Get off the train at Trunkeyville—a station-house and water-tank—and

climb up the hill towards Fagundas. After walking through the woods a

mile an opening appears. A man is plowing. The soil looks too poor to

raise grasshoppers, yet that man during the oil-excitement refused an

offer of sixty-thousand dollars for this farm. His principal reason was

that he feared a suitable house into which to move his family could not

be obtained! On a little farther a pair of old bull-wheels, lying

unused, tells that the once productive Fagundas pool has been reached. A

short distance ahead on an eminence is a church. This is South Fagundas.

No sound save the crowing of a chanticleer from a distant farm-yard

breaks the silence. The merry voices heard in the seventies are no

longer audible, the drill and pump are not at work, the dwellings,

stores and hotels have disappeared. The deserted church stands alone. A

few landmarks linger at Fagundas proper. There is one store and no place

where the weary traveler can quench his thirst. The nearest resemblance

to a drinking-place is a boy leaning over a barrel drinking rain-water

while another lad holds him by the feet. Fagundas is certainly “dry.”

The stranger is always taken to the Venture well. Its appearance differs

little from that of hundreds of other abandoned wells. The conductor and

the casing have not been removed. Robert W. Pimm, who built the rig,

still lives at Fagundas. He will be remembered by many, for he is a

jovial fellow and was “one of the boys.” The McQuade—the biggest in the

field—the Bird and the Red Walking-beam were noted wells. If Dr.

Stillson were to hunt up the office where he extracted teeth “without

pain” he would find the building used as a poultry-house. Men went to

Fagundas poor and departed with sufficient wealth to live in luxury the

rest of their lives; others went wealthy and lost everything in a vain

search for the greasy fluid. Passing through what was known as Gillespie

and traversing three miles of a lonely section, covered with scrub-oak

and small pine, Triumph is reached. It is not the Triumph oil-men knew

twenty-five years ago, when it had four-thousand population, four good

hotels, two drug-stores, four hardware-stores, a half-dozen groceries

and many other places of business. No other oil-field ever held so many

derricks upon the same area. The Clapp farm has a production of twelve

barrels per day. Traces of the town are almost completely blotted out.

The pilgrim traveling over the hill would never suspect that a rousing

oil-town occupied the farm on which an industrious Swede has a crop of

oats. Along Babylon hill, once dotted with derricks thickly as trees in

the forest, nothing remains to indicate the spot where stood the

ephemeral town.

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

John Henderson, a tall, handsome man, came from the east during the

oil-excitement in Warren county and located at Garfield. In a fight at a

gambling-house one night George Harkness was thrown out of an

upstairs-window and his neck broken. Foul play was suspected, although

the evidence implicated no one, and the coroner’s jury returned a

verdict of accidental death. Harkness had left a young bride in

Philadelphia and was out to seek his fortune. Henderson, feeling in a

degree responsible for his death, began sending anonymous letters to the

bereaved wife, each containing fifty to a hundred dollars. The letters

were first mailed every month from Garfield, then from Bradford, then

from Chicago and for three years from Montana. In 1893 she received from

the writer of these letters a request for an interview. This was

granted, the acquaintance ripened into love and the pair were married!

Henderson is a wealthy stockman in Montana. In 1867 an English vessel

went to pieces in a terrible storm on the coast of Maine. The captain

and many passengers were drowned. Among the saved were two children, the

captain’s daughters. One was adopted by a merchant of Dover, N. H. He

gave her a good education, she grew up a beautiful woman and it was she

who married George Harkness and John Henderson.

[Illustration: T. J. VANDERGRIFT.]

Balltown was the chief pet of T. J. Vandergrift, now head and front of

the Woodland Oil-Company, and he harvested bushels of money from the

middle-field. “Op” Vandergrift is not an apprentice in petroleum. He

added to his reputation in the middle-field leading the opposition to

the mystery-dodge. Napoleon or Grant was not a finer tactician. His

clever plans were executed without a hitch or a Waterloo. He neither

lost his temper nor wasted his powder. The man who “fights the devil

with fire” is apt to run short of ammunition, but Vandergrift knew the

ropes, kept his own counsel, was “cool as a cucumber” and won in an easy

canter. He is obliging, social, manfully independent and a zealous

worker in the Producers’ Association. It is narrated that he went to New

York three years ago to close a big deal for Ohio territory he had been

asked to sell. He named the price and was told a sub-boss at Oil City

must pass upon the matter. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I am not going to Oil

City on any such errand. I came prepared to transfer the property and,

if you want it, I shall be in the city until noon to-morrow to receive

the money!” The cash—three-hundred-thousand dollars—was paid at eleven

o’clock. Mr. Vandergrift has interests in Pennsylvania, Ohio,

West-Virginia and Kentucky. He knows a good horse, a good story, a good

lease or a good fellow at sight and a wildcat-well does not frighten him

off the track. His home is at Jamestown and his office at Pittsburg.

The Anchor Oil-Company’s No. 1, the first well finished near “646,” in

Warren county, flowed two-thousand barrels a day on the ground until

tanks could be provided. It burned when flowing a thousand barrels and

for ten days could not be extinguished. One man wanted to steam it to

death, another to drown it, another to squeeze its life out, another to

smother it with straw, another to dig a hole and cut off the flow,

another to roll a big log over it, another to blow out its brains with

dynamite, another to blind it with carbolic acid, another to throw up

earth-works and so on until the pestered owners wished five-hundred

cranks were in the asylum at North Warren. Pipes were finally attached

in such a way as to draw off the oil and the flame died out.

The first funeral at Fagundas was a novelty. A soap-peddler, stopping at

the Rooling House one night, died of delirium-tremens. He was put into a

rough coffin and a small party set off to inter the corpse. Somebody

thought it mean to bury a fellow-creature without some signs of respect.

The party returned to the hotel with the body, a large crowd assembled

in the evening, flowers decorated the casket, services were conducted

and at dead of night two-hundred oil-men followed the friendless

stranger to his grave.

This year, at a drilling well near Tiona, the workmen of Contractor

Meeley were surprised to strike oil three feet from the surface. A

stream of the real stuff flowed over the top of the derrick, scattering

seven men who happened to be standing on the floor. Fortunately no fire

was about the structure, hence a thorough soaking with seventy-cent

crude was the chief damage to the crew and the spectators. Visions of a

new sand close to the grass-roots filled the minds of all beholders. At

that rate every man, woman, boy, girl and baby who could burrow a yard

into the earth might have a paying well. The cool-headed foreman, R. G.

Thompson, decided to investigate before ordering tankage and taking down

the tools. He discovered that the derrick had been set directly above a

six-inch pipe-line, which the bit had punctured, thus letting the oil

escape under the heavy pressure of a fifty-ton pump. Word was sent to

the pump-station to shut off the flow, a new joint of pipe was put in

and drilling proceeded to the third sand without further disturbance.

[Illustration: W. H. STALEY.]

One bright day in the summer of 1873 an active youth, beardless and

boyish in appearance, dropped into Fagundas. With little cash, but no

end of energy and pluck, he soon picked up a lease. Fortune smiled upon

him and he followed the surging tide to the different pastures as they

came into line. He operated at Bradford, Tiona, Clarendon, in Clarion

county, in Ohio and Indiana. West Virginia has been his best hold for

some years, and the boys all know W. H. Staley as a live oilman, who has

stayed with the procession two-dozen years.

Stories of the late E. E. Clapp’s rare humor and rare goodness of heart

might be recited by the score. He never grew weary helping the poor and

the unfortunate. Once a zealous Methodist minister, whose meagre salary

was not half-paid, thought of leaving his mission from lack of support.

Clapp heard the tale and handed the good man a sealed envelope, telling

him not to open it until he reached home and gave it to his wife. It

contained a check for five-hundred-dollars. Like thousands of producers,

Clapp was sued by the torpedo-monopoly for alleged infringement of the

Roberts patent. Meeting Col. E. A. L. Roberts at Titusville while the

suit was pending, he was invited to go through the great building

Roberts Brothers were completing. The delegate from President peered

into the corners of the first room as though looking for something. The

Colonel’s curiosity was aroused and he inquired what the visitor meant.

“Oh,” came the quick rejoinder, “I’m only trying to find where the

twenty-thousand-dollars I’ve paid you for torpedoes may be built in

these walls!” A laugh followed and Roberts proposed to square the suit,

which was done forthwith. At a country-fair E. Harvey, the Oil-City

music-dealer, played and sang one of Gerald Massey’s sublime

compositions with thrilling effect. Among the eager listeners was E. E.

Clapp, beside whom stood a farmer’s wife. The woman shouted to Harvey:

“Tech it off agin, stranger, but don’t make so much noise yerself!” Poor

Harvey—dead long ago—subsided and Clapp took up the expression, which he

often quoted at the expense of loquacious acquaintances. Humanity lost a

friend when Edwin Emmett Clapp left the smooth roads of President to

walk the golden streets of the New Jerusalem.

Up the winding river proved in not a few instances the straight path to

a handsome fortune, while some found only shoals and quicksands.

THE AMEN CORNER.

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

Good creeds are all right, but good deeds are the stuff that won’t

shrink in the washing.

Domestic infidelity does more harm than unbelieving infidelity and

hearsay knocks heresy galley-west as a mischief-maker.

Stick to the right with iron nerve,

Nor from the path of duty swerve,

Then your reward you will deserve.

The Baptists of Franklin offered Rev. Dr. Lorimer, the eminent Chicago

divine, a residence and eight-thousand dollars a year to become their

pastor. How was that for a church in a town of six-thousand population?

“Pray—pray—pray for—” The good minister bent down to catch the whisper

of the dying operator, whom he had asked whether he should petition the

throne of grace—“pray for five-dollar oil!”

St. Joseph’s church, Oil City, is the finest in the oil-region and has

the finest altar in the state. Father Carroll, for twenty years in

charge of the parish, is a priest whose praises all denominations carol.

You “want to be an angel?”

Well, no need to look solemn;

If you haven’t got what you desire,

Put an ad. in the want column.

The Presbyterian church at Rouseville, torn down years ago, was built,

paid for, furnished handsomely and run nine months before having a

settled pastor. Not a lottery, fair, bazaar or grab-bag scheme was

resorted to in order to raise the funds.

The Salvation Army once scored a sensational hit in the oil-regions. A

lieutenant struck a can of nitro-glycerine with his little tambourine

and every house in the settlement entertained more or less

Salvation-Army soldier for a month after the blow-up.

“Like a sawyer’s work is life—

The present makes the flaw,

And the only field for strife

Is the inch before the saw.”

“What are the wages of sin?” asked the teacher of Ah Sin, the first

Chinese laundryman at Bradford, who was an attentive member of a class

in the Sunday-school. Promptly came the answer: “Sebenty-flive cente a

dozen; no checkee, no washee!”

The first sound of a church-bell at Pithole was heard on Saturday

evening, March 24, 1866, from the Methodist-Episcopal belfry. The first

church-bell at Oil City was hung in a derrick by the side of the

Methodist church, on the site of a grocery opposite the _Blizzard_

office. At first Sunday was not observed. Flowing-wells flowed and

owners of pumping wells pumped as usual. Work went right along seven

days in the week, even by people who believed the highest type of church

was not an engine-house, with a derrick for its tower, a well for its

Bible and a tube spouting oil for its preacher.

“If you have gentle words and looks, my friends,

To spare for me—if you have tears to shed

That I have suffered—keep them not I pray

Until I hear not, see not, being dead.”

Many people regard religion as they do small-pox; they desire to have it

as light as possible and are very careful that it does not mark them.

Most people when they perform an act of charity prefer to have it like

the measles—on the outside where it can be seen. Oil-region folks are

not built that way.

[Illustration: UP THE ALLEGHENY RIVER.]

-RICHBURG, N.Y. 1879- -TARPORT AND TUNA VALLEY-

GENERAL VIEW OF BRADFORD.

ECONOMITE WELLS OPPOSITE TIDIOUTE

A GLIMPSE OF WARREN

-BABYLON-

EXCHANGE HOTEL TIDIOUTE 1863

TIDIOUTE 1876

XI.

A BEE-LINE FOR THE NORTH.

THE GREAT BRADFORD REGION LOOMS UP—MILES OF FIRST-CLASS

TERRITORY—LEADING OPERATORS—JOHN MCKEOWN’S MILLIONS—MANY LIVELY

TOWNS—OVER THE NEW-YORK BORDER—ALL ABOARD FOR RICHBURG—CROSSING INTO

CANADA—SHAW’S STRIKE—THE POLAR REGION PLAYS A STRONG HAND IN THE

GAME OF TAPPING NATURE’S LABORATORY.

