watson had done years before Drake ever

saw—perhaps ever heard of—a drop of petroleum, the absurdity of these

claims is “so plain that he who runs may read.” Couple with this his

incredible failure to secure lands after the well was drilled—wholly

inexcusable if he supposed oil-operations would ever be important—and

the man who thinks Colonel Drake was “the first man with a clear

conception of the future of petroleum” could swallow the fish that

swallowed Jonah!

Above all else history should be truthful and “hew to the line, let

chips fall where they may.” Mindful that “the agent is but the

instrument of the principal,” why should Colonel Drake wear the laurels

in this instance? Paid a salary to carry out Bissell’s plan of boring an

artesian-well, he spent sixteen months getting the hole down seventy

feet. For a man who “had visions” and “a clear conception” his movements

were inexplicably slow. He encountered obstacles, but salt-wells had

been drilled hundreds of feet without either a steam-engine or

professional “borer.” The credit of suggesting the driving-pipe to

overcome the quicksand is justly his due. Quite as justly the credit of

suggesting the boring of the well belongs to George H. Bissell. The

company hired Drake, Drake hired Smith, Smith did the work. Back of the

man who possessed the skill to fashion the tools and sink the hole, back

of the man who acted for the company and disbursed its money, back of

the company itself is the originator of the idea these were the means

employed to put into effect. Was George Stephenson, or the foreman of

the shop where the “Rocket” was built, the inventor of the locomotive?

Was Columbus, or the man whose name it bears, the discoverer of America?

In a conversation on the subject Mr. Bissell remarked: “Let Colonel

Drake enjoy the pleasure of giving the well his name; history will set

us all right.” So it will and this is a step in that direction. If the

long-talked-of monument to commemorate the advent of the petroleum-era

ever be erected, it should bear in boldest capitals the names of Samuel

M. Kier and George H. Bissell.

Edwin L. Drake, who is linked inseparably with the first oil-well in

Pennsylvania, was born on March eleventh, 1819, at Greenville, Greene

county, New York. His father, a farmer, moved to Vermont in 1825. At

eighteen Edwin left home to begin the struggle with the world. He was

night-clerk of a boat running between Buffalo and Detroit, worked one

year on a farm in the Wolverine state, clerked two years in a Michigan

hotel, returned east and clerked in a dry-goods store at New Haven,

clerked and married in New York, removed to Massachusetts, was

express-agent on the Boston & Albany railroad and resigned in 1849 to

become conductor on the New-York & New-Haven. His younger brother died

in the west and his wife at New Haven, in 1854, leaving one child. While

boarding at a hotel in New Haven he met James M. Townsend, who persuaded

him to draw his savings of two-hundred dollars from the bank and buy

stock of the Pennsylvania Rock-Oil-Company, his first connection with

the business that was to make him famous. Early in 1857 he married Miss

Laura Dow, sickness in the summer compelled him to cease punching

tickets and his memorable visit to Titusville followed in December. In

1860 he was elected justice-of-the-peace, an office worth

twenty-five-hundred dollars that year, because of the enormous number of

property-transfers to prepare and acknowledge. Buying oil on commission

for Shefflin Brothers, New York, swelled his income to five-thousand

dollars for a year or two. He also bought twenty-five acres of land from

Jonathan Watson, east of Martin street and through the center of which

Drake street now runs, for two-thousand dollars. Unable to meet the

mortgage given for part of the payment, he sold the block in 1863 to Dr.

A. D. Atkinson for twelve-thousand dollars. Forty times this sum would

not have bought it in 1867! With the profits of this transaction and his

savings for five years, in all about sixteen-thousand dollars, in the

summer of 1863 Colonel Drake left the oil-regions forever.

Entering into partnership with a Wall-street broker, he wrecked his

small fortune speculating in oil-stocks, his health broke down and he

removed to Vermont. Physicians ordered him to the seaside as the only

remedy for his disease, neuralgic affection of the spine, which

threatened paralysis of the limbs and caused intense suffering. Near

Long Branch, in a cottage offered by a friend, Mr. and Mrs. Drake drank

the bitter cup to the dregs. Their funds were exhausted, the patient

needed constant attention and helpless children cried for bread. The

devoted wife and mother attempted to earn a pittance with her needle,

but could not keep the wolf of hunger from the door. Medicine for the

sick man was out of the question. All this time men in the region the

Drake well had opened to the world were piling up millions of dollars!

One day in 1869, with eighty cents to pay his fare, Colonel Drake

struggled into New York to seek a place for his twelve-year-old boy. The

errand was fruitless. The distressed father was walking painfully on the

street to the railway-station, to board the train for home, when he met

“Zeb” Martin of Titusville, afterwards proprietor of the Hotel

Brunswick. Mr. Martin noted his forlorn condition, inquired as to his

circumstances, learned the sad story of actual privation, procured

dinner, gave the poor fellow twenty dollars and cheered him with the

assurance that he would raise a fund for his relief. The promise was

redeemed.

At a meeting in Titusville the case was stated and forty-two hundred

dollars were subscribed. The money was forwarded to Mrs. Drake, who

husbanded it carefully. The terrible recital aroused such a feeling that

the Legislature, in 1873, granted Colonel Drake an annuity of

fifteen-hundred dollars during his life and his heroic wife’s.

California had set a good example by giving Colonel Sutter, the

discoverer of gold in the mill-race, thirty-five-hundred dollars a year.

The late Thaddeus Stevens, “the Great Commoner,” hearing that Drake was

actually in want, prepared a bill, found among his papers after his

death, intending to present it before Congress for an appropriation of

two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars for Colonel Drake. In 1870 the

family removed to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Years of suffering, borne

with sublime resignation, closed on the evening of November ninth, 1881,

with the release of Edwin L. Drake from this vale of tears. A faithful

wife and four children survived the petroleum-pioneer. They lived at

Bethlehem until the spring of 1895 and then moved to New England.

Colonel Drake was a man of pronounced individuality, affable, genial and

kindly. He had few superiors as a story-teller, neither caroused nor

swore, and was of unblemished character. He wore a full beard, dressed

well, liked a good horse, looked every man straight in the face and his

dark eyes sparkled when he talked. Gladly he laid down the heavy burden

of a checkered life, with its afflictions and vicissitudes, for the

peaceful rest of the grave.

“Since every man who lives is born to die * * *

Like pilgrims to the appointed place we tend;

The world’s an inn, and death the journey’s end.”

George H. Bissell, honorably identified with the petroleum-development

from its inception, was a New-Hampshire boy. Thrown upon his own

resources at twelve, by the death of his father, he gained education and

fortune unaided. At school and college he supported himself by teaching

and writing for magazines. Graduating from Dartmouth College in 1845, he

was professor of Greek and Latin in Norwich University a short time,

went to Washington and Cuba, did editorial work for the New Orleans

_Delta_ and was chosen superintendent of the public schools. Impaired

health forced him to return north in 1853, when his connection with

petroleum began. From 1859 to 1863 he resided at Franklin, Venango

county, to be near his oil-interests. He operated largely on Oil Creek,

on the Allegheny river and at Franklin, where he erected a

barrel-factory. He removed to New York in 1863, established the Bissell

Bank at Petroleum Centre in 1866, developed oil-lands in Peru and was

prominent in financial circles. His wife died in 1867 and long since he

followed her to the tomb. Mr. Bissell was a brilliant, scholarly man,

positive in his convictions and sure to make his influence felt in any

community. His son and daughter reside in New York.

“Pass some few years,

Thy flowering Spring, thy Summer’s ardent strength,

Thy sober Autumn fading into age,

And pale concluding Winter comes at last

And shuts the scene.”

William A. Smith, born in Butler county in 1812, at the age of twelve

was apprenticed at Freeport to learn blacksmithing. In 1827 he went to

Pittsburg and in 1842 opened a blacksmith-shop at Salina, below

Tarentum. Samuel M. Kier employed him to drill salt-wells and

manufacture drilling-tools. After finishing the Drake well, he drilled

in various sections of the oil-regions, retiring to his farm in Butler a

few years prior to his death, on October twenty-third, 1890. “Uncle

Billy,” as the boys affectionately called him, was no small factor in

giving to mankind the illuminator that enlightens every quarter of the

globe. The farm he owned in 1859 and on which he died proved good

territory.

Dr. Francis B. Brewer was born in New Hampshire, studied medicine in

Philadelphia and practiced in Vermont. His father in 1840 purchased

several thousand acres of land on Oil Creek for lumbering, and the firm

of Brewer, Watson & Co. was promptly organized. Oil from the “spring” on

the island at the mouth of Pine Creek was sent to the young physician in

1848 and used in his practice. He visited the locality in 1850 and was

admitted to the firm. Upon the completion of the Drake well he devoted

his time to the extensive oil-operations of the partnership for four

years. In 1864 Brewer, Watson & Co. sold the bulk of their oil-territory

and the doctor, who had settled at Westfield, Chautauqua county, N. Y.,

instituted the First National Bank, of which he was chosen president. A

man of solid worth and solid wealth, he has served as a Member of

Assembly and is deservedly respected for integrity and benevolence.

Jonathan Watson, whose connection with petroleum goes back to the

beginning of developments, arrived at Titusville in 1845 to manage the

lumbering and mercantile business of his firm. The hamlet contained ten

families and three stores. Deer and wild-turkeys abounded in the woods,

John Robinson was postmaster and Rev. George O. Hampson the only

minister. Mr. Watson’s views of petroleum were of the broadest and his

transactions the boldest. He hastened to secure lands when oil appeared

in the Drake well. At eight o’clock on that historic Monday morning he

stood at Hamilton McClintock’s door, resolved to buy or lease his

three-hundred-acre farm. A lease was taken and others along the stream

followed during the day. Brewer, Watson & Co. operated on a wholesale

scale until 1864, after which Watson continued alone. Riches poured upon

him. He erected the finest residence in Titusville, lavished money on

the grounds and stocked a fifty-thousand dollar conservatory with

choicest plants and flowers. A million dollars in gold he is credited

with “putting by for a rainy day.” He went miles ahead, bought huge

blocks of land and drilled scores of test-wells. In this way he barely

missed opening the Bradford field and the Bullion district years before

these productive sections were brought into line. His well on the

Dalzell farm, Petroleum Centre, in 1869, renewed interest in that

quarter long after it was supposed to be sucked dry. An Oil-City

clairvoyant indicated the spot to sink the hole, promising a

three-hundred-barrel strike. Crude was six dollars a barrel and Watson

readily proffered the woman the first day’s production for her services.

