The Oil-City _Derrick_, ordained to become “the organ of oil,” was born

on the thirteenth of September, 1871. The name was an inspiration,

sprung by Bishop as a surprise, instead of the hackneyed _Times_, which

had been agreed upon by the three proprietors. To embody its most

conspicuous emblem in the head of a newspaper designed to represent the

oil-trade suggested itself to the alert editor. He consulted only his

foreman, Charles E. White, long the brilliant editor of the Tidioute

_News_, who had come with him from Jamestown and approved of the drawing

from which the famous design of a derrick spouting newspapers was

engraved. It was a go from the start. People were roused from their

slumber by strong-lunged newsboys shouting, “Derrick, ere’s yer Derrick,

Derrick!” Their first impulse was to wonder if they had left any

derricks out all night, exposed to thieves and marauders, and somebody

was bringing them home. The new sheet was scanned eagerly. It had

departments of “Spray,” “Lying Around Loose” and “Pick-ups,” teeming

with catchy, piquant, invigorating items. Its advocacy of the producers’

cause boomed the paper tremendously. A bitter fight with the Allegheny

Valley Railroad increased its circulation and prestige. Bishop’s

individuality permeated every page and column. He had the sand to

continue the railroad war, but a threat to remove the shops from Oil

City weakened his partners and they bought him out in 1873. From the

“Hub of Oildom” he went to Buffalo to edit the _Express_. Thence he went

to Bradford, embarked in oil-operations on Kendall Creek and enlivened

the Chautauqua _Herald_, Rev. Theodore Flood’s bonanza, one summer.

Invited to New York in 1880, he managed the _Merchants’ Review_ and

edited _Judge_ until it changed owners in 1885. Leaving the metropolis,

he wandered to Dakota and freshened the Rapid-City _Republican_.

Returning east, he furnished Washington correspondence to various

papers. Locomotor-ataxia disabled him and he died in 1896. Mrs. Bishop

is a popular teacher of the Delsarte system and has published a book on

the subject. Miss Bishop is a talented lecturer. It is not disparaging

the galaxy of oil-region journalists to say that C. E. Bishop, the

gamest, keenest, raciest member of the fraternity, might be termed a

bishop in the congregation of men who have shaped public opinion in the

domain of grease. No matter how difficult or delicate the theme, from

pre-natal influence to monopoly, from heredity to fishing, from biology

to pumpkins, he treated it tersely and charmingly. A thoroughbred from

top to toe, his was a Damascus blade and “none but himself can be his

parallel.”

Captain Longwell—the title was awarded for gallantry in many a hard

battle—attended to the business-end with decided success. Buying

Herpst’s claim, he conducted the whole concern four years and sold out

at a steep figure in 1877. He raked in wealth producing and speculating,

quitting well-heeled financially. A native of Adams county, he was

educated at Gettysburg and learned printing in the office of the

Chambersburg _Repository and Whig_, then published by Col. Alexander K.

McClure, now the world-famed editor of the Philadelphia _Times_. His

mother was a descendant of James Wilson, a signer of the Declaration of

Independence. Herpst opened a wall-paper store, removed later to

Jamestown and died there in 1884. Square, honest and “straight as a

string,” he merited the regard of his fellows. Charles H. Morse, the

first city-editor, had the snap to corral news at sight and present it

toothsomely. Who that knew him in his beardless youth imagined Charley

would “get religion” and adorn the pulpit? He entered the ministry and

for over twenty years has been pastor of a Baptist church at Mercer.

Were he to serve up to his hearers some of the funny experiences he

encountered as a reporter, he would discount Talmage’s recitals of the

slums and Dr. Parkhurst’s leap-frog exploits in the Tenderloin! Archie

Frazer wrote the market-report, ten or twelve lines at first and a plump

column or more ultimately. In November of 1872 it was my luck to engage

with the _Derrick_ and inaugurate the role of traveling correspondent.

Venango and Warren, with Clarion, Armstrong and Butler budding into

prominence, covered the oil-fields. Bradford loomed up in the autumn of

1875, extending my mission from the northern line of McKean county to

the southern boundary of Butler before the close of the term of five

years. These breezy days were crowded with bustle and excitement,

adventure and incident. Over the signature of “J. J. M.”—possibly

remembered by old-timers—fate appointed me to chronicle a multitude of

events that played an important part in petroleum-annals. The system of

“monthly reports” was arranged methodically, the producing sections were

visited regularly and my acquaintance embraced every oil-farm and nearly

every oil-operator in the rushing, hustling, get-up-and-get world of

petroleum.