----------

“Like youthful steers unyoked, they take their courses

north.”—_Shakespeare._

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

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

Chandler Harris._

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

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

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

“Bid the devil take the hindmost.”—_Butler._

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

“Nature must give way to art.”—_Dean Swift._

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

“God helps them that help themselves.”—_Franklin._

“The north breathes steadily beneath the stars.”—_Shelley._

----------

[Illustration: M’KEAN COUNTY, PA.]

Oil Creek and its varied branches, Pithole and its suburbs, Forest and

Warren had figured creditably in oil-developments, but the Mastodon of

the North was yet to come. “The goal of yesterday shall be the starting

point of to-morrow” is especially true of oil-operations. At times men

have supposed the limits of juicy territory had been reached, only to be

startled by the unexpected opening of a larger, grander field than any

that preceded it. Guessing the weather a month ahead is child’s play in

comparison with guessing where oil may be found in paying quantity.

Geology is liable to shoot wide of the mark, so that the drill is the

one indisputable test, from which there is no appeal for an injunction

or a reversal of the verdict. Years of waiting sharpened the appetite of

the polar bear for the feast to be spread in McKean county and across

the New-York border. Tempting tidbits prepared the hungry animal to

digest the rich courses that were to follow in close succession, until

the whole world was cloyed and gorged, and surfeited with petroleum. It

could not hold another mouthful, and the surplus had to be stored in

huge tanks ready for the demand certain to come some day and empty the

vast receptacles of their last drop.

“Still linger, in our northern clime,

Some remnants of the good old time.”

The United States Land-Company, holding a quarter-million acres in

McKean and adjoining counties, in 1837 sent Col. Levitt C. Little from

New Hampshire to look after its interests. He located on Tuna Creek,

eight miles from the southern border of New-York state. The Websters

arrived in 1838, journeying by canoe from Olean. Other families settled

in the valley, founding the hamlet of Littleton, which in 1858 adopted

the name of Bradford and became a borough in 1872, with Peter T. Kennedy

as burgess. The vast forests were divided into huge blocks, such as the

Bingham, Borden, Clark & Babcock, Kingsbury and Quintuple tracts. Lumber

was rafted to distant points and thousands of hardy woodmen “shantied”

in rough huts each winter. They beguiled the long evenings singing

coarse songs, playing cards, imbibing the vintage of Kentucky or New

England from a black jug and telling stories so bald the mules drooped

their ears to hide their blushes. But they were open-hearted, sternly

honest, sticklers for fair-play, hard-working and admirable forerunners

of the approaching civilization. To the sturdy blows of the rugged

chopper and raftsman all classes are indebted for fuel, shelter and

innumerable comforts. Like the rafts they steered to Pittsburg and the

wild beasts they hunted, most of these brave fellows have drifted away

never to return.

[Illustration: FREDERICK CROCKER.]

Six-hundred inhabitants dwelt peacefully at Bradford ten years after the

Pithole bubble had been blown and pricked. The locomotive and track of a

branch of the Erie Railroad had supplanted A. W. Newell’s rude engine,

which transported small loads to and from Carrollton. An ancient coach,

weather-beaten and worm-eaten, sufficed for the scanty passenger-traffic

and the quiet borough bade fair to stay in the old rut indefinitely. The

collection of frames labeled Tarport—a suit of tar and feathers

presented to a frisky denizen begot the name—snuggled on a muddy road a

mile northward. Seven miles farther, at Limestone, the “spirits”

directed Job Moses to buy ten-thousand acres of land. He bored a

half-dozen shallow wells in 1864, getting some oil and gas. Jonathan

Watson skirmished two miles east of Limestone, finding slight tinges of

greasiness. A mile south-west of Moses the Crosby well was dry. Another

mile south the Olmsted well, on the Crooks farm, struck a vein of oil at

nine-hundred feet and flowed twenty barrels on July fourteenth, 1875.

The sand was poor and dry-holes south and west augured ill for the

territory. Frederick Crocker drilled a duster early in 1875 on the

Kingsbury lands, east side of Tuna Creek. He had grit and experience and

leased an angular piece of ground formed by a bend of the creek for his

second venture. It was part of the Watkins farm, a mile above Tarport. A

half-mile south-west, on the Hinchey farm, the Foster Oil-Company had

sunk a twenty-barrel well in 1872, which somehow passed unnoticed. On

September twenty-sixth, 1875, from a shale and slate at nine-hundred

feet, the Crocker well flowed one-hundred-and-seventy barrels. This

opened the gay ball which was to transmute the Tuna Valley from its

arcadian simplicity to the intense bustle of the grandest

petroleum-region the world has ever known. The valley soon echoed and

re-echoed the music of the tool-dresser and rig-builder and the click of

the drill as well as the vigorous profanity of the imported teamster.

Frederick Crocker, who drilled on Oil Creek in 1860 and devised the

valve which kept the Empire well alive, had won another victory and the

great Bradford field was born. He lived at Titusville fifteen years,

erected the home afterwards occupied by Dr. W. B. Roberts, sold his

Bradford property, operated in the Washington district and died at

Idlewild on February twenty-second, 1895. Mr. Crocker possessed real

genius, decision and the qualities which “from the nettle danger pluck

the flower success.” Active to the close of his long and useful

eighty-three years, he met death calmly and was laid to rest in the

cemetery at Titusville.

Scarcely had the Crocker well tanked its initial spurt ere “the fun grew

fast and furious.” Rigs multiplied like rabbits in Australia.

Train-loads of lively delegates from every nook and cranny of Oildom

crowded the streets, overran the hotels and taxed the commissary of the

village to the utmost. Town-lots sold at New-York prices and buildings

spread into the fields. At B. C. Mitchell’s Bradford House, headquarters

of the oil-fraternity, operators and land-holders met and drillers “off

tour” solaced their craving for “the good things of this life” playing

billiards and practising at the hotel-bar. Hundreds of big contracts

were closed in the second-story room where Lewis Emery, “Judge” Johnson,

Dr. Book and the advance-guard of the invading hosts assembled. Main

street blazed at night with the light of dram-shops and the gaieties

incidental to a full-fledged frontier-town. Noisy bands appealed to

lovers of varieties to patronize barnlike-theatres, strains of syren

music floated from beer-gardens, dance-halls of dubious complexion were

thronged and gambling-dens ran unmolested. The free-and-easy air of the

community, too intent chasing oil and cash to bother about morality,

captivated the ordinary stranger and gained “Bad Bradford” notoriety as

a combination of Pithole and Petroleum Centre, with a dash of Sodom and

Pandemonium, condensed into a single package. In February of 1879 a

city-charter was granted and James Broder was elected mayor. Radical

reforms were not instituted with undue haste, to jar the sensitive

feelings of the incongruous masses gathered from far and near. Their

accommodating nature at last adapted itself to a new state of affairs

and accepted gracefully the restrictions imposed for the general

welfare. Checked temporarily by the Bullion spasm in 1876-7, the influx

redoubled as the lower country waned. Fires merely consumed

frame-structures to hasten the advent of costly brick-blocks. Ten

churches, schools, five banks, stores, hotels, three newspapers,

street-cars, miles of residences and fifteen-thousand of the liveliest

people on earth attested the permanency of Bradford’s boom. Narrow-gauge

railroads circled the hills, traversed spider-web trestles and brought

tribute to the city from the outlying districts. The area of

oil-territory seemed interminable. It reached in every direction, until

from sixteen-thousand mouths seventy-five thousand acres poured their

liquid treasure. The daily production waltzed to one-hundred-thousand

barrels! Iron-tanks were built by the thousand to store the surplus

crude. Two, three or four-thousand-barrel gushers were lacking, but

wells that yielded twenty-five to two-hundred littered the slopes and

valleys. The field was a marvel, a phenomenon, a revelation. Bradford

passed the mushroom-stage safely and was not snuffed out when

developments receded and the floaters wandered south in quest of fresh

excitement. To-day it is a thriving railroad and manufacturing centre,

the home of ten-thousand intelligent, independent, go-ahead citizens,

proud of its past, pleased with its present and confident of its future.

To trace operations minutely would be an endless task. Crocker sold a

half-interest in his well and drilled on an adjacent farm. Gillespie,

Buchanan & Kelly came from Fagundas in 1874 and sank the two Fagundas

wells—twenty and twenty-five barrels—a half-mile west of Crocker, in the

fall and winter. Butts No. 1, a short distance north, actually flowed

sixty barrels in November of 1874. Jackson & Walker’s No. 1, on the

Kennedy farm, north edge of town, on July seventeenth, 1875, flowed

twenty barrels at eleven-hundred feet. The dark, pebbly sand, the best

tapped in McKean up to that date, encouraged the belief of better strata

down the Tuna. On December first, two months after Crocker’s strike, the

yield of the Bradford district was two-hundred-and-ten barrels. The

Crocker was doing fifty, the Olmsted twenty-five, the Butts fifteen, the

Jackson & Walker twenty and all others from one to six apiece. The oil,

dark-colored and forty-five gravity, was loaded on Erie cars direct from

the wells, most of which were beside the tracks. The Union Company

finished the first pipe-line and pumped oil to Olean the last week of

November. Prentice, Barbour & Co. were laying a line through the

district and 1875 closed with everything ripe for the millenium these

glimmerings foreshadowed.

Lewis Emery, richly dowered with Oil-Creek experience and the

get-up-and-get quality that forges to the front, was an early arrival at

Bradford. He secured the Quintuple tract of five-thousand acres and

drilled a test well on the Tibbets farm, three miles south of town. Its

success confirmed his judgment of the territory and began the wonderful

Quintuple development. The Quintuple rained staying wells on the lucky,

plucky graduate from Pioneer, quickly placing him in the

millionaire-class. He built blocks and refineries, opened an immense

hardware-store, constructed pipe-lines, established a daily-paper,

served two terms in the Senate and opposed the Standard “tooth and

toe-nail.” Thoroughly earnest, he champions a cause with unflinching

tenacity. He owns a big ranche in Dakota, big lumber-tracts and

saw-mills in Kentucky, a big oil-production and a big share in the

United-States Pipe-Line. He has traveled over Europe, inspected the

Russian oil-fields and gathered in his private museum the rarest

collection of curiosities and objects of interests in the state. Senator

Emery is a staunch friend, a fighter who “doesn’t know when he is

whipped,” liberal, progressive, fluent in conversation and firm in his

convictions.

“A prince can mak’ a belted knight,

A marquis, duke and a’ that;

But an honest man’s aboon his might—

Guid faith, he maunna fa’ that.”

Hon. David Kirk sticks faithfully to Emery in his hard-sledding to array

petroleumites against the Standard. He manages the McCalmont

Oil-Company, which operated briskly in the Forest pools, at Bradford and

Richburg. Mr. Kirk is a rattling speaker, positive in his sentiments and

frank in expressing his views. He extols Pennsylvania petroleum, backs

the outside pipe-lines and is an influential leader of the Producers’

Association.

Dr. W. P. Book, who started at Plumer, ran big hotels at Parker and

Millerstown and punched a hole in the Butler field occasionally, leased

nine-hundred acres below Bradford in the summer of 1875. He bored

two-hundred wells, sold the whole bundle to Captain J. T. Jones and went

to Washington Territory with eight-hundred-thousand dollars to engage in

lumbering and banking. Captain Jones landed on Oil Creek after the war,

in which he was a brave soldier, and drilled thirteen dry-holes at

Rouseville! Repulses of this stripe would wear out most men, but the

Captain had enlisted for the campaign and proposed to stand by his guns

to the last. His fourteenth attempt—a hundred-barreler on the Shaw

farm—recouped former losses and inaugurated thirty years of remarkable

prosperity. Fortune smiled upon him in the Clarion field. Pipe-lines,

oil-wells, dealings in the exchanges, whatever he touched turned into

gold. Not handicapped by timid partners, he paddled his own canoe and

became the largest individual operator in the northern region. Acquiring

tracts that proved to be the heart of the Sistersville field, he is

credited with rejecting an offer last year of five-million dollars for

his West-Virginia and Pennsylvania properties! From thirteen wells, good

only for post-holes if they could be dug up and retailed by the foot, to

five-millions in cash was a pretty stretch onward and upward. He

preferred staying in the harness to the obscurity of a mere

coupon-clipper. He lives at Buffalo, controls his business, enjoys his

money, remembers his legions of old friends and does not put on airs

because of marching very near the head of the oleaginous procession.