A check for two-thousand dollars was her reward, as the well yielded

three-hundred-and-thirty-three barrels the first twenty-four hours. Mrs.

Watson was an ardent medium and her husband humored her by consulting

the “spirits” occasionally. She became a lecturer and removed to

California long since. The tide of Watson’s prosperity ebbed. Bad

investments and dry-holes ate into his splendid fortune. The

gold-reserve was drawn upon and spent. The beautiful home went to

satisfy creditors. In old age the brave, hardy, indefatigable

oil-pioneer, who had led the way for others to acquire wealth, was

stripped of his possessions. Hope and courage remained. He operated at

Warren and revived some of the old wells around the Drake, which

afforded him subsistence. Advanced years and anxiety enfeebled the

stalwart fame. His steps faltered, and in 1893 protracted sickness

closed the busy, eventful life of the man who, more than any other,

fostered and developed the petroleum-industry.

“I am as a weed

Flung from the rock, on ocean’s foam to sail

Where’er the surge may sweep, the tempest’s breath prevail.”

The Drake well declined almost imperceptibly, yielding twelve barrels a

day by the close of the year. It stood idle on Sundays and for a week in

December. Smith had a light near a tank of oil, the gas from which

caught fire and burned the entire rig. This was the first “oil-fire” in

Pennsylvania, but it was destined to have many successors. Possibly it

brought back vividly to Colonel Drake the remembrance of his childish

dream, in which he and his brother had set a heap of stubble ablaze and

could not extinguish the flames. His mother interpreted it: “My son, you

have set the world on fire.”

The total output of the well in 1859 was under eighteen-hundred barrels.

One-third of the oil was sold at sixty-five cents a gallon for shipment

to Pittsburg. George M. Mowbray, the accomplished chemist, who came to

Titusville in 1860 and played a prominent part in early refining,

disposed of a thousand barrels in New York. The well produced moderately

for two or three years from the first sand, until shut down by low

prices, which made it ruinous to pay the royalty of twelve-and-a-half

cents a gallon. A compromise was effected in 1860, by which the Seneca

Oil-Company retained a part of the land as fee and surrendered the lease

to the Pennsylvania Rock-Oil-Company. Mr. Bissell purchased the stock of

the other shareholders in the latter company for fifty-thousand dollars.

He drilled ten wells, six of which for months yielded eighty barrels a

day, on the tract known thenceforth as the Bissell farm, selling it

eventually to the Original Petroleum-Company. The Drake was deepened to

five-hundred feet and two others, drilled beneath the roof of the

sawmill in 1862, were pumped by water.

The Drake machinery was stolen or scattered piecemeal. In 1876 J. J.

Ashbaugh, of St. Petersburg, and Thomas O’Donnell, of Foxburg, conveyed

the neglected derrick and engine-house to the Centennial at

Philadelphia, believing crowds would wish to look at the mementoes. The

exhibition was a fizzle and the lumber was carted off as rubbish.

Ex-Senator Emery saved the drilling-tools and he has them in his private

museum at Bradford. They are pigmies compared with the giants of to-day.

A man could walk away with them as readily as Samson skipped with the

gates of Gaza. Sandow and Cyril Cyr done up in a single package couldn’t

do that with a modern set. The late David Emery, a man of heart and

brain, contemplated reviving the old well—the land had come into his

possession—and bottling the oil in tiny vials, the proceeds to be

applied to a Drake monument. He put up a temporary rig and pumped a

half-barrel a week. Death interrupted his generous purpose. Except that

the trees and the saw-mill have disappeared, the neighborhood of the

Drake well is substantially the same as in the days when lumbering was

at its height and the two-hundred honest denizens of Titusville slept

without locking their doors. There is nothing to suggest to strangers or

travelers that the spot deserves to be remembered. How transitory is

human achievement!

[Illustration: LOCATION AND SURROUNDINGS OF THE DRAKE WELL IN 1897.]

William Barnsdall, Boone Meade and Henry R. Rouse started the second

well in the vicinity, on the James Parker farm, formerly the Kerr tract

and now the home of Ex-Mayor J. H. Caldwell. The location was north and

within a stone’s throw of the Drake. In November, at the depth of eighty

feet, the well was pumped three days, yielding only five barrels of oil.

The outlook had an indigo-tinge and operations ceased for a week or two.

Resuming work in December, at one-hundred-and-sixty feet indications

were satisfactory. Tubing was put in on February nineteenth, 1860, and

the well responded at the rate of fifty barrels a day! In the language

of a Hoosier dialect-poet: “Things wuz gettin’ inter-restin’!” William

H. Abbott, a gentleman of wealth, reached Titusville on February ninth

and bought an interest in the Parker tract the same month. David

Crossley’s well, a short distance south of the Drake and the third

finished on Oil Creek, began pumping sixty barrels a day on March

fourth. Local dealers, overwhelmed by an “embarrassment of riches,”

could not handle such a glut of oil. Schefflin Brothers arranged to

market it in New York. Fifty-six-thousand gallons from the Barnsdall

well were sold for seventeen-thousand dollars by June first, 1860. J. D.

Angier contracted to “stamp down a hole” for Brewer, Watson & Co., in a

pit fourteen feet deep, dug and cribbed to garner oil dipped from the

“spring” on the Hamilton-McClintock farm. Piercing the rock by

“hand-power” was a tedious process. December of 1860 dawned without a

symptom of greasiness in the well, from which wondrous results were

anticipated on account of the “spring.” One day’s hand-pumping produced

twelve barrels of oil and so much water that an engine was required to

pump steadily. By January twentieth, 1861, the engine was puffing and

the well producing moderately, the influx of water diminishing the yield

of oil. These four, with two getting under way on the Buchanan farm,

north of the McClintock, and one on the J. W. McClintock tract, the site

of Petroleum Centre, summed up all the wells actually begun on Oil Creek

in 1859.

Three of the four were “kicked down” by the aid of spring-poles, as were

hundreds later in shallow territory. This method afforded a mode of

development to men of limited means, with heavy muscles and light

purses, although totally inadequate for deep drilling. An elastic pole

of ash or hickory, twelve to twenty feet long, was fastened at one end

to work over a fulcrum. To the other end stirrups were attached, or a

tilting platform was secured by which two or three men produced a

jerking motion that drew down the pole, its elasticity pulling it back

with sufficient force, when the men slackened their hold, to raise the

tools a few inches. The principle resembled that of the treadle-board of

a sewing-machine, operating which moves the needle up and down. The

tools were swung in the driving-pipe or the “conductor”—a wooden tube

eight or ten inches square, placed endwise in a hole dug to the rock—and

fixed by a rope to the spring-pole two or three feet from the workmen.

The strokes were rapid and a sand-pump—a spout three inches in diameter,

with a hinged bottom opening inward and a valve working on a

sliding-rod, somewhat in the manner of a syringe—removed the borings

mainly by sucking them into the spout as it was drawn out quickly.

Horse-power, in its general features precisely the kind still used with

threshing-machines, was the next step forward. Steam-engines, employed

for drilling at Tidioute in September of 1860, reduced labor and

expedited work. The first pole-derricks, twenty-five to thirty-five feet

high, have been superseded by structures that tower seventy-two to

ninety feet.

[Illustration: “KICKING DOWN” A WELL.]

Drilling-tools, the chief novelty of which are the “jars”—a pair of

sliding-bars moving within each other—have increased from two-hundred

pounds to three-thousand in weight. George Smith, at Rouseville, forged

the first steel-lined jars in 1866, for H. Leo Nelson, but the steel

could not be welded firmly. Nelson also adopted the “Pleasantville Rig”

on the Meade lease, Rouseville, in 1866, discarding the “Grasshopper.”

In the former the walking-beam is fastened in the centre to the

“samson-post,” with one end attached to the rods in the well and the

other to the band-wheel crank, exactly as in side-wheel steamboats.

George Koch, of East Sandy, Pa., patented numerous improvements on

pumping-rigs, drilling-tools and gas-rigs; for which he asked no

remuneration. Primitive wells had a bore of three or four inches, half

the present size. To exclude surface-water a “seed-bag”—a leather-bag

the diameter of the hole—was tied tightly to the tubing, filled with

flax-seed and let down to the proper depth. The top was left open and in

a few hours the flax swelled so that the space between the tubing and

the walls of the well was impervious to water. Drilling “wet holes” was

slow and uncertain, as the tools were apt to break and the chances of a

paying well could not be decided until the pump exhausted the water. It

is surprising that over five-thousand wells were sunk with the rude

appliances in vogue up to 1868, when “casing”—a larger pipe inserted

usually to the top of the first sand—was introduced. This was the

greatest improvement ever devised in oil-developments and drilling has

reached such perfection that holes can be put down five-thousand feet

safely and expeditiously. Devices multiplied as experience was gained.

The tools that drilled the Barnsdall, Crossley and Watson wells were the

handiwork of Jonathan Lock, a Titusville blacksmith. Mr. Lock attained

his eighty-third year, died at Bradford in March of 1895 and was buried

at Titusville, the city in which he passed much of his active life. He

was a worthy type of the intelligent, industrious American mechanics, a

class of men to whom civilization is indebted for unnumbered comforts

and conveniences. John Bryan, who built the first steam-engine in Warren

county, started the first foundry and Machine-shop in Oildom and

organized the firm of Bryan, Dillingham & Co., began the manufacture of

drilling-tools in Titusville in 1860.

[Illustration: JONATHAN LOCK.]