Orion Clemens, a brother of “Mark Twain,” worked on the _Derrick_ a few

weeks in 1873. The exact opposite of “Mark,” his forte was the pathetic.

He could write up the death of an insect or a reptile so feelingly that

sensitive folks would shed gallons of tears in the wood-shed over the

harrowing details. He fairly reveled in the gloomy, somber, tragic

element of life. Daily contributions taxed him too severely, as he

composed slowly, and his resignation caused no surprise. Frank H.

Taylor, a young graduate from the Tidioute _Journal_, succeeded Bishop,

vacating the chair to undertake the field-work. Frank can afford to

“point with pride” to his career as editor and compiler of statistics.

His “Handbook” is an unquestioned authority on petroleum. Once he

resigned to float the _Call_, a sprightly Sunday folio, which glistened

from the spring of 1877 to October of 1878. “Puts and Calls,” the

humorous column, had to answer for bursting off tons of vest-buttons.

Taylor acquired money and fame as a journalist, was president of

select-council, called the turn as a producer and saved a snug

competence. During a term of Congress he was Hon. J. C. Sibley’s

secretary, a position demanding remarkable tact and industry. Now he is

leasing lands, drilling wells and looking after the oil-properties of

Sibley & Co. in Indiana. Oil City is his home and he is as busy as a boy

clubbing chestnuts or a Brooklynite dodging the trolley-cars at thirty

miles an hour.

[Illustration:

CHAS. E. WHITE.

HOMER McCLINTOCK. FRANK H. TAYLOR.

P. C. BOYLE.

EDWARD STUCK. WM. H. SIVITER.

W. J. McCULLAGH.

]

Robert W. Criswell, who has forged to the front by his mirth-provoking

sketches, followed Taylor as editor in 1877. He fertilized the

“Stray-sand,” parodied Shakespeare and developed “Grandfather

Lickshingle,” giving the _Derrick_ national celebrity. He stepped down

when the shuffle occurred in 1877 and went to the Cincinnati _Enquirer_.

W. J. McCullagh and Frank W. Bowen were on deck at about the same time.

McCullagh held the field department up to its elevated standard and

Bowen ground out first-class local and editorial. Col. Edward Stuck, who

came from York in 1879 to supervise the Bradford _Era_, ran the machine

in 1880-2, displaying much ability in the face of manifold hindrances.

William Brough and J. M. Bonham of Franklin, gentlemen of high literary

attainments, wishing to have a paper of their own, induced Mr. Stuck to

leave Bradford, with a view to resurrect the _Sunday Call_. The project

was not carried out and he assumed charge of the _Derrick_, with

gratifying results. His training was acquired on the York _Democratic

Press_, his father’s weekly, which Col. Stuck now conducts in connection

with the _Daily Age_, established by him after his sojourn in Oil City.

He was appointed State Librarian during Governor Pattison’s first term

and elected Register of Wills of York county in 1889, in recognition of

his excellent journalistic services. William H. Siviter, straight from

college, was next in order. His polished, scholarly writings were

relished by educated people. He paragraphed for the Pittsburg

_Chronicle-Telegraph_ and for some years has contributed to the comic

weeklies. He is responsible for the “High-School Girl,” with her

Bostonese flavor and highfalutin speech. McCullagh became an operator in

the Bradford region, drilled extensively in Ohio, laid by considerable

boodle and chose Toledo as his residence. Robert Simpson, who began as

“printer’s devil” in 1872, remained with the _Derrick_ as a writer until

the _Blizzard_ blew into town, excepting brief respites at Emlenton and

Bradford.

P. C. Boyle, whose dash and skill and tireless energy had advanced him

steadily, leased the establishment in 1885. He had the vigor and

backbone needed to bring the paper back to its pristine strength. By

turns a roustabout at Pithole in 1866, a driller, a scout, a reporter, a

publisher and an editor, his experience in the oil-country was extensive

and invaluable. He published the _Laborer’s Voice_ at Martinsburg in

1877-8, reported for the _Derrick_ and Titusville _Herald_ in 1879, for

the _Petroleum World_ in 1880 and the Olean _Herald_ in 1881, conducted

the Richburg _Echo_ in 1881-2 and scouted all through the developments

at Cherry Grove, Macksburg and Thorn Creek in 1882-5. George Dillingham,

who had “a nose for news,” and J. N. Perrine, gilt-edged and yard-wide

in the counting-room, assisted Mr. Boyle in tuning the paper up to high

G. The outside fields, daily growing in number and importance, were put

in charge of Homer McClintock, the real Homer of oil-reporters. He

fattens on timely paragraphs, scents live items in the air and lets no

juicy happening escape. The force was augmented as occasion arose,

type-setting machines and fast presses were added, the job-office was

supplied with the latest and best materials and the _Derrick_ is to-day

one of the finest, brightest, smartest newspapers that ever edified a

community. It is owned by the Derrick Publishing Company, of which Mr.