[Illustration:

-THEO BARNSDALL-

-LEWIS EMERY-

DAVID KIRK CAPT. J. T. JONES

]

Theodore Barnsdall has never lagged behind since he entered the arena in

1860. He operated on Oil Creek and has been a factor in every important

district. Marcus Hulings, reasoning that a paying belt intersected it

diagonally, secured the Clark & Babcock tract of six-thousand acres on

Foster Brook, north-east of Bradford. Hundreds of fine wells verified

his theory and added a half-million to his bank-account. Sitting

beside me on a train one day in 1878, Mr. Hulings refused

three-hundred-thousand dollars, offered by Marcus Brownson, for his

interest in the property. He projected the narrow-gauge railroad from

Bradford to Olean and a bevy of oil-towns—Gillmor, Derrick City, Red

Rock and Bell’s Camp—budded and bloomed along the route. Frederic

Prentice built pipe-lines and tanks, leased a half-township, started

thirty wells in a week on the Melvin farm and organized the Producers’

Consolidated Land-and-Petroleum-Company, big in name, in quality and in

capital. The American Oil-Company’s big operations wafted the late W. A.

Pullman a million and the presidency of the Seaboard Bank in New York,

filled Joseph Seep’s stocking and saddled a hundred-thousand dollars on

James Amm. The Hazlewood Oil-Company, guided by Bateman Goe’s prudent

hand, drilled five-hundred wells and counted its gains in columns of six

figures. Robert Leckey, a first-class man from head to foot, was a royal

winner. Frederick Boden—true-blue, clear-grit, sixteen ounces to the

pound—forsook Corry to extract a stream of wealth from the Borden lands,

six miles east of Tarport. Prompt, square and manly, he merited the good

luck that rewarded him in Pennsylvania and followed him to Ohio, where

for four years he has been operating extensively. Boden’s wells boosted

the territory east and north. From its junction with the Tuna at

Tarport—Kendall is the post-office—to its source off in the hills,

Kendall Creek steamed and smoked. Tarport expanded to the proportions of

a borough. Two narrow-gauge roads linked Bradford and Eldred, Sawyer

City, Rew City, Coleville, Rixford and Duke Centre—oil-towns in all the

term implies—keeping the rails from rusting. Other narrow-gauges

diverged to Warren, Mt. Jewett and Smethport. The Erie extended its

branch south and the Rochester & Pittsburg crossed the Kinzua gorge over

the highest railway viaduct—three-hundred feet—in this nation of tall

projects and tall achievements.

[Illustration: BATEMAN GOE.]

[Illustration: FREDERICK BODEN.]

[Illustration: ROBERT LECKEY.]

Twenty-nine years ago a stout-hearted, strong-limbed, wiry youth, fresh

from the Emerald Isle, asked a man at Petroleum Centre for a job. Given

a pick and shovel, he graded a tank-bottom deftly and swiftly. He dug,

pulled tubing, drove team and earned money doing all sorts of chores.

Reared in poverty, he knew the value of a dollar and saved his pennies.

To him Oildom, with its “oil-princes”—George K. Anderson, Jonathan

Watson, Dr. M. C. Egbert, David Yanney, Sam Woods, Joel Sherman and the

Phillips Brothers were in their glory—was a golden dream. He learned to

“run engine,” dress tools, twist the temper-screw and handle drilling

and pumping-wells expertly. Although neither a prohibitionist nor a

prude, he never permitted mountain-dew, giddy divinities in petticoats

or the prevailing follies to get the better of him in his inordinate

desire for riches. Drop by drop for three years his frugal store

increased and he migrated to Parker early in the seventies. Such was the

young man who “struck his gait” in the northern end of Armstrong county,

who was to outshine the men he may have envied on Oil Creek, to scoop

the biggest prize in the petroleum-lottery and weave a halo of

glittering romance around the name of John McKeown.

Working an interest in an oil-well, he hit a paying streak and joined

the pioneers who had sinister designs on Butler county, proverbial for

“buckwheat-batter” and “soap-mines.” At Lawrenceburg, a suburb of

Parker, he boarded with a comely widow, the mother of two bouncing kids

and owner of a little cash. He married the landlady and five boys

blessed the union of loyal hearts. His wife’s money aided him to develop

the Widow Nolan farm, east of the coal-bank near Millerstown. Regardless

of Weller’s advice to “beware of vidders,” he wedded one and from

another obtained the lease of a farm on which his first well produced

one-hundred-and-fifty barrels a day for a year, a fortune in itself.

This was the beginning of McKeown’s giant strides. In partnership with

William Morrisey, a stalwart fellow-countryman—dead for years—he drilled

at Greece City, Modoc and on the Cross-Belt. He held interests with

Parker & Thompson and James Goldsboro, played a lone hand at

Martinsburg, invested in the Karns Pipe-Line and avoided speculation. He

agreed with Thomas Hayes, of Fairview, in 1876, to operate in the

Bradford field. Hayes went ahead to grab a few tracts at Rixford,

McKeown remaining to dispose of his Butler properties. He sold every

well and every inch of land at top figures. No slave ever worked harder

or longer hours than he had done to gain a firm footing. No task was too

difficult, no fatigue too severe, no undertaking too hazardous to be met

and overcome. Avarice steeled his heart and hardened his muscles.

Wrapped in a rubber-coat and wearing the slouch-hat everybody

recognized, he would ride his powerful bay-horse knee-deep in mud or

snow at all hours of the night. It was his ambition to be the leading

oil-operator of the world. While putting money into Baltimore blocks,

bank-stocks and western ranches, he always retained enough to gobble a

slice of seductive oil-territory. Plunging into the northern field

“horse, foot and dragoons,” he bought out Hayes, who returned to

Fairview with a snug nest-egg, and captured a huge chunk of the Bingham

lands. Robert Simpson, agent of the Bingham estate, fancied the bold,

resolute son of Erin and let him pick what he wished from the

fifty-thousand acres under his care. McKeown selected many juicy tracts,

on which he drilled up a large production, sold portions at excessive

prices and cleared at least a million dollars in two or three years! As

Bradford declined he turned his gaze towards the Washington district,

bought a thousand acres of land and at the height of the excitement had

ten-thousand barrels of oil a day! His object had been attained and John

McKeown was the largest oil-producer in the universe.

Down in Washington, as in Butler and McKean, he attended personally to

his wells, hired the workmen, negotiated for all materials and managed

the smallest details. He removed his family to the county-seat and lived

in a plain, matter-of-fact way. It had been his intention to erect a

forty-thousand-dollar house and reside at Jamestown, N. Y. Ground was

purchased and the foundation laid. The local papers spoke of the

acquisition he would be to the town, one suggesting to haul him into

politics and municipal improvements, and McKeown resented the notoriety

by pulling up stakes and locating at Washington. It often amused me to

hear him denounce the papers for calling him rich. He was more at home

in a derrick than in a drawing-room. The din of the tools boring for

petroleum was sweeter to his ears than “Lohengrin” or “The Blue Danube.”

Watching oil streaming from his wells delighted his eye more than a

Corot or a Meissonier in a gilt frame. For claw-hammer coats, tooth-pick

shoes and vulgar show he had no earthly use. Democratic in his habits

and speech, he heard the poor man as patiently as the banker or the

schemer with a “soft snap.” Clothes counted for nothing in his judgment

of people. He enjoyed the hunt for riches more than the possession. In

no sense a liberal man, sometimes he thawed out to friends who got on

the sunny side of his frosty nature and wrote checks for church or

charity. Hard work was his diversion, his chief happiness. His wells and

lands and income grew to dimensions it would have strained the nerves

and brains of a half-dozen men to supervise. He had mortgaged his robust

constitution by constant exposure and the foreclosure could not always

be postponed. Repeated warnings were unheeded and the strong man broke

down just when he most needed the vitality his lavish drafts exhausted.

Eminent physicians hurried from Pittsburg and Philadelphia to his

relief, but the paper had gone to protest and on Sunday forenoon,

February eighth, 1891, at the age of fifty-three, John McKeown passed

into eternity. Father Hendrich administered the last rites to the dying

man. He sank into a comatose state and his death was painless. The

remains were interred in the Catholic cemetery at Lawrenceville, in

presence of a great multitude that assembled to witness the curtain fall

on the most eventful life in the oil-regions.

One touching little tale about McKeown, which might adorn the pages of a

Sunday-school library, has drifted out of Bradford. Landing on the

platform of the dilapidated Erie-Railroad station, upon his first visit

to the metropolis of mud and oil, John McKeown, wearing his greasiest

suit, asked a group of boys to direct him to the Parker House. “I’ll

tell you for a quarter,” said one. “I’ll show you where it is for ten

cents,” chimed in another. “Say, I’ll do it for five cents,” remarked a

third. “Mister,” said bright-eyed Jimmie Duffy, “I will show you the

place for nothing.” So the stranger went with Jimmie. He took the lad to

a clothing-store, arrayed him sumptuously in the best hand-me-downs that

Bradford could afford and sent the boy away with a five-dollar

gold-piece. Jimmie bought a shoeblack-outfit and began to “shine ’em up”

at ten cents a clip. His good work, cheerfulness and ready wit brought

him many a quarter. Soon he hired a number of assistants, built a

“parlor,” controlled every stand in town and at nineteen went west with

seven-thousand dollars in his pockets. Jimmie Duffie’s luck set all the

Bradford urchins to lying in wait for strangers in greasy garments lined

with gold-pieces.

[Illustration: JOHN MCKEOWN.]

Estimates of McKeown’s wealth ranged from three-millions to ten. A guess

midway would probably be near the mark. When asked by Dun or Bradstreet

how he should be rated, his invariable answer was: “I pay cash for all I

get.” O. D. Bleakley, of Franklin, was appointed guardian of the sons

and Hon. J. W. Lee is Mrs. McKeown’s legal adviser. The oldest boy has

married, has received his share of the estate and is spending it freely.

A younger son was drowned in a pond at the school to which his mother

sent the bright lad. Once McKeown, desiring to have Dr. Agnew’s candid

opinion at the lowest cost, put on his poorest garb and secured a rigid

examination upon his promise to pay the great Philadelphia practitioner

ten dollars “as soon as he could earn the money.” He thanked the doctor,

returned in a business-suit, told of the ruse he had adopted and

cemented the acquaintance with a check for one-hundred dollars. In

Baltimore he posed as a hayseed at a forced sale of property the

mortgagors calculated to bid in at a fraction of its value. He deposited

a million dollars in a city-bank and appeared at the sale in the old

suit and slouched hat he had packed in his satchel for the occasion.

Stylish bidders at first ignored the seedy fellow whose winks to the

auctioneer elevated the price ten-thousand dollars a wink. One of them

hinted to the stranger that he might be bidding beyond his limit. “I

guess not,” replied John, “I pay cash for what I get.” The property was

knocked down to him for about six-hundred-thousand dollars. He requested

the attorney to telephone to the bank whether his check would be

honored. “Good for a million!” was the response. Now his triumphs and

his spoils have shrunk to the little measure of the grave!

“Through the weary night on his couch he lay

With the life-tide ebbing fast away.

When the tide goes out from the sea-girt lands

It bears strange freight from the gleaming sands:

The white-winged ships, which long may wait

For the foaming wave and the wind that’s late;

The treasures cast on a rock-bound shore

From stranded ships that shall sail no more,

And hopes that follow the shining seas—

Oh! the ocean wide shall win all these.

But saddest of all that drift to the sea

Is the human soul to eternity,

Floating away from a silent shore,

Like a fated ship, to return no more.”

The Bradford Oil-Company—J. T. Jones, Wesley Chambers, L. G. Peck and L.

F. Freeman were the principal stockholders—owned a good share of the

land on which Greater Bradford was built and ten-thousand acres in the

northern field. The company drilled three-hundred wells in McKean and

Allegany, realized fifty-thousand dollars from city-lots and its stock

rose to two-thousand dollars a share. In 1881 Captain Jones bought out

his copartners. The Enterprise Transit-Company, managed by John Brown,

achieved reputation and currency. The McCalmont Oil-Company—organized

during the Bullion phantom by David Kirk, I. E. Dean, Tack Brothers and

F. A. Dilworth—humped itself in the middle and northern fields,

sometimes paying three-hundred-thousand dollars a year in dividends.

Kirk & Dilworth founded Great Belt City, in Butler county, cutting up a

farm and selling hundreds of lots. “Farmer” Dean, manager of the

company, operated in the lower fields, lived two years at Richburg,

toured the country to preach the gospel according to the Greenbackers

and won laurels on the rostrum. Frank Tack—frank and trustworthy—was

vice-president of the New-York Oil-Exchange and his brother is dead. The

Emery Oil-Company, the Quintuple, Mitchell & Jones, Whitney & Wheeler,

Melvin and Fuller, George H. Vanvleck, George V. Forman, John L.

McKinney & Co., Isaac Willets and Peter T. Kennedy were shining lights

in the McKean-Allegany firmament. Kennedy owned the saw-mill when

Bradford was a lumber camp and his estate—he died at fifty—inventoried

eleven-hundred-thousand dollars. Hundreds of small operators left

Bradford happy as men should be with as much money as their wives could

spend; other hundreds dumped their well-earnings into the insatiable maw

of speculation.