Of the partners in the second well William Barnsdall survives. He has

lived in Titusville sixty-four years, served as mayor and operated

extensively. His son Theodore, who pumped wells on the Parker and Weed

farms, adjoining the Barnsdall homestead, is among the largest and

wealthiest producers. Crossley’s sons rebuilt the rig at their father’s

well in 1873, drilled the hole deeper and obtained considerable oil.

Other wells around the Drake were treated similarly, paying a fair

profit. In 1875 this spasmodic revival of the earliest territory died

out—Machinery was removed and the derricks rotted. Jonathan Watson, in

1889, drilled shallow wells, cleaned out several of the old ones and

awakened brief interest in the cradle of developments. Gas burning and

wells pumping, thirty years after the first strike, seemed indeed

strange. Not a trace of these repeated operations remains. The Parker

and neighboring farms north-west and north of Titusville proved

disappointing, owing to the absence of the third sand, which a hole

drilled two-thousand feet by Jonathan Watson failed to reveal. The

Parker-Farm Petroleum Company of Philadelphia bought the land in 1863

and in 1870 twelve wells were producing moderately. West and south-west

the Octave Oil-Company has operated profitably for twenty years and

Church Run has produced generously. Probably two-hundred wells were sunk

above Titusville, at Hydetown, Clappville, Tryonville, Centerville,

Riceville, Lincolnville and to Oil-Creek Lake, in vain attempts to

discover juicy territory.

Ex-Mayor William Barnsdall is the oldest living pioneer of Titusville.

Not only has he seen the town grow from a few houses to its present

proportions, but he is one of its most esteemed citizens. Born at

Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, England, on February sixth, 1810, he lived

there until 1831, when he came to America. In 1832 he arrived at what is

known as the English Settlement, seven miles north of Titusville. The

Barnsdalls founded the settlement, Joseph, a brother of William,

clearing a farm in the wilderness that then covered the country.

Remaining in the settlement a year, in 1833 William Barnsdall came to

the hamlet of Titusville, where he has ever since resided. He

established a small shop to manufacture boots and shoes, continuing at

the business until the discovery of oil in 1859. Immediately after the

completion of the Drake strike he began drilling the second well on Oil

Creek. Before this well produced oil, in February of 1860, he sold a

part interest to William H. Abbott for ten-thousand dollars. He

associated himself with Abbott and James Parker and, early in 1860,

commenced the first oil-refinery on Oil Creek. It was sold to Jonathan

Watson for twenty-five-thousand dollars. From those early days to the

present Mr. Barnsdall has been identified with the production of

petroleum. At the ripe age of eighty-seven years, respected as few men

are in any community and enjoying an unusual measure of mental and

physical strength, he calmly awaits “the inevitable hour.”

Hon. David Emery, the last owner of the Drake well, was for many years a

successful oil-operator. At Pioneer he drilled a number of prime wells,

following the course of developments along Oil Creek. He organized the

Octave Oil-Company and was its chief officer. Removing to Titusville, he

erected a fine residence and took a prominent part in public affairs.

His purse was ever open to forward a good cause. Had the Republican

party, of which he was an active member, been properly alive to the

interests of the Commonwealth, he would have been Auditor-General of

Pennsylvania. In all the relations and duties of life David Emery was a

model citizen. Called hence in the vigor of stalwart manhood, multitudes

of attached friends cherish his memory as that “of one who loved his

fellow-men.”

Born in England in 1818, David Crossley ran away from home and came to

America as a stowaway in 1828. He found relatives at Paterson, N.J., and

lived with them until about 1835, when he bound himself out to learn

blacksmithing. On March seventeenth, 1839, he married Jane Alston and in

the winter of 1841-2 walked from New York to Titusville, walking back in

the spring. The following autumn he brought his family to Titusville.

For a few years he tried farming, but gave it up and went back to his

trade until 1859, when he formed a partnership with William Barnsdall,

William H. Abbott and P. T. Witherop, under the firm-name of Crossley,

Witherop & Co., and began drilling the third well put down on Oil Creek.

The well was completed on March tenth, 1860, having been drilled

one-hundred-and-forty feet with a spring-pole. It produced at the rate

of seventy-five barrels per day for a short time. The next autumn the

property was abandoned on account of decline in production. In 1865

Crossley bought out his partners and drilled the well to a depth of

five-hundred-and-fifty feet, but again abandoned it because of water. In

1872 he and his sons drilled other wells upon the same property and in a

short time had so reduced the water that the investment became a paying

one. In 1873 he and William Barnsdall and others drilled the first

producing well in the Bradford oil-field. His health failed in 1875 and

he died on October eleventh, 1880, esteemed by all for his manliness and

integrity.

[Illustration: Z. MARTIN]

Z. Martin, who befriended Drake in his sad extremity, landed at

Titusville in March of 1860 and pumped the Barnsdall, Mead & Rouse well

on Parker’s flat, the first well in Crawford county that produced oil.

In 1861 he went to the Clapp farm, above Oil City, as superintendent of

the Boston Rock-Oil-Company, only three of whose eighteen wells were

paying ventures. The Company quitting, Martin bought and shipped crude

to Pittsburg for Brewer, Burke & Co., traveling to the wells on

horseback to secure oil for his boats. He bought the Eagle Hotel at

Titusville in 1862, conducted it two years and sold the building to C.

V. Culver for bank-purposes. Mr. Martin resided at Titusville many years

and was widely known as the capable landlord of the palatial Hotel

Brunswick. He was the intimate friend of Colonel Drake, Jonathan Watson,

George H. Bissell and the pioneer operators on Oil Creek. His son, L. L.

Martin, is running the Commercial Hotel at Meadville, where the father

makes his home, young in everything but years and always pleased to

greet his oil-region acquaintances.

Thus dawned the petroleum-day that could not be hidden under myriads of

bushels. The report of the Drake well traveled “from Greenland’s icy

mountains” to “India’s coral strands,” causing unlimited guessing as to

the possible outcome. Crude-petroleum was useful for various things, but

a farmer who visited the newest wonder hit a fresh lead. Begging a jug

of oil, he paralyzed Colonel Drake by observing as he strode off:

“This’ll be durned good tew spread onto buckwheat-cakes!”

Bishop Simpson once delivered his lecture on “American Progress,” in

which he did not mention petroleum, before an immense Washington

audience. President Lincoln heard it and said, as he and the eloquent

speaker came out of the hall: “Bishop, you didn’t ‘strike ile’!”

When the Barnsdall well, on the Parker farm, produced hardly any oil

from the first sand, the coming Mayor of Titusville quietly clinched the

argument in favor of drilling it deeper by remarking: “It’s a long way

from the bottom of that hole to China and I’m bound to bore for

tea-leaves if we don’t get the grease sooner!”

“De Lawd thinks heaps ob Pennsylvany,” said a colored exhorter in

Pittsburg, “fur jes’ ez whales iz gettin’ sca’ce he pints outen de way

fur Kunnel Drake ter ’scoveh petroleum!” A solemn preacher in Crawford

county held a different opinion. One day he tramped into Titusville to

relieve his burdened mind. He cornered Drake on the street and warned

him to quit taking oil from the ground. “Do you know,” he hissed, “that

you’re interfering with the Almighty Creator of the universe? God put

that oil in the bowels of the earth to burn the world at the last day

and you, poor worm of the dust, are trying to thwart His plans!” No

wonder the loud check in the Colonel’s barred pantaloons wilted at this

unexpected outburst, which Drake often recounted with extreme gusto.

The night “Uncle Billy” Smith’s lantern ignited the tanks at the Drake

well the blaze and smoke of the first oil-fire in Pennsylvania ascended

high. A loud-mouthed professor of religion, whose piety was of the brand

that needed close watching in a horse-trade, saw the sight and scampered

to the hills shouting: “It’s the day of judgment!” How he proposed to

dodge the reckoning, had his surmise been correct, the terrified victim

could not explain when his fright subsided and friends rallied him on

the scare.

The Drake well blazed the path in the wilderness that set petroleum on

its triumphant march. This nation, already the most enlightened, was to

be the most enlightening under the sun. An Atlantic of oil lay beneath

its feet. America, its young, plump sister, could laugh at lean Europe.

War raged and the old world sought to drain the republic of its gold.

The United States exported mineral-fat and kept the yellow dross at

home. Petroleum was crowned king, dethroning cotton and yielding a

revenue, within four years of Drake’s modest strike, exceeding that from

coal and iron combined! Talk of California’s gold-fever, Colorado’s

silver-furore and Barney Barnato’s Caffir-mania.

American petroleum is a leading article of commerce, requiring hundreds

of vessels to transport it to distant lands. Its refined product is

known all over the civilized world. It has found its way to every part

of Europe and the remotest portions of Asia. It shines on the western

prairie, burns in the homes of New England and illumines miles of

princely warehouses in the great cities of America. Everywhere is it to

be met with, in the Levant and the Orient, in the hovel of the Russian

peasant and the harem of the Turkish pasha. It is the one article

imported from the United States and sold in the bazaars of Bagdad, the

“City of the Thousand-and-One-Nights.” It lights the dwellings, the

temples and the mosques amid the ruins of Babylon and Nineveh. It is the

light of Abraham’s birthplace and of the hoary city of Damascus. It

burns in the Grotto of the Nativity at Bethlehem, in the Church of the

Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, on the Acropolis of Athens and the plains

of Troy, in cottage and palace along the banks of the Bosphorus, the

Euphrates, the Tigris and the Golden Horn. It has penetrated China and

Japan, invaded the fastnesses of Tartary, reached the wilds of Australia

and shed its radiance over African wastes. Pennsylvania petroleum is the

true cosmopolite, omnipresent and omnipotent in fulfilling its mission

of illuminating the universe! A product of nature that is such a

controlling influence in the affairs of men may well challenge attention

to its origin, its history and its economic uses.

All this from a three-inch hole seventy feet in the ground!

A grape-seed is a small affair,

Yet, swallow’d when you sup,

In your appendix it may stick

Till doctors carve you up.

