rich agricultural section. The descendents of the first settlers retain
their characteristics of their German ancestors. Frugal, honest and
industrious, they live comfortably in their narrow sphere and save their
gains. The Delo farm, another mile north, was for a time the limit of
developments. True to his instincts as a discoverer of new territory,
Marcus Hulings went six miles north-east of St. Petersburg, leased B.
Delo’s farm and drilled a forty-barrel well in the spring of 1872.
Enormous quantities of gas were found in the second sand. The oil was
piped to Oil City. A half-mile east, on the Hummell farm, Salem
township, Lee & Plumer struck a hundred-barreler in July of 1872. The
Hummell farm had been occupied for sixty years by a venerable Teuton,
whose rustic son of fifty-five summers described himself as “the
pishness man ov the firm.” The new well, twelve-hundred feet deep, had
twenty-eight feet of nice sand and considerable gas. Its success bore
fruit speedily in the shape of a “town” dubbed Pickwick by Plumer, who
belonged to the redoubtable Pickwick Club at St. Petersburg. A
quarter-mile ahead, on a three-cornered plot, Triangle City bloomed. The
first building was a hotel and the second a hardware store, owned by
Lavens & Evans. Charles Lavens operated largely in the Clarion region
and in the northern field, lived at Franklin several years and removed
to Bradford. He is president of the Bradford Commercial Bank and a
tip-top fellow at all times and under all circumstances. Evans may claim
recognition as the author, in the muddled days of shut-downs and
suspensions in 1872, of the world-famed platform of the Grass-Flats
producers: “Resolved that we don’t care a damn!” The three tailors of
Tooley street, who issued a manifesto as “We, the people of England,”
were outclassed by Evans and his friends. News of their action was
flashed to every “council” and “union” in the oil-country, with more
stimulating effect than a whole broadside of formal declarations.
Triangle, Pickwick and Paris City have passed to the realm of
forgetfulness.
Marcus Hulings, a leader in the world of petroleum, was born near
Philipsburg, Clarion county, and began his career as a producer in 1860.
For some years he had been a contractor and builder and he turned his
practical knowledge of mechanics to good account. His earliest
oil-venture was a well on the Allegheny River above Oil City, for which
he refused sixty-thousand dollars. To be nearer the producing-fields, he
removed to Emlenton and resided there a number of years. The Hulings
family had been identified with Venango county from the first
settlement, one of them establishing a ferry at Franklin a century ago.
Prior to that date the family owned and lived on what is now Duncan’s
Island, at the junction of the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers, fifteen
miles north-west of Harrisburg. Marcus was a pathfinder in Forest county
and opened the Clarion region. He leased Clark & Babcock’s six-thousand
acres in McKean county and drilled hundreds of paying wells. Deciding to
locate at Oil City, he built an elegant home on the South Side and
bought a delightful place in Crawford county for a summer residence. His
liberality, enterprise and energy seemed inexhaustible. He donated a
magnificent hall to Allegheny College, Meadville, aided churches and
schools, relieved the poor and was active in political affairs. Besides
his vast oil-interests he had mines in Arizona and California, mills on
the Pacific coast and huge lumber-tracts in West Virginia. Self-poised
and self-reliant, daring yet prudent, brave and trustworthy, he was one
of the grandest representatives of the petroleum-industry. Neither
puffed up by prosperity nor unduly cast down by adversity, he met
obstacles resolutely and accepted results manfully. My last talk with
him was at Pittsburg, where he told of his endeavor to organize a
company to develop silver-claims in Mexico. He had grown older and
weaker, but the earnestness of youth was still his possession. His eyes
sparkled and his face lightened as he shook my hand at parting and said:
“You will hear from me soon. If this company can be organized I would
not exchange my Mexican properties for the wealth of the Astors!”
[Illustration:
FREDERICK PLUMER
MARCUS HULINGS JOHN LEE
]
He died in a few weeks, his dream unfulfilled. Losses in the west had
reduced his fortune without impairing his splendid courage, hope and
patience. He united the endurance of a soldier with the skill of a
commander. Marcus Hulings deserved to enjoy a winter of old age as green
as spring, as full of blossoms as summer, as generous as autumn. His
son, Hon. Willis J. Hulings, served in the Legislature three terms. He
introduced the bills prohibiting railroad-discriminations and was a
strong debater on the floor. Senator Quay favored him for State
Treasurer and attempted to stampede the convention which nominated
William Livsey. This was the beginning of the differences between Quay
and the combine which culminated in the rout of the latter and the
triumph of the Beaver statesman in 1895-6. Mr. Hulings lives at Oil
City, has a beautiful home and is colonel of the Sixteenth Regiment of
the National Guards. He practiced law in 1877-81, then devoted his
attention to oil-operations, to mining and lumbering, in which he is at
present actively engaged.
John Lee drilled his first well on the Hoover farm, near Franklin, in
1860, and he is operating to-day in Clinton and Rockland townships. He
has had his share of storm and sunshine, from dusters at Nickelville to
a slice of the Big Injun at Bullion, in the shifting panorama of
oil-developments for thirty-six years, but his fortitude and manliness
never flinched. He is no sour dyspeptic, whose conduct depends upon what
he eats for breakfast and who cannot believe the world is O. K. if he
drills a dry-hole occasionally.
Frederick C. Plumer and John Lee, partners in the Clarion and Butler
fields, were successful operators. Their wells on the Hummell farm
netted handsome returns. By a piece of clever strategy they secured the
Diviner tract, drilled a well that extended the territory two miles
south of Millerstown and sold out for ninety-thousand dollars. Plumer
quit with a competence, purchased his former hardware-store at
Newcastle, took a flyer in the Bullion district and died at Franklin,
his birthplace and boyhood home, in 1879. “Fred” was a thorough man of
affairs, prompt, courteous, affable and popular. His long sickness was
borne cheerfully and he faced the end—he died at thirty-one—without
repining. His wife and daughter have joined him in the land of deathless
reunions.
“Over the river!
Sailing on waters where lotuses smile,
Passing by many a tropical isle,
Sighting savannas there mile upon mile,
Over the river!
Music forever and beauty for aye,
Sunlight unending—the sunlight and day,
Never a farewell to weep on the way,
Over the river!”
[Illustration: BEAVER CREEK AT JEFFERSON FURNACE.]
East, north and west the area of prolific territory widened. Wells on
the Young farm started a jaunty development at Jefferson Furnace. Once
the scene of activity in iron-manufacture, the old furnace had been
neglected for three decades. Oil awakened the spot from its
Rip-Van-Winkle slumber. A narrow-gauge railroad crossed Beaver Creek on
a dizzy trestle, which afforded an enticing view of derricks, streams,
hills, dales, cleared farms and wooded slopes. The wells have pumped
out, the railroad has been switched off and the stout furnace stands
again in its solitary dignity. James M. Guffey, J. T. Jones, Wesley
Chambers and other live operators kept branching out until Beaver City,
Mongtown, Mertina, Edenburg, Knox, Elk City, Fern City and Jerusalem,
with Cogley as a supplement, were the centers of a production that
aggregated ten-thousand barrels a day. The St. Lawrence well, on the
Bowers farm, a mile north of Edenburg, was finished in June of 1872 and
directed attention to Elk township. For two years it pumped sixty-nine
barrels a day, six days each week, the owners shutting it down on
Sunday. Previously Captain Hasson, of Oil City, and R. Richardson, then
of Tarr Farm and now of Franklin, had drilled in the vicinity. Ten
dusters north of the Bowers farm augured poorly for the St. Lawrence. It
disappointed the prophets of evil by striking a capital sand and
producing with a regularity surpassed only by one well on Cherry Run. It
was not “a lovely toy, most fiercely sought, that lost its charm by
being caught.”
The St. Lawrence jumped the northern end of the Clarion district to the
front. Hundreds of wells ushered in new towns. Knox, on the Bowers farm,
attained a post-office, a hardware store and a dozen dwellings, its
proximity to Edenburg preventing larger growth. The cross-roads
collection of five houses and a store known as Edenburg progressed
immensely. John Mendenhall and J. I. Best’s farm-houses, ’Squire
Kribbs’s country-store and justice-mill, a blacksmith-shop and three
dwellings constituted the place at the date of the St. Lawrence advent.
The nearest hotel—the Berlin House—was three miles northward. In six
months the quiet village became a busy, hustling, prosperous town of
twenty-five hundred population. It had fine hotels, fine stores, banks
and people whom a destructive fire—it eliminated two-thirds of the
buildings in one night—could not “send to the bench.” When the flames
had been subdued, a crowd of sufferers gathered at two o’clock in the
morning, sang “Home, Sweet Home,” and at seven were clearing away the
embers to rebuild. Narrow-gauge railroads were built and the folks
didn’t scare at the cars. Elk City flung its antlers to the breeze two
miles east. Isaac N. Patterson—he is president of the Franklin Savings
Bank and a big operator in Indiana—had a creamy patch on the Kaiser
farm. Jerusalem’s first arrival—Guffey’s wells created it—was a Clarion
delegate with a tent and a cargo of liquids. He dealt the drink over a
rough board, improvised as a counter, so briskly that his receipts in
two days footed up seven-hundred dollars. He had no license, an officer
got on the trail and the vendor decamped. He is now advance-agent of a
popular show, wears diamonds the size of walnuts and tells hosts of
oil-region stories. The Clarion field was not inflamed by enormous
gushers, but the wells averaged nicely and possessed the cardinal virtue
of enduring year after year. It is Old Sol, steady and persevering, and
not the flashing meteor, “a moment here, then gone forever,” that lights
and heats the earth and is the fellow to bank upon.
An Edenburg mother fed her year-old baby on sliced cucumbers and milk,
and then desired the prayers of the church “because the Lord took away
her darling.” “How is the baby?” anxiously inquired one lady of another
at Beaver City. “Oh, baby died last week, I thank you,” was the
equivocal reply.
Some of the oilmen were liberally endowed with the devotional sentiment.
When the news of a blazing tank of oil at Mertina reached Edenburg, a
jolly operator telegraphed the fact to Oil City, with the addendum:
“Everything has gone hellward.” A half-hour later came his second
dispatch: “The oil is blazing, with big flames going heavenward.” Such a
happy blending of the infernal with the celestial is seldom witnessed in
ordinary business.
The behavior of some people in a crisis is a wonderful puzzle, sometimes
funnier than a pig-circus. At the St. Petersburg fire, which sent half
the town up in smoke, an old woman rescued from the Adams House, with a
bag of money containing four-hundred dollars, was indignant that her
fifty-cent spectacles had been left to burn. A male guest stormed over
the loss of his satchel, which a servant had carried into the street,
and threatened a suit for damages. The satchel was found and opened. It
had a pair of dirty socks, two dirty collars, a comb and a toothbrush!
The man with presence of mind to throw his mother-in-law from the
fourth-story window and carry a feather-pillow down stairs was not on
hand. St. Petersburg had no four-story buildings.
John Kiley and “Ed.” Callaghan headed a circle of jolly jokers at
Triangle City and Edenburg. Hatching practical sells was their meat and
drink. One evening they employed a stranger to personate a constable
from Clarion and arrest a pipe-line clerk for the paternity of a bogus
offspring. In vain the astonished victim protested his innocence,
although he acknowledged knowing the alleged mother of the alleged kid.
The minion of the law turned a deaf ear to his prayers for release, but
consented to let him go until morning upon paying a five-dollar note.
The poor fellow thought of an everlasting flight from Oildom and was
leaving the room to pack up his satchel when the “constable” appeared
with a supply of fluids. The joke was explained and the crowd liquidated
at the expense of the subject of their pleasantry. Kiley was an oilman
and operated in the northern fields. Callaghan slung lightning in the
telegraph-office. He married at Edenburg and went to Chicago. His wife
procured a divorce and married a well-known Harrisburger.
A letter from his feminine sweetness, advising him to hurry up if he
wished her not to marry his rival, so flustrated an Edenburg druggist
that he imbibed a full tumbler of Jersey lightning. An irresistible
longing to lie down seized him and he stretched himself for a nap on a
lounge in a room back of the store. John Kiley discovered the sleeping
beauty, spread a sheet over him and prepared for a little sport. He let
down the blinds, hung a piece of crape on the door and rushed out to
announce that “Jim” was dead. People flocked to learn the particulars.
Entering the drug-store a placard met their gaze: “Walk lightly, not to
disturb the corpse!” They were next taken to the door of the rear
apartment, to see a pair of boots protruding from beneath a sheet.
Nobody was permitted to touch the body, on a plea that it must await the
coroner, but the friends were invited to drink to the memory of the
deceased pill-dispenser and suggest the best time for his funeral. Thus
matters continued two hours, when the “corpse” wakened up, kicked off
the sheet and walked out! His friends at first refused to recognize him,
declaring the apparition was a ghost, but finally consented to renew the
acquaintance upon condition that he “set ’em up” for the thirsty
multitude.
A Clarion operator, having to spend Sunday in New York, strayed into a
fashionable church and was shown to a swell seat. Shortly after a
gentleman walked down the aisle, glared at the stranger, drew a pencil
from his pocket, wrote a moment and handed him a slip of paper
inscribed, “This is my pew.” The unabashed Clarionite didn’t bluff a
little bit. He wrote and handed back the paper: “It’s a darned nice pew.