[Illustration: COL. JOHN J. CARTER.]

The Bradford field was young when Col. John J. Carter, of Titusville,

paid sixty-thousand dollars for the Whipple farm, on Kendall Creek.

Friends shook their heads over the purchase, up to that time the largest

by a private individual in the district, but the farm produced

fifteen-hundred-thousand barrels of oil and demonstrated the wisdom of

the deed. Other properties were developed by this indefatigable worker,

until his production was among the largest in the northern region and he

could have sold at a price to number him with the millionaires.

Unanimously chosen president of the Bradford, Bordell & Kinzua

Railroad-Company, he completed the line in ninety days from the issue of

the charter and in eighteen months returned the stockholders eighty per

cent. in dividends. President Carter’s ability in handling the property

saved it to its owners, while every other narrow-gauge in the system

fell into the clutches of receivers or sold as junk to meet

court-charges for costly litigation.

All “Old-Timers” remember the “Gentlemen’s Furnishing-House of John J.

Carter,” the finest establishment of the kind west of New York. Young

Carter, with a splendid military record, located at Titusville in the

summer of 1865, immediately after being mustered out of the service, and

engaged in mercantile pursuits ten years. Like other progressive men, he

took interests in the wild-cat ventures that made Pithole, Shamburg,

Petroleum Centre and Pleasantville famous. From large holdings in

Venango, Clarion and Forest he reaped a rich harvest. One tract of

four-thousand acres in Forest, purchased in 1886 and two-thirds of it

yet undrilled, he expects to hand down to his children as a proof of

their father’s business-foresight. He scanned the petroleum-horizon

around Pittsburg carefully and retained his investments in the middle

and upper fields. Taylorstown and McDonald, with their rivers of oil,

burst forth with the fury of a flood and disappeared. Sistersville, in

West Virginia, had given the trade a taste of its hidden treasures from

a few scattered wells. Much salt-water, little oil and deep drilling

discouraged operators. How to produce oil at a profit, with such

quantities of water to be pumped out, was the problem. Col. Carter

visited the scene, comprehended the situation, devised his plans and

bought huge blocks of the choicest territory before the oil-trade

thought Sistersville worth noticing. This bold stroke added to the value

of every well and lease in West Virginia, inspired the faltering with

courage and rewarded him magnificently. Advancing prices rendered the

princely yield of his scores of wells immensely profitable. Purchases

based on fifty-cent oil—the trade had small faith in the outcome—he sold

on the basis of dollar-fifty oil. Col. Carter is in the prime of

vigorous manhood, ready to explore new fields and surmount new

obstacles. He occupies a beautiful home, has a superb library, is a

thorough scholar and a convincing speaker. His recent argument before

the Ohio Legislature, in opposition to the proposed iniquitous tax on

crude-petroleum, was a masterpiece of effective, pungent, unanswerable

logic. None who admire a brave, manly, generous character will say that

his success is undeserved.

[Illustration: O. P. TAYLOR.]

Five townships six miles square—Independence, Willing, Alma, Bolivar and

Genesee, with Andover, Wellsville, Scio, Wirt and Clarksville north—form

the southern border of Allegany county, New York. The first well bored

for oil in the county—the Honeyoe—was the Wellsville & Alma Oil

Company’s duster in Independence township, drilled eighteen-hundred feet

in September, 1877. Gas at five-hundred feet caught fire and burned the

rig, and signs of oil were found at one-thousand feet. The second was O.

P. Taylor’s Pikeville well, Alma township, finished in November, 1878.

Taylor, the father of the Allegany field, decided to try north of Alma,

and in July of 1879 completed the Triangle No. 1, in Scio township, the

first in Allegany to produce oil. It originated the Wellsville

excitement and first diverted public attention from Bradford. Triangle

No. 2, drilled early in 1880, pumped twelve barrels a day. S. S.

Longabaugh, of Duke Centre, sank a dry-hole, the second well in Scio,

three miles north-east of Triangle No. 1. Operations followed rapidly.

Richburg No. 1, Wirt township, in which Taylor enlisted three

associates, responded at a sixty barrel gait in May of 1881 to a huge

charge of glycerine. Samuel Boyle, who had struck the first big well at

Sawyer City, completed the second well at Richburg in June, manipulated

it as a “mystery” and torpedoed it on July thirteenth. It flowed

three-hundred barrels of blue-black oil, forty-two gravity, from fifty

feet of porous sand and slate. Taylor’s exertions and perseverance

showed indomitable will, bravery and pluck. He was a Virginian by birth,

a Confederate soldier and a cigar-manufacturer at Wellsville. It is

related that while drilling his first Triangle well the tools needed

repairs and he had not money to send them to Bradford. His Wellsville

acquaintances seemed amazingly “short” when he attempted a loan. His

wife had sold her watch to procure food and she gave him the cash. The

tools were fixed, the well was completed and it started Taylor on the

road to the fortune he and his helpmeet richly earned. The pioneer died

in the fall of 1883. The record of his adventures, trials and

tribulations in opening a new oil-district would fill a volume. He was

prepared for the message: “Child of Earth, thy labors and sorrows are

done.”

Eighteen lively months sufficed to define the Allegany field, which was

confined to seven-thousand acres. Twenty-nine-hundred wells were bored

and the maximum yield of the district was nineteen-thousand barrels.

Richburg and Bolivar, both old villages, quadrupled their size in three

months. Narrow-gauge railroads soon connected the new field with Olean,

Friendship and Bradford. The territory was shallow in comparison with

parts of McKean, where eighteen-hundred feet was not an uncommon depth

for wells. Timber and water were abundant, good roads presented a

pleasing contrast to the unfathomable mud of Clarion and Butler and the

country was decidedly attractive. Efforts to find an outlet to the belt

failed in every instance. The climax had been reached and a gradual

decline set in. Allegany was the northern limit of remunerative

developments in the United States, which the next turn of the wheel once

more diverted southward. The McCalmont Oil-Company and Phillips Brothers

were leaders in the Richburg field. The country had been settled by

Seventh-day Baptists, whose “Sunday was on Saturday.” Not to offend

these devout people by discriminating in favor of Sunday, operators

“whipped the devil around the stump” by drilling and pumping their wells

seven days a week!

The Chipmunk pool, a dozen miles north of Bradford, was trotted out in

1895. For a season its shallow wells promised a glut of real oil, the

daily production rising to twenty-six-hundred barrels. The area of

creamy territory was quickly defined. Captain E. H. Barnum, long an

enterprising Bradford operator, drilled a test-well near Arkwright,

Chautauqua County, N.Y., in 1897. He put twenty-five-hundred feet of

six-inch and three-hundred feet of eight-inch casing in the hole, which

proved barren of oil or gas and was abandoned when three-thousand feet

deep. The Watsonville pool, south-west of Bradford, lively drilling

brought to the nine-thousand-barrel notch for a time this season.

The town of Ceres, which celebrated its one-hundredth birthday this

year, has had some peculiar experiences. Located on the state-line

between New York and Pennsylvania, the boundary has figured in many

curious ways since the pioneers erected the first log-cabin in 1797. The

first squabble related to the post-office, which was established on the

south-side of the line, in Pennsylvania, with a basket to hold the mail.

By some hocus-pocus the department permitted the office to be removed to

the north-side, in New York, fifty or more years ago. Every President

from Andrew Jackson to William McKinley has been importuned to change it

back again, but the population is so nearly divided that the question

bids fair, like Tennyson’s brook, “to go on forever.” Ceres was strictly

in it as a Gretna Green. The little Methodist church, the only one in

the village, is built against the line, the porch extending into New

York. The parsonage is in the same fix. To avoid securing a license,

Pennsylvania couples had merely to step out of the parsonage to the

porch and be married in New York. Eloping couples have had some lively

rides to Ceres. For many years Justice Peabody was very popular at

knot-tying. He was aroused one midnight by a man who wanted a warrant

for the arrest of a pair of elopers. The judge was friendly to the young

fellow in love. As he was making out the papers a rap at the door

interrupted him. The caller was the young man himself. The judge stepped

outside behind a stump-fence, across the state-line, married the eloping

couple and then returned to the house to finish making out the warrant.

A hotel built by a bright genius close to the line had an addition for a

barroom. The barroom extended over the line and its sole entrance was

from the Pennsylvania side. The bartender, by stepping a foot either way

from the center of the bar, could pass from one state to another. He was

arrested for illegal selling many times, but in each instance he would

swear that the whisky he sold was disposed of in the other state. One

day a Pennsylvania prisoner slipped his handcuffs when the sheriff was

not looking, jumped out of the dining-room into New York, made faces at

the minion of the law and defied arrest. For fifty years state-pride

kept the people apart on the school-question. They had a small

district-school on each side of the line in preference to a graded

school, because the latter would demand a surrender of state-pride. Four

years ago the differences were patched up and a graded-school was

provided. The engine of the steam saw-mill is in Pennsylvania and the

boiler in New York. The logs enter the mill in Pennsylvania and are

sawed in New York, the boards are edged in Pennsylvania and the lumber

is piled up crosswise on the state-line. At the grist-mill the grain

entered on the New-York side, was ground in Pennsylvania and carried

back into New York by the bolting-machinery. When the oil-boom was on at

Bolivar and Richburg two narrow-gauge railroads passed through Ceres.

One station was in New York and the other in Pennsylvania, with tracks

parallel to Bolivar. The schedules of the passenger-trains were alike

and some of the fastest rides ever taken on a narrow-gauge road

resulted. Oil-developments did not hit Ceres hard, wells around the tidy

village failing to tap the greasy artery. Possibly Nature thought the

folks had enough fun over the boundary complications to compensate for

the lack of petroleum.

Canada has oil-fields of considerable importance. The largest and oldest

is in Enniskillen township, Lambton county, a dozen miles from Port

Sarnia, at the foot of Lake Huron. Black Creek, a small tributary of the

Detroit river, flows through this township and for many years its waters

had been coated with a greasy liquid the Indians sold as a specific for

countless diseases. The precious commodity was of a brown color,

exceedingly odorous, unpleasant to the taste and burned with great

intensity. In 1860 several wells were started, the projectors believing

the floating oil indicated valuable deposits within easy reach of the

surface. James Williams, who had previously garnered the stuff in pits,

finished the first well that yielded oil in paying quantity. Others

followed in close succession, but months passed without the sensation of

a genuine spouter. Late in the summer of the same year that operations

commenced, John Shaw, a poor laborer, managed to get a desirable lease

on the bank of the creek. He built a cheap rig, provided a spring-pole

and “kicked down” a well, toiling all alone at his weary task until

money and credit and courage were exhausted. Ragged, hungry and

barefooted, one forenoon he was refused boots and provisions by the

village-merchant, nor would the blacksmith sharpen his drills without

cash down. Reduced to the verge of despair, he went back to his derrick

with a heavy heart, ate a hard crust for dinner and decided to leave for

the United States next morning if no signs of oil were discovered that

afternoon. He let down the tools and resumed his painful task. Twenty

minutes later a rush of gas drove the tools high in the air, followed

the next instant by a column of oil that rose a hundred feet! The roar

could be heard a mile and the startled populace rushed from the

neighboring hamlet to see the unexpected marvel. Canada boasted its

first flowing-well and the tidings flew like wild-fire. Before dark

hundreds of excited spectators visited the spot. For days the oil gushed

unchecked, filling a natural basin an acre in extent, then emptying into

the creek and discoloring the waters as far down as Lake St. Clair. None

knew how to regulate its output and bring the flow under control. Thus

it remained a week, when a delegate from Pennsylvania showed the owner

how to put in a seed-bag and save the product. The first attempt

succeeded and thenceforth the oil was cared for properly. Opinions

differ as to the actual production of this novel strike, although the

best judges placed it at five-thousand barrels a day for two or three

weeks! The stream flowed incessantly the full size of the hole, a strong

pressure of gas forcing it out with wonderful speed. The well produced

generously four months, when it “stopped for keeps.” Persons who visited

the well at its best will recall the surroundings. A pond of oil large

enough for a respectable regatta lay between it and Black Creek, whose

greasy banks for miles bore traces of the lavish inundation of crude.

The locality was at once interesting and high-flavored and a conspicuous

feature was Shaw himself. Radiant in a fresh suit of store-clothes, he

moved about with the complacency incident to a green ruralist who has

“struck ile.”

[Illustration: JOHN SHAW.]