A coral-insect is not large,

Still it can build a reef

On which the biggest ship that floats

May quickly come to grief.

A hint, a word, a look, a breath

May bear envenom’d stings,

From all of which the moral learn:

Despise not little things!

IN A NUTSHELL.

Colonel Drake used the first driving pipe.

Adolph Schreiner, of Austria, made the first petroleum-lamp.

The first oil-well drilled by steam power was opposite Tidioute, in

1860.

Jonathan Watson put down the first deep well on Oil Creek—2,130 feet—in

1866.

William Phillips boated the first cargo of oil down the Allegheny to

Pittsburg in March, 1860.

The Chinese were the first to drill with tools attached to ropes, which

they twisted from rattan.

The Liverpool Lamp, devised by an unknown Englishman, was the first to

have a glass-chimney and do away with smoke.

The first tubing in oil-wells was manufactured at Pittsburg, with brass

screw-joints soldered on the pipe, the same as at Tarentum salt-wells.

The first steamboat reached the mouth of Oil Creek in 1828, with a load

of Pittsburgers. The first train crossed Oil Creek into Oil City on a

track on the ice.

William A. Smith, who drilled the Drake well, made the first rimmer.

While enlarging a well with a bit the point broke off, after which

greater progress was noted. The accident suggested the rimmer.

The first white settler in the Pennsylvania oil-regions was John

Frazier, who built a cabin at Wenango—Franklin—in 1745, kept a gun-shop

and traded with the Indians until driven off by the French in 1753, the

year of George Washington’s visit.

Jonathan Titus located at Titusville in 1797, on land made famous by the

Drake well. In that year the first oil skimmed from Oil Creek to be

marketed was sold at Pittsburg, then a collection of log-cabins, at

_sixteen dollars a gallon_! Now people kick at half that many cents for

the refined article.

Early well-owners found the tools and fuel, paid all expenses but labor

and paid three-dollars-and-fifty-cents per foot to the contractor, yet

so many contractors failed that a lien-law was passed. George Koch, in

November of 1873, took out a patent on fluted drills, which did away

with the rimmer, reduced the time of drilling a well from sixty days to

twenty and reduced the price from three dollars per foot to fifty cents.

Sam Taft was the first to use a line to control the engine from the

derrick, at a well near McClintockville, in 1867. Henry Webber was the

first to regulate the motion of the engine from the derrick. He drilled

a well near Smoky City, on the Porter farm, in 1863, with a rod from the

derrick to the throttle-valve. He also dressed the tools, with the forge

in the derrick, perhaps the first time this was done. He drilled this

well six-hundred feet with no help. Near this well was the first

plank-derrick in the oil-country.

The first derricks were of poles, twelve feet base and twenty-eight to

thirty feet high. The ladder was made by putting pins through a corner

of a leg of the derrick. The Samson-post was mortised in the ground. The

band-wheel was hung in a frame like a grindstone. A single bull-wheel,

made out of about a thousand feet of lumber, placed on the side of the

derrick next to the band-wheel, with a rope or old rubber-belt for a

brake, was used. When the tools were let down the former would burn and

smoke, the latter would smell like ancient codfish.

[Illustration:

MAJ. W. T. BAUM.

JACOB SHEASLEY. HENRY F. JAMES.

JAMES EVANS.

W. R. CRAWFORD. COL. JAMES P. HOOVER

DANIEL GRIMM.

]

VI.

THE WORLD’S LUBRICANT.

A GLANCE AT A PRETTY SETTLEMENT—EVANS AND HIS WONDERFUL WELL—HEAVY OIL

AT FRANKLIN TO GREASE ALL THE WHEELS IN CREATION—ORIGIN OF A POPULAR

PHRASE—OPERATIONS ON FRENCH CREEK—EXCITEMENT AT FEVER HEAT—GALENA

AND SIGNAL OIL-WORKS—RISE AND PROGRESS OF A GREAT INDUSTRY—CRUMBS

SWEPT UP.

----------

“The race was on, the souls of the racers were in it.”—_Gen. Lew

Wallace._

“Wild rumors are afloat in Jericho.”—_J. L. Barlow._

“Carthage has crossed the Alps; Rome, the sea.”—_Victor Hugo._

“There shall be no Alps.”—_Napoleon._

“We must not hope to be mowers

Until we have first been sowers.”—_Alice Cary._

“Gained the lead, and kept it, and steered his journey free.”—_Will

Carleton._

“A cargo of petroleum may cross the ocean in a vessel propelled by steam

it has generated, acting upon an engine it lubricates and directed

by an engineer who may grease his hair, limber his joints, and

freshen his liver with the same article.”—_Petrolia, A.D. 1870._

“Friction, not motion, is the great destroyer of

machinery.”—_Engineering Journal._

“Here was * * * a battle of Marengo to be gained.”—_Balzac._

----------

[Illustration: BIG ROCK BELOW FRANKLIN.]

Cheap and abundant light the island-well on Oil Creek assured the

nations sitting in darkness. If there are “tongues in trees” and

“sermons in stones” the trickling stream of greenish liquid murmured:

“Bring on your lamps—we can fill them!” The _second_ oil-well in

Pennsylvania, eighteen miles from Col. Drake’s, changed the strain to:

“Bring on your wheels—we can grease them!” America was to be the world’s

illuminator and lubricator—not merely to dispel gloom and chase

hobgoblins, but to increase the power of machinery by decreasing the

impediments to easy motion. Friction has cost enough for extra wear and

stoppages and breakages “to buy every darkey forty acres and a mule.”

The first coal-oil for sale in this country was manufactured at Waltham,

Mass., in 1852, by Luther Atwood, who called it “Coup Oil,” from the

recent _coup_ of Louis Napoleon. Although highly esteemed as a

lubricator, its offensive odor and poor quality would render it

unmerchantable to-day. Samuel Downer’s hydro-carbon oils in 1856 were

marked improvements, yet they would cut a sorry figure beside the

unrivaled lubricant produced from the wells at Franklin, the county-seat

of Venango. It is a coincidence that the petroleum era should have

introduced light and lubrication almost simultaneously, one on Oil

Creek, the other on French Creek, and both in a region comparatively

isolated. “Misfortunes never come singly,” said the astounded father of

twins, in a paroxysm of bewilderment; but happily blessings often come

treading closely on each other’s heels.

[Illustration: J. B. NICKLIN.]

Pleasantly situated on French Creek and the Allegheny River, Franklin

is an interesting town, with a history dating from the middle of the

eighteenth century. John Frazer, a gunsmith, occupied a hut and traded

with the Indians in 1747. Four forts, one French, one British and two

American, were erected in 1754, 1760, 1787 and 1796. Captain Joncaire

commanded the French forces. George Washington, a British lieutenant,

with no premonition of fathering a great country, visited the spot in

1753. The north-west was a wilderness and Pittsburg had not been laid

out. Franklin was surveyed in 1795, created a borough in 1829 and a

city in 1869, deriving its chief importance from petroleum. Lofty

hills and winding streams are conspicuous. Spring-water is abundant,

the air is invigorating and healthfulness is proverbial. James

Johnston, a negro-farmer of Frenchcreek township, stuck it out for

one-hundred-and-nine summers, lamenting that death got around six

months too soon for him to attend the Philadelphia Centennial. Angus

McKenzie, of Sugarcreek, whose strong-box served as a bank in early

days, reached one-hundred-and-eight. Mrs. McDowell, a pioneer, was

bright and nimble three years beyond the century-mark. Galbraith

McMullen, of Waterloo, touched par. John Morrison, the first

court-crier, rounded out ninety-eight. A successor, Robert Lytle, was

summoned at eighty-seven, his widow living to celebrate her

ninety-fourth birthday. David Smith succumbed at ninety-nine and

William Raymond at ninety-three. Mr. Raymond was straight as an arrow,

walked smartly and in youth was the close friend of John J. Pearson,

who began to practice law at Franklin and was President Judge of

Dauphin county thirty-three years. J. B. Nicklin, fifty years a

respected citizen, died in 1890 at eighty-nine. To the end he retained

his mental and physical strength, kept the accounts of the Baptist

church, was at his desk regularly and could hit the bullseye with the

crack shots of the military company. William Hilands, county-surveyor,

was a familiar figure on the streets at eighty-seven. Rev. Dr. Crane

preached, lectured, visited the sick and continued to do good at

eighty-six. Grandma Snyder is eighty-eight and Benjamin May, a few

miles up the Allegheny, is hardy and hearty at ninety-one. At

eighty-five “Uncle Billy” Grove, of Canal, would hunt deer in Forest

county and walk farther and faster than any man in the township. The

people who have rubbed fourscore would fill a ten-acre patch. Of

course, some get sick and die young, or the doctors would starve,

heaven would be short of youthful tenants and the theories of Malthus

might have to be tried on.

Franklin boasts the finest stone side-walks in the State. There are

imposing churches, shady parks, broad streets, cosy homes, spacious

stores, first-class schools, fine hotels and inviting drives. For

years the Baptist quartette has not been surpassed in New York or

Philadelphia. The opera-house is a gem. Three railroads—a fourth is

coming that will lop off sixty-five miles between New York and

Chicago—and electric street-cars supply rapid transit. Five

substantial banks, a half-dozen millionaires, two-dozen

hundred-thousand-dollar-citizens and multitudes of well-to-do

property-holders give the place financial backbone. Manufactures

flourish, wages are liberal and many workmen own their snug houses.

Probably no town in the United States, of seven-thousand population,

has greater wealth, better society and a kindlier feeling clear

through the community.