How much rent do you ante up for it?” The New-Yorker saw the joke, sat
down quietly and when the service closed shook hands with the intruder
and asked him to dinner. The acquaintance begun so oddly ripened into a
poker-game next evening, at which the oilman won enough from the city
clubman to pay ten years’ pew-rent. At parting he remarked: “Who’s in
the wrong pew now?” Then he whistled softly: “Let me off at Buffalo!”
Clarion’s products were not confined to prize pumpkins, mammoth corn and
oil-wells. The staunch county supplied the tallest member of the
National Guard, in the person of Thomas Near, twenty-one years old, six
feet eleven in altitudinous measurement and about twice the thickness of
a fence-rail. The Clarion company was mustered in at Meadville. General
Latta’s look of astonishment as he surveyed the latitude and longitude
of the new recruit was exceedingly comical. He rushed to Governor
Hartranft and whispered, “Where in the name of Goliath did you pick up
that young Anak?” At the next annual review Near stood at the end of the
Clarion column. A staff-officer, noticing a man towering a foot above
his comrades, spurred his horse across the field and yelled: “Get down
off that stump, you blankety-blank son of a gun!” The tall boy did not
“get down” and the enraged officer did not discover how it was until
within a rod of the line. His chagrin rivaled that of Moses Primrose
with the shagreen spectacles. Poor Near, long in inches and short in
years, was not long for this world and died in youthful manhood.
[Illustration: JAMES M. GUFFEY.]
[Illustration: WESLEY S. GUFFEY.]
Hon. James M. Guffey, one of Pennsylvania’s most popular and successful
citizens, began his career as a producer in the Clarion district. Born
and reared on a Westmoreland farm, his business aptitude early
manifested itself. In youth he went south to fill a position under the
superintendent of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. The practical
training was put to good use by the earnest young Pennsylvanian. Its
opportunities for dash and energy to gain rich rewards attracted him to
the oil-region. Profiting by what he learned from the experiences of
others in Venango—a careful observer, he did not have to scorch himself
to find out that fire is hot—he located at St. Petersburg in 1872.
Clarion was budding into prominence as a prospective oil-field. Handling
well-machinery as agent of the Gibbs & Sterrett Manufacturing Company
brought him into close relations with operators and operations in the
new territory. He improved his advantages, leased lands, secured
interests in promising farms, drilled wells and soon stepped to the
front as a first-class producer. Fortune smiled upon the plucky
Westmorelander, whose tireless push and fearless courage cool judgment
and sound discretion tempered admirably. While always ready to accept
the risks incident to producing oil and developing untried sections, he
was not a reckless plunger, going ahead blindly and not counting the
cost. He decided promptly, moved forward resolutely and took nobody’s
dust. Those who endeavored to keep up with him had to “ride the horse of
Pacolet” and travel fast. He invested in pipe-lines and local
enterprises, helped every deserving cause, stood by his friends and his
convictions, believed in progress and acted strictly on the square. Not
one dollar of his splendid winnings came to him in a manner for which he
needs blush, or apologize or be ashamed to look any man on earth
straight in the face. He did not get his money at the expense of his
conscience, of his self-respect, of his generous instincts or of his
fellow-men. Of how many millionaires, in this age of shoddy and
chicanery, of jobbery and corruption, of low trickery and inordinate
desire for wealth, can this be said?
Mr. Guffey is an ardent Democrat, but sensible voters of all classes
wished him to represent them in Congress and gave him a superb send-off
in the oil-portion of the Clarion district. Unfortunately the fossils in
the back-townships prevented his nomination. The uncompromising foe of
ring-rule, boss-domination and machine-crookedness, he is a leader of
the best elements of his party and not a noisy ward-politician. His
voice is potent in Democratic councils and his name is familiar in every
corner of the producing-regions. His oil-operations have reached to
Butler, Forest, Warren, McKean and Allegheny counties. He furnished the
cash that unlocked the Kinzua pool and extended the Bradford field miles
up Foster Brook. In company with John Galey, Michael Murphy and Edward
Jennings, he drilled the renowned Matthews well and owned the juiciest
slice of the phenomenal McDonald field. He started developments in
Kansas, putting down scores of wells, erecting a refinery and giving the
state of Mary Ellen Lease a product drouths cannot blight nor
grasshoppers devour. He was largely instrumental in developing the
natural-gas fields of Western Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana, heading
the companies that piped it into Pittsburg, Johnstown, Wheeling,
Indianapolis and hundreds of small towns. He owns thousands of acres of
the famous gas-coal lands of his native county, vast coal-tracts in West
Virginia and valuable reality in Pittsburg. He lives in a handsome house
at East Liberty, brightened by a devoted wife and four children, and
dispenses a bountiful hospitality. Quick to mature and execute his
plans, he dispatches business with great celerity, keeping in touch
constantly with the details of his manifold enterprises. He is the soul
of honor in his dealings, liberal in his benefactions and always
approachable. His charm of manner, kindness of heart, keen intuition and
rare geniality draw men to him and inspire their confidence and regard.
He is a striking personality, his lithe frame, alert movements, flowing
hair, luxuriant mustache, rolling collar, streaming tie, frock-coat and
broad-brimmed hat suggesting General Custer. When at last the vital
fires burn low, when his brave heart beats weak and slow, when the
evening shadows lengthen and he enters the deepening dusk at the ending
of many happy years, James M. Guffey will have lived a life worth living
for its worth to himself, to his family, to the community and to the
race.
“The grass is softer to his tread
For rest it yields unnumber’d feet;
Sweeter to him the wild rose red
Because it makes the whole world sweet.”
Wesley S. Guffey, for many years a prominent operator, resembles his
brother in enterprise, activity and the manly qualities that win
respect. He owns scores of productive wells, and the firm of Guffey &
Queen ranks high in the southern fields. He has labored zealously to
secure political reform and free Pittsburg, where he has his beautiful
home and office, from the odious thraldom of corrupt bossism. Unhappily
the last legislature defeated the efforts of good citizens in this
direction. Mr. Guffey is a fluent talker, knows lots of rich stories and
reckons his friends by whole battalions. Pride and meanness he despises
and “his word is his bond.” Another brother, John Guffey, has been
sheriff of Westmoreland county and is a leading citizen. The Guffeys are
men to trust implicitly, to tie to, to swear by and to bank upon at all
times and under all circumstances.
[Illustration: HENRY WETTER.]
Major Henry Wetter, the embodiment of honor and energy, was the largest
operator in the Clarion district until swamped by the low price of oil.
Death overtook him while struggling against heavy odds to recuperate his
health and fortune. How sad it is that the flower must die before the
fruit can bloom. A terrible decline in oil-values caused his failure in
1877 and compelled Merrick & Conley’s Edenburg bank to close.
“I falter where I firmly trod.”
Edenburg, in its prime the liveliest inland town the Clarion district
could boast, is in Beaver township, ten miles from Foxburg and Emlenton.
It was named by. J. G. Mendenhall, who located on a big farm and opened
the Eden Inn fifty years ago. Two farms, one two miles north and the
other a mile south-west of his home-farm, he dubbed Jerusalem and Egypt
respectively. Mendenhall lived to see all three tracts productive
oil-territory, with a busy town occupying part of the central tract. J.
I. Best, who died in 1880, was his early neighbor and P. F. Kribbs
started a country-store opposite the Mendenhall homestead. In the spring
of 1872 Balliet & Co. drilled a duster on the Best farm. Hahn & Co. had
similar ill-luck on the Kiser farm, a mile south, following in the wake
of W. J. Brundred’s dry-hole on the Eischelman tract a month previous.
The St. Lawrence strike changed the aspect of affairs and brought the
territory into notice. Wooden buildings were hurried up, wells were
rushed through the sand, crowds thronged the streets and Edenburg became
the centre of attraction. Page Maplestone had the first hotel, to which
Robert Orr quickly succeeded. The Winebrennerians had the first church,
chased closely by the Methodists. Two banks, countless stores and shops,
plenty of saloons, hundreds of houses and hosts of operators were soon
in evidence. Knox, Elk City, Slam Bang, Wentling, Jefferson, Beaver and
other suburban oil-towns put in an appearance. Ross Haney, D. J.
Wyncoop, Charles Lavens, A. J. Urquhart, Gray Brothers, G. M. Cushing,
Clark Hayes, B. F. Painter, J. D. Wolff, G. W. Moltz, Joseph E. Zuver,
James Travis, M. E. Hess, Charles Shaw and dozens of others were
familiar figures. J. M. Gifford launched the _Herald_, J. Edd Leslie
exploited the _Spirit_, Campbell Brothers loaded the _Oil-Times_ and Tom
Whittaker fired off the malodorous _Gattling Gun_. Col. J. S. Brown
dealt in real-estate and wrote breezily for the Oil-City _Derrick_. Sam
Magee, M. M. Meredith and William Wirt Johnson practised law. Major J.
B. Maitland managed the United Pipe-Lines and Goss Brothers owned the
best well in the diggings. Narrow-gauge railroads were built from
Emlenton and Foxburg, a borough charter was obtained and 1877 saw the
town at its highest point. Severe fires scourged it frightfully, the
Butler field lured many of the operators and Edenburg relapsed into a
tidy village.
Thomas McConnell, Smith K. Campbell, W. D. Robinson and Col. J. B.
Finlay, of Kittanning, in 1860 purchased two acres of land on the west
bank of the Allegheny, ninety rods above Tom’s Run, from Elisha
Robinson. Organizing the Foxburg Oil-Company of sixteen shares, they
drilled a well four-hundred-and-sixty feet. An obstruction delayed work
a few days, the war broke out and the well was abandoned. The same
parties paid Robinson five-thousand dollars in 1865 for one-hundred
acres and sold thirty to Philadelphia capitalists. The latter formed the
Clarion and Allegheny-River Oil-Company and sunk a well which struck oil
on October tenth, the first produced in the upper end of Armstrong
county and the beginning of the Parker development. Venango was drooping
and operators sought the southern trail. The Robinson farm was not
perforated as quickly as “you could say Jack Robinson,” the owners
choosing not to cut it into small leases, but other tracts were seized
eagerly. Drilled deeper, the original Robinson well was utterly dry! Had
it been finished in 1860-1 the territory might have been condemned and
the Parker field never heard of!
John Galey’s hundred-barrel well, drilled in 1869 on the island above
Parker, relieved the monotony of commonplace strikes—twenty to fifty
barrels—on the Robinson and adjacent farms and elevated the district to
the top rung of the ladder. Parker’s Landing—a ferry and a dozen
houses—named from a pioneer settler, ambled merrily to the head of the
procession. The center of operations that stretched into Butler county
and demonstrated the existence of three greasy streaks, Parker speedily
became a red-hot town of three-thousand inhabitants. Hotels, stores,
offices, banks and houses crowded the strip of land at the base of the
steep cliff, surged over the hill, absorbed the suburbs of Lawrenceburg
and Farrentown and proudly wore the title of “Parker City.” Hosts of
capital fellows made life a perpetual whirl of business and jollity.
Operators of every class and condition, men of eminent ability,
indomitable hustlers, speculators, gamblers and adventurers thronged the
streets. It was the vim and spice and vigor of Oil City, Rouseville,
Petroleum Centre and Pithole done up in a single package. A hundred of
the liveliest laddies that ever capered about a “bull-ring” traded jokes
and stories and oil-certificates at the Oil-Exchange. Two fires
obliterated nine-tenths of the town, which was never wholly rebuilt.
Developments tended southward for years and the sun of Parker set
finally when Bradford’s rose in the northern sky. The bridge and a few
buildings have held on, but the banks have wound up their accounts, the
multitudes have dispersed, the residence-section of the cliff is a waste
and the glory of Parker a tradition. As the ghost of Hamlet’s father
observed concerning the bicycle academy, where beginners on wheels were
plentiful: “What a falling off was there!”
Galey leased lands, sunk wells and sold to Phillips Brothers for a
million dollars. He played a strong hand in Butler and Allegheny and
removed to Pittsburg, his present headquarters. He possessed nerve,
energy and endurance and, like the country-boy applying for a job, “wuz
jam’d full ov day’s work.” He would lend a hand to tube his wells, lay
pipes, move a boiler or twist the tools. There wasn’t a lazy bone in his
anatomy. Rain, mud, storm or darkness had no terrors for the bold rider,
who bestrode a raw-boned horse and “took Time by the forelock.” A young
lady from New York, whose father was interested with Galey in a tract of
oil-land, accompanied him on one of his visits to Millerstown. She had
heard a great deal about her father’s partner and the producers, whom
she imagined to be clothed in broadcloth and diamonds. When the stage
from Brady drew up at the Central Hotel a gorgeous chap was standing on
the platform. He sported a stunning suit, a huge gold-chain, a
diamond-pin and polished boots, the whole outfit got up regardless of
expense. “Oh, papa, I see a producer! That must be Mr. Galey,” exclaimed
the girl as this prototype of the dude met her gaze. The father glanced
at the object, recognized him as a neighboring bar-tender and spoiled
his daughter’s fanciful notion by the curt rejoinder: “That blamed fool
is a gin-slinger!” Butler had long been a sort of by-word for poverty
and meanness, the settlers going by the nickname of “Buckwheats.” This
was an unjust imputation, as the simple people were kind, honest and
industrious, in these respects presenting a decided contrast to some of
the new elements in the wake of the petroleum-development. The New-York
visitor drove out in the afternoon to meet his business-associate. A
mile below the Diviner farm a man on horseback was seen approaching. Mud
covered the panting steed and his rider. The young lady, anxious to show
how much she knew about the country, hazarded another guess. “Oh! papa,”
she said earnestly, “I’m sure that’s a Buckwheat!” The father chuckled,
next moment greeted the rider warmly and introduced him to his
astonished daughter as “My partner, Mr. Galey!” A hearty laugh followed
the father’s version of the day’s incidents.