Boyle is president and H. McClintock, J. N. Perrine and Alfred L. Snell

are the active members. Mr. Boyle also managed the Toledo _Commercial_

and the Bradford _Era_. He is “the Dean of the Fourth Estate” by virtue

of eminent services and seniority. Like the lightning, he never needs

strike twice in the same spot, because the job is finished at a single

lick when he goes “loaded for b’ar.”

John B. Smithman, a wealthy operator, to whom Oil City owes its

street-railways and a bridge spanning the Allegheny, in 1880 equipped

the _Telegraph_, an evening sunflower, with Philip C. Welch at its head.

Isaac N. Pratt, later an advance-agent for Ezra Kendall, had a finger in

the pie. The paper was as fetching as a rural maiden in a brand-new

calico gown, but two dailies were too rich for the blood of the

population and the _Telegraph_ wilted at a tender age. Welch tapped a

vein of rich humor in the Philadelphia _Call_ by originating

“Accidentally Overheard,” a feature that captured the bakery. It bubbled

with actual wit, fragrant as sweet clover and wholesome as morning dew,

not revamped and twisted and warmed over. Charles A. Dana, no mean judge

of literary merit, recognized the value of the Welch rarebits and

secured them for the New York _Sun_ at a fixed rate for each, big or

little, long or short, large or small. Anon Dana offered him a salary

few bank-presidents would refuse and Welch moved to Gotham. The _Sun_

that “shines for all” fairly glittered and dazzled. Welch’s “Tailor-Made

Girl” hit the popular taste and was published in elegant form by the

Scribners. Disease preyed upon him, compelling an operation similar to

General Grant’s. Half the tongue was cut off, affecting his utterance

seriously. Weeks and months of patient suffering ended at last in

release from earthly pain and sorrow. Mrs. Welch, a noble helpmeet,

lives in Brooklyn and is to be credited with the clever, dainty “From

Her Point of View,” which irradiates the Sunday issues of the New York

_Times_. Upon the grave of Philip C. Welch old friends would lay a

wreath and drop a sympathetic tear.

“Alas, Poor Yorick!

I knew him, Horatio;

A fellow of infinite jest,

Of most excellent fancy.”

[Illustration:

FRANK. W. BOWEN.

PHILIP C. WELCH. ROBERT SIMPSON.

]

Frank W. Bowen, a diamond of the first water, H. G. McKnight, the

lightning type-slinger, and B. F. Gates, a dandy printer, swarmed from

the _Derrick_ hive and raised the wind to blow an evening _Blizzard_ in

1882. They bought the _Telegraph_ stuff and the Richburg _Echo_ press,

had brains and pluck in abundance and went in to win. The significant

motto—“It blows on whom it pleases and for others’ snuff ne’er

sneezes”—attested the independence of the free-playing zephyr. Gentle as

the summer breezes when dealing with the good, the true and the

beautiful, it swept everything before it when a wrong was to be righted,

a sleek rascal unmasked or a monopoly toppled over. Bowen’s “Little

Blizzards” had a laugh in every line. If they stung transgressors by

their sharp thrusts, the author didn’t lie awake nights trying to load

up with mean things. His humor was spontaneous and easy as rolling off a

log. Now his friends and admirers—their name is Legion—propose to waft

him into the Legislature, a clear case of the office seeking the man. It

goes without saying that the _Blizzard_ was an instant success. It was

no fault of the fond parents that they were built that way and couldn’t

compel people not to want their exhilarating paper. Place its neat

make-up to McKnight’s account. Gates flocked by himself to usher in the

_Venango Democrat_, which the gods loved so well that it passed through

the golden gates in four weeks. Robert Simpson, jocularly styled its

“horse editor,” was a _Blizzard_ trump-card until 1886. He then filled

consecutive engagements as exchange-editor, news-editor, night-editor,

assistant managing-editor and legislative correspondent of the Pittsburg

_Dispatch_. Again he edited the _Derrick_ nine months in 1889. Returning

to Pittsburg as political-reporter of the _Commercial-Gazette_, he was

promoted to legislative-correspondent and lastly to managing-editor, a

position of much responsibility.