On the south bank of French Creek, at Twelfth and Otter streets, James

Evans, blacksmith, had lived twenty years. A baby when his parents

settled farther up in 1802, he removed to Franklin in 1839. His house

stood near the “spring” from which Hulings and Whitman wrung out the

viscid scum. In dry weather the well he dug seventeen feet for water

smelled and tasted of petroleum. Tidings of Drake’s success set the

blacksmith thinking. Drake had bored into the well close to the “spring”

and found oil. Why not try the experiment at Franklin? Evans was not

flush of cash, but the hardware-dealer trusted him for the iron and he

hammered out rough drilling-tools. He and his son Henry rigged a

spring-pole and bounced the drill in the water-well. At seventy-two feet

a crevice was encountered. The tools dropped, breaking off a fragment of

iron, which obstinately refused to be fished out. Pumping by hand would

determine whether a prize or a blank was to be drawn in the greasian

lottery. Two men plied the pump vigorously. A stream of dark-green fluid

gushed forth at the rate of twenty-five barrels a day. It was heavy oil,

about thirty degrees gravity, free from grit and smooth as silk. The

greatest lubricant on earth had been unearthed!

Picture the pandemonium that followed. Franklin had no such convulsion

since the William B. Duncan, the first steamboat, landed one Sunday

evening in January, 1828. The villagers speeded to the well as though

all the imps of sheol were in pursuit. November court adjourned in half

the number of seconds Sut Lovingood’s nest of hornets broke up the

African camp-meeting. Judge John S. McCalmont, whose able opinions the

Supreme Court liked to adopt, decided there was ample cause for action.

A doctor rushed to the scene hatless, coatless and shoeless. Women

deserted their households without fixing their back-hair or getting

inside their dress-parade toggery. Babies cried, children screamed, dogs

barked, bells rang and two horses ran away. At prayer-meeting a ruling

elder, whom the events of the day had wrought to fever-heat, raised a

hilarious snicker by imploring God to “send a shower of blessings—yea,

Lord, twenty-five barrels of blessings!” Altogether it was a red-letter

forenoon, for twenty-five barrels a day of thirty-dollar oil none felt

inclined to sneeze at.

That night a limb of the law, “dressed in his best suit of clothes,”

called at the Evans domicile. Miss Anna, one of the fair daughters of

the house, greeted him at the door and said jokingly: “Dad’s struck

ile!” The expression caught the town, making a bigger hit than the well

itself. It spread far and wide, was printed everywhere and enshrined

permanently in the petroleum-vernacular. The young lady married Miles

Smith, the eminent furniture-dealer, still trading on Thirteenth street.

In 1875 Mr. Smith revisited his native England, after many years’

absence. Meeting a party of gentlemen at a friend’s house, the

conversation turned upon Pennsylvania. “May I awsk, Mr. Smith,” a

Londoner inquired, “if you hever ’eard in your ’ome about ‘dad’s stwuck

ile’? I wead it in the papahs, doncherknow, but I fawncied it nevah

weally ’appened.” Mr. Smith _had_ “’eard” it and the delight of the

company, when he recited the circumstances and told of marrying the

girl, may be conceived. The phrase is billed for immortality.

Sufficient oil to pay for an engine was soon pumped. Steam-power

increased the yield to seventy barrels! Franklin became the Mecca of

speculators, traders, dealers and monied men. Frederic Prentice, a

leader in aggressive enterprises, offered forty-thousand dollars for the

well and lot. Evans rejected the bid and kept the well, which declined

to ten or twelve barrels within six months. The price of oil shrank like

a flannel-shirt, but the lucky disciple of Vulcan realized a nice

competence. He enjoyed his good fortune some years before journeying to

“that bourne from which no traveler e’er returns.” Mrs. Evans long

survived, dying at eighty-six. The son removed to Kansas, three

daughters died and one resides at Franklin. The old well experienced its

complement of fluctuations. Mosely & Co., of Philadelphia, leased it. It

stood idle, the engine was taken away, the rig tumbled and the hole

filled up partially with dirt and wreckage. Prices spurted and the well

was hitched to a pumping-rig operating others around it. Captain S. A.

Hull ran a group of the wells on the flats and a dozen three miles down

the Allegheny. He was a man of generous impulses, finely educated and

exceedingly companionable. His death, in 1893, resulted in dismantling

most of these wells, hardly a vestige remaining to tell that the Evans

and its neighbors ever existed.

James Evans was not “left blooming alone” in the search for oily worlds

to conquer. Companies were organized while he was yanking the tools in

the well that “set ’em crazy.” The first of these—The Franklin

Oil-and-Mining-Company—started work on October fifth, twenty rods below

Evans, finding oil at two-hundred-and-forty-one feet on January twelfth,

1860. The well pumped about one-half as much as the Evans for several

months, but did not die of old age. The forty-two shares of stock

advanced ten-fold in one week, selling at a thousand dollars each. Three

or four wells were put down, the company dissolving and members

operating on their own hook. It was strongly officered, with Arnold

Plumer as president; J. P. Hoover, vice-president; Aaron W. Raymond,

secretary; James Bleakley, Robert Lamberton, R. A. Brashear, J. L. Hanna

and Thomas Hoge, executive committee. Mr. Plumer was a dominant factor

in Democratic politics, largely instrumental in the nomination of James

Buchanan for President, twice a member of Congress, twice

State-Treasurer, Canal-Commissioner and founder of the First-National

Bank. At his death, in 1869, he devised his family an estate that

appraised several million dollars, making it the largest in Venango

county. Judge Lamberton opened the first bank in the oil-regions, owned

hundreds of houses and in 1885 bequeathed each of his eight children a

handsome fortune. Colonel Bleakley rose by his own exertions, keen

foresight and skillful management. He invested in productive realty,

drilled scores of wells around Franklin, built iron-tanks and

brick-blocks, established a bank, held thousands of acres of lands and

in 1884 left a very large inheritance to his sons and daughters. Mr.

Raymond developed the Raymilton district—it was named from him—in which

hundreds of fair wells have rewarded Franklin operators, and at

eighty-nine was exceedingly quick in his movements. Mr. Brashear, a

civil engineer and exemplary citizen, has been in the grave twenty

years. Mr. Hanna operated heavily in oil, acquired numerous farms and

erected the biggest block—it contained the first opera-house—in the

city. He is handling real-estate, but his former partner, John Duffield,

slumbers in the cemetery. Mr. Hoge, an influential politician, elected

to the Legislature two terms and Mayor one term, has also joined the

silent majority.

In February, 1860, Caldwell & Co., a block southeast of Evans, finished

a paying well at two-hundred feet. The Farmers and Mechanics’ Company,

Levi Dodd, president, drilled a medium producer at the foot of High

street, on the bank of the creek. Mr. Dodd was an old settler,

originator of the first Sabbath-school in Franklin and a ruling-elder

for over fifty years. Numerous companies and individuals pushed work in

the spring. Holes were sunk in front yards, gardens and water-wells.

Derricks dotted the landscape thickly. Franklin was the objective point

of immense crowds of people. The earliest wells were shallow, seldom

exceeding two-hundred feet. The Mammoth, near a huge walnut tree back of

the Evans lot, began flowing on May fifteenth to the tune of a hundred

barrels. This was the first “spouter” in the district and it quadrupled

the big excitement. Four-hundred barrels of oil were shipped to

Pittsburg, by the steamboat Venango, on April twenty-seventh. Twenty-two

wells were drilling and twenty producing on July first. Farms for miles

up French Creek had been bought at high prices and the noise of the

drill permeated the summer ozone. Four miles west of Franklin, zig-zag

Sugar Creek shared in the activity. Then the prices “came down like a

thousand of brick.” Pumping was expensive, lands were scarce and dear,

hauling the oil to a railroad cost half its value and hosts of small

wells were abandoned. On November first, within the borough limits,

fifteen were yielding one-hundred-and-forty barrels. Curtz & Strain had

bored five-hundred feet in October, the deepest well in the

neighborhood, without finding additional oil-bearing rock. The

Presidential election foreboded trouble, war-clouds loomed up and the

year closed gloomily.

[Illustration]

LEVI DODD.

COL. BLEAKLEY.

J. LINDSAY HANNA.

AARON W. RAYMOND.

The advantages of Franklin heavy-oil as a lubricant were quickly

recognized. It possessed a “body” that artificial oils could not rival.

In the crude state it withstood a cold-test twenty degrees below zero.

Here is where it “had the bulge” on alleged lubricants which solidify

into a sort of liver with every twitch of frost. The producing-area of

heavy-oil is restricted to a limited section, where the first sand is

thirty to sixty feet thick and the lower sands were entirely omitted in

the original distribution of strata. For years operators hugged the

banks of the streams and the low grounds, keeping off the hills more

willingly than General Coxey kept off the Washington grass. The famous

“Point Hill,” across French Creek from the Evans well, went begging for

a purchaser. At its southern base Mason & Lane, Cook & Co., Welsby &

Smith, Shuster, Andrews, Green and others had profitable wells, but

nobody dreamed of boring through the steep “Point” for oil. J. Lowry

Dewoody offered the lordly hill, with its forty acres of dense

evergreen-brush, to Charles Miller for fifteen-hundred dollars. He

wanted the money to drill on the flats and the hill was an elephant on

his hands.

During the Columbian Exposition an aged man alighted from a western

train at the union-depot in Chicago. His rifle and his buckskin-suit

indicated the Kit-Carson brand of hunter. He gazed about him in

amazement and a crowd assembled. “Wal,” ejaculated the white-haired

Nimrod, “this be Chicago, eh? Sixty years ago I killed lots ov game

right whar we stan’ an’ old man Kinzey fell all over hisse’f to trade me

a hunnerd acre ov land fur a pair ov cowhide boots! I might hev took him

up, but, consarn it, I didn’t hev the boots!”

[Illustration: J. LOWRY DEWOODY.]

[Illustration: WILLIAM PAINTER.]

[Illustration: EDWARD RIAL.]

Something of this kind would apply to Mr. Miller and the Dewoody

proposition. He had embarked in the business that was to bring him

wealth and honor, but just at that time “didn’t hev” the fifteen-hundred

to spare from his working-capital for the fun of owning a hill presumed

to be worthless except for scenery. Colonel Bleakley and Dr. A. G.