[Illustration: JOHN H. GALEY.]
[Illustration: JAMES M. LAMBING.]
John H. Galey has been engaged in oil-operations for a generation.
Coming from Clarion county to Oil Creek in the sixties, he participated
in the Pithole excitement, drilled a test-well that broadened the
Pleasantville field and started the Parker furore with his
island-strike. He is every inch a petroleum-pioneer. To him belongs the
honor of ushering in various new districts in Pennsylvania and the
oil-developments in Kansas and Texas. Well-earned success has rewarded
his persistent, indomitable energy. He owns a fat slice of the finest
silver-mine in Idaho and holds a large stake in California, Colorado and
Nova-Scotia gold-mines. Mr. Galey is thoroughly practical and
companionable, has traveled much and observed closely, nor can any excel
him in narrating reminiscences and experiences of life in the
oil-regions.
John McKeown drilled on the Farren hill and the slopes bordering the
north bank of Bear Creek. Glory Hole popped up on B. B. Campbell’s
Bear-Creek farm. Campbell-bluff, whole-souled “Ben”—is a Pittsburg
capitalist, big in body and mind, outspoken and independent. “The
Campbells are coming” could not have found a better herald. He produced
largely, bought stacks of farms, refined and piped oil and was an
important factor in the Armstrong-Butler development. At the Ursa Major
well, the first on the farm, large casing and heavy tools were first
used, with gratifying results. “Charley” Cramer juggled the temper-screw
and laughed at the chaps who solemnly predicted the joints would not
stand the strain and the engine would not jerk the tools out of the
hole. The tool-dresser on Cramer’s “tower”—drilling went on night and
day, each “tower” lasting twelve hours and the men changing at noon and
midnight—was A. M. Lambing, now the learned and zealous parish-priest at
Braddock. The well, completed in June of 1871 and good for a hundred
barrels, was owned by James M. Lambing, to whom more than any other man
the world is indebted for the extension of the Butler field.
Born in Armstrong county, in 1861 young Lambing concluded to invest some
time and labor—his sole capital—in a well at the mouth of Tubb’s Run,
two miles above Tionesta. A dry-hole was the poor reward of his efforts.
Enlisting in the Eighty-third Regiment, he received disabling injuries,
was discharged honorably, returned to Forest county in 1863,
superintended the Denver Petroleum-Company, dealt in real estate and in
1866 commenced operating at Tidioute. A vein of bad luck in 1867
exhausting his last dollar, he sold his gold-watch and chain to pay the
wages of his drillers. Facing the future bravely, he worked by the day,
contracted to bore wells at Pleasantville, Church Run, Shamburg and Red
Hot and bore up cheerfully during three years of adversity. In the
winter of 1869 he traded an engine for an interest in a well at Parker
that smelled of oil. For another interest he drilled the Wilt & Crawford
well and secured leases on Tom’s Run. His Pharos, Gipsy Queen and Lady
Mary wells enabled him to strike out boldly. In company with his
brother—John A. Lambing—C. D. Angell and B. B. Campbell, he ventured
beyond the prescribed limits to the Campbell, Morrison and Gibson farms.
He “wildcatted” farther south, at times with varying success, pointing
the way to Modoc and Millerstown. Reverses beset him temporarily, but
hope and courage and integrity remained and he recovered the lost
ground. Charitable, enterprising and sincere, no truer, squarer, manlier
man than James M. Lambing ever marched in the grand cavalcade of
Pennsylvania oil-producers. He and John A. retired from the business
years ago to engage in other pursuits. James M. settled at Corry and
served so capably as mayor that the citizens wanted to elect him for
life. His noble, womanly wife, a real helpmeet always, made his
hospitable home an earthly paradise. He had an office in Pittsburg and
customers for his Ajax machinery wherever oil is produced. He died in
January, 1897. “Who can blot his name with any just reproach?”
Counselled by “spirits,” Abram James selected a block of land on Blyson
Run, twenty miles up the Clarion River, as the location of a rich
petroleum-field. His luck at Pleasantville induced numbers to believe
him an infallible oil-smeller. The test-well that was to deluge Blyson
with crude was bored eighteen-hundred feet. It had no sand or oil and
the tools were stuck in the hole! The “spirits” couldn’t have missed the
mark more widely if they had directed James to mine for gold in a
snow-bank.
The Big-Injun well at Bullion, owned originally by Prentice, Wheeler &
Crawford, was located in the center of a wheat-patch by William R.
Crawford, of Franklin, a member of the firm. His opinion carried against
the choice of his partners, who preferred a spot fifteen rods eastward,
where a well drilled later was “dry as a powder-horn.” The direction
“Smiley’s Frog” might happen to jump was less uncertain than the outcome
of many a Bullion well before the tools pierced the sand to the last
foot and settled the matter positively.
On October third, 1875, the boiler at the Goss well, J. I. Best farm,
exploded, fatally injuring Alonzo Goss and instantly killing A. Wilson,
the man in charge.
The first pipe-line in Clarion County was laid in 1871, by Martin &
Harms, on lands of the Fox estate. In October of 1877 the Rev. Dr.
Newman, President Grant’s pastor in Washington, dedicated the second
church the Methodists built at Edenburg. Fire cremated the structure and
seriously damaged the third one on the site in 1879. Probably no other
town of its size on the face of the earth has suffered so repeatedly and
disastrously at the hands of incendiaries as Edenburg. The third great
conflagration, on October thirteenth, 1878, destroyed two-hundred
buildings and thirteen oil-wells.
Sad accidents happened before drillers learned how to manage a flowing
oil-well with casing in it. At Frank Fertig’s well, Antwerp, a man was
burned to death. The burning of the Shoup & Vensel well at Turkey City
cost three lives and led to an indignation-meeting at St. Petersburg to
protest against casing. Danger from its use was soon removed by Victor
Gretter’s invention of the oil-saver. Gretter, a small, dark-haired,
dark-eyed man, lived at St. Petersburg. He was an inventive genius and a
joker of the first water. His oil-saver doubtless saved many lives, by
preventing gas and oil from escaping when a vein was tapped and coming
in contact with the tool-dresser’s fire in the derrick.
Captain John Kissinger, a pioneer settler, died in 1880 at the age of
eighty-five. He was the father of thirty-four children, nine of whom
perished by his dwelling taking fire during the absence of the parents
from home. His second wife, who survived him ten years, weighed
three-hundred pounds.
Lillian Edgarton, the plump and talented platform-speaker, was billed to
appear at Franklin. She traveled from Pittsburg by rail. A Parker broker
was a passenger on the train and wired to the oil-exchange that Josie
Mansfield was on board. The news flew and five-hundred men stood on the
platform when the train arrived. The broker jumped off and said the lady
had a seat near the center of the coach he had just left. The boys
climbed on the car-platform, opened the door and marched in single file
along the aisle to get a look at “Josie.” The conductor tore his hair in
anguish that the train would not carry such a crowd as struggled to get
on, but he was dumbfounded when the long procession began to get off.
The sell was not discovered until next morning, by which time the author
of the joke had started on his summer-vacation and could not be reached
by the vigilance-committee.
Down the zig-zagged stream proved to not a few operators a pleasant
voyage to wealth and to others the direct road to disaster. Venango,
Clarion and Armstrong counties had been explored, with Butler on deck to
surprise mankind by the extent and richness of its amazing territory.
WHERE IGNORANCE IS BLISS.
The first building at Triangle bore in bold letters and bad spelling a
sign labeled “Tryangle Hotel.”
“A Black Justice of the Peace” ran the off-color legend, painted by an
artist not up in punctuation, on the weather-beaten sign of ’Squire
Black, at Shippenville.
An honest Dutchman near Turkey City declined to lease his farm at
one-fourth royalty, insisting upon _one-eighth_ as the very lowest he
would accept. He did not discover that one-eighth was not twice
one-fourth until he received his first instalment of oil, when he fired
off the simple expletive, “Kreutzmillionendonnerwetter!”
A farmer rather shy on grammar, who represented Butler county in the
Legislature at the outset of developments around Petrolia, “brought down
the house” and a unanimous appropriation by his maiden-speech: “Feller
citizens, if we’uns up to Butler county wuz yu’uns down to Harrisburg
we’uns would give yu’uns what we’uns is after!”
At Oil City in 1863-4 J. B. Allen, of Michigan, a first-class chemist,
had charge of the prescription-department in Dr. Colbert and Dr.
Egbert’s drug-store. He could read Greek as readily as English, declaim
in Latin by the hour, quote from any of the classics and speak three or
four modern languages. To raise money to pay off a mortgage on his
father’s farm he walked across the Allegheny on a wire thirty feet above
the water. He carried a large flag, attached to a frame mounted on a
pulley-wheel, which he shoved with one hand, holding a balance-pole in
the other. It was a feat Blondin could not excel. Allen was decidedly
eccentric and the hero of unnumbered stories. Once a mud-bespattered
horseman rushed into the store with a prescription that called for a
deadly poison. The horseman was informed it was not safe to fill it, but
he insisted upon having it, saying it bore a prominent doctor’s
signature and there could be no mistake. Allen filled it and wrote on
the label: “Caution—If any damphool takes this prescription it will kill
him as dead as the devil!”
General Reed, of Erie, the largest vessel-owner on the lakes,
represented his district in Congress and desired a second term. The
Democrats nominated Judge Thompson and Clarion county was the pivot upon
which the election turned. The contest waxed furious. Near its close the
two candidates brought up at a big meeting in the wilds of Clarion to
debate. Lumbermen and furnacemen were out in force. Reed led off and on
the homestretch told the people how he loved them and their county. He
had built the fastest craft on the lakes and named the vessel Clarion.
As the craft sailed from Buffalo to Erie, and from Cleveland to Detroit,
and from Saginaw to Mackinaw, to Oconomowoc and Manitowoc, Oshkosh,
Milwaukee and Chicago, in every port she folded her white wings and told
of the county that honored him with a seat in Congress. The people were
untutored in nautical affairs and listened with rapt attention. As the
General closed his speech the enthusiasm was unbounded. Things looked
blue for Judge Thompson. After a few moments required to get the
audience out of the seventh heaven of rapture, he stepped to the front
of the platform, leaned over it, motioned to the crowd to come up close
and said: “Citizens of Clarion, what General Reed has told you is true.
He has built a brig and a grand one. But where do you suppose he painted
the proud name of Clarion?” Turning to General Reed, he said: “Stand up
here, sir, and tell these honest people where you had the painter put
the name of Clarion. You never thought the truth would reach back here.
I shall tell these people the truth and I challenge you to deny one word
of it. Yes, fellow-citizens, he painted the proud name of Clarion under
the stern of the brig—under her stern, gentlemen!” The indignation of
the people found vent in groans and curses. General Reed sat stunned and
speechless. No excuses would be accepted and the vote of proud Clarion
made Judge Thompson a Congressman.
[Illustration: HASCAL L. TAYLOR.]
[Illustration: MARCUS BROWNSON.]
[Illustration: JOHN SATTERFIELD.]
[Illustration]
PARKER—FROM PROSPECT ROCK
ARGYLE CITY-1872.
KARNS CITY-1873
GREECE CITY 1873
MILLERSTOWN 1874
PETROLIA 1873
XIII.
ON THE SOUTHERN TRAIL.
BUTLER’S RICH PASTURES UNFOLD THEIR OLEAGINOUS TREASURES—THE CROSS-BELT
DEALS TRUMPS—PETROLIA, KARNS CITY AND MILLERSTOWN—THORN CREEK KNOCKS
THE PERSIMMONS FOR A TIME—MCDONALD MAMMOTHS BREAK ALL
RECORDS—INVASION OF WASHINGTON—GREEN COUNTY HAS SOME
SURPRISES—GLEANINGS OF MORE OR LESS INTEREST.
----------
“I’m comin’ from de Souf, Susanna, do’ant yo cry.”—_Negro Melody._
“Again the lurid light gleamed out.”—_J. Boyle O’Reilly._
“I have never been known to miss one end of the trail.”—_J. Fennimore
Cooper._
“An eagle does not catch flies.”—_Latin Proverb._
“Step by step one goes very far.”—_French Proverb._
“The light fell like a halo upon their bent heads.”—_Rev. John Watson._
“Either I will find a way or make one.”—_Norman Crest._
“I stretch lame hands of faith and grope.”—_Tennyson._
“We but catch at the skirts of the thing we would be.”—_Owen Meredith._
“Where are frost and snow when the hawthorn blooms?”—_Julius Stinde._
“The things we see are shadows of the things to be.”—_Phœbe Cary._
“Oh! but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp.”—_Robert Browning._
“These little things are great to little man.”—_Oliver Goldsmith._
“So will a greater fame redound to thee.”—_Dante._
“Every white will have its black and every sweet its sour.”—_Dr. Percy._
----------
[Illustration: DAVID DOUGALL.]