The Reno _Times_, an eight-column folio that ranked with the foremost

weeklies in the State, was started in 1865 and expired in May of 1866. A

department was assigned each kind of news, the matter was classified and

set in minion and nonpareil, oil-operations were noted fully and local

affairs received due attention. Samuel B. Page, the editor, understood

how to glean from exchanges and correspondence. George E. Beardsley,

whose parish lay along Oil Creek, about Pithole and the Allegheny River

from Franklin to Tidioute, a section thirty miles by seventy, managed

the oil-columns admirably. E. W. Mercer kept the books, collected the

bills and had general supervision. W. C. Plumer, J. Diffenbach and

Edward Fairchilds stuck type and the average edition exceeded

ten-thousand copies.

[Illustration: CHARLES C. WICKER.]

Pithole, the most kaleidoscopic oil-town that ever stranded human lives

and bank-accounts, gave birth to the _Daily Record_ on the twenty-fifth

of September, 1865. It was a five-column folio, crammed with news

piping-hot and sold at five cents a copy, or thirty cents a week.

Morton, Spare & Co. were the publishers. Col. L. M. Morton—he earned his

shoulder-straps in the civil war—edited the _Record_, winning laurels by

his wise discernment. He was a manly character, incapable of deceit, a

brilliant writer and conversationalist, the soul of honor and courtesy,

“a knight without fear and without reproach.” He served as postmaster at

Milton and spent his closing years as night-editor of the Bradford

_Era_, dying at his post, loved and esteemed by thousands of friends. W.

H. Longwell, another brave defender of the Union, bought out Spare in

May, 1886. Charles C. Wicker and W. C. Plumer were taken into the firm

shortly after. In May of 1868, Pithole having crawled into a hole,

Longwell changed the base of operations to Petroleum Centre, then at the

zenith of its meteoric flight. He sold the paper in 1871 to Wicker, who

held on until formidable rivals in Oil City and Titusville forced the

_Record_ to quit. Generous to a fault and faithful to those who shared

his confidence, Wicker left the decaying town in 1873, was foreman of

the Titusville _Courier_, worked as a compositor at Bradford and died

there years ago. He was never satisfied to accept ill-luck without

emphatic dissent. He always wore a blue-flannel shirt, a fashion he

adopted in the army, and was eccentric in attire.

Charles C. Leonard was “a bright, particular star” in the days of

the Pithole _Record_, to which, over the signature of “Crocus,” he

contributed side-splitting sketches of ludicrous phases of

oil-region life. These felicitous word-paintings, with additions and

revisions, he published in a volume that had a prodigious sale. He

was an Ohioan, born in 1845, and a soldier at sixteen. Arriving at

Pithole in 1865, he saw that wonderful place grow from a dozen

shanties to a city of fifteen-thousand at a pace distancing Jonah’s

gourd or Jack-the-Giant-Killer’s bean-stalk. In the fall of 1867 he

came to the Titusville _Herald_, remaining five years. After short

terms with the Cleveland _Leader_ and St. Louis _Globe_, he returned

to Titusville to write for the _Evening Press_. He went back to St.

Louis and died at Cleveland on the twelfth of March 1874, wounds

received in battle hastening his demise. He was a natural wit, whose

keen jokes had the aroma of Attic salt. Mrs. Leonard removed to

Detroit, her home at present. One of Charlie’s favorite creations

was “The Sheet-Iron Cat,” written for the Cleveland _Leader_. It

passed the rounds of the newspapers and was printed in the

_Scientific American_. The sell took immensely, lots of persons

sending letters asking the cost of the “cats” and where they could

be procured! The article, which revives many a pleasant memory of

“auld lang-syne,” follows:

“A young mechanic in this city, whose friends and acquaintances have

heretofore supposed there was “nothing to him,” has at last achieved a

triumph that will place him at once among the noblest benefactors of

mankind. His name will be handed down to posterity with those of the

inventors of the “steam-man,” the patent churn and other contrivances of

a labor-saving or comfort-inducing character. His invention, which

occurred to him when trying to sleep at night in the sky-parlor of his

cheap boarding-house, with the feline demons of mid-night clattering

over the roof outside, is nothing more than a patent sheet-iron cat with

cylindrical attachment, steel-claws and teeth, the whole arrangement

being covered with cat-skins, which give it a natural appearance and

preserve the clock-work and intricate machinery with which the old thing

is made to work. Among the other peculiarities of this ingenious

invention are the tail and voice. The former is hollow and supplied by a

bellows (concealed within the body) with compressed air at momentary

intervals, which causes the appendage to be elevated and distended to

three times its natural size, giving to the metallic cat a most warlike

and belligerent appearance. By the aid of the same bellows and a

tremolo-stop arrangement, the cat is made to emit the most fearful

caterwauls and “spitting” that ever awakened a baby, made the head of

the family swear in his dreams, or caused a shower of boots, washbowls

and other missiles of midnight wrath to cleave the sky.