One of the persons earliest on the ground after the well began to flow

was the storekeeper who had refused the proprietor a pair of boots that

morning. With the cringing servility of a petty retailer he hurried to

embrace Shaw, coupling this outbreak of affection with the assurance

that everything in the shop was at his service. It is gratifying to note

that Shaw had the spirit to rebuke this puppyism. Bringing his ample

foot into violent contact with the dealer’s most vital part, he

accompanied a heavy kick with an emphatic command to go to the place

Heber Newton and Pentecost have ruled out. Shaw was uneducated and fell

a ready prey to sharpers on the watch for easy victims. Cargoes of oil

shipped to England brought small returns and his sudden wealth slipped

away in short order. Ere long the envied possessor of the big well was

obliged to begin life anew. For a few years he struggled along as an

itinerant photographer, traveling with a “car” and earning a precarious

substance taking “tin-types.” Death closed the scene in 1872, the

luckless pioneer expiring at Petrolea in absolute want. Thus sadly ended

another illustration of the adverse fortune which frequently overtakes

men whose energy and grit confer benefits upon mankind that surely

entitle them to a better fate. Mr. Williams saved money, served in

parliament and died in the city of Hamilton years ago. He was the

intimate friend of Hon. Isaac Buchanan, the distinguished Canadian

statesman, whose sons are well-known operators at Oil City and

Pittsburg.

“The stars shall fade away, the sun himself

Grow dim with age and nature sink in years;

But thou shall flourish in immortal youth.”

As might be imagined, Shaw’s venture gave rise to operations of great

magnitude. Hosts flocked to the scene in quest of lands and developments

began on an extensive scale. Among others a rig was built and a well

drilled without delay as close to the Shaw as it was possible to place

the timbers. The sand was soon reached by the aid of steam-power and

once more the oil poured forth enormously, the new strike proving little

inferior to its neighbor. It was named the Bradley, in honor of the

principal owner, E. C. Bradley, afterwards a leading operator in

Pennsylvania, president of the Empire Gas-Company and still a resident

of Oildom. The yield continued large for a number of months, then ceased

entirely and both wells were abandoned. Of the hundreds in the vicinity

a good percentage paid nicely, but none rivalled the initial spouters.

The influx of restless spirits led to an “oil-town,” which for a brief

space presented a picture of activity rarely surpassed. Oil Springs, as

the mushroom city was fittingly termed, flourished amazingly. The

excessive waste of oil filled every ditch and well, rendering the water

unfit for use and compelling the citizens to quench their thirst with

artificial drinks. The bulk of the oil was conveyed to Mandaumin,

Wyoming or Port Sarnia, over roads of horrible badness, giving

employment to an army of teamsters. A sort of “mud canal” was formed,

through which the horses dragged small loads on a species of flat-boats,

while the drivers walked along the “tow-path” on either side. The mud

had the consistency of thin batter and was seldom under three feet deep.

To those who have never seen this unique system of navigation the most

graphic description would fail to convey an adequate idea of its

peculiar features. Unlike the Pennsylvania oil-fields, the

petroleum-districts of Canada are low and swampy, a circumstance that

added greatly to the difficulty of moving the greasy staple during the

wet season. Ultimately roads were cut through the soft morasses and

railways were constructed, although not before Oil Springs had seen its

best days and begun a rapid descent on the down grade. Salt-water

quickly put a stop to many wells, the production declined rapidly and

the town was depopulated. Operations extended towards the north-west,

where Petrolea, which is yet a flourishing place, was established in

1864. Bothwell, twenty-six miles south of Oil Springs, had a short

career and light production. Canadian operators were slower than the

Yankees of the period and the tireless push of the Americans who crowded

to the front at the beginning of the developments around Oil Springs was

a revelation to the quiet plodders of Enniskillen and adjacent

townships. The leading refineries are at London, fifty miles east of

Wyoming and one of the most attractive cities in the Dominion.

[Illustration:

OIL ON THE

PENINSULA OF GASPE.

]

Petroleum has long been known to exist in considerable quantity in the

Gaspe Peninsula, at the extreme eastern end of Quebec. The Petroleum

Oil-Trust, organized by a bunch of Canadians to operate the district,

put down eight wells in 1893, finding a light green oil. The Trust

continued its borings in 1894, on the left bank of the York River, south

of the anticlinal of Tar Point. Several of the ten wells yielded

moderately, and operations extended to the portion of Gaspe Basin called

Mississippi Brook. One well in that section, completed in July of 1897,

flowed from a depth of fifteen-hundred feet. Hundreds of barrels were

lost before the well could be controlled. Its first, pumping produced

forty barrels, and two others in the vicinity are of a similar stripe.

The results thus far are deemed sufficiently encouraging to warrant

further tests in hope of developing an extensive field. The oil comes

from a coarse rock of sandy texture, and in color and gravity resembles

the Pennsylvania article. The formation around the newest strikes is

nearly flat, while the shallow wells in the section first prospected

were bored at a sharp angle, to keep in touch with the dip of the rock,

just as diamond drills follow the gold-bearing ledges in the Black Hills

of South Dakota. Crossing the continent, oil has been tapped in the

gold-diggings of British Columbia, although in amounts too small to be

important commercially.

John Shaw, whose gusher brought the “gum-beds” of Enniskillen into the

petroleum-column, narrowly escaped anticipating Drake three years. Shaw

removed from Massachusetts to Canada in 1838, and was regarded as a

visionary schemer. In 1856 he sought to interest his neighbors in a plan

to _drill a well through the rock_ in search of the reservoir that

supplied Bear Creek with a thick scum of oil. They hooted at the idea

and proposed to send Shaw to the asylum. This tabooed the subject and

postponed the advent of petroleum until the end of August, 1859.

Not content to crown Alaska with mountains of gold and valleys of yellow

nuggets, inventors of choice fables have invested the hyperborean region

with an exhaustless store of petroleum. In July of 1897 this paragraph,

dated Seattle, went the rounds of the press:

“What is said to be the greatest discovery ever made is reported from

Alaska. Some gold-prospectors several months ago ran across what seemed

to be a lake of oil. It was fed by innumerable springs and the

surrounding mountains were full of coal. They brought supplies to

Seattle and tests proved it to be of as high grade as any ever taken out

of Pennsylvania wells. A local company was formed and experts sent up.

They have returned on the steamer Topeka, and their report has more than

borne out first reports. It is stated there is enough oil and coal in

the discovery to supply the world. It is close to the ocean; in fact,

the experts say that the oil oozes out into the salt-water.”

William H. Seward’s purchase from Russia, for years ridiculed as good

only for icebergs and white-bears, may be credited with Klondyke placers

and vast bodies of gold-bearing quartz, but a “lake of oil” is too great

a stretch of the long bow. If “a lake of oil” ever existed, the lighter

portions would have evaporated and the residue would be asphaltum. The

story “won’t hold water” or oil.

A thief broke into a Bradford store and pilfered the cash-drawer. Some

months later the merchant received an unsigned letter, containing a

ten-dollar bill and this explanatory note: “I stole seventy-eight

dollars from your money-drawer. Remorse gnaws at my conscience. When

remorse gnaws again I will send you some more.”

It is not surprising that evil travels faster than good, since it takes

only two seconds to fight a duel and two months to drill an oil-well at

Bradford.

“The Producers’ Consolidated Land-and-Petroleum-Company,” the formidable

title over the Bradford office of the big corporation, is apt to suggest

to observant readers the days of old long sign.

[Illustration: REUBEN CARROLL.]

Hon. Reuben Carroll, a pioneer-operator, was born in Mercer county in

1823, went to Ohio to complete his education, settled in the Buckeye

State, and was a member of the Legislature when developments began on

Oil Creek. Solicited by friends to join them in an investment that

proved fortunate, he removed to Titusville and cast his lot with the

producers. He operated extensively in the northern fields, residing at

Richburg during the Allegheny excitement. He took an active interest in

public affairs, and contributed stirring articles on politics, finance

and good government to leading journals. He opposed Wall-street

domination and vigorously upheld the rights of the masses. Upon the

decline of Richburg he located at Lily Dale, New York. As a

representative producer he was asked to become a member of the South

Improvement-Company in 1872. The offer aroused his inflexible sense of

justice and was indignantly spurned. He knew the sturdy quality and

large-heartedness of the Oil-Creek operators and did not propose to

assist in their destruction. At seventy-four, Mr. Carroll is vigorous

and well-preserved, ready to combat error and champion truth with tongue

and pen. An intelligent student of the past and of current events, a

close observer of the signs of the times and a keen reasoner, Reuben

Carroll is a fine example of the men who are mainly responsible for the

birth and growth of the petroleum-development.

[Illustration: RALPH W. CARROLL.]

There is much uncertainty as to the youngest soldier in the civil-war,

the oldest Mason, the man who first nominated McKinley for President,

and who struck Billie Patterson, but none as to the youngest dealer in

oil-well supplies in the oil-region. This distinction belongs to Ralph

W. Carroll, a native of Youngstown, Ohio, and son of Hon. Reuben

Carroll. Born in 1860, at eighteen he was at the head of a large

business at Rock City, in the Four-Mile District, five miles south-west

of Olean. Three brothers were associated with him. The firm was the

first to open a supply-store at Richburg, with a branch at Allentown,

four miles east, and an establishment later at Cherry Grove. In 1883

Ralph W. succeeded the firm, his brothers retiring, and located at

Bradford. In 1886 he opened offices and warehouses at Pittsburg and in

1894 removed to New York to engage in placing special investments. The

young merchant was secretary of the Producers’ Protective Association,

organized at Richburg in 1891, and a member of the executive committee

that conducted the fight against the Roberts Torpedo-Company. Hon. David

Kirk, Asher W. Milner, J. E. Dusenbury and “Farmer” Dean were his four

associates on this important committee. Roscoe Conkling, for the Roberts

side, and General Butler, for the Producers’ Association, measured

swords in this legal warfare. Mr. Carroll has a warm welcome for his

oil-region friends, a class of men the like of whom for geniality,

sociability, liberality and enterprise the world can never duplicate.

The Beardsleys, Fishers, Dollophs and Fosters were the first inhabitants

in the wilds of Northern McKean. Henry Bradford Dolloph, whose house

above Sawyer City was shattered by a glycerine-explosion, was the first

white child who saw daylight and made infantile music in the Tuna

Valley. One of the first two houses where Bradford stands was occupied

by the Hart family, parents and twelve children. When the De Golias

settled up the East Branch a road had to be cut through the forest from

Alton. Hon. Lewis Emery’s No. 1, on the Tibbets farm, the first good

well up the Branch, produced oil that paid two or three times the cost

of the entire property.

The United-States Pipe-Line has overcome legal obstructions, laid its

tubes under railroads that objected to its passage to the sea and will

soon pump oil direct to refineries on the Jersey coast. Senator Emery,

the sponsor of the line, is not the man to be bluffed by any

railroad-popinjay who wants him to get off the earth. The

National-Transit Line has ample facilities to transport all the oil in

Pennsylvania to the seaboard, but Emery is a true descendant of the

proud Highlander who wouldn’t sail in Noah’s ark because “ilka McLean

has a boat o’ his ain.” He was born in New-York State, reared in

Michigan, whither the family removed in his boyhood, and learned to be a

miller. Arriving at Pioneer early in the sixties, he cut his eye-teeth

as an oil-operator on Oil Creek and had much to do with bringing the

great Bradford district to the front. He served one term in the

Legislature and two in the Senate, gaining a high reputation by his

fearless opposition to jobbery and corruption.

Michael Garth, a keen-witted son of the Emerald Isle, has the easiest

snap in the northern region. Scraping together the funds to put down a

well on his rocky patch of ground near Duke Centre, he rigged a

water-wheel to pump the ten barrels of crude the strike yielded daily.

Another well of similar stripe was drilled and the faithful creek drives

the wooden-wheel night and day, without one cent of expense or one

particle of attention on the part of the owner. Garth can go fishing

three days at a lick, to find the wells producing upon his return just

as when he left. Such a picnic almost compels a man to be lazy.

The Devonian Oil Company, of which Charles E. Collins is the

clear-brained president and guiding star, has operated on the wholesale

plan in the northern region and in West Virginia. In October of 1897 the

Devonian, the Watson and the Emery companies sold a part of their

holdings north and south to the West Penn, a producing wing of the

Standard, for fourteen-hundred-thousand dollars in spot cash. The

largest cash sale of wells and territory on record, this transaction was

negotiated by John L. and J. C. McKinney acting in behalf of the buyer,

and Charles E. Collins and Lewis Emery representing the sellers.

“Hell in harness!” Davy Crockett is credited with exclaiming the first

time he saw a railroad train tearing along one dark night. Could he have

seen an oil-train on the Oil-Creek Railroad, blazing from end to end and

tearing down from Brocton at sixty miles an hour, the conception would

have been yet more realistic. Engineer Brown held the throttle, which he

pulled wide open upon discovering a car of crude on fire. Mile after

mile he sped on, thick smoke and sheets of flame each moment growing

denser and fiercer. At last he reached a long siding, slackened the

speed for the fireman to open the switch and ran the doomed train off

the main track. He detached the engine and two cars, while the rest of

the train fell a prey to the fiery demon. A similar accident at

Bradford, caused by a tank at the Anchor Oil-Company’s wells overflowing

upon the tracks of the Bradford & Bordell narrow-gauge, burned two or

three persons fatally. The oil caught fire as the locomotive passed the

spot and enveloped the passenger-coach in flames so quickly that escape

was cut off.