Klondyke nuggets, cold, yellow and glittering, could not be more
fascinating to lovers of the most exciting methods of gaining wealth
than were the oil-wells that started Parker on the highway to
prosperity. All eyes turned instinctively southward, believing the next
center of activity lay in that direction. The Israelites scanning the
horizon for a glimpse of the promised land were less earnest and
anxious. Butler, not Canaan, was on everybody’s lips. “On to Richmond,”
the frenzied cry during the civil war, appeared in the new dress of “On
to Butler!” For a time, just to catch breath for the supreme movement,
operators groped their way cautiously. But Napoleon scaled the Alps and
the advance-couriers of the coming host of oilmen climbed Farren Hill
and the slopes beyond. Julius Cæsar crossed the Rubicon in days of old,
so Campbell and Lambing in 1871 crossed Bear Creek, three miles
south-west of Parker, to plant the tall derricks which signified that
the invasion of Butler by the petroleumites was about to begin and to be
carried through to a finish. With Richard each of the bold invaders
might declare:
“I have set my life upon a cast,
And I will stand the hazard of the die.”
Butler, the county-seat of Butler county, was laid out in 1802 by the
Cunninghams, two brothers from Lancaster, who repose in the old
cemetery. The surveyor was David Dougall, who lived seventy-five years
alone, in a shanty near the court-house, dying at ninety-eight. He owned
a row of tumble-down frames on the public-square, eye-sores to the
community, but would not sell lest his poor tenants might suffer by a
change of proprietors! His memory of local events was marvelous. He
walked from Detroit through the forest to Butler, following an Indian
trail, and remembered when Pittsburg had only three brick-buildings. He
was agent of the McCandless family and once consented to spend a night
at the mansion of his friends in Pittsburg. To do honor to the occasion
he wore trousers made of striped bed-ticking. Fearing fire, he would not
sleep up-stairs and a bed was provided in the parlor. About midnight an
alarm sounded. Dougall jumped up, grabbed his shoes and hat and walked
home-thirty-three miles-before breakfast. He was an eccentric bachelor
and had his coffin ready for years. It was constructed of oak, grown on
one of his farms, which he willed to a friend upon condition that the
legatee buried him at the foot of a particular tree and kept a
night-watchman at his grave one year. He was the last of his race and
the last survivor of the bold pioneers to whom Butler owed its
settlement.
[Illustration: BUTLER COUNTY]
Well-known operators figured in the vicinity of Bear Creek. Joseph Overy
drilled rows of good wells, pushed south and founded the town embalmed
as St. Joe in compliment to its progenitor. Marcus Brownson—he was
active in Venango and McKean and died at Titusville—had a walkover on
the Walker farm, a mile in advance. On Donnelly’s eleven-hundred acres,
offered in 1868 for six-thousand-dollars, scores of medium wells yielded
from 1871 to 1878. S. D. Karns drained the Morrison farm and John
McKeown hit the “sucker-rod belt”—so called from its extreme
narrowness—near Martinsburg. Ralph Brothers tickled the sand on the
Sheakley farm. Up the stream operations jogged and Argyle City sprouted
on the hillside. Two miles ahead, upon the line dividing the Jameson and
Blaney farms, Dimick, Nesbit & Co. finished a wildcat well on April
seventeenth, 1892. This was the noted Fanny Jane—gallantly named in
honor of a pretty girl—which pumped one-hundred barrels and gave birth
to Petrolia, seven miles south by west of Parker. George H. Dimick,
examining lands in Fairview township, Butler county, decided that a
natural basin at the junction of South Bear Creek and Dougherty Run was
oil-territory. Fifty men were raising a barn on the Campbell farm,
overlooking this basin. Proceeding to the spot, he proposed to drill a
test well if the owners of the soil would lease enough land to warrant
the undertaking. Terms were agreed upon which secured twenty acres of
the Blaney farm, sixteen of the Jameson, ten of the W. A. Wilson, ten of
the James Wilson and ten of the Graham, at one-eighth royalty. The
nearest producing wells at that date were three miles north. The Fanny
Jane stirred the blood of the oil-clans. The moving mass began to-arrive
in May and by July two-thousand people had their home at Petrolia.
A charter was obtained and Mr. Dimick was chosen burgess at the first
borough-election, in February of 1873. The town expanded like the turnip
Longfellow said “grew and it grew and it grew all it was able.” Hotels,
stores, shops and offices lined the valley and dwellings crowned the
hills. A narrow-gauge railroad from Parker was built in 1874, extended
to Karns City and Millerstown and ultimately to Butler. Fisher Brothers
paid sixty-thousand dollars for the Blaney farm and wells multiplied in
all directions. A dog-fight or a street-scrap would gather hundreds of
spectators. The Argyle Savings Bank handled hundreds-of-thousands of
dollars daily. Ben Hogan erected a big opera-house and May Marshall was
the Cora Pearl of the frail sisterhood. R. W. Cram ran the post-office
and news-room. “Steve” Harley wafted newsy items to the newspapers. Dr.
Frank H. Johnston, now of Franklin, was the first physician. Kindred
spirits met at “Sam” McBride’s drug-store and Peter Christie’s Central
Hotel. Poor “Sam,” “Dave” Mosier, H. L. McCance and S. S. Avery are in
their graves and others have wandered nobody knows whither. Petrolia
continued the metropolis four years and then dropped out of the game.
Some straggling houses and left-over derricks alone remain of the
gayest, sprightliest, hottest, busiest town that bloomed and withered in
old Butler.
[Illustration:
RICHARD JENNINGS
GEO NESBIT S. D. KARNS.
GEORGE DIMICK
]
George H. Dimick, the son of a Wisconsin farmer and sire of Petrolia, is
liberally stocked with the never-say-die qualities of the breezy
Westerner. At nineteen he taught a Milwaukee school, landed on Oil Creek
in 1860 and was appointed superintendent of the two Buchanan farms by
Rouse & Mitchell. He drilled on his own account in the spring of 1861,
aided in settling the Rouse estate, enrolled as a private in “Scott’s
Nine-Hundred” and came out a captain at the close of the war. In May of
1865 he bent his footsteps towards Pithole, sold lands for the United
States Petroleum-Company and drilled eleven dry-holes on the McKinney
farm! Interests in the Poole, Grant, Eureka and Burchill spouters offset
these losses and added thousands of dollars a week to his wealth.
Staying at Pithole too long, values had shrunk to such a degree that he
was virtually penniless at his departure from the “Magic City” in 1867.
A whaling voyage of fifteen months in the Arctic seas and a sojourn at
his boyhood home improved his health and he returned in time to share in
the Pleasantville excitement. He located at Parker’s Landing in 1871 as
partner of McKinney & Nesbit in the sale of oil-well supplies. He
operated in the Parker field, at St. Petersburg, Petrolia, Greece City
and Slippery Rock. Disposing of his properties in these localities, he
and Captain Peter Grace drilled the wildcat-well that opened Cherry
Grove and paralyzed the market in 1882. He had been active at Bradford
and the middle field felt the influence of his shrewd movements. He has
kept abreast of developments in the southern districts, sometimes
getting several lengths ahead. He is now interested in West Virginia and
Kentucky. Those who know his quick perception, his executive ability and
his intense love for opening new fields would not wonder to hear of his
striking a gusher at Oshkosh or Kamtschatka. Mr. Dimick is a man of
active temperament, high character and sturdy industry, a genuine
pathfinder and tireless explorer.
An Erie boy of fifteen when he left his father’s house for the
oil-region in 1862, George H. Nesbit first fired a still in a Titusville
refinery and in 1863 engaged with Dinsmore Brothers at Tarr Farm. He
built a small refinery at Shaffer, sold it in 1864 and in the spring of
1865 drilled wells for himself on Benninghoff and Cherry-Tree Runs. He
spent two years at Pithole, gaining a fortune and remaining until the
collapse swallowed the bulk of his profits. He operated at Pioneer in
1867 and a year later at Pleasantville. He and George H. Dimick
prospected in 1869 for oil-belts and fresh territory, located rich
leases on Hickory Creek and established the line of the Venture well at
Fagundas. In 1870 Nesbit moved to Parker and, in company with John L.
McKinney, sold oil-well machinery and oil-lands. McKinney & Nesbit
drilled along Bear Creek, especially on the Black and Dutchess farms,
prospering greatly. The firm ranked with the most enterprising and
realized large returns from wells at St. Petersburg and Parker. Dimick &
Nesbit, with Mr. McKinney as their associate, opened the Petrolia field
in 1872. William Lardin, the contractor of the Fanny Jane, bought
McKinney’s interest in the well and leases. The three partners were
right in the swim, their first six wells at Petrolia yielding them a
thousand barrels a day. Nesbit bought the Patton farm, below town, in
1872 for twenty-thousand dollars, selling five-eighths. Five third-sand
wells ranged from thirty to one-hundred barrels and oil ruled at three
to five dollars. The fourth-sand was found in 1873, and in January of
1874 Nesbit & Lardin struck a thousand-barrel gusher on the Patton. The
farm paid enormously and Nesbit became an “oil-prince.” He developed
hundreds of acres and displayed masterly tact. His check was good for a
half-million any day and his luck was so remarkable that, had he fallen
into the river, probably he would not have been wet. He paid the highest
wages and met his bills at sight. He entered the oil-exchange at Parker,
for a time was a high-roller and ended a bankrupt! The desk on which he
wrote his bold, round signature on checks aggregating many
hundred-thousand dollars was stored away among shocks of corn and
sheaves of oats in the weather-stained barn on the Patton farm. J. N.
Ireland bought the tract for seven-thousand dollars. Nesbit drifted
about aimlessly, heard from occasionally at Macksburg and fetching up at
last in Cincinnati. His prestige was gone, his star had waned and he
never “caught on” again. He was no sluggard in business, no dullard in
society, no niggard with money, no laggard in the petroleum-column.
Surely the oil-region has furnished its full allotment of sad romances
from real life. Nesbit died July eighth, 1897.
“Time, with a face like a mystery,
And hands as busy as hands can be,
Sits at the loom with its warp outspread,
To catch in its meshes each glancing thread.
Click, click! there’s a thread of love wove in!
Click, click! and another of wrong and sin!
What a checkered thing this web will be
When we see it unrolled in eternity!”
James E. Brown, to whom Nesbit sold one-quarter of the Patton farm, made
his mark upon the industries of the state. A carpenter’s son, he started
a store on the site of Kittanning, saved money, purchased lands and at
his death in 1880 left his family four-millions. He manufactured iron at
various furnaces and owned a big block of stock in the rolling-mills at
East Brady. Samuel J. Tilden was a stockholder in the works, which
employed sixteen hundred men, turned out the first T-rails west of the
Alleghenies and tottered to their fall in 1874. Mr. Brown cleared
eight-hundred-thousand dollars in 1872 by the advance in iron. He owned
oil-farms in Butler county, took stock in the Parker Bridge, the Parker
& Karns City Railroad and the Karns Pipe-Line Company and conducted a
bank at Kittanning. His granddaughter, Miss Findley, who inherited half
his wealth, married Lord Linton, a British baronet. The aged banker—he
stuck it out to eighty-two—knew how to pile up money.
Stephen Duncan Karns, who had a railroad and a town named in his honor,
was a picturesque figure in the Armstrong-Butler district. With his two
uncles he operated the first West-Virginia well, at the mouth of
Burning-Spring Run, in 1860. His experience at his father’s Tarentum
salt-wells enabled him to run engine, to sharpen tools and clean out an
old salt-well to be tested for oil. The well pumped forty barrels a day
during the winter of 1860-1. Fort Sumter was bombarded, several Kanawha
operators were killed and young Karns escaped by night in a canoe. He
enlisted, served three years, led his company at Antietam and
Chancellorsville and in 1866 leased one acre at Parker’s Landing from
Fullerton Parker. His first well, starting at one barrel a day, by
months of pumping was increased to twelve barrels and earned him
twenty-thousand dollars. From the Miles Oil-Company of New York he
leased a farm and an abandoned well a mile below Parker. He drilled the
well through the sand and it produced twenty-five barrels a day. This
settled the question of oil south of Parker. “Dunc,” as he was usually
called by his friends, leased the Farren farm, drilled on Bear Creek,
secured the famous Stonehouse farm of three-hundred acres and in 1872
enjoyed an income of five-thousand dollars a day! A mile south of
Petrolia, on the McClymonds farm, Cooper Brothers were about to give up
their first well as a hopeless duster. Karns thought the hole not deep
enough, bought the property, resumed drilling and in two days the well
was flowing one-hundred barrels! The town of Karns City blossomed into a
community of twenty-five-hundred people, with three big hotels, stores,
offices and dwellings galore. It fell a prey to the flames eventually.