“Such is the invention. The method of using and the result is as

follows: Winding up the patent Thomas-cat, the owner adjusts him upon

the house-top or in the back-yard and awaits events. Soon is heard the

tocsin of cat-like war in the shape of every known sound that the tribe

are capable of producing, only in a key much louder than any live cat

could perform in. Every cat within a circle of a half-mile hears the

familiar sounds and accepts the challenge, frequently fifty or one

hundred appearing simultaneously upon the battle-ground, ready to buckle

in. The swelling tail invites combat and they attack old “Ironsides,”

who no sooner feels the weight of a paw upon his hide than a spring is

touched off, his paws revolve in all directions with lightning rapidity

and the adversaries within six feet of him are torn to shreds! Fresh

battalions come to the scratch only to meet a like fate, and in the

morning several bushels of hair, fiddle-strings and toe-nails is all

that are seen, while the owner proceeds to wind the iron cat up and set

him again.

“But a few pleasant evenings are needed to clean out a common-sized

country town of its sleep-disturbers. We understand the inventor will

make a proposition next week to the common council to depopulate the

city of cats for a moderate sum. We do not intend to endorse any

invention or article unless we know that it will perform all that it is

claimed to do, and therefore we have not been so explicit in our

description as we might have been; but the principle is a good one, and

we hope to see every house in the city surmounted with a sheet-iron cat

as soon as they are offered for sale, which will be about April the

first, the inventor and patentee informs us.”

J. H. Bowman and Richard Linn sent forth the _Petroleum Monthly_ at Oil

City in October, 1870. Their purpose was to treat the oil-industry from

a scientific stand and present statistics and biographies in

magazine-style. The _Monthly_, which lasted a year, was ably edited and

supplied matter of permanent value. Bowman, a fascinating writer and

agreeable companion, went westward and the snows of twenty winters have

drifted over his grave. Linn aided in compiling a history of petroleum,

spent some years in the east and meandered to Australia. Pleasantville

evolved the _Evening News_ in 1888 and the semi-monthly

_Commercial-Record_. The former has sought “the dark realms of

everlasting shade,” to keep company with J. L. Rohr’s Cooperstown

_News_, Tom Whitaker’s _Gatling Gun_, the Oil-City _Critic_, the

Franklin _Oil-Region_, the Petroleum-Centre _Era_ and a score of unwept

sacrifices on the altar of Venango journalism. James Tyson, a hardware

merchant at Rouseville, in 1872 issued the _Pennsylvanian_, a superior

weekly, which subsided with the waning town. He migrated to California,

living in San Francisco until last year, when he located in

Philadelphia. At the age of seventy-nine his faculties are unimpaired

and he stands erect. He is an earnest member of the Pennsylvania

Historical Society and compiler of a “Life of Washington and the Signers

of the Declaration of Independence.” This timely and interesting work,

published in two handsome volumes in 1895, is dedicated to the public

schools of the nation. It fitly crowns the literary labors of the

revered author, who is “only waiting till the shadows are a little

longer drawn.”

[Illustration: JOHN PONTON.]

[Illustration: JAMES TYSON.]

[Illustration: CHARLES C. LEONARD.]