Bradford, Tarport, Limestone, Sawyer, Gillmor, Derrick, Red Rock, State

Line, Four-Mile, Duke Centre, Rexford, Bordell, Rew City, Coleville,

Custer and De Golia, with their thousands of wells, their hosts of live

people, their boundless activity, their crowded railways, their endless

procession of teams and their unlimited energy, were for the nonce the

brightest galaxy of oil-towns that ever flourished in the busy realm of

petroleum. Some have vanished, others are mere skeletons and Bradford

alone retains a fair semblance of its pristine greatness.

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

THE SEX MEN ADORE.

A little girl at Titusville, when she prayed to have herself and all of

her relations cared for during the night, added: “And, dear God, do try

and take good care of yourself, for if anything should happen to you we

should all go to pieces. Amen.”

A young lady at Sawyer City accepted a challenge to climb a derrick on

the Hallenback farm, stand on top and wave her handkerchief. She was to

receive a silk-dress and a ten-dollar greenback. The feat was performed

in good shape. It is probably the only instance on record where a woman

had the courage to climb an eighty-foot derrick, stand on top and wave

her handkerchief to those below. It was done and the enterprising girl

gathered in the wager.

Mrs. Sands, formerly a resident of Oil City, built the Sands Block and

owned wells on Sage Run. McGrew Brothers, of Pittsburg, struck a spouter

in 1869 that boomed Sage Run a few months. A lady at Pleasantville, who

had coined money by shrewd speculations in oil-territory, purchased

two-hundred acres near the McGrew strike, while the well was drilling

and nobody thought it worth noticing. The lady was Mrs. Sands, who

enacted the role of “a poor lone widow,” anxious to secure a patch of

ground to raise cabbage and garden-truck, to get the property. She

worked so skillfully upon the sensibilities of the Philadelphians owning

the land that they sold it for a trifle “to help a needy woman!” Her

first well, finished the night before the “thirty-day shut down,” flowed

five-hundred barrels each twenty-four hours. The “poor lone widow”

valued the tract at a half-million dollars and at one time was rated at

six-hundred-thousand, all “earned by her own self.” Yet weak-minded men

and strong-minded women talk of the suppressed sex!

A Franklin lady asked her husband one morning to buy five-thousand

barrels of oil on her account, saying she had an impression the price

would advance very soon. To please her he promised to comply. At dinner

she inquired about it and was told the order had been filled by an

Oil-City broker. In the afternoon the price advanced rapidly. Next

morning the lady asked hubby to have the lot sold and bring her the

profits. The miserable husband was in for it. He dared not confess his

deception and the only alternative was to pay the difference and keep

mum. His sickly smile, as he drew fifteen-hundred dollars out of the

bank to hand his spouse, would have cracked a mirror an inch thick.

Solomon got a good deal of experience from his wives and that Franklin

husband began to think “a woman might know something about business

after all.”

Mrs. David Hanna, of Oil City, is not one of the women whose idea of a

good time is to go to a funeral and cry. She tried a bit of speculation

in certificates and the market went against her. She tried again and

again, but the losses exceeded the profits by a large majority. The

phenomenal spurt in April of 1895 was her opportunity. She held down a

seat in the Oil-Exchange gallery three days, sold at almost the top

notch and cleared twelve-thousand dollars. People applauded and declared

the plucky little woman “had a great head.”

[Illustration]

SCHRUBRASS FERRY 1873

SUMMIT CITY

ACROSS THE BELT AT BARRINGER

TURKEY CITY IN 1874

FIRST HOUSE AT TRIANGLE CITY

MAIN STREET, ST. PETERSBURG.

VIEW IN EDENBURG.

XII.

DOWN THE ZIG-ZAGGED STREAM.

WHERE THE ALLEGHENY FLOWS—RENO CONTRIBUTES A GENEROUS MITE—SCRUBGRASS

HAS A SHORT INNING—BULLION LOOMS UP WITH DUSTERS AND GUSHERS—A PEEP

AROUND EMLENTON—FOXBURG FALLS INTO LINE—THROUGH THE CLARION

DISTRICT—ST. PETERSBURG, ANTWERP, TURKEY CITY AND DOGTOWN—EDENBURG

HAS A HOT TIME—PARKER ON DECK.

----------

“He left the barren-beaten thoroughfare.”—_Tennyson._

“Who, grown familiar with the sky, will grope * * * among

groundlings?”—_Browning._

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

Hawkins._

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

Quarles._

“Liberal as noontide speeds the ambient ray

And fills each crevice in the world with day.”—_Lytton._

“We must take the current when it serves or lose our

ventures.”—_Shakespeare._

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

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

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

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

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

“Fortune turns everything to the advantage of her

favorites.”—_Rochefoucauld._

“Good, the more communicated, more abundant grows.”—_Milton._

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

----------

South and west of Oil Creek for many miles the petroleum-star shed its

effulgent luster. Down the Allegheny adventurous operators groped their

way patiently, until Clarion, Armstrong, Butler, Washington and West

Virginia unlocked their splendid store-houses at the bidding of the

drill. Aladdin’s wondrous lamp, Stalacta’s wand or Ali Babi’s magic

sesame was not so grand a talisman as the tools which from the bowels of

the earth brought forth illimitable spoil. No need of fables to varnish

the tales of struggles and triumphs, of disappointments and successes,

of weary toil and rich reward that have marked the oil-development from

the Drake well to the latest strike in Tyler county. Men who go miles in

advance of developments to seek new oil-fields run big chances of

failure. They understand the risk and appreciate the cold fact that

heavy loss may be entailed. But “the game is worth the powder” in their

estimation and impossibility is not the sort of ability they swear by.

“Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win” is

a maxim oil-operators have weighed carefully. The man who has faith to

attempt something is a man of power, whether he hails from Hong Kong or

Boston, Johannesburg or Oil City. The man who will not improve his

opportunity, whether seeking salvation or petroleum, is a sure loser.

His stamina is as fragile as a fifty-cent shirt and will wear out

quicker than religion that is used for a cloak only. Muttering long

prayers without working to answer them is not the way to angle for

souls, or fish, or oil-wells. It demands nerve and vim and enterprise to

stick thousands of dollars in a hole ten, twenty, fifty or “a hundred

miles from anywhere,” in hope of opening a fresh vein of petroleum.

Luckily men possessing these qualities have not been lacking since the

first well on Oil Creek sent forth the feeble squirt that has grown to a

mighty river. Hence prolific territory, far from being scarce, has

sometimes been too plentiful for the financial health of the average

producer, who found it hard to cipher out a profit selling dollar-crude

at forty cents. As old fields exhausted new ones were explored in every

direction, those south of the original strike presenting a very

respectable figure in the oil-panorama. If “eternal vigilance is the

price of liberty,” eternal hustling is the price of oil-operations.

Maria Seidenkovitch, a fervid Russian anarchist, who would rather hit

the Czar with a bomb than hit a thousand-barrel well, has written:

“There is no standing still! Even as I pause

The steep path shifts and I slip back apace;

Movement was safety; by the journey’s laws

No help is given, no safe abiding-place;

No idling in the pathway, hard and slow—

I must go forward or must backward go!”

[Illustration: GEN. JESSE L. RENO.]

Down the Allegheny three miles, on a gentle slope facing bold hills

across the river, is the remnant of Reno, once a busy, attractive town.

It was named from Gen. Jesse L. Reno, who rose to higher rank than any

other of the heroes Venango “contributed to the death-roll of

patriotism.” He spent his boyhood at Franklin, was graduated from West

Point in the class with George B. McClellan and “Stonewall” Jackson,

served in the Mexican war, was promoted to Major-General and fell at the

battle of South Mountain in 1862. The Reno Oil-Company, organized in

1865 as the Reno-Oil-and-Land Company, owns the village-site and

twelve-hundred acres of adjacent farms. The company and the town owed

their creation to the master-mind of Hon. C. V. Culver, to whose rare

faculty for developing grand enterprises the oil-regions offered an

inviting field. Visiting Venango county early in the sixties, a canvass

of the district convinced him that the oil-industry, then an infant

beginning to creep, must attain giant proportions. To meet the need of

increased facilities for business, he conceived the idea of a system of

banks at convenient points and opened the first at Franklin in 1861.

Others were established at Oil City, Titusville and suitable

trade-centres until the combination embraced twenty banks and

banking-houses, headed by the great office of Culver, Penn & Co. in New

York. All enjoyed large patronage and were converted into corporate

banks. The speculative mania, unequaled in the history of the world,

that swept over the oil-regions in 1864-5, deluged the banks with

applications for temporary loans to be used in purchasing lands and

oil-interests. Philadelphia alone had nine-hundred stock-companies. New

York was a close second and over seven-hundred-million dollars were

capitalized—on paper—for petroleum-speculations! The production of oil

was a new and unprecedented business, subject to no known laws and

constantly overturning theories that set limits to its expansion. There

was no telling where flowing-wells, spouting thousands of dollars daily

without expense to the owners, might be encountered. Stories of sudden

fortunes, by the discovery of oil on lands otherwise valueless, pressed

the button and the glut of paper-currency did the rest.

Mr. Culver directed the management and employment of fifteen-million

dollars in the spring of 1865! People literally begged him to handle

their money, elected him to Congress and insisted that he invest their

cash and bonds. The Reno Oil-Company included men of the highest

personal and commercial standing. Preliminary tests satisfied the

officers of the company that the block of land at Reno was valuable

territory. They decided to operate it, to improve the town and build a

railroad to Pithole, in order to command the trade of Oil Creek, Cherry

Run and “the Magic City.” Oil City opposed the railroad strenuously,

refusing a right-of-way and compelling the choice of a circuitous route,

with difficult grades to climb and ugly ravines to span. At length a

consolidation of competing interests was arranged, to be formally

ratified on March twenty-ninth, 1866. Meanwhile rumors affecting the

credit of the Culver banks were circulated. Disastrous floods, the close

of the war and the amazing collapse of Pithole had checked speculation

and impaired confidence in oil-values. Responsible parties wished to

stock the Reno Company at five-million dollars and Mr. Culver was in

Washington completing the railroad-negotiations which, in one week,

would give him control of nearly a million. A run on his banks was

started, the strain could not be borne and on March twenty-seventh,

1866, the failure of Culver, Penn & Co. was announced. The assets at

cost largely exceeded the liabilities of four-million dollars, but the

natural result of the suspension was to discredit everything with which

the firm had been identified. The railroad-consolidation, confessedly

advantageous to all concerned, was not confirmed and Reno stock was

withheld from the market. While the creditors generally co-operated to

protect the assets and adjust matters fairly, a few defeated measures

looking to a safe deliverance. These short-sighted individuals

sacrificed properties, instituted harassing prosecutions and

precipitated a crisis that involved tremendous losses. Many a man

standing on his brother’s neck claims to be looking up far into the sky

watching for the Lord to come!

The fabric reared with infinite pains toppled, pulling down others in

its fall. The Reno, Oil-Creek & Pithole Railroad, within a mile of

completion, crumbled into ruin. The architect of the splendid plans that

ten days of grace would have carried to fruition displayed his manly

fiber in the dark days of adversity and he has been amply vindicated.

Instead of yielding to despair and “letting things take their course,”

he strove to realize for the creditors every dollar that could be saved

from the wreck. Animated by a lofty motive, for thirty years Mr. Culver

has labored tirelessly to discharge the debts of the partnership. No

spirit could be braver, no life more unselfish, no line of action more

steadfastly devoted to a worthy object. He had bought property and

sought to enhance its value, but he had never gambled in stocks, never

dealt in shares on the mere hazard of a rise or gone outside the

business—except to help customers whose necessities appealed to his

sympathy—with which he was intimately connected. Driven to the wall by

stress of circumstances and general distrust, he has actually paid off

all the small claims and multitudes of large ones against his banks. How

many men, with no legal obligation to enforce their payment, would toil

for a generation to meet such demands? Thistles do not bear figs and

banana-vendors are not the only persons who should be judged by their

fruits. It is a good thing to achieve success and better still to

deserve it. Gauged by the standard of high resolve, earnest purpose and

persistent endeavor—by what he has tried to do and not by what may have

been said of him—Charles Vernon Culver can afford to accept the verdict

of his peers and of the Omniscient Judge, who “discerns the thoughts and

intents of the heart.”