The McClymonds, Riddle and J. B. Campbell farms doubled “Dunc’s” big
income for many moons. He had the second well at Greece City and for a
year or more was the largest producer in the oil-region. He built a
pipe-line from Karns City to Harrisburg to fight the United Lines, held
fifty-five-thousand dollars’ stock in the Parker Bridge and controlled
the Parker & Karns-City Railroad and the Exchange Bank.
Near Freeport, on the Allegheny River, thirty miles above Pittsburg, he
lassoed a great farm and erected a fifty-thousand-dollar mansion.
Fourteen race-horses fed in his palatial stables. Guests might bathe in
champagne and the generous host spent money royally. A good strike or a
point gained meant a general jollification. He played billiards
skillfully, handled cards expertly and wagered heavily on anything that
hit his fancy. He and his wife were in Paris during the siege. Upon his
return from Europe he built the Fredericksburg & Orange Railroad, in
Virginia. The glut of crude from Butler wells dropped the price in 1874
to forty cents. Losses of different kinds cramped Karns and the man
worth three-millions in 1872-3 was obliged to surrender his stocks and
lands and wells and begin anew! James E. Brown secured Glen-Karns, the
beautiful home below Freeport. In 1880 Karns induced E. O. Emerson, the
wealthy Titusville producer, to start a cattle-ranch in Western
Colorado. For six years he superintended the herds on the immense
plains, joining the round-ups, sleeping on the ground with the boys,
roping and branding cattle and accumulating a stock of health and muscle
which he thinks will carry him to the hundred-year mark. Emerson had
bought from Karns the Riddle farm for eleven-thousand dollars. He
deepened one well—supposed dry—to the fourth sand. It flowed six-hundred
barrels and Emerson sold the tract in sixty days for ninety-thousand
dollars. Karns returned from the west, practiced law a short while in
Philadelphia and for some years has managed a Populist paper at
Pittsburg. He ran against John Dalzell for Congress and walked at the
head of the parade when General Coxey’s “Army of the Commonweal” marched
through the Smoky City. He enjoyed making money more than handling it,
was honorable in his dealings, intensely active, comprehensive in his
views and positive in his opinions. His “yes” or “no” was given
promptly. “Dunc” is of slender build and nervous temperament, easy in
his manners, frank in his utterances and not scared by spooks in
politics or trade. He had his share of light and shade, struggle and
triumph, defeat and victory, incident and adventure in his pilgrimage.
“How chances mock,
And changes fill the cup of alteration
With divers liquors!”
Richard Jennings, over whose head the grass and flowers are growing, and
his brother-in-law, the late Jacob L. Meldren, did much to develop the
territory east of Petrolia. Coming from England to Armstrong county a
half-century ago, they located at what is now Queenstown. Meldren bought
the farm at the head of Armstrong Run on which the noted Armstrong well
was struck in 1870. It opened “the Cross-Belt,” an abnormal strip
running nearly at right angles to the main lines and remarkable for
mammoth gushers. This unprecedented “belt” upset the theories of
geologists and operators. The first and only one of its kind, it
resembled the mule that “had no pride of ancestry and no hope of
posterity.” Mr. Jennings drilled on many farms and gathered a large
fortune. He was a man of character and ability, with a priceless
reputation for integrity and truthfulness. Once he sent his foreman,
Daniel Evans, to secure the Dougherty farm, on the southern edge of
Petrolia, owned by two maiden sisters. The foreman knocked at the door,
engaged board for a week, was engaged to the elder sister before the
week expired and had the pleasure of reaping a harvest of greenbacks
from the property in due course. It is satisfactory to find such
enterprise abundantly recompensed. Not so lucky was a gay and festive
operator with an ancient maiden who owned a tempting patch of land near
Millerstown. He exhausted every art to get a lease, in desperation
finally hinting at matrimony. The indignant lady exploded like a ton of
dynamite, seizing a broom and compelling the bold visitor to beat an
ungraceful retreat through the window, minus his hat and gloves! Evans
leased part of the farm to his former employer, who finished the
Dougherty spouter on November twenty-second, 1873. It flowed
twenty-seven-hundred barrels a day from the fourth sand, loading
Jennings with greenbacks and sending the speculative trade into
convulsions. A patriotic citizen, devoted parent and genuine
philanthropist, Richard Jennings was sincerely respected and his death
was deeply mourned. His sons inherited their father’s sagacity and manly
principle. They have operated in the McDonald field and are prominent in
banking and business at Pittsburg.
The “Cross-Belt” crossed the petroleum-horizon in dead earnest in March
of 1874. Taylor & Satterfield’s Boss well, on the James Parker farm, two
miles east of Petrolia, flowed three-thousand barrels a day! William
Hartley—General Harrison Allen defeated him for Auditor-General in
1872—organized the Stump Island Oil-Company and drilled from the mouth
of the Clarion River six miles south, in 1866-7. He and John Galey owned
the Island-King well at Parker’s Landing and a hundred others, some of
which crept well down into Armstrong county. Richard Jennings and Jacob
L. Meldren had punched holes on Armstrong Run and around Queenstown, but
the spouter in the Parker-farm ravine was the fellow that touched the
spot and hypnotized the trade. A solid stream of oil poured into the
tank as if butted through the pipe by a hundred hydraulic-rams. The
billowy mass of fluid heaved and foamed and boiled and tried its level
best to climb over the wooden walls and unload the roof. David S.
Criswell, of Oil City, had an interest in the gusher, and Criswell
City—a shop, a lunch-room and five or six dwellings—was imprinted on
Heydrick & Stevenson’s map. Stages between Petrolia and Brady halted at
the bantling town for the convenience of pilgrims to the shrine of the
Boss—a “boss” representing innumerable “bar’ls.” Wells were hurried down
at a spanking gait, to divy up the oily freshet. “The best-laid schemes
o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley” and the uncertainty of fourth-sand
wells was forcibly illustrated. Jennings had dry-holes on the Steele and
Bedford farms, the latter ten rods north-west of the mastodon. Taylor &
Satterfield’s No. 2, thirty rods west, was a small affair. Dusters and
light pumpers studded the road from Criswell to Petrolia, with the
Hazelwood Oil-Company’s two-hundred-barreler a trifle north to tantalize
believers in a straight “belt.” Lines and belts and theories and former
experiences amounted to little or nothing. The only safe method was to
“go it blind” and bear with exemplary resignation whatever might turn
up, be it a big gusher or a measly duster.
[Illustration: H. H. CUMMINGS. JAHU HUNTER.]
The Boss weakened to eleven-hundred barrels in July and to a humble
pumper by the end of the year. Forty rods east, on the Crawford farm,
Hunter & Cummings plucked a September pippin. Their Lady Hunter,
sixteen-hundred feet deep and flowing twenty-five-hundred barrels, was a
trophy to enrapture any hunter coming from the chase. The Boss and the
Lady Hunter were the lord and lady of the manor, none of the others
approaching them in importance. Hunter & Cummings laid a pipe-line to
East Brady, to load their oil on the Allegheny-Valley Railroad. The
railroad company refused to furnish cars, urging a variety of pretexts
to disguise the unfair discrimination. The owners of the oil had a
Roland for the Oliver of the officials. They quietly gauged their output
and let it run upon the ground, notifying the company to pay for the
oil. A new light dawned upon the railroaders, who discovered they had to
deal with men who knew their rights and dared maintain them. Crawling
off their high stool, they footed the bill, apologized meekly and
thenceforth took precious care Hunter & Cummings should not have reason
to complain of a car-famine. Simon Legree was not the only braggart whom
good men have been obliged to knock down to inspire with decent respect
for fair-play.
Hunter & Cummings stayed in the business, opening the “Pontius Pool,”
east of Millerstown, and sinking many wells at Herman Station, where
they acquired a snug production. They operated on the lands of the
Brady’s Bend Iron-company, putting down the wells on the hills opposite
East Brady and a number in the Bradford region. They owned the Tidioute
Savings Bank and large tracts in North Dakota—the scene of their
“bonanza farming”—and were interested with the Grandins in the great
lumber-mills at Grandin, Missouri, the largest in the south-west. In
connection with these mills they were building railroads to develop
their two-hundred-thousand acres of timber lands and establish
experimental farms. Both members of the firm were the architects of
their own fortunes, public-spirited, generous and eminently deserving of
the liberal measure of success that has attended their labors during the
twenty-three years of their association as partners.
Jahu Hunter was born on a farm two miles above Tidioute in 1830. From
seventeen to twenty-seven he lumbered and farmed, in 1857 engaged in
merchandising and in 1861 sold his store and embarked in oil. He
operated moderately five years, increasing his interests largely in
1866 and forming a partnership with H. H. Cummings in 1873, which
death ended. Mr. Hunter married Miss Margaret R. Magee in 1860 and one
son, L. L. Hunter, survives to aid in managing his extensive
business-enterprises. He occupied a delightful home at Tidioute, was
president of the Savings Bank and of the chair-factory, a Mason of the
thirty-second degree and a leader in all progressive movements. He had
lands in various states and was prospered in manifold undertakings. He
served as school-director fifteen years, contributing time and money
freely in behalf of education. He believed in bettering humanity, in
relieving distress, in befriending the poor, in helping the struggling
and in building up the community. Retired from active work, the
evening of Jahu Hunter’s useful life was serene and unclouded. As the
shadows lengthened he reviewed the past with calm content and awaited
the future without apprehension. He died last March.
Captain H. H. Cummings removed from Illinois, his birthplace in 1840, to
Ohio and was graduated from Oberlin College at twenty-two. Enlisting in
July, 1862, he shared the privations and achievements of the Army of the
Cumberland until mustered out in June, 1865. Three months later he
visited the oil-region and in January of 1866 located at Tidioute in
charge of Day & Co.’s refinery. Becoming a partner, he refined and
exported oil seven years and was interested in wells at Tidioute and
Fagundas. The firm dissolving in 1873, he joined hands with Jahu Hunter
and operated extensively in the lower country. Hunter & Cummings stood
in the front rank as representative producers. Captain Cummings is
president of the Missouri Mining and Lumbering Company, which has a
paid-up capital of five-hundred-thousand dollars and saws forty-million
feet of lumber a year. L. L. Hunter is secretary, E. B. Grandin is
treasurer and Hon. J. B. White, formerly a member of the Legislature
from Warren county, is general manager. As Commander of the Grand Army
of the Republic in Pennsylvania, Judge Darte succeeding him this year,
Captain Cummings is favorably known to veterans over the entire state.
He is a man of fine attainments, broad views and noble traits—a man who
sizes up to a high ideal, who can be trusted and whose friendship “does
not shrink in the wash.”
Taylor & Satterfield began operations in the lower fields in 1870,
secured much of the finest territory in Butler and became one of the
wealthiest firms in the oil-region. Harvesters rather than sowers, their
usual policy was to buy lands tested by one or more wells and avoid the
risk of wildcatting. In this way they acquired productive farms in every
part of the district, which yielded thousands of barrels a day when
fully developed. Their transactions footed up many millions yearly. They
established banks at Petrolia and Millerstown, employed an army of
drillers and pumpers and clerks and were always ready fora big purchase
that promised fat returns. In company with Vandergrift & Forman, John
Pitcairn and Fisher Brothers, they built the Fairview Pipe-Line from
Argyle to Brady, the nucleus of the magnificent National-Transit system
of oil-transportation. Captain J. J. Vandergrift, George V. Forman and
John Pitcairn were associated with them in their gigantic
producing-operations, which in 1879 extended to the Bradford field and
grew to such magnitude that the Union Oil-Company was formed in 1881,
with five-millions capital. The Union was almost uniformly successful,
owning big wells and paying big dividends. In 1883 it paid Forman a
million dollars for his separate holdings in Allegany county, up to that
date the largest individual sale in the region. All its properties were
sold to the Forest Oil-Company and the Union was dissolved, Taylor
retiring and Satterfield continuing to assist in the management some
months.
Hascal L. Taylor was first known in Oildom as a member of the firm of
Taylor & Day, Fredonia, N. Y., whose “buckboards” had a tremendous sale
in Venango, Clarion, Armstrong and Butler. He lived at Petrolia several
years, having charge of the office of Taylor & Satterfield and general
oversight of the Argyle Savings Bank. After his retirement from the
oil-business with an ample fortune he lived at Buffalo, speculated in
real-estate and purchased miles of Florida lands. He died last year, as
he was arranging to erect a fifteen-story office-block in Buffalo. Mr.
Taylor was of medium height and stout build, energetic, resourceful and
notable in the busy world of petroleum. His only son, Emory G., clerked
in the bank at Petrolia, engaged in manufacturing at Williamsport a year
or two and removed to Buffalo before his father’s death. He and his
sister inherited the estate.