Egbert bought it later at a low figure. Operators scaled the slopes and

hills and the first well on the “Point” was of the kind to whet the

appetite for more. Bleakley & Egbert pocketed a keg of cold-cash from

their wells and the royalty paid by lessees. Daniel Grimm’s production

put him in the van of Franklin oilmen. He came to the town in 1861, had

a dry-goods store in partnership with the late William A. Horton and in

1869 drilled his first well. W. J. Mattem and Edward Rial & Son had a

rich slice. The foundation of a dozen fortunes was laid on the “Point,”

which yields a few barrels daily, although only a shadow of its former

self. From the western end of the hill thousands of tons of a peculiar

shale have been manufactured into paving-brick, the hardest and toughest

in America. A million dollars would not pay for the oil taken from the

hill that found no takers at fifteen-hundred!

Dewoody, over whose grave the storms of a dozen winters have blown, was

a singular character. He cared not a continental for style and was

independent in speech and behavior. Bagging a term in the Legislature as

a Democratic-Greenbacker, his rugged honesty was proof against the

allurements of the lobbyists, jobbers and heelers who disgrace common

decency. His most remarkable act was a violent assault on the

Tramp-Bill, a measure cruel as the laws of Draco, which Rhoads of

Carlisle contrived to pass. He paced the central aisle, spoke in the

loudest key and gesticulated fiercely. Tossing his long auburn hair like

a lion’s mane, he wound up his torrent of denunciation with terrible

emphasis: “If Jesus Christ were on earth this monstrous bill would jerk

him as a vagrant and dump him into the lock-up!”

Gradually developments crept north and east. The Galloway—its Dolly

Varden well was a daisy—Lamberton and McCalmont farms were riddled with

holes that repaid the outlay lavishly. Henry F. James drilled scores of

paying wells on these tracts. In his youth he circled the globe on

whaling voyages and learned coopering. Spending a few months at Pithole

in 1865, he returned to Venango county in 1871, superintended the

Franklin Pipe-Line five years and operated judiciously. He was active in

agriculture and served three terms in the Legislature with distinguished

fidelity. He defeated measures inimical to the oil-industry and promoted

the passage of the Marshall Bill, by which pipe-lines were permitted to

buy, sell or consolidate. This sensible law relieves pipe-lines in the

older districts, where the production is very light, from the necessity

of maintaining separate equipments at a loss or ruining hundreds of

well-owners by tearing up the pipes for junk and depriving operators of

transportation. The late Casper Frank, William Painter—he was killed at

his wells—Dr. Fee, the Harpers, E. D. Yates and others extended the

field into Sugarcreek township. Elliott, Nesbett & Bell’s first well on

the Snyder farm, starting at thirty barrels and settling down to regular

work at fifteen, elongated the Galloway pool and brought adjoining lands

into play. Kunkel & Newhouse, Stock & Co., Mitchell & Parker, Crawford &

Dickey, Dr. Galbraith and M. O’Connor kept many sets of tools from

rusting. The extension to the Carter and frontier-farms developed oil of

lighter gravity, but a prime lubricator. Mrs. Harold, a Chicago lady,

dreamed a certain plot, which she beheld distinctly, would yield

heavy-oil in abundance. She visited Franklin, traversed the district a

mile in advance of developed territory, saw the land of her dream,

bargained for it, drilled wells and obtained “lashin’s of oil!” Still

there are bipeds in bifurcated garments who declare woman’s “sphere” is

the kitchen, with dish-washing, sock-darning and meal-getting as her

highest “rights!”

Jacob Sheasley, who came from Dauphin county in 1860 and branched into

oil in 1864, is the largest operator in the bailiwick. He drilled at

Pithole, Parker, Bradford, on all sides of Franklin and put down a

hundred wells the last two years. He enlarged the boundaries of the

lubricating section by leasing lands previously condemned and sinking

test-wells in 1893-4, with gratifying results. Rarely missing his guess

on territory, he has been almost invariably fortunate. His son, George

R., has operated in Venango and Butler counties and owns a bunch of

desirable wells on Bully Hill, with his brother Charles as partner. The

father and two sons are “three of a kind” hard to beat.

A mile north of Franklin, in February of 1870, the Surprise well on

Patchel Run, a streamlet bearing the name of the earliest hat-maker,

surprised everybody by its output. It foamed and gassed and frothed

excessively, filling the pipe with oil and water. Throngs tramped the

turnpike over the toilsome hill to look at the boiling, fuming tank into

which the well belched its contents. “Good for four-hundred barrels” was

the verdict. A party of us hurried from Oil Creek to judge for

ourselves. Although the estimate was six times too great, a lease of

adjacent lands would not be bad to take. Rev. Mr. Johns, retired pastor

of the Presbyterian church at Spartansburg, Crawford county, had charge

of the property. My acquaintance with Mr. Johns devolved upon me the

duty of negotiating for the tract. He received me graciously and would

be pleased to lease twenty acres for one-half the oil and one-thousand

dollars an acre bonus! Br’er John’s exalted notions soared far too high

to be entertained seriously. The Surprise fizzled down to four or five

barrels in a week and the good minister—for twenty years he has been

enjoying his treasure in heaven—never fingered a penny from his land

save the royalty of two or three small wells.

Major W. T. Baum has operated in the heavy-oil field thirty-two years,

beginning in 1864. He passed through the Pithole excitement and drilled

largely at Foster, Pleasantville, Scrubgrass, Bullion, Gas City,

Clarion, Butler and Tarkiln. His faith in Scrubgrass territory has been

recompensed richly. In 1894 he sank a well on the west bank of the

Allegheny, opposite Kennerdell Station, in hope of a ten-barrel strike.

It pumped one-hundred-and-fifty barrels a day for months and it is doing

fifty barrels to-day, with three more of similar caliber to keep it

company! The Major’s persevering enterprise deserves the reward Dame

Fortune is bestowing. He owns the wells and lands on Patchel Run, which

yield a pleasant revenue. Colonel J. H. Cain, Colonel L. H. Fassett and

J. W. Grant, all successful operators, have their wells in the vicinity.

Modern devices connect wells far apart, by coupling them with rods two

to ten feet above ground, so that a single engine can pump thirty or

forty in shallow territory. The downward stroke of one helps the upward

stroke of the other, each pair nearly balancing. This enables the owners

of small wells to pump them at the least expense. Heavy-oil has sold for

years at three-sixty to four dollars a barrel, consequently a

quarter-barrel apiece from forty wells, handled by one man and engine,

would exceed the income from a quarter-million dollars salted down in

government bonds. It is worth traveling a long distance to stand on the

hill and watch the pumping of Baum’s, Grimm’s, Cain’s, Grant’s,

Sheasley’s and James’s wells, some of them a mile from the power that

sets the strings of connecting-rods in motion.

[Illustration: COL. JOHN H. CAIN.]

[Illustration: GEORGE PLUMER SMITH.]

[Illustration: W. S. M’MULLAN]

On Two-Mile Run, up the Allegheny two miles, W. S. McMullan drilled

several wells in 1871-2. The product was the blackest of black oils,

indicating a deposit separated from the main reservoir of the

lubricating region. Subsequent operations demonstrated that a dry streak

intervened. Captain L. L. Ray put down fair wells near the river in

1894. Mr. McMullan resided at Rouseville and had valuable interests on

Oil Creek. He served a term in the State Senate, reflecting honor upon

himself and his constituents. A man of integrity and capacity, he could

be trusted implicitly. Fifteen years ago he removed to Missouri to

engage in lumbering. Senator McMullan, Captain William Hasson, member of

Assembly, and Judge Trunkey, who presided over the court and later

graced the Supreme Bench, were three Venango-county men in public life

whom railroad-passes never swerved from the path of duty. They refused

all such favors and paid their way like gentlemen. If lawgivers and

judges of their noble impress were the rule rather than the exception—“a

consummation devoutly to be wished”—grasping corporations would not own

legislatures and “drive a coach and four” through any enactment with

impunity.

George P. Smith’s tract of land between Franklin and Two-Mile Run netted

him a competence in oil and then sold for one-hundred-thousand dollars.

Mr. Smith dispenses liberally to charitable objects, assists his friends

and uses his wealth properly. He owns his money, instead of letting it

own him. He has traveled much, observed closely and profited by what he

has seen and read. He is verging on fourscore, his home is in

Philadelphia and “the world will be the better for his having lived in

it.”

The production of heavy-oil in 1875 aggregated

one-hundred-and-thirty-thousand barrels. In 1877 it dropped to

eighty-eight-thousand barrels and in 1878 to seventy thousand.

Thirteen-hundred wells produced sixty-thousand barrels in 1883. Taft &

Payn’s pipe-line was laid in 1870 from the Egbert and Dewoody tracts to

the river, extended to Galloway in 1872 and combined with the Franklin

line in 1878. The Producers’ Pipe-Line Company began to transport oil in

1883. J. A. Harris, who died in 1894, had the first refinery in the

oil-regions in 1860. His plant was extremely primitive. Colonel J. P.

Hoover built the first refinery of note, which burned in the autumn of

1861. Sims & Whitney had one in 1861 and the Norfolk Oil-Works were

established the same year, below the Allegheny bridge. Samuel Spencer,

of Scranton, expended thirty-thousand dollars on the Keystone Oil-Works,

near the cemetery, in 1864. Nine refineries, most of them running the

lighter oils, were operated in 1854-5, after which the business

collapsed for years. Dr. Tweddle, a Pittsburg refiner who had suffered

by fire, organized a company in 1872 to start the Eclipse Works. At

different periods many of the local operators have been interested in

refining, now the leading Franklin industry.