“I will go on then, though the limbs may tire,

And though the path be doubtful and unseen;

Better with the last effort to expire

Than lose the toil and struggle that have been,

And have the morning strength, the upward strain,

The distance conquered in the end made vain.”

[Illustration: JAMES H. OSMER.]

Reorganized in the interest of Culver, Penn & Co.’s creditors, the Reno

Company developed its property methodically. No. 18 well, finished in

May of 1870, pumped two-hundred barrels and caused a flutter of

excitement. Fifty others, drilled in 1870-1, were so satisfactory that

the stockholders might have shouted “Keno!” The company declined to

lease and very few dry-holes were put down on the tract. Gas supplied

fuel and the sand, coarse and pebbly, produced oil of superior gravity

at five to six-hundred feet. Reno grew, a spacious hotel was built,

stores prospered, two railroads had stations and derricks dotted the

banks of the Allegheny. The company’s business was conducted admirably,

it reaped liberal profits and operated in Forest county. Its affairs are

in excellent shape and it has a neat production today. Mr. Culver and

Hon. Galusha A. Grow have been its presidents and Hon. J. H. Osmer is

now the chief officer. Mr. Osmer is a leader of the Venango bar and has

lived at Franklin thirty-two years. His thorough knowledge of law,

sturdy independence, scorn of pettifogging and skill as a pleader gained

him an immense practice. He has been retained in nearly all the most

important cases before the court for twenty-five years and appears

frequently in the State and the United-States Supreme Courts. He is a

logical reasoner and brilliant orator, convincing juries and audiences

by his incisive arguments. He served in Congress with distinguished

credit. His two sons have adopted the legal profession and are

associated with their father. A man of positive individuality and

sterling character, a friend in cloud and sunshine, a deep thinker and

entertaining talker is James H. Osmer.

Cranberry township, a regular petroleum-huckleberry, duplicated the Reno

pool at Milton, with a vigorous offshoot at Bredinsburg and nibbles

lying around loose. Below Franklin the second-sand sandwich and

Bully-Hill successes were special features. A mile up East Sandy

Creek—it separates Cranberry and Rockland—was Gas City, on a toploftical

hill twelve miles south of Oil City. A well sunk in 1864 had heaps of

gas, which caught fire and burned seven years. E. E. Wightman and

Patrick Canning drilled five good wells in 1871 and Gas City came into

being. Vendergrift & Forman constructed a pipeline and telegraph to Oil

City. Gas fired the boilers, lighted the streets, heated the dwellings

and great quantities wasted. The pressure could be run up to

three-hundred pounds and utilized to run engines in place of steam, were

it not for the fine grit with the gas, which wore out the cylinders.

Wells that supplied fuel to pump themselves seemed very similar to mills

that furnished their own motive-power and grist for the hoppers. A cow

that gave milk and provided food for herself by the process could not be

slicker. Gas City vaporized a year or two and flickered out. The last

jet has been extinguished and not a glimmer of gas or symptom of wells

has been visible for many years.

Fifteen of the first sixteen wells at Foster gladdened the owners by

yielding bountifully. To drill, to tube, to pump, to get done-up with a

dry-hole, “aye, there’s the rub” that tests a fellow’s mettle and

changes blithe hope to bleak despair. Foster wells were not of that

complexion. They lined the steep cliff that resembles an Alpine farm

tilted on end to drain off, the derricks standing like sentries on the

watch that nobody walked away with the romantic landscape. Lovers of the

sterner moods of nature would revel in the rugged scenery, which

discounts the overpraised Hudson and must have fostered sublime emotions

in the impassive redmen. Indian-God Rock, inscribed with untranslatable

hieroglyphics, presumably tells what “Lo” thought of the surroundings.

Six miles south of the huge rock, which somebody proposed to boat to

Franklin and set in the park as an interesting memento of the

aborigines, was “the burning well.” For years the gas blazed,

illuminating the hills and keeping a plot of grass constantly fresh and

green. The flood in 1865 overflowed the hole, but the gas burned just as

though water were its native element. It was the fad for sleighing

parties to visit the well, dance on the sward when snow lay a yard deep

ten rods away and hold outdoor picnics in January and February. This

practically realized the fancy of the boy who wished winter would come

in summer, that he might coast on the Fourth of July in shirt-sleeves

and linen-pants. Here and there in the interior of Rockland township

morsels of oil have been unearthed and small wells are pumping to-day.

C. D. Angell leased blocks of land from Foster to Scrubgrass in 1870-71

and jabbed them with holes that confirmed his “belt theory.” His first

well—a hundred-barreler—on Belle Island, a few rods below the station,

opened the Scrubgrass field. On the Rockland side of the river the

McMillan and 99 wells headed a list of remunerative producers. Back a

quarter-mile the territory was tricky, wells that showed for big strikes

sometimes proving of little account. A town toddled into existence.

Gregory—the genial host joined the heavenly host long ago—had a hotel at

which trains stopped for meals. James Kennerdell ran a general store and

the post-office. The town was busy and had nothing scrubby except the

name. The wells retired from business, the depot burned down, the people

vanished and Kennerdell Station was established a half-mile north.

Wilson Cross continued his store at the old stand until his death in

March, 1896. Within a year paying wells have been drilled near the

station and two miles southward. On the opposite bank Major W. T. Baum,

of Franklin, has a half-dozen along the base of the hill that net him a

princely return. A couple of miles north-west, in Victory township,

Conway Brothers, of Philadelphia, recently drilled a well forty-two

hundred feet. The last sixty feet were sand with a flavor of oil, the

deepest sand and petroleum recorded up to the present time. Careful

records of the strata and temperature were taken. Once a thermometer

slipped from Mr. Conway’s hand and tumbled to the bottom of the well,

the greatest drop of the mercury in any age or clime.

Sixty farmers combined in the fall of 1859 to drill the first well in

Scrubgrass township, on the Rhodabarger tract. They rushed it like sixty

six-hundred feet, declined to pay more assessments, kicked over the

dashboard and spilled the whole combination. The first productive well

was Aaron Kepler’s, drilled on the Russell farm in 1863, and John

Crawford’s farm had the largest of the early ventures. On the Witherup

farm, at the mouth of Scrubgrass Creek, paying wells were drilled in

1867. Considerable skirmishing was done at intervals without startling

results. The first drilling in Clinton township was on. the Kennerdell

property, two miles west of the Allegheny, the Big-Bend Oil-Company

sinking a dry-hole in 1864-5. Jonathan Watson bored two in 1871, finding

traces of oil in a thin layer of sand. The Kennerdell block of

nine-hundred acres figured as the scene of milling operations from the

beginning of the century. David Phipps—the Phipps families are still

among the most prominent in Venango county—built a grist-mill on the

property in 1812, a saw-mill and a woolen-factory, operated an

iron-furnace a mile up the creek and founded a natty village. Fire

destroyed his factory and Richard Kennerdel bought the place in 1853. He

built a woolen-mill that attained national celebrity, farmed

extensively, conducted a large store and for thirty years was a leading

business-man. A handsome fortune, derived from manufacturing and

oil-wells on his lands, and the respect of all classes rewarded the

enterprise, sagacity and hospitality of this progressive citizen. The

factory he reared has been dismantled, the pretty little settlement amid

the romantic hills of Clinton is deserted and the man to whom both owed

their development rests from his labors. Mr. Kennerdell possessed

boundless energy, decision and the masterly qualities that surmount

obstacles, build up a community and round out a manly character. Cornen

Brothers have a production on the Kennerdell tract, which they purchased

in 1892. During the Bullion furore a bridge was built at Scrubgrass and

a railroad to Kennerdell was constructed. Ice carried off the bridge and

the faithful old ferry holds the fort as in the days of John A. Canan

and George McCullough.

Phillips Brothers, who had operated largely on Oil Creek and in Butler

county, leased thousands of acres in Clinton and drilled a number of

dry-holes. Believing a rich pool existed in that latitude, they were not

deterred by reverses that would have stampeded operators of less

experience. On August ninth, 1876, John Taylor and Robert Cundle

finished a two-hundred-barrel spouter on the George W. Gealy farm, two

miles north of Kennerdell. They sold to Phillips Brothers, who were

drilling on adjacent farms. The new strike opened the Bullion field,

toward which the current turned forthwith. H. L. Taylor and John

Satterfield, the biggest operators in Butler, visited the Gealy well and

offered a half-million dollars for the Phillips interests in Clinton. A

hundred oilmen stood watching the flow that August morning. The parties

consulted briefly and Isaac Phillips invited me to walk with him a few

rods. He said: “Taylor & Satterfield wish to take our property at

five-hundred-thousand dollars. This is a good deal of money, but we have

declined it. We think there will be a million in this field for us if we

develop it ourselves.” They carried out this programme and the estimate

was approximated closely.

[Illustration: J. J. MYERS.]

The Sutton, Simcox, Taylor, Henderson, Davis, Gealy, Newton and

Berringer farms were operated rapidly. Tack Brothers paid ten-thousand

dollars to Taylor for thirty acres and Porter Phipps leased fifteen

acres, which he sold to Emerson & Brownson, whose first well started at

seven-hundred barrels. Phillips Brothers’ No. 3 well, on the Gealy farm,

was a four-hundred-barreler. In January, 1877, Frank Nesbit’s No. 2,

Henderson farm, flowed five-hundred barrels, and in February the

Galloway began at two-hundred. The McCalmont Oil-Company’s Big Medicine,

on the Newton Farm, tipped the beam at one-thousand barrels on June

seventh. Mitchell & Lee’s Big Injun flowed three-thousand barrels on

June eighteenth, the biggest yield in the district. Ten yards away a

galaxy of Franklinites drilled the driest kind of a dry-hole. In August

the McCalmont No. 31 and the Phillips No. 7 gauged a plump thousand

apiece. These were the largest wells and they exhausted speedily. The

oil from the Gealy No. 1 was hauled to Scrubgrass until connections

could be laid to the United Pipe-Lines. The Bullion field, in which a

few skeleton-wells produce a few barrels daily, extended seven miles in

length and three-eighths of a mile in width. Like the business-end of a

healthy wasp, “it was little, but—oh, my!” It swerved the tide from

Bradford and ruled the petroleum-roost eighteen months. Summit City on

the Simcox farm, Berringer City on the Berringer farm, and Dean City on

the McCalmont farm flourished during the excitement. The first house at

Summit was built on December eighth, 1876. In June of 1877 the town

boasted two-hundred buildings and fifteen-hundred population. Abram

Myers, the last resident, left in April of 1889. All three towns have

“faded into nothingness” and of the five-hundred wells producing at the

summit of Bullion’s short-lived prosperity not a dozen survive. Westward

a new strip was opened, the wells on several farms yielding their owners

a pleasant income. J. J. Myers, whose home is now at Hartstown, operated

successfully in this district. George Rumsey, an enterprising citizen,

is the lucky owner of a number of slick wells. The pretty town of

Clintonville has been largely benefited by oil-operations in the

vicinity. It is surrounded by a fine agricultural country and possesses

many desirable features as a place of residence. Bullion had its turn

and others were to follow in short meter.

[Illustration: GEO. RUMSEY.]

“’Tis not too late to seek a newer world,

Tho’ much is taken, much abides.”

[Illustration: VIEW ON RITCHEY RUN.]

Major St. George—the kindly old man sleeps in the Franklin cemetery—had

a bunch of wells and lived in a small house close to the

Allegheny-Valley track, near the siding in Rockland township that bears

his name. At Rockland Station a stone chimney, a landmark for many

years, marked the early abode of Hon. Elisha W. Davis, who operated at

Franklin, was speaker of the House of Representatives and the

State-Senate five terms and spent the closing years of his active life

in Philadelphia. Emlenton, the lively town at the south-eastern corner

of Venango county, was a thriving place prior to the oil-development.

The wells in the vicinity were generally medium, Ritchey Run having some

of the best. This romantic stream, south of the town, borders Clarion

county for a mile or two from its mouth. John Kerr, a squatter, cleared

a portion of the forest and was drowned in the river, slipping off a

flat rock two miles below his bit of land. The site of Emlenton was

surveyed and the warrant from the state given in 1796 to Samuel B. Fox,

great-grandfather of the late William Logan Fox and J. M. Fox, of

Foxburg. Joseph M., son of Samuel B. Fox, settled on the land in 1827.

Andrew McCaslin owned the tract above, from about where the Valley Hotel

and the public-school now stand. He was elected sheriff in 1832 and

built an iron-furnace. As a compliment to Mrs. Fox—Miss Hanna Emlen—he

named the hamlet Emlenton. Doctor James Growe built the third house in

the settlement. The covered wooden-bridge, usually supposed to have been

brought over in the Mayflower, withstood floods and ice-gorges until

April of 1883. John Keating, who had the second store, built a furnace

near St. Petersburg and held a thousand acres of land. Oil-producers

were well represented in the growing town, which has been the home of

Marcus Hulings, L. E. Mallory, D. D. Moriarty, M. C. Treat and R. W.