Titusville enjoys the honor of harboring the first petroleum-daily that

weathered the storm and stayed in the ring. June, 1865, heralded the

_Morning Herald_ of W. W. and Henry C. Bloss, which possessed the entire

field and prospered accordingly. Col. J. H. Cogswell joined the

partnership in 1866. Major W. W. Bloss, the elder of the two brothers,

was a fluent writer, and made his mark in journalism. Mastering the

details of “the art preservative” at Rochester, N. Y., in 1857 he

started a short-lived journal in Kansas, retraced his footsteps to his

native heath in 1859, was badly wounded at Antietam, beamed upon

Titusville in the spring of 1865 and bought the _Petroleum Reporter_, a

moribund weekly. Quitting the _Herald_, in 1873, he unfurled the banner

of the _Evening Press_, which did not live to cut its eye-teeth. His

next attempt, a tasteful weekly, traveled the road to oblivion. The

Major once more headed for Kansas, served in the Legislature and wended

his way to Chicago, whence he crossed “to the other side” in the prime

of matured manhood. Harry C. Bloss stuck to the _Herald_ “through evil

and through good report,” steadfastly upholding Titusville and dipping

his eagle feather in vitriol when necessary to squelch “a foeman worthy

of his steel.” He died—the ranks are thinning out sadly—four years ago

and his son, upon whom the mantle of his father has descended, is

keeping the paper in the van. Col. Cogswell, who dropped out to accept

the postmastership, enacting the role of “Nasby” a couple of terms, for

years has been in the office of the Tidewater Pipe-Line. Among the

_Herald_ force were C. C. Leonard, John Ponton and A. E. Fay. Ponton

turned his peculiar talent for invention to electrical pursuits and the

giddy telephone. He narrowly missed heading off Prof. Bell in stumbling

upon the “hello” machine. Fay forsook the _Herald_ for the Oil-City

_Times_, did a turn on the Titusville _Courier_ and hied him to Arizona.

He ran a mining-paper, sat in the Legislature, incubated a

chicken-nursery that would have dumbfounded Rutherford B. Hayes, farmed

a bit and harvested a crop of shekels.

The Titusville _Courier_, sprung in 1870 to oppose the _Herald_, was

edited by Col. J. T. Henry, an accomplished journalist from Olean, N. Y.

In 1871 he bought the _Sunday News_, formerly A. L. Chapman’s

_Long-Roll_, transferring it in 1872 to W. W. Bloss, who changed it to

the _Evening Press_. Col. Henry in 1873 published “Early and Later

History of Petroleum,” a large volume, replete with information,

biographies and portraits. The author speculated profitably in oil,

lived at Olean, wrote as the impulse prompted and died at Jamestown in

May, 1878. A tear is due the memory of a kingly, chivalrous man, who

reflected luster upon his profession and was not fully appreciated until

he had reached the haven of eternal rest. To him Littleton’s tribute

applies:

“He wrote not a line which dying he would blot.”

Warren C. Plumer guided the _Courier_ after Col. Henry’s retirement. He

was no tyro in slinging his quill. Born in Maine in 1835, at fourteen he

entered a printing-office, ten years later edited a paper, served three

years in the war, set type on the Reno _Times_ in 1865 and was

editor-journeyman of the Pithole _Record_ in the fall of 1866. His

“Dedbete” contributions were a striking feature of the _Record_, of

which he became joint-owner with Longwell and Wicker in 1867, when

Burgess of Pithole, and editor-in-chief upon its removal to Petroleum

Centre in 1868. Selling out in 1869, Wicker and Plumer lighted a _Weekly

Star_ at Titusville that quickly set to rise no more. Plumer was foreman

of the Oil City _Times_ in 1870-1 and connected with the Tidioute

_Journal_ in 1872, when offered the editorship of the _Courier_. Elected

to the Legislature on the Democratic ticket in 1874, he was defeated for

a second term and for Congress as the Greenbackers’ candidate in 1878.

For a time his political notions were as facile as his Faber and he

trained with whatever party chanced to have a vacancy. From 1879 to 1881

he controlled the Meadville _Vindicator_, a soft-money weekly, winding

up the latter year on the Richburg _Echo_. In Dakota, his next

stamping-ground, he edited Republican papers at Fargo, Bismarck,

Aberdeen and Casselton. He stumped several states for Blaine with an eye

to an appointment that would have swelled his bank-account to the

dimensions of a plumber’s. “The Plumed Knight” failed to connect and the

plum did not fall into the lap of his eloquent supporter. President

Harrison in 1891 appointed him Receiver of the Minot District

Land-office, North Dakota, which he resigned last year. As an orator

Col. W. C. Plumer—they call him “Colonel” in the Dakotas—trots in the

class with Robert G. Ingersoll, Thomas B. Reed and William McKinley and

is denominated the “Silver Tongue of the North-west.” At the Republican

National Conventions in 1884-8 he was unanimously pronounced the finest

off-hand speaker in the crowd. He is a finished lecturer and unrivaled

story-teller, loves the choicest books, reads the Bible diligently,

sticks to his friends and delights to recount his experiences in the

Pennsylvania oil-regions.