For some time heavy-oil was used principally in its natural state. At

length improvements of great value were devised, out of which have grown

the oil-works devoted solely to the manufacture of lubricants. Among

these the most important and successful was that adopted in 1869 by

Charles Miller, of Franklin, protected by letters-patent of the United

States and since by patents covering the complete method. Besides

improvements in the method of manufacturing, he recognized the value of

lead-oxide as an ingredient in lubricating oils and a patent was secured

for the combination of whale-oil, oxide of lead and petroleum. The

Great-Northern Oil-Company, once a big organization, had built a

refinery in 1865 on the north bank of French Creek, below the Evans

Well, and leased it in 1868 to Colonel Street. In May of 1869 Mr. Miller

and John Coon purchased the Point Lookout Oil-Works, as the refinery was

called, Street retiring. The total tankage was one-thousand barrels and

the daily manufacturing capacity scarcely one-hundred. The new firm, of

which R. L. Cochran became a member in July, pushed the business with

characteristic energy, doubling the plant and extending the trade in all

directions. Mr. Cochran withdrew in January of 1870, R. H. Austin buying

his interest. The following August fire destroyed the works, entailing

severe loss. A calamity that would have disheartened most men seemed

only to imbue the partners with fresh vigor. Colonel Henry B. Plumer, a

wealthy citizen of Franklin, entered the firm and the Dale light-oil

refinery, a half-mile up the creek, was bought and remodeled throughout.

Reorganized on a solid basis as the “Galena Oil-Works,” a name destined

to gain world-wide reputation, within one month from the fire the new

establishment, its buildings and entire equipment changed and adapted to

the treatment of heavy-oil, was running to its full capacity night and

day! Such enterprise and pluck augured happily for the future and they

have been rewarded abundantly.

Orders poured in more rapidly than ever. The local demand spread to the

adjoining districts. Customers once secured were sure to stay. In

addition to the excellence of the product, there was a vim about the

business and its management that inspired confidence and won patronage.

Messrs. Coon, Austin and Plumer disposed of their interest, at a

handsome figure, to the Standard Oil Company in 1878. The Galena

Oil-Works, Limited, was chartered and continued the business, with Mr.

Miller as president. Increasing demands necessitated frequent

enlargements of the works, which now occupy five acres of ground. Every

appliance that ingenuity and experience can suggest has been provided,

securing uniform grades of oil with unfailing precision.

The machinery and appurtenances are the best money and skill can supply.

The same sterling traits that distinguished the smaller firm have all

along marked the progress of the newer and larger enterprise. The

standard of its products is always strictly first-class, hence patrons

are never disappointed in the quality of any of the celebrated Galena

brands of “Engine,” “Coach,” “Car,” “Machinery,” or “Lubricating” oils.

Steadfast adherence to this cardinal principle has borne its legitimate

fruit. Railway-oils are manufactured exclusively. The daily capacity is

three-thousand barrels. “Galena Oils” are used on _over ninety per

cent._ of the railway-mileage of the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Such patronage has never before been gained by any one establishment and

it is the result of positive merit. The Franklin district furnishes more

and better lubricating oil than all the rest of the continent and the

Galena treatment brings it to the highest measure of perfection. Reflect

for a moment upon the enormous expansion of the Galena Works and see

what earnest, faithful, intelligent effort and straightforward dealing

may accomplish.

The first three railroads that tried the “Galena Oils” in 1869 have used

none other since. Could stronger proof of their excellence be desired?

It was a pleasing novelty for railway-managers to find a lubricant that

would neither freeze in winter nor dissipate in summer and they made

haste to profit by the experience. The severest tests served but to

place it far beyond all competition. At twenty degrees below zero it

would not congeal, while the fiercest heat of the tropical sun affected

it hardly a particle. As the natural consequence it speedily superseded

all others on the principal railroads of the country. The axles of the

magnificent Pullman and Wagner coaches on the leading lines have their

friction reduced to the minimum by “Galena Oil.” It adds immeasurably to

the smoothness and speed of railway-travel between the Atlantic and the

Pacific, from Maine to the Isthmus, from British Columbia to Florida.

Passengers detained by a “hot box” and annoyed by the fumes of rancid

grease frying in the trucks beneath their feet may be certain that the

offending railways _do not_ use “Galena Oil.” The “Galena” is not

constructed on that plan, but stands alone and unapproachable as the

finest lubricator of the nineteenth century.

This is a record-breaking age. The world’s record for fast time on a

railroad was again captured from the English on September

eleventh, 1895. The New-York-Central train, which left New

York that morning, accomplished the trip to Buffalo at the

greatest speed for a continuous journey of any train over any

railroad in the world. The distance—four-hundred-and-thirty-six

miles—was covered in four-hundred-and-seven minutes, a rate of

sixty-four-and-one-third miles per hour. Until that feat the English

record of sixty-three-and-one-fifth miles an hour for five-hundred miles

was the fastest. In other words, the American train of four heavy cars,

hauled to Albany by engine No. 999, the famous World’s Fair locomotive,

smashed the English record more than a mile an hour, in the teeth of a

stiff head-wind. Father Time, who has insisted for many years that

travelers spend at least twenty-four hours on the journey between

Chicago and New York, received a fatal shock on October twenty-fourth,

1895. Two men who left Chicago at three-thirty in the morning visited

five theatres in New York that night! A special New-York-Central train,

with Vice-President Webb and a small party of Lake-Shore officials, ran

the nine-hundred-and-eighty miles in seventeen-and-three-quarter hours,

averaging sixty-five miles an hour to Buffalo, beating all previous

long-distance runs. For the first time copies of Chicago newspapers,

brought by gentlemen on the train, were seen in New York on the day of

their publication. Every axle, every journal, every box, every wheel of

both these trains, from the front of the locomotive to the rear of the

hind-coach, was lubricated with “Galena Oil.”

Later a train in Scotland, keeping step with the oatmeal-and-haggis fad

that has deluged the land with Highland-dialect tales, snatched the

garland by adding a mile or more to the Central’s achievement. The

Scottish triumph was very brief. “Ian McLaren,” Barree and Crockett

might shine in literature, but no foreign line could be permitted to fix

the record for railroad-speed. Engineer Charles H. Fahl, of the Reading

system, believed American railways to be the best on earth and backed up

his opinion by solid proof. During the past summer he ran the famous

flyer between Camden and Atlantic City the entire season on time every

trip. The train, scheduled to travel the fifty-six miles in fifty-two

minutes, always started at least two minutes late, owing to the

ferryboats not connecting promptly. Yet Engineer Fahl made up this loss

and reached Atlantic City a trifle ahead of time, without missing once.

The trips averaged _forty-eight minutes_, or a fraction above

_sixty-nine miles an hour_! This was not one experimental test, but a

regular run day after day the whole season, generally with six

passenger-coaches crowded from end to end. Week in and week out the

flyer sped across the sandy plains of New Jersey, with never a skip or a

break, at the pace which placed the record of Train 25, of the

Atlantic-City branch of the Reading Railroad, upon the top rung of the

ladder. This performance, unequaled in railway-history at home or

abroad, brought Engineer Fahl a commendatory letter from Vice-President

Theodore Voorhees. It was rendered possible only by the exclusive use,

on locomotive and coaches alike, of the Galena Oils, which prevented the

hot-journals and excessive friction that are fatal to speed-records.

The works are situated in the very heart of the heavy-oil district. Two

railroads, with a third in prospect, and a paved street front the

spacious premises. The main building is of brick, covering about an acre

and devoted chiefly to the handling of oil for manufacture or in course

of preparation, the repairing and painting of barrels and the

accommodation of the engines and machinery. To the rear stands a

substantial brick-structure, containing the steam-boilers, the

electric-light outfit and the huge agitators in which the oil is

treated. Big pumps next force the fluid into large vessels, where it is

submitted to a variety of special processes, which finally leave it

ready for the consumer. A dozen iron-tanks, each holding many thousand

barrels, receive and store crude to supply the works for months. As this

is piped directly from the wells the largest orders are filled with the

utmost dispatch. Nothing is lacking that can ensure superiority. The

highest wages are paid and every employee is an American citizen or

proposes to become one. The men are regarded as rational, responsible

beings, with souls to save and bodies to nourish, and treated in

accordance with the Golden Rule. They are well-fed, well-housed,

prosperous and contented. A strike, or a demand for higher wages or

shorter hours, is unknown in the history of this model institution. Is

it surprising that each year adds to its vast trade and wonderful

popularity? The unrivalled “Galena Oil-Works,” of Franklin, Venango

county, Pennsylvania, must be ranked among the most noteworthy

representative industries of Uncle Sam’s splendid domain.

Have you a somewhat cranky wife,

Whose temper’s apt to broil?

To ease the matrimonial strife

Just lubricate when trouble’s rife—

Pour on Galena Oil!

Has life some rusty hinge or joint

That vexes like a boil,

And always sure to disappoint?

The hindrance to success anoint

As with Galena Oil!

Does business seem to jar and creak,

Despite long years of toil,

Till wasted strength has left you weak?

Reduce the friction, so to speak—

Apply Galena Oil!

Are your affairs all run aground,

The cause of sad turmoil?

To see again “the wheels go ’wound,”

Smooth the rough spots wherever found—

Soak in Galena Oil!

The Signal Oil-Works, Franklin, manufacture Sibley’s Perfection

Valve-Oil for locomotive-cylinders and Perfection Signal-Oil. More than

twenty-five years ago Joseph C. Sibley commenced experimenting with

petroleum-oils for use in steam-cylinders under high pressure. He found

that where the boiler-pressure was not in excess of sixty pounds the

proper lubrication of a steam-cylinder with petroleum was a matter of

little or no difficulty. With increase in pressure came increase in

temperature. As a result the oil vaporized and passed through the

exhaust. The destruction of steam-chests and cylinders through fatty

acids incident to tallow, or tallow and lard-oils, cost millions of

dollars annually; but it was held as a cardinal point in mechanical

engineering that these were the only proper steam-lubricants. Mr. Sibley

carried on his experiments for years. He conversed with leading

superintendents-of-machinery in the United States and with leading

chemists. Almost invariably he was laughed at when asserting his

determination to produce a product of petroleum, free from fatty acids,

capable of better lubrication even than the tallow then in use. Many of

his friends in the oil-business, who thought they understood the nature

of petroleum, expressed the deepest sympathy with Mr. Sibley’s

hallucination. Amid partial successes, interspersed with many failures,

he continued the experiments. So incredulous were chemists and

superintendents-of-machinery, so fearful of disasters to their machinery

through the use of such a compound, that he had in many instances to

guarantee to assume any damages which might occur to a locomotive

through its use. He rode thousands of miles upon locomotives, watching

the use of the oil, daily doubling the distance made by engineers.