Porterfield. James Bennett, a leader in business, built the brick

opera-house and the flour-mills and headed the company that built the

Emlenton & Shippenville Railroad, which ran to Edenburg at the height of

the Clarion development. Emlenton is supplied with natural-gas and noted

for good schools, good hotels and get-up-and-get citizens and is

wide-awake in every respect.

[Illustration: DR. A. W. CRAWFORD.]

Dr. A. W. Crawford, of Emlenton, who served in the Legislature, was

appointed consul to Antwerp by President Lincoln in 1861. At the time he

reached Antwerp a cheap illuminant was unknown on the continent. Gas was

used in the cities, but the people of Antwerp depended mainly upon

rape-seed oil. Only wealthy people could afford it and the poorer folks

went to bed in the dark. From Antwerp to Brussels the country was

shrouded in gloom at night. Not a light could be seen outside the towns,

in the most populous section on earth. A few gallons of American refined

had appeared in Antwerp previous to Dr. Crawford’s arrival. It was

regarded as an object of curiosity. A leading firm inquired about this

new American product and Dr. Crawford was the man who could give the

information. He was from the very part of the country where the new

illuminant was produced. The upshot of the matter was that Dr. Crawford

put the firm in communication with American shippers, which led to an

order of forty barrels by Aug. Schmitz & Son, Antwerp dealers. The

article had tremendous prejudice to overcome, but the exporters

succeeded in finally disposing of their stock. It yielded them a net

return of forty francs. The oil won its way and from the humble

beginning of forty barrels in 1861, the following year witnessing a

demand for fifteen-hundred-thousand gallons. By 1863 it had come largely

into use and since that time it has become a staple article of commerce.

Dr. Crawford served as consul at Antwerp until 1866, when he returned

home and began a successful career as an oil-producer. It was fortunate

that Col. Drake chanced upon the shallowest spot in the oil-regions

where petroleum has ever been found, when he located the first well, and

equally lucky that a practical oilman represented the United States at

Antwerp in 1861. Had Drake chanced upon a dry-hole and some other man

been consul at Antwerp, oil-developments might have been retarded for

years.

“Oft what seems a trifle,

A mere nothing in itself, in some nice situations

Turns the scale of Fate and rules important actions.”

It is interesting to note that in the original land-warrants to Samuel

M. Fox certain mineral-rights are reserved, although oil is not

specified. A clause in each of the documents reads:

* * * “To the use of him, the said Samuel M. Fox, his heirs and assigns

forever, free and clear of all restriction and reservation as to mines,

royalties, quit-rents or otherwise, excepting and reserving only the

fifth part of all gold and silver-ore for the use of this Commonwealth,

to be delivered at the pit’s mouth free of all charges.”

The lands of Joseph M. Fox extended five miles down the Allegheny, to

the north bank of the Clarion River. He built a home a mile back of the

Allegheny and endeavored to have the county-seat established at the

junction of the two streams. The village of Foxburg, which bears the

family-name and is four miles below Emlenton, had no existence until

long after his death. Contrary to the accepted opinion, he was not a

Quaker, nor do his descendants belong to the Society of Friends or any

religious denomination in particular.

The prudence and wisdom of his father’s policy left the estate in

excellent shape when its management devolved largely upon W. L. Fox.

Progressive and far-seeing, the young man possessed in eminent degree

the business-qualities needed to handle vast interests successfully. His

honored mother and his younger brother aided him in building up and

constantly improving the rich heritage. Oil-operations upon and around

it added enormously to the value of the property. Hundreds of prolific

wells yielded bounteously and the town of Foxburg blossomed into the

prettiest spot on the banks of the Allegheny. The Foxes erected a

spacious school and hotel, graded the streets, put up dainty residences

and fostered the growing community most generously. A bank was

established, stores and dwellings multiplied, the best people found the

surroundings congenial and the lawless element had no place in the

attractive settlement. The master-hand of William Logan Fox was visible

everywhere. With him to plan was to execute. He constructed the railroad

that connected Foxburg with St. Petersburg, Edenburg and Clarion. The

slow hacks gave way to the swift iron-horse that brought the interior

towns into close communication with each other and the world outside. It

would be impossible to estimate the advantage of this enterprise to the

producers and the citizens of the adjacent country.

[Illustration: RAILROAD BRIDGE NEAR CLARION.]

The narrow-gauge railroad from Foxburg to Clarion was an engineering

novelty. It zig-zagged to overcome the big hill at the start, twisted

around ravines and crossed gorges on dizzy trestles. Near Clarion was

the highest and longest bridge, a wooden structure on stilts, curved and

single-tracked. One dark night a drummer employed by a Pittsburg house

was drawn over it safely in a buggy. The horse left the wagon-road, got

on the railroad-track, walked across the bridge—the ties supporting the

rails were a foot apart—and fetched up at his stable about midnight. The

drummer, who had imbibed too freely and was fast asleep in the vehicle,

knew nothing of the drive, which the marks of the wheels on the

approaches and the ties revealed next morning. The horse kept closely to

the center of the track, while the wheels on the right were outside the

rails. Had the faithful animal veered a foot to the right, the buggy

would have tumbled over the trestle and there would have been a vacant

chair in commercial ranks and a new voice in the celestial choir. That

the horse did not step between the ties and stick fast was a wonder. The

trip was as perilous as the Mohammedan passage to Paradise over a

slack-wire or Blondin’s tight-rope trip across Niagara.

Mr. Fox’s busy brain conceived even greater things for the benefit of

the neighborhood. Millions of capital enabled him to carry out the ideas

of his resourceful mind. He created opportunities to invest his wealth

in ways that meant the greatest good to the greatest number. The family

heartily seconded his efforts to advance the general welfare. He built

and operated the only extensive individual pipe-line in the oil-regions.

To extend the trade and influence of Foxburg he devised new lines of

railway, which would traverse a section abounding in coal, timber and

agricultural products. He outlined the plan of an immense refinery,

designed to employ a host of skilled workmen and utilize the crude-oil

derived from the wells within several miles of his home. In the midst of

these and other useful projects, in the very heyday of vigorous manhood,

just as the full fruition of his highest hopes seemed about to be

grandly realized, the end of his bright career came suddenly. His death,

met in the discharge of duty, was almost tragic in its manner and

results.

[Illustration: WILLIAM LOGAN FOX.]

In February of 1880 Conductor W. W. Gaither, of the Foxburg-Clarion

Railroad, ejected a peddler named John Clancy from his train, near

King’s Mills, for refusing to pay his fare. Clancy shot Gaither, who

died in a few days from the wound. W. L. Fox was the president of the

road and a warm personal friend of the murdered conductor. He took

charge of the pistol and became active in bringing Clancy to punishment.

Clancy was placed on trial at Clarion. President Fox was to produce the

pistol in court. Leaving home on the early train for Clarion, he had

proceeded some distance from Foxburg when he discovered he had forgotten

the pistol. He stopped the train and ran back to get the weapon. When he

returned he was almost exhausted. W. J. McConnell, beside whom he was

sitting, attempted to revive him, but he sank into unconsciousness and

expired in the car near the spot where his friend Gaither was shot.

Clancy was convicted of murder in the second degree and sentenced to

eight years in the penitentiary. His wife and twelve-year-old son were

left destitute. The boy went to work for a farmer near St. Petersburg. A

week later, it is said, he was crossing a field in which a vicious bull

was feeding. The bull attacked him, ripped his side open, tossed him

from the field into the road and the boy died in a short time. Besides

these fatalities resulting from Clancy’s crime, the business of Foxburg

was seriously crippled. The village depended mainly upon the

oil-business of the Fox estate, of which Mr. Fox, although only

twenty-nine years old, was manager. Its three-thousand acres of

oil-territory, but partially developed, yielded forty-five-thousand

barrels of crude a month. The refinery was never built, the pipe-line

was sold and extensive development of the property practically ceased.

The pathetic death of William Logan Fox took the distribution of a

million dollars a year from the region about Foxburg. The stricken

family erected a splendid church to his memory, but it is seldom used.

Much of its trade and population has sought other fields and the pretty

town is merely a shadow of the past.

“The massive gates of circumstance

Are turned upon the smallest hinge,

And thus some seeming pettiest chance

Oft gives our life its after tinge.”

Fertig & Hammond drilled numerous wells on the Fox estate in 1870-71 and

started a bank. Operations were pressed actively by producers from the

upper districts. Foxburg was the jumping off point for pilgrims to the

Clarion field, which Galey No. 1 well, on Grass Flats, inaugurated in

August, 1871. Others on the Flats, ranging from thirty to eighty

barrels, boomed Foxburg and speedily advanced St. Petersburg, three

miles inland, from a sleepy village of thirty houses to a busy town of

three-thousand population. In September of 1871 Marcus Hulings, whose

great specialty was opening new fields, finished a hundred-barrel well

on the Ashbaugh farm, a mile beyond St. Petersburg. The town of Antwerp

was one result. The first building, erected in the spring of 1872, in

sixty days had the company of four groceries, three hotels, innumerable

saloons, telegraph-office, school-house and two-hundred dwellings. Its

general style was summed up by the victim of a poker-game in the

expressive words: “If you want a smell of brimstone before supper go to

Antwerp!” Fire in 1873 wiped it off the face of the planet.

Charles H. Cramer, now proprietor of a hotel in Pittsburg, left the

Butler field to drill the Antwerp well, in which he had a

quarter-interest. James M. Lambing, for whom he had been drilling,

jokingly remarked: “When you return ‘broke’ from the wildcat well on the

Ashbaugh farm I will have another job for you.” It illustrates the ups

and downs of the oil business in the seventies to note that, when the

well was completed, Lambing had met with financial reverses and Cramer

was in a position to give out jobs on his own hook. Victor Gretter was

one of the spectators of the oil flowing over the derrick. The waste

suggested to him the idea of the oil-saver, which he patented. This

strike reduced the price of crude a dollar a barrel. Antwerp would have

been more important but for its nearness to St. Petersburg, which

disastrous fires in 1872-3 could not prevent from ranking with the best

towns of Oildom. Stages from Foxburg were crowded until the narrow-gauge

railroad furnished improved facilities for travel. Schools, churches,

hotels, newspapers, two banks and an opera-house flourished. The

Pickwick Club was a famous social organization. The Collner, Shoup,

Vensel, Palmer and Ashbaugh farms and Grass Flats produced

three-thousand barrels a day. Oil was five to six dollars and business

strode ahead like the wearer of the Seven-League Boots. Now the

erstwhile busy town is back to its pristine quietude and the farms that

produced oil have resumed the production of corn and grass.

A jolly Dutchman near St. Petersburg, who married his second wife soon

after the funeral of the first, was visited with a two-hours’ serenade

in token of disapproval. He expostulated pathetically thus: “I say,

poys, you ought to be ashamed of myself to be making all dish noise ven

der vas a funeral here purty soon not long ago.” This dispersed the

party more effectually than a bull-dog and a revolver could have done.

A girl just returned to St. Petersburg from a Boston high-school said,

upon seeing the new fire-engine at work: “Who would evah have dweamed

such a vewy diminutive looking apawatus would hold so much wattah!”

“Where are you going?” said mirth-loving Con. O’Donnell to an elderly

man in a white cravat whom he overtook on the outskirts of Antwerp and

proposed to invite to ride in his buggy. “I am going to heaven, my son.

I have been on my way for eighteen years.” “Well, good-bye, old fellow!

If you have been traveling toward heaven for eighteen years and got no

nearer than Antwerp, I will take another route.”

The course of operations extended past Keating Furnace, up and beyond

Turkey Run, a dozen miles from the mouth of the Clarion River. Good

wells on the Ritts and Neeley farms originated Richmond, a small place

that fizzled out in a year. The Irwin well, a mile farther, flowed

three-hundred barrels in September of 1872. The gas took fire and burned

three men to death. The entire ravine and contiguous slopes proved

desirable territory, although the streak rarely exceeded a mile in

breadth. Turkey City, in a nice expanse to the east of the famous

Slicker farm, for months was second only to St. Petersburg as a frontier

town. It had four stages to Foxburg, a post-office, daily mail-service

and two passable hotels. George Washington, who took a hack at a

cherry-tree, might have preferred walking to the drive over the rough,

cut-up roads that led to and from Turkey City. The wells averaged

eleven-hundred feet, with excellent sand and loads of gas for fuel.

Richard Owen and Alan Cochran, of Rouseville, opened a jack-pot on the

Johnson farm, above town. Wells lasted for years and this nook of the

Clarion district could match pennies with any other in the business of

producing oil.