M. N. Allen, an original stockholder and its last guardian, purchased

the _Courier_ in 1874. Even his acknowledged skill could not put it on a

paying basis and the paper, unsurpassed in quality and appearance,

succumbed to the inevitable. Mr. Allen followed Col. Cogswell as

postmaster, a proper tribute to his rugged Democracy. Hale and hearty,

although “over the summit of life,” time has dealt kindly with him and

his deft pen has lost none of its vigor. He is editing the _Advance

Guard_, the outgrowth of Roger Sherman’s departed _American Citizen_, as

an intellectual pastime. F. A. Tozer, the champion “fat take,”

five-feet-four-inches high and four-feet-five-inches around, graduated

from the _Courier_, wafted the St. Petersburg _Crude-Local_ up the flume

and was chief-cook of the East-Brady _Times_. His reports were newsy and

palatable. He travels for a Pittsburg house and would pay extra fare if

passengers were carried by weight. The East-Brady _Review_ “sees” the

_Times_ and “goes it one better.”

[Illustration: SAMUEL L. WILLIAMS.]

Graham & Hoag’s _Sunday News-Letter_ arose from the tomb of the

Evening Press and the _Sunday-News_. J. W. Graham, now of the

_Herald_, piloted the trim vessel skillfully. A stock-company of

producers, thinking a daily in the family would be “a thing of beauty”

and “a joy forever,” bought the _News-Letter_ and the _Courier_

equipment in 1879, to start the _Petroleum World_. James M. Place, a

pusher from Pusherville, had solicited the bulk of the subscriptions

to the stock and was entrusted with the management. R. W. Criswell

edited the paper splendidly. Captain M. H. Butler, who put heaps of

ginger into his spicy effusions, and John P. Zane, whose hobby was

finance—both have gone the journey that has no return trip—embellished

its columns with thoughtful, digestible brain-food. Oil-news, readable

locals, dispatches, jaunty selections and bang-up neatness were never

lacking. But competition was fierce and the _World_ had a hard row to

hoe. A committee of stockholders soon took charge. Place, sleepless,

indomitable and with the energy of a steam-hammer, opened a big store

at Richburg and drove a rattling trade. Setting out to paddle his own

canoe as a Corry newsboy at ten, he had run a newsroom at Fagundas, a

bookstore and the post-office at St. Petersburg, a branch store at

Edenburg, large stores at Bradford and Bolivar and won laurels as the

greatest newspaper circulator in the petroleum-diggings. At Harrisburg

and Reading he swung papers and the _Globe_ in New York. He is now in

Washington. S. L. Williams, unexcelled as a sprightly writer, and Hon.

George E. Mapes, equally competent in the Legislature and the

editorial chair, kept the _World_ booming until “patience ceased to be

a virtue” and the daily ceased to be a sheet. About half the material

went to the Oil City _Blizzard_ and the rest went to print the _Sunday

World_ Frank W. Truesdell had determined to originate. The late Hon.

A. N. Perrin, ex-Mayor of Titusville, possessing “ample means and

ample generosity,” backed the project. Truesdell finished his trade as

printer in Cleveland and worked at Youngstown and Franklin, settling

at Titusville in 1880 to manage the _World_ jobbing-room. He was a

young man of fine ability and scrupulous integrity. His partnership

with Perrin ended in 1887 by his purchase of the entire business. He

sold a half-interest in the paper in 1893 and death claimed him in

October of 1894. Measured by his thirty-seven years, Frank Willard

Truesdell’s life was short; measured by his good deeds, his worthy

enterprises, his lofty sentiments and kindly acts, it was longer than

that of many who pass the Psalmist’s three-score-and-ten. Mrs.

Truesdell and her little daughter live in Titusville. F. F. Murray,

associated with Walter Izant and W. R. Herbert in the general details,

edits the _Sunday World_, which is as frisky as a spring-colt. Born at

Buffalo in 1860, Murray was reared in Venango county, whither his

father was drawn by the oil-excitement. Correspondence for local

papers naturally bore him into the journalistic swim. He whooped it up

six years for the _Blizzard_. A regular hummer, he is at home whether

flaying monopolists, taking a ruffian’s scalp, praising a pretty girl,

writing a tearful obituary, dissecting a suspicious job or reeling off

a natty poem. “The Old Tramp-Printer,” a recent effort, is a fair

sample of his quality:

“Here’s a rhyme to the old tramp-printer, who as long as he lives will

roam,

Whose ‘card’ is his principal treasure and where night overtakes him

home;

Whose shoes are run over and twisty, whose garments are shiny and thin,

And who takes a bunk in the basement when the pressman lets him in.

“It is true there are some of the trampers that only the Angel of Death,

When he touches them with his sickle, can cure of the ‘spirituous

breath’;

That some by their fellow-trampers are shunned as unwholesome scamps,

And that some are just aimless, homeless, restless, typographical

tramps.