John Satterfield, a man of heart and brain, imposing in stature, frank
in speech and square in his dealings, was a Mercer boy. He served four
years in a regiment organized at Greenville and opened a grocery at
Pithole in 1865, with James A. Waugh as partner. Selling the remnants of
the grocery in 1867, he superintended wells at Tarr Farm three years and
went to Parker in 1870. His work in the Butler field increased his
excellent reputation for honesty and enterprise. He married Miss Matilda
Martin, of Allentown, lived four years at Millerstown, removed to
Titusville and built an elegant house on Delaware avenue, Buffalo. When
the Union Oil-Company’s accounts were closed, the books balanced and the
assets transferred to the Forest he engaged in banking. He was
vice-president of the Third National Bank of Buffalo and president of
the Fidelity Trust Company, whose new bank-building is the boast of the
Bison City. George V. Forman and Thomas L. McFarland joined him in the
Fidelity. Mr. McFarland, formerly cashier of the bank at Petrolia and
secretary of the Union Company, is exceedingly affable, capable and
popular. Failing health induced Mr. Satterfield to go on a trip designed
to include France, the Mediterranean Sea and the warmer countries of the
east. With his brother-in-law, Dr. T. J. Martin, he reached Paris, took
seriously ill and died on April sixth, 1894, in his fifty-fourth year.
Besides his wife, who was on the ocean hastening to his bedside when the
end came, he left one son and one daughter. Dr. Martin cremated the
body, pursuant to the wish of the deceased, and brought the ashes home
for interment. Charitable and unostentatious, upright and active, all
men liked and trusted “Jack” Satterfield, whom old friends miss sadly
and remember tenderly.
The sinless land some of his friends have enter’d long ago,
Some others stay a little while to struggle here below;
But, be the conflict short or long, life’s battle will be won
And lovingly he’ll welcome us when earthly toil is done.
Nor will our joy be less sincere—we’ll slap him on the back,
Clasp his brave hand and warmly say: “We’re glad to see you, Jack!”
[Illustration: W. J. YOUNG.]
The Forest Oil-Company, into which the Union was merged, reckons its
capital by millions, numbers its wells by thousands and is at the head
of producing companies. Its operations cover five states. The company
has hundreds of wells and farms in Pennsylvania, operates extensively in
Ohio, is developing large interests in Kansas and seems certain to place
Kentucky and Tennessee high up in the petroleum-galaxy. From its
inception as a Limited Company the management has been progressive and
efficient. To meet the increasing demands of new sections the original
company was closed out and the present one incorporated, with Captain
Vandergrift as president and W. J. Young as vice-president and general
manager. Mr. Young, who was also elected treasurer in 1890, was
peculiarly fitted for his responsible duties by long experience and
executive ability. Born and educated in Pittsburg, he entered the employ
of a leather-merchant in 1856, spent six years in the establishment and
in 1862 went to Oil City to take charge of the forwarding and storage
business of John and William Hanna. The Hannas owned the steamboat
Allegheny Belle No. 4 and Hanna’s wharf, the site of the
National-Transit machine-shops in the Third Ward. Captain John Hanna
dying, John Burgess & Co. bought the firm’s storage interests and
admitted Young as a partner. Burgess & Co. sold to Fisher Brothers, who
used the wharf and yard for shipping and appointed Mr. Young their
financial agent. How capably he filled the place every operator on Oil
Creek can attest. He and John J. Fisher, under the name of Young & Co.,
bought and shipped crude-oil in bulk-barges. His relations with the
Fishers ceased in 1872 with his appointment as book-keeper of the
Oil-City Savings Bank. Elected cashier of the Oil-City Trust Company in
1874, he was afterwards vice-president and president, holding the latter
office until 1891. John Pitcairn retiring from the firm of Vandergrift,
Pitcairn & Co., he purchased an interest in the business. The firm of
Vandergrift, Young & Co. was organized and sold its property to the
Forest Oil-Company, of which Mr. Young was one of the incorporators and
chairman. The business of the Forest necessitated his removal to
Pittsburg in 1889. He is president of the Washington Oil-Company and the
Taylorstown Natural-Gas Company and has his offices in the Vandergrift
building, on Fourth avenue. During his twenty-seven years’ residence in
Oil City he was active in promoting the welfare of the community. In
1866 he married Miss Morrow, sister-in-law and adopted daughter of
Captain Vandergrift. Two daughters, one the wife of Lieutenant P. E.
Pierce, West Point, N. Y., and the other a young lady residing with her
parents, blessed the happy union. The hospitable home at Oil City was a
delightful center of moral and social influence. Mr. Young represented
the First Ward nine years in Common and Select Councils and was
school-director six years. He furthered every good cause and was a
helpful, honored citizen. Now at the meridian of life, his judgment
matured and his acute perceptions quickened, young in heart and earnest
in spirit, a wider sphere enlarges his opportunities. Of W. J. Young,
true and tried, faithful and competent, a loyal friend and prudent
counsellor, it can never be said: “Thou art weighed in the balance and
found wanting.”
Fairview, charmingly located two miles south-west of Petrolia, was on
one side of the greased streak. James M. Lambing’s gas-well a mile west
lighted and heated the town, but vapor-fuel and pretty scenery could not
offset the lack of oil and the dog-in-the-manger policy of greedy
land-holders. Portly Major Adams—under the sod for years—built a
spacious hotel, which William Lecky, Isaac Reineman, William Fleming and
kindred spirits patronized. A mile-and-a-half east of Fairview and as
far south of Petrolia, on a branch of Bear Creek, the Cooper well
originated Karns City in June of 1872. S. D. Karns laid down
eight-thousand dollars for the supposed dry-hole on the McClymonds farm,
drilled forty feet and struck a hundred-barreler. Cooper Brothers
finished the second well—it flowed two-hundred barrels for months—on the
Saturday preceding “the thirty-day shut-down.” Tabor & Thompson and
Captain Grace had moguls on the Riddle and Story farms. Big-hearted,
open-handed “Tommy” Thompson—a whiter man ne’er drew breath—operated
profitably in Butler and McKean and was active in the movements that
made 1872-3 memorable to oil-producers. The biggest well in the bunch
was A. J. Salisbury’s five-hundred-barrel spouter on the J. B. Campbell
farm, in January of 1873. Salisbury conducted the favorite Empire House,
which perished in the noon-day blaze that extinguished two-thirds of
Karns City in December of 1874. One day he bought a wagon-load of
potatoes from a verdant native, who dumped the tubers into the cellar
and was given a check for the purchase. He gazed at the check long and
earnestly, finally breaking out: “Vot for you gives me dose paper?”
Salisbury explained that it was payment for the murphies. “Mein Gott!”
ejaculated the ruralist, “you dinks me von tarn fool to take dot papers
for mein potatoes?” The proprietor strove to enlighten the farmer,
telling him to step across the street to the bank and get his money. “I
see nein monish there,” replied the innocent, looking at John Shirley’s
hardware-store, part of which a bank occupied. Discussing finance with
the rustic would be useless, so “Jack” sent the hotel-clerk for the cash
and counted it out in crisp documents bearing the serpentine autograph
of General Spinner.
Vandergrift & Forman paid ninety-thousand dollars for the McCafferty
farm, a mile south-west of Karns City. Mr. Forman closed the deal, going
to the house with a lawyer and a New-York draft. The honest granger, not
familiar with bank-drafts, would not receive anything except actual
greenbacks. The parties journeyed to the county-seat to convert the
draft into legal-tenders, which the seller of the property carried home.
William McCafferty was a thrifty tiller of the soil and cultivated his
farm thoroughly. He bought a home at Greenville, near John
Benninghoff’s, put his money in Government bonds and died in 1880. Half
the farm was fine territory and repaid its cost several times.
One-twentieth of the price in 1873 would be good value to-day for the
broad acres. For John Blaney’s farm, adjoining the McCafferty, Melville,
Payne & Fleming put up fifteen-thousand dollars, bored a well and sold
out to Vandergrift & Forman at fifty-thousand. The Rob Roy well, on the
McClymonds farm, produced forty-thousand barrels of fourth-sand oil,
while a dry hole was sunk thirty yards away. Colonel Woodward, Mattison
& McDonald, Tack & Moorhead and John Markham owned wells good for thirty
to eight-hundred barrels. A cloud of dry-holes encompassed the May
Marshall, on the Wallace farm. Haysville, on the Thomas Hays farm, had a
brief run, a harvest of small strikes and dusters nipping it off
prematurely. The epitaph of the Philadelphia baby would about fit:
“Died when young and full of promise,
Our own little darling Thomas;
We can’t have things here to please us—
He has gone to dwell with Jesus.”
Branching off a mile south of Karns City, on January thirty-first, 1873,
the first well—one-hundred and fifty barrels—was finished on the Moore &
Hepler farm of three-hundred acres. Another in February strengthened
“the belt theory,” belief in which induced C. D. Angell, John L.
McKinney, Phillips Brothers and O. K. Warren to form a company and test
the tract. Their faith was recompensed “an hundred fold” by an array of
dandy wells and the unfolding of Angelica. Operators were feeling their
way steadfastly. Two miles south-east of Angelica, on the Simon Barnhart
farm, Messimer & Backus’s wild-cat—also a February plant—pumped eight
barrels a day. Shreve & Kingsley’s, on the Stewart farm, a mile
north-east, found good sand and flowed one-hundred-and-forty barrels, in
April, 1873. The fickle tide turned in that direction and Millerstown, a
dingy, pokey hamlet on a side-elevation in Donegal township, a half-mile
south-east of the Shreve-spouter, was on everybody’s lips. Some persons
and some communities have greatness thrust upon them and Millerstown was
of this brood. The natives awakened one April morning to find their
settlement invaded by the irrepressible oilmen.
For sixty years the quiet hamlet of Barnhart’s Mills—a colony of
Barnharts settled in Donegal when the nineteenth century was in its
teens—stuck contentedly in the old rut, “the world unknowing, by the
world unknown.” It consisted chiefly of log-houses, looking sufficiently
antiquated to have been imported in William Penn’s good ship Welcome. A
church, a school, a blacksmith-shop, a grocery, a general store and a
tavern had existed from time immemorial. A grist-mill ground wheat and
the name of Barnhart’s Mills was adopted by the post-office authorities.
It yielded to Millerstown and finally to Chicora. The two-hundred
villagers went to bed at dark and breakfasted by candle-light in winter.
A birth, a marriage or a funeral aroused profound interest. At last news
of oil “from Parker down” was heard occasionally. Petrolia arose and the
Millerites shivered with apprehension. Was the petroleum-wave to
submerge their peaceful homes? The Shreve well answered the query
affirmatively and the invasion was not delayed. Crowds came, properties
changed hands, old houses were razed and by July the ancient borough was
disguised as a modern oil-town. Dr. Book built a grand hotel, Taylor &
Satterfield established a bank, the United and Relief Pipe-Lines opened
offices, the best firms were represented and “on to Millerstown” was the
shibboleth of the hour. McFarland & Co.’s seventy-barrel well on the
Thorn farm, a mile north-east of town, the third in the district, fed
the oily flame. Dr. James, on R. Barnhart’s lands, finished the fourth,
an eighty-barreler, in June, a half-mile west of the Shreve & Kingsley,
which Clark & Timblin bought for twenty-thousand dollars. Wyatt, Fertig
& Hammond’s mammoth flowed one-thousand barrels a day! Col. Wyatt was a
real Virginian, chivalric, educated and high-strung. Hon. John Fertig
was a pioneer on Oil Creek and had operated at Foxburg with John W.
Hammond. The Wyatt spouted for months.
McKeown & Morissey drilled rib-ticklers on the Nolan farm. Warden &
Frew, F. Prentice, Taylor & Satterfield, Captain Grace, John Preston,
Cook & Goldsboro, Samuel P. Boyer, C. D. Angell and multitudes more
scored big hits. McKinney Brothers & Galey secured the Hemphill and
Frederick farms, on which they drilled scores of splendid wells. James
M. Lambing had a chunk near the Wyatt, with Col. Brady next door. Lee &
Plumer, fresh from their triumphs in Clarion, leased the Diviner farm,
two miles south-west of Millerstown, for two-hundred dollars an acre
bonus and one-eighth royalty. Their first well flowed fifteen-hundred
barrels and they sold to Taylor & Satterfield for ninety-thousand
dollars after its production paid the bonus and the drilling. Henry
Greene drilled on the Johnson farm, two miles straight south of the
village, and P. M. Shannon’s, on the Boyle, was the lion of the eastern
belt. A dry strip divided the field into two productive lines. P. H.
Burchfield opened the Gillespie farm and Joseph Overy touched the Mead,
four miles south of Millerstown, for a two-hundred-barreler that
installed St. Joe. Dr. Hunter, of Pittsburg, monkeyed a well on the
Gillespie for many weeks, inaugurating the odious “mystery” racket.
Millerstown was a peach of the most approved pattern, holding its own
bravely until Bradford overwhelmed the southern region. A narrow-gauge
railroad connected it with Parker in 1876. Fire in 1875 swept away the
central portion of the town and blotted out seven lives. Oil has
receded, the operators have departed and the town is once more a placid
country village.