Success at last crowned his efforts and the Perfection Valve-Oil has

been for nearly twenty years the standard lubricant of valves and

cylinders. To-day there is scarcely a locomotive in the United States

that does not use some preparation of petroleum and the steam-chests and

cylinders of _more than three-fourths_ of all in the United States are

lubricated with Perfection Valve-Oil.

The results have been astounding. Destruction of steam-joints by fatty

acids from valve-lubricants is now an unknown thing. Not only this, but

as a lubricant the Perfection Valve-Oil has proved itself so much

superior that, where valve-seats required facing on an average once in

sixty days, they do not now require facing on an average once in two

years. The steam-pressure carried upon the boilers at that time rarely

exceeded one-hundred-and-twenty pounds. With the increase of pressure

and the corresponding increase of temperature it was found next to

impossible to properly lubricate the valves and cylinders to prevent

cutting. The superintendent-of-machinery of a leading American railway

sent for Mr. Sibley at one time, told him that he proposed to build

passenger-locomotives carrying one-hundred-and-eighty pounds pressure

and asked if he would undertake to lubricate the valves and cylinders

under that pressure. The reply was: “Go ahead. We will guarantee perfect

lubrication to a pressure very much higher than that.” And to-day the

higher type of passenger-locomotives carry one-hundred-and-eighty pounds

pressure regularly.

When it was clearly demonstrated that the Perfection Valve-Oil was a

success, oil-men who had pronounced it impossible and had been backed in

their opinion by noted chemists commenced to make oils similar to it in

appearance. While many of them may have much confidence in their own

product, the highest testimonial ever paid to Perfection Valve-Oil is

that no competitor claims he has its superior. Some urge their product

with the assurance that it is the equal of Perfection Valve-Oil, thus

unconsciously paying the highest tribute possible to the latter.

The works also make Perfection Signal-Oil for use in railway-lamps and

lanterns. Since 1869 this oil has been before the public. It is in daily

use in more than three-fourths of the railway-lanterns of the United

States and it is the proud boast of Mr. Sibley that, during that time,

there has never occurred an accident which has cost either a human limb

or life or the destruction of one penny’s worth of property, through the

failure of this oil to perform its work perfectly. Making but the two

products, Valve and Signal-Oils, catering to no other than

railroad-trade, studying carefully the demands of the service, keeping

in touch with the latest developments of locomotive-engineering and

thoroughly acquainted with the properties of all petroleum in

Pennsylvania, the company may well believe that, granted the possession

of equal natural abilities with competitors, under the circumstances it

is entitled to lead all others in the production of these two grades of

oils for railroad-use.

[Illustration:

CHARLES MILLER.

JOSEPH C. SIBLEY.

]

Hon. Charles Miller, president of the Galena Oil-Works, and Hon. Joseph

C. Sibley, president of the Signal Oil-Works, are brothers-in-law and

proprietors of the great stock-farms of Miller & Sibley. Mr. Miller is

of Huguenot ancestry, born in Alsace, France, in 1843. The family came

to this country in 1854, settling on a farm near Boston, Erie county,

New York. At thirteen Charles clerked one year in the village-store for

thirty-five dollars and board. He clerked in Buffalo at seventeen for

one-hundred-and-seventy-five dollars, without board. In 1861 he enlisted

in the New-York National Guard. In 1863 he was mustered into the United

States service and married at Springville, N. Y., to Miss Ann Adelaide

Sibley, eldest child of Dr. Joseph C. Sibley. In 1864 he commenced

business for himself, in the store in which he had first clerked, with

his own savings of two-hundred dollars and a loan of two-thousand from

Dr. Sibley. In 1866 he sold the store and removed to Franklin. Forming a

partnership with John Coon of Buffalo, the firm carried on a large

dry-goods house until 1869, when a patent for lubricating oil and a

refinery were purchased and the store was closed out at heavy loss. The

refinery burned down the next year, new partners were taken in and in

1878 the business was organized in its present form as “The Galena

Oil-Works, Limited.” The entire management was given Mr. Miller, who had

built up an immense trade and retained his interest in the works. He

deals directly with consumers. Since 1870 his business-trips have

averaged five days a week and fifty-thousand miles a year of travel. No

man has a wider acquaintance and more personal friends among

railroad-officials. His journeys cover the United States and Mexico.

Wherever he may be, in New Orleans or San Francisco, on the train or in

the hotel, conferring with a Vanderbilt or the humblest manager of an

obscure road, receiving huge orders or aiding a deserving cause, he is

always the same genial, magnetic, generous exemplar of practical belief

in “the universal fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.”

Major Miller is one whom money does not spoil. He is the master, not the

servant, of his wealth. He uses it to extend business, to foster

enterprise, to further philanthropy, to alleviate distress and to

promote the comfort and happiness of all about him. His benefactions

keep pace with his increasing prosperity. He is ever foremost in good

deeds. He gives thousands of dollars yearly to worthy objects, to the

needy, to churches, to schools, to missions and to advance the general

welfare. In 1889 he established a free night-school for his employés and

the youth of Franklin, furnishing spacious rooms with desks and

apparatus and engaging four capable teachers. This school has trained

hundreds of young men for positions as accountants, book-keepers,

stenographers and clerks. The First Baptist church, which he assisted in

organizing, is the object of his special regard. He bore a large share

of the cost of the brick-edifice, the lecture-room and the parsonage. He

and Mr. Sibley have donated the massive pipe-organ, maintained the

superb choir, paid a good part of the pastor’s salary, erected a

branch-church and supported the only services in the Third Ward. For

twenty-five years Mr. Miller has been superintendent of the

Sabbath-school, which has grown to a membership of six-hundred. His

Bible-class of three-hundred men is equalled in the state only by John

Wanamaker’s, in Philadelphia, and James McCormick’s, in Harrisburg. The

instruction is scriptural, pointed and business-like, with no taint of

bigotry or sectarianism. No matter how far away Saturday may find him,

the faithful teacher never misses the class that is “the apple of his

eye,” if it be possible to reach home. Often he has hired an engine to

bring him through on Saturday night, in order to meet the adult pupils

of all denominations who flock to hear his words of wisdom and

encouragement. Alike in conversation, teaching and public-speaking he

possesses the faculty of interesting his listeners and imparting

something new. He has raised the fallen, picked poor fellows out of the

gutter, rescued the perishing and set many wanderers in the straight

path. Not a few souls, “plucked as brands from the burning,” owe their

salvation to the kindly sympathy and assistance of this earnest layman.

Eternity alone will reveal the incalculable benefit of his night-school,

his Bible-class, his church-work, his charity, his personal appeals to

the erring and his unselfish life to the community and the world.

“No duty could overtask him, no need his will outrun;

Or ever our lips could ask him, his hand the work had done.”

Twice Mr. Miller served as mayor of Franklin. Repeatedly has he declined

nominations to high offices, private affairs demanding his time and

attention. He is president or director of a score of commercial and

industrial companies, with factories, mines and works in eight states.

He has been president time after time of the Northwestern Association of

Pennsylvania of the Grand Army of the Republic, Ordnance-Officer and

Assistant Adjutant-General of the Second Brigade of Pennsylvania and

Commander of Mays Post. He is a leading spirit in local enterprises. He

enjoys his beautiful home and the society of his wife and children and

friends. He prizes good horses, smokes good cigars and tells good

stories. In him the wage-earner and the breadwinner have a steadfast

helper, willing to lighten their burden and to better their condition.

In short, Charles Miller is a typical American, plucky, progressive,

energetic and invincible, with a heart to feel, genius to plan and

talent to execute the noblest designs.

Hon. Joseph Crocker Sibley, eldest son of Dr. Joseph Crocker Sibley, was

born at Friendship, N.Y., in 1850. His father’s death obliging him to

give up a college-course for which he had prepared, in 1866 he came to

Franklin to clerk in Miller & Coon’s dry-goods store. From that time his

business interests and Mr. Miller’s were closely allied. In 1870 he

married Miss Metta E. Babcock, daughter of Simon M. Babcock, of

Friendship. He was agent of the Galena Oil-Works at Chicago for two

years, losing his effects and nearly losing his life in the terrible

fire that devastated that city. His business-success may be said to date

from 1873, when he returned to Franklin. After many experiments he

produced a signal-oil superior in light, safety and cold-test to any in

use. The Signal Oil-Works were established, with Mr. Sibley as president

and the proprietors of the Galena Oil-Works, whose plant manufactured

the new product, as partners. Next he compounded a valve-oil for

locomotives, free from the bad qualities of animal-oils, which is now

used on three-fourths of the railway mileage of the United States.

Every newspaper-reader in the land has heard of the remarkable

Congressional fight of 1892 in the Erie-Crawford district. Both counties

were overwhelmingly Republican. People learned with surprise that Hon.

Joseph C. Sibley, a resident of another district, had accepted the

invitation of a host of good citizens, by whom he was selected as the

only man who could lead them to victory over the ring, to try

conclusions with the nominee of the ruling party, who had stacks of

money, the entire machine, extensive social connections, religious

associations—he was a preacher—and a regular majority of five-thousand

to bank upon. Some wiseacres shook their heads gravely and predicted

disaster. Such persons understood neither the resistless force of

quickened public sentiment nor the sterling qualities of the candidate

from Venango county. Democrats, Populists and Prohibitionists endorsed

Sibley. He conducted a campaign worthy of Henry Clay. Multitudes crowded

to hear and see a man candid enough to deliver his honest opinions with

the boldness of “Old Hickory.” The masses knew of Mr. Sibley’s courage,

sagacity and success in business, but they were unprepared to find so

sturdy a defender of their rights. His manly independence, ringing

denunciations of wrong, grand simplicity and incisive logic aroused

unbounded enthusiasm. The tide in favor of the fearless advocate of

fair-play for the lowliest creature no earthly power could stem. His

opponent was buried out of sight and Sibley was elected by a sweeping

majority.