The Barnhart and Hemphill farms yielded McKinney Brothers a lavish
return, the wells averaging fifty to three-hundred barrels month after
month. The two brothers, John L. and J. C., were not amateurs in
oil-matters. Sons of a well-to-do lumberman and farmer in Warren county,
they learned business-methods in boyhood and were fitted by habit and
education to manage important enterprises. Their connection with
petroleum dated back to the sixties, in the oldest districts. The
knowledge stored up on Oil Creek and around Franklin and at
Pleasantville was of immense benefit in the lower fields. Organizing the
firm of McKinney Brothers in 1890, to operate at Parker, they kept pace
with the trend of developments southward. Millerstown impressed them
favorably and they paid seventy-thousand dollars for the Barnhart and
two Hemphill farms, two-hundred-and-seventy acres in the heart of the
richest territory. John Galey purchased an interest in the properties,
which the partners developed judiciously. J. C. McKinney and Galey
resided at Millerstown to oversee the numerous details of their
extensive operations. In 1877, H. L. Taylor, John Satterfield, John
Pitcairn and the brothers formed the partnership known as John L.
McKinney & Co. It was controlled and managed by the McKinneys, until the
sale of its interests to the Standard Oil-Company. John L. and J. C.
McKinney sold their Ohio lands and wells in 1889 and their Pennsylvania
oil-properties in 1890, since which period they have been associated
with the Standard in one of its great producing branches, the South Penn
Oil-Company. Noah S. Clark is president of the South Penn, with
headquarters at Oil City and Pittsburg. This company has thousands of
wells in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. The wise policy that has
made the Standard the world’s foremost corporation has nowhere been
manifested more effectively than in the formation of such companies as
the Forest and the South Penn. Letting sellers of production share in
the ownership and management of properties united in one grand system
secures the advantages of concerted action, unlimited capital, identity
of interest and combined experience. Thus men of the highest skill join
hands for the good of all, using the latest appliances, buying at
wholesale for cash, producing oil at the smallest cost and giving the
public the fruits of systematic coöperation. In this free country “the
poor man’s back-yard opens into all out-doors” and many producers, like
John McKeown, Captain Jones “The.” Barnsdall and Michael Murphy have
been conspicuously successful going it alone. Sometimes a growl is heard
about monopoly, centralization and the octave of similar phrases, just
as folks grumble at the weather, the heat and cold and think they could
run the universe much better than its Creator does it.
“Oh, many a wicked smile they smole,
And many a wink they wunk;
And, oh, it is an awful thing
To think the thoughts they thunk.”
[Illustration: JOHN L. MCKINNEY.]
[Illustration: J. C. MCKINNEY.]
Hon. John L. McKinney’s talent for business displayed itself in youth.
“The boy’s the father to the man” and at sixteen he assumed charge of
his father’s accounts, superintending the sale of lumber and
farm-products three years. At nineteen, in the fall of 1861, he drilled
his first well, a dry-hole south of Franklin. Two leases on Oil Creek
fared better and in the spring he purchased one-third of a drilling well
and lease on the John McClintock farm, near Rouseville. The well was
spring-poled three-hundred feet, horse-power put it to four-hundred and
an engine to five-hundred, at which depth it flowed six-hundred barrels,
lasting two years, lessening slowly and producing enough oil to enrich
the owners. Young McKinney worked his turn, “kicking the pole” all
summer and visiting his home in Warren county when steam was substituted
for human and equine muscle. During his absence the sand was prodded,
the golden stream responded and his partner sold out for a round sum,
taking no note of his share! He heard of the strike and found the
purchasers in full possession upon his return. His contract had not been
recorded, one day remained to file it with the register and he saved his
claim by a few hours! He bought interests on Cherry Run that profited
him two-hundred thousand dollars, in 1864 leased large tracts in Greene
county and in 1865 removed to Philadelphia. He operated on Benninghoff
Run in 1866, the crash of 1867 swept away his gains and he began again
“at the top of the ground.” With his younger brother, J. C. McKinney, he
drilled at Pleasantville in 1868 and the next year located at Parker’s
Landing, operating constantly and managing an agency for the sale of
Gibbs & Sterrett machinery. Success crowded upon him in 1871 and in 1873
McKinney Brothers & Galey were the leaders in the Millerstown field.
Mrs. McKinney, a beautiful and accomplished woman, died in 1894. Mr.
McKinney built an elegant home at Titusville and he has been an
influential citizen of “the Queen City of Oildom” for twenty years. He
is president of the Commercial Bank and a heavy stockholder in local
industries. He has resisted pressing demands for his services in public
office, preferring the private station, yet participating actively in
politics. John L. McKinney is earnest and manly everywhere, steadfast in
his friendships, true to his professions, liberal and honorable always.
J. C. McKinney engaged with an engineer-corps of the Pennsylvania
Railroad Company in 1861, at the age of seventeen, to survey lines
southward from Garland, on the Philadelphia & Erie Road. The survey
ending at Franklin in 1863, he left the corps and started a lumber-yard
at Oil City. His father was a lumberman at Pittsfield, Warren county,
and the youth of nineteen knew every branch of the business thoroughly.
He opened a yard at Franklin in 1864, resided there a number of years
and in 1868 married Miss Agnes E. Moore. His first well, drilled at
Foster in 1865, produced moderately. In company with C. D. Angell, he
drilled on Scrubgrass Island—Mr. Angell changed the name to Belle Island
for his daughter Belle—in 1866 and at Pleasantville in 1868 with his
brother, John L. Operating for heavy-oil at Franklin in 1869-70, he sold
his wells to Egbert, Mackey & Tafft and settled at Parker’s Landing in
1870. The firm’s operations in Butler county requiring his personal
attention, he built a house and resided at Millerstown several years.
There he worked zealously, purchasing blocks of land and drilling a
legion of prolific wells. Upon the subsidence of the Butler field he
removed to Titusville, buying and remodeling the Windsor mansion, which
he made one of the finest residences in the oil-region. He assists in
managing the South Penn Oil-Company, to which McKinney Brothers disposed
of their interests in Ohio and Pennsylvania. In the flush of healthful
vigor, wealthy and respected, he enjoys “the good the gods provide.” He
keeps fast horses, handles the ribbons skillfully, can guide a big
enterprise or an untamed bicycle deftly, is companionable and utterly
devoid of affectation. To the McKinneys, men of positive character and
strict integrity, the Roman eulogy applies: “A pair of noble brothers.”
“Plumer’s Ride to Diviner” discounted Sheridan’s Ride to Winchester in
the estimation of Millerstown hustlers. Various operators longed and
prayed for the Diviner farm of two-hundred acres, two miles south of
Millerstown, which “Ed” Bennett’s three-hundred barrel well on the Boyle
farm rendered very desirable. The old, childless couple owning it
declined to lease or sell, not wishing to move out of the old house. Lee
& Plumer were on the anxious seat with the rest of the fraternity.
Plumer overheard a big operator tell his foreman one morning to offer
three-hundred dollars an acre for the farm. “Fred” lost not a moment.
Ordering his two-twenty horse to be saddled instantly, he galloped to
the Diviner domicile in hot haste and said: “I’ll give you two-hundred
dollars an acre and one-eighth the oil for your land and let you stay in
the house!” The aged pair consulted a moment, accepted the offer and
signed an agreement to transfer the property in three days. The ink was
not dry when the foreman rode up, but “Fred” met him in the yard with a
smile that expressed the gospel-hymn: “Too late, too late, ye cannot
enter in!” The first well repaid the whole outlay in thirty days, when
Taylor & Satterfield paid ninety-thousand dollars for Lee & Plumer’s
holdings, a snug sum to rake in from a two-mile horseback-ride. With a
fine sense of appreciation the well was labeled “Plumer’s Ride to
Diviner,” a board nailed to the walking-beam bearing the protracted
title in artistic capitals.
The Millerstown fire ended seven human lives, four of them at Dr. Book’s
Central Hotel. A. G. Oliver, of Kane City, was roasted in the room
occupied by me the previous night. Norah Canty, a waitress, descended
the stairs, returned for her trunk and was burned to a cinder. Nellie
McCarthy jumped from a high window to the street, fracturing both legs
and sustaining injuries that crippled her permanently. In loss of life
the fire ranked next to the dreadful tragedy of the burning-well at
Rouseville.
P. M. Shannon, first burgess of Millerstown, had a fashion of saluting
intimate friends with the query: “Where are we now?” Possibly this was
the origin of the popular phrase, “Where are we at?” A zealous officer
arrested a drunken loafer one afternoon. The fellow struggled to get
free and the officer halted a wagon to haul the obstreperous drunk to
the lock-up. The prisoner was laid on his back in the wagon and his
captor tried to hold him down.
[Illustration: “WHERE ARE WE NOW?”]
A crowd gathered and the burgess got aboard to assist the peeler. He was
holding the feet of the law-breaker, with his back to the end-board, at
the instant the wheels struck a plank-crossing. The shock keeled Shannon
backwards over the end-board into the deep, vicious mud! The spectators
thought of shedding tears at the sad plight of their chief magistrate,
who sank at full length nearly out of sight. As he raised his head a
ragged urchin bawled out: “Where are we now?” The laugh that ensued was
a risible earthquake and thenceforth the expression had unlimited
circulation in the lower districts.
The Millerstown field produced ten-thousand barrels a day at its prime
and the temptation to enlarge the productive area even St. Anthony, had
he been an oil-operator, would have found it hard to resist. A half-mile
west, at the Brick Church, J. A. Irons punched a hole and started a
hardware-store that hatched out Irons City. St. Joe, where two-hundred
lots were sold in thirty days and a beer-jerker’s tent was the first
business-stand, was the outcome of good wells on the Now, Meade, Boyd,
Neff and Graham farms, four miles south. Three miles farther dry-holes
blasted the budding hopes of Jeffersonville. Three miles south-west of
Millerstown, on an elevated site, Buena Vista bade fair to knock the
persimmons. The territory exhausted too speedily for comfort, other
points lured the floaters, hotels and stores stood empty and a fire sent
three-fourths of the neat little town up in smoke. Two miles west the
Hope Oil-Company’s Troutman well, reported on March twenty-second, 1873,
“the biggest strike since ’sixty-five,” flowed twelve-hundred barrels.
The tools hung in the hole seven months, by which time the well had
produced ninety-six-thousand barrels. The gusher was on the Troutman
farm, a patch of rocks and stunted trees tenanted by a Frenchman. I. E.
Dean, Lecky & Reineman, Captain Grace, Captain Boyer, the Reno
Oil-Company and others jostled neck and neck in the race to drain the
Ralston, Harper, Starr, Jenkins and Troutman lands. The result was a
series of spouters that aggregated nine-thousand barrels a day. Phillips
Brothers paid eighty-thousand dollars for the Starr farm and trebled
their money in a year. William K. Vandergrift’s Blackhawk was a
five-hundred barreler and dozens more swelled the production and the
excitement. The day before Husselton & Thompson’s seven-hundred
barreler, on the Gruber farm, struck the sand the boiler exploded. Two
men were standing on a tank discussing politics. They saw a ton of iron
heading directly towards them, concluded to postpone the argument and
leaped from the tank as the flying mass tore off half the roof. The
Ralston farm evoluted the embryo town of Batesville, named for the late
Joseph Bates, of Oil City, and Modoc planted its wigwams on the Starr
and Sutton.
Modoc stood at the top of the class for mud. The man who found a
gold-dollar in a can of tomatoes and denounced the grocer for selling
adulterated goods would have had no reason to grumble at the mud around
Modoc. It was pure, unmixed and unstinted. The voyager who, in the
spring or fall of 1873, accomplished the trip from Troutman to the
frontier wells without exhausting his stock of profanity earned a
free-pass to the happy hunting-grounds. Twenty balloon-structures were
erected by May first and a red-headed dispenser of stimulants answered
to the title of “Captain Jack.” Modoc was not a Tammany offshoot, but
the government had an Indian war on hand and red-skinned epithets
prevailed. The town soon boasted three stores, four hotels, liveries and
five-hundred people. By and by the spouters wilted badly, degenerating
into pumpers. On a cold, rainy night in the autumn of 1874 fire started
in Max Elasser’s clothing-store and one-half the town was absent at dawn
next morning. Biting wind and drenching showers added to the sadness of
the dismal scene. Women and children, weeping and homeless, crouched in
the fields until daylight and shelter arrived. That was the last chapter
in the history of Modoc. The American Hotel and a few houses escaped the
flames, but the destroyed buildings were not replaced. It would puzzle a
tourist now to find an atom of Modoc or the wells that vegetated about
the Troutman whale.
Two miles south of Modoc the McClelland farm made a bold effort to
outshine the Troutman. Phillips Brothers owned the biggest wells,
luscious fellows that salt-water killed off prematurely. They paid
forty-five-thousand dollars for the Stahl & Benedict No. 1 well. The
farmer leased the tract to George Nesbit and John Preston. Nesbit placed
timbers for a rig on the ground and entrenched a force of men behind a
fence. Preston’s troops scaled the fence, dislodged the enemy, carried
the timbers off the premises, built a rig and drilled a well. Such
disputes were liable to occur from the ignorance or knavery of the
natives, some of whom leased the same land to several parties. In one of
these struggles for possession Obadiah Haymaker was shot dead at
Murraysville, near Pittsburg. Milton Weston, a Chicago millionaire, who
hired and armed the attacking party, was sent to the penitentiary for
manslaughter. Haymaker was pleasant, sociable and worthy of a better
fate.
David Morrison leased ten acres of the Jamison farm, three miles below
Modoc and seven south of Petrolia, at one-fiftieth royalty. The
property was situated on Connoquinessing Creek, a tributary of Beaver
River, in the bosom of a rugged country. On August twenty-fourth,
1872, the tools pricked the sand, gas burst forth and oil flowed
furiously. The gas sought the boiler-fire and the entire concern was
speedily in a blaze. Unlike many others in the oil-region, the
Morrison well suffered no injury from the fire. It flowed
three-hundred barrels a day for a month and in October was sold to
Taylor & Satterfield for thirty-eight-thousand dollars. They cleaned
out the hole, which mud had clogged, restoring the yield to
two-hundred barrels. S. D. Karns completed the Dogleg well, the second
in the field, on Christmas day, and the third early in January, the
two wells flowing seven-hundred barrels. John Preston’s No. 1, a
half-mile northward, flowed two-hundred barrels on January twelfth.
Preston was a strong-limbed, black-haired, courageous operator, who
cut his eye-teeth in the upper fields. He augmented his pile at
Parker, Millerstown and Greece City, landing at last in Washington
county. He was not averse to a hand at cards or a gamble in
production. His word was never broken and he vied with John McKeown
and John Galey in untiring energy. A truer, livelier, braver lot of
men than the Butler oil-operators never stepped on God’s green carpet.
A mean tyrant might as well try to climb into heaven on a greased pole
as to keep them at the bottom of the heap.
The first new building on the Jamison farm, a frame drug-store, was
erected on September tenth. Eight-hundred people inhabited Greece City
by the end of December. Drinking dens drove a thriving trade and three
hotels could not stow away the crowds. J. H. Collins fed five-hundred a
day. Theodore Huselton established a bank and Rev. Mr. Thorne a
newspaper. A post-office was opened at New-Year. Two pipe-lines conveyed
oil to Butler and Brady, two telegraph-offices rushed messages, a church
blossomed in the spring and a branch of the West Penn Railroad was
proposed. Greece City combined the muddiness and activity of Shaffer and
Funkville with the ambition of Reno. Fifty wells were drilling in
February and the surrounding farms were not permitted to “linger longer,
Lucy,” than was necessary to haul machinery and set the walking-beam
sawing the atmosphere. Joseph Post—a jolly Rousevillean, who weighed
two-hundred pounds, operated at Bradford and retired to a farm in
Ohio—tested the Whitmire farm, two miles south. An extensive water-well
was the best the farm had to offer and Boydstown, built in expectation
of the oil that never came, scampered off. The third sand was only
twelve to fifteen feet thick and the wells declined with unprecedented
suddenness. The bottom seemed to drop out of the territory in a
twinkling. The town wilted like a paper-collar in the dog-days. Houses
were torn down or deserted and rigs carted to Millerstown. In December
fire licked up three-fourths of what removals had spared, summarily
ending Greece City at the fragile age of thirteen months. “The isles of
Greece, were burning Sappho loved and sung,” may have been pretty slick,
but the oil of Greece City would have burned out Sappho in one round.
“The meanest man I ever saw,” a Butler judge remarked to a company of
friends at Collins’s Hotel, “has never appeared in my court as a
defendant and it is lucky for him. As a matter of course he was a
newspaper man—a rascal of a reporter for the Greece City _Review_,
printed right in this town, and there he stands! One day he was playing
seven-up with a young lady and guess what he did? He told her that
whenever she had the jack of trumps it was a sure sign her lover was
thinking of her. Then he watched her and whenever she blushed and looked
pleased he would lead a high card and catch her jack. A man who would do
that would steal a hot stove or write a libellous joke about me.” The
judge was a rare joker and the young man whom he apostrophised for fun
didn’t know a jack from a load of hay.
Parker, Martinsburg, Argyle, Petrolia, the “Cross Belt,” Karns City,
Angelica, Millerstown, St. Joe, Buena Vista, Modoc and Greece City had
passed in review. The “belt” extended fifteen miles and the Butler field
acknowledged no rival. The great Bradford district was about to distance
all competitors and leave the southern region hopelessly behind, yet
operators did not desist from their efforts to discover an outlet below
Greece City and St. Joe. Two miles west of the county-seat Phillips
Brothers stumbled upon the Baldridge pool, which produced largely. The
old town of Butler, settled at the beginning of the century and not
remarkable for enterprise until the oilmen shoved it forward, was dry
territory. Eastward pools of minor note were revealed. William K.
Vandergrift, whose three-hundred-barrel well on the Pontius farm ushered
in Buena Vista’s short-lived reign, drilled at Saxonburg. Along the
West-Penn Railroad fair wells encouraged the quest. David Kirk entered
Great Belt City in the race and the country was punctured like a
bicycle-tire tripping over a road strewn with tacks pointing skyward and
loaded for mischief. South of St. Joe gas blew off and Spang & Chalfant
laid a line from above Freeport to pipe the stuff into their
rolling-mills at Pittsburg. The search proceeded without big surprises,
Bradford monopolizing public interest and Butler jogging on quietly at
the rear. But the old field had plenty of ginger and was merely
recovering some of the breath expended in producing forty-million
barrels of crude. “I smell a rat,” felicitously observed Sir Boyle
Roche, “and see him floating in the air.” The free play of the drill
could hardly fail to ferret out something with the smell of petroleum in
the soap-mine county, beyond the cut-off at Greece City and Baldridge.
Bradford was sliding down the mountain it had ascended and Butler
furnished the answer to the conundrum of where to look for the next
fertile spot.
Col. S. P. Armstrong, who experienced a siege of hard luck in the upper
latitudes, in 1884 leased a portion of the Marshall farm, on Thorn
Creek, six miles south-west of the town of Butler. Operators had been
skirmishing around the southern rim of the basin, looking for an annex
to the Baldridge pool. Andrew Shidemantle was drilling near the mouth of
the creek, on the north bank of which Johnson & Co.’s well, finished in
May, found plenty of sand and salt-water and a taste of oil. More than
once Armstrong was pressed for funds to pay the workmen drilling the
well he began on the little stream and he sold an interest to Boyd &
Semple. A vein of oil was met on June twenty-seventh, gas ignited the
rig and for a week the well burned fiercely. The flames were subdued
finally, the well pumped and flowed one-hundred-and-fifty barrels a day
and No. 2 was started fifty rods north-east. Meanwhile Phillips Brothers
set the tools dancing on the Bartlett farm, adjoining the Marshall on
the north. They hit the sand on August twenty-ninth and the well flowed
five-hundred barrels next day. Drilling ten feet deeper jagged a
veritable reservoir of petroleum, the well flowing forty-two-hundred
barrels on September fifteenth! At last Phillips & Vanausdall’s spouter
on Oil Creek had been eclipsed. The trade was “shaken clear out of its
boots.” Glowing promises of a healthy advance in prices were
frost-bitten. Scouts had been hovering around and their reckoning was
utterly at fault. Brokers knew not which way to turn. Crude staggered
into the ditch and speculators on the wrong side of the market went down
like the Louisiana Tigers at Gettysburg. The bull-element thought the
geyser “a scratch,” quite sure not to be duplicated, and all hands
awaited impatiently the completion of Hezekiah Christie’s venture on a
twenty-five acre plot hugging the Phillips lease. The one redeeming
feature of the situation was that nobody had the temerity to remark, “I
told you so!”
[Illustration: TELEGRAPH-OFFICE IN CARRIAGE, GROUP OF SCOUTS AND
PHILLIPS WELL, THORN CREEK.]
A telegraph office was rigged up near the Phillips well in an abandoned
carriage, one-third mile from the Christie. About it the sharp-eyed
scouts thronged night and day. On October eleventh the Christie was
known to be nearing the critical point. Excitement was at fever-heat
among the group of anxious watchers. In the afternoon some knowing-one
reported that the tools were twenty-seven feet in the sand, with no show
of oil. The scouts went to condole with Christie, who was sitting in the
boiler-house, over his supposed dry-hole. One elderly scout, whose
rotundity made him “the observed of all observers,” was especially warm
in his expressions of sympathy. “That’s all right, Ben,” said Christie,
“but before night you’ll be making for the telegraph-office to sell your
oil at a gait that will make a euchre-game on your coat-tails an easy
matter.” When the scout had gone he walked into the derrick and asked
his driller how far he was in the sand. “Only twenty-two feet and we are
sure to strike oil before three o’clock. Those scouts don’t know what
they’re talking about.” Christie went back to the boiler-house and
waited. It was an interesting scene. About the old buggy were the
self-confident scouts, many of whom had already wired their principals
that the well was dry. The intervals between the strokes of the drill
appeared to be hours. At length the well began to gas. Then came a low,
rumbling sound and those about the carriage saw a cloud-burst of oil
envelop the derrick. The Christie well was in and the biggest gusher the
oil-country had ever known! The first day it did over five-thousand
barrels, seven-thousand for several days after torpedoing, and for a
month poured out a sea of oil. Christie refused one-hundred-thousand
dollars for his monster, which cast the Cherry Grove gushers completely
into the shade. Phillips No. 3, four-hundred barrels, Conners No. 1,
thirty-seven-hundred, and Phillips No. 2, twenty-five hundred, were
added to the string on October eighteenth, nineteenth and twenty-first.
Crude tumbled, the bears pranced wildly and everybody wondered if Thorn
Creek had further surprises up its sleeve. Bret Harte’s “heathen Chinee”
with five aces was less of an enigma.
All this time Colonel Armstrong, who borrowed money to build his first
derrick and buy his first boiler, was pegging away at his second well.
The sand was bored through into the slate beneath and the contractor
pronounced the well a failure. The scouts agreed with him unanimously
and declared the contractor a level-headed gentleman. The owner, who
looked for something nicer than salt-water and forty-five feet of
ungreased sand, did not lose every vestige of hope. He decided to try
the persuasive powers of a torpedo. At noon on October twenty-seventh
sixty quarts of nitro-glycerine were lowered into the hole. The usual
low rumbling responded, but the expected flow did not follow
immediately. One of the scouts laughingly offered Armstrong a cigar for
the well, which the whole party declared “no good.” They broke for the
telegraph-office in the buggy to wire that the well was a duster. Prices
stiffened and the bulls breathed more freely.
The scouts changed their minds and their messages very speedily. The
rumbling increased until its roar resembled a small Niagara. A sheet of
salt-water shot out of the hole over the derrick, followed by a shower
of slate, stones and dirt. A moment later, with a preliminary cough to
clear its passage, the oil came with a mighty rush. A giant stream
spurted sixty feet above the tall derrick, dug drains in the ground and
saturated everything within a radius of five-hundred feet! The Jumbo of
oil-wells had been struck. Thousands of barrels of oil were wasted
before the cap could be adjusted on the casing. Tanks had been provided
and a half-dozen pipes were needed to carry the enormous mass of fluid.
It was an inspiring sight to stand on top of the tank and watch the
tossing, heaving, foaming deluge. The first twenty-four hours Armstrong
No. 2 flowed _eight-thousand-eight-hundred barrels_! It dropped to
six-thousand by November first, to six-hundred by December first and
next morning stopped altogether, having produced eighty-nine-thousand
barrels in thirty-seven days! Armstrong then divided his lease into
five-acre patches, sold them at fifteen-hundred dollars bonus and half
the oil and quit Thorn Creek in the spring a half-million ahead.
[Illustration:
MILLER & YEAGLE FLOWING INTO TANK
ARMSTRONG FLOWING INTO TANK
ARMSTRONG WELL
]
Fisher Brothers were the largest operators in the field. From the
Marshall farm of three-hundred acres—worth ten dollars an acre for
farming—they took four-hundred-thousand dollars’ worth of oil. Their
biggest well flowed forty-two-hundred barrels on November fifteenth,
when the total output of the field was sixteen-thousand, its highest
notch. Miller & Yeagle’s spouter put forty-five-hundred into the tank,
sending out a stream that filled a five-inch pipe. Thomas B. Simpson, of
Oil City, joined with Thomas W. Phillips in leasing the Kennedy farm and
drilling a three-thousand-barrel well. They sold to the Associated
Producers in December for eighty-thousand dollars and Simpson, a
sensible man every day in the year, presented his wife with a Christmas
check for his half of the money. McBride and Campbell, two young
drillers who had gone to Thorn Creek in search of work, went a mile in
advance of developments and bored a well that did five-thousand barrels
a day. They sold out to the Associated Producers for ninety-thousand and
six months later their big well was classed among the small pumpers.
Campbell saved what he had made, but success did not sit well on
McBride’s shoulders. After lighting his cigars awhile with five-dollar
bills he touched bottom and went back to the drill. Hell’s Half Acre, a
crumb of land owned by the Bredin heirs, emptied sixty-thousand barrels
into the tanks of the Associated Producers. The little truck-farm of
John Mangel put ninety-thousand into its owner’s pocket, although a
losing venture to the operators, producing barely a hundred-thousand
barrels. For the half-acre on which the red school-house was built, ten
rods from the first Phillips well, the directors were offered
fifty-thousand dollars. This would have endowed every school in the
township, but legal obstacles prevented the sale and the district was
the loser. By May the production declined to seven-thousand barrels and
to one-thousand by the end of 1885. The sudden rise of the field made a
score of fortunes and its sudden collapse ruined as many more. Thorn
Creek, like reform measures in the Legislature, had a brilliant opening
and an inglorious close.