“But the most of them surely are worthy of something akin to praise,

And have drifted down to the present out of wholesomer, happier days;

And when, though his looks be as seedy as ever a mortal wore,

Will you find the old tramper minus his marvelous fund of lore?

“What paper hasn’t he worked on? Whose manuscript hasn’t he set?

What story worthy remembrance was he ever known to forget?

What topics rise for discussion, in science, letters or art,

That the genuine old tramp-printer cannot grapple and play his part?

“It is true you will sometimes see him when the hue that adorns his nose

Outrivals the crimson flushes which the peony flaunts at the rose;

It is true that much grime he gathers in the course of each trip he

takes,

Inasmuch as he boards all freight-trains between the Gulf and the Lakes.

“Yet his knowledge grows more abundant than many much-titled men’s,

Who travel as scholarly tourists and are classed with the upper-tens;

And few are the contributions these scholarly ones have penned

That the seediest, shabbiest tramper couldn’t readily cut and mend.

“He has little in life to bind him to one place more than the rest,

For his hopes in the past lie buried with the ones that he loved the

best;

He has little to hope from Fortune and has little to fear from Fate,

And little his dreams are troubled over the public’s love or hate.

“So a rhyme to the old tramp-printer—to the hopes he has cherished and

wept,

To the loves and the old home-voices that still in his heart are kept;

A rhyme to the old tramp-printer, whose garments are shiny and thin,

And who takes a bunk in the basement when the pressman lets him in.”

Mr. Mapes gravitated to Philadelphia to write for Colonel McClure’s

_Times_. His are the appetizing paragraphs that burnish the editorial

page by their subtile essence. He is a familiar figure at party

conventions, which his intimate knowledge of state-politics enables him

to gauge accurately. He abhors trickery and chicanery, deals his hardest

blows in exposing corrupt methods, believes taxpayers and voters have

rights contractors and bosses are bound to respect and is a stickler for

honest government. Williams also strayed to the Quaker City as

paragrapher for the _Press_, making a phenomenal hit. James G. Blaine

complimented Charles Emory Smith upon these tart, peppery nuggets,

saying: “I invariably read the _Press_ paragraphs before looking at any

other paper.” This pleasant tribute added ten dollars a week to Sam’s

salary, yet he tired of Philadelphia years ago and glided back to his

old home in “the Messer Diocese.” He is now connected with the New York

_Mail and Express_, whose readers can hardly find words to express their

satisfaction with the spice he injects into Elliot Shepherd’s trusty

expositor of Republicanism.

His pointed squibs and his cranium bare

Are as much alike as steps in a stair—

One grows no moss and the other no hair.

R. W. Criswell holds an honorable place among the men who have made

oil-region newspapers known abroad and influential at home. He was born

in Clarion county and educated in Cincinnati. His sketches, signed

“Chris,” introduced him to the public through the medium of the Oil-City

_Derrick_, the East Brady _Independent_ and the Fairview _Independent_,

Colonel Samuel Young’s twin offspring. Retiring from Young’s employ at

Fairview, he was next heard of as traveling correspondent of the

Cincinnati _Enquirer_. His editorship of the _Derrick_ in 1877 clinched

his fame as a Simon-pure humorist, thirty-six inches to the yard and

one-hundred cents to the dollar. The Shakespearian parodies and

Lickshingle stories, lustrous as the Kohinoor, waltzed the merry round

of the American press and were published in two taking books—“The New

Shakespeare” and “Grandfather Lickshingle.” After his departure from the

_Petroleum World_ Criswell renewed his relations with the _Enquirer_ as

managing-editor. He was John R. McLean’s trusty lieutenant and held the

great western daily on the topmost rung of the ladder. The New-York

_Graphic_, the pathfinder of illustrated dailies, needed him and he

accepted its flattering offer. The Cincinnati _Sun_ was about to shine

on the just and the unjust and he returned to Porkopolis. Colonel John

Cockrell coaxed him back to Manhattanville to reconstruct the

funny-streak of the overflowing New-York _World_.

[Illustration:

F. F. MURRAY. JAMES M. PLACE.

R. W. CRISWELL.

FRANK W. TRUESDELL. GEORGE E. MAPES.

]

[Illustration: “LEND ME YOUR EARS.”]

When the Colonel and Joseph Pulitzer disagreed—they “never spoke as they

passed by”—he went with Cockrell to the _Commercial Advertiser_, for

which he has done some of the brightest work in the newspaper-kingdom.

He now edits _Truth_. “Mark Anthony’s Oration Over Cæsar,” from “The

Comic Shakespeare,” will dispel the gloom and indicate the rare brand of

Criswell’s vintage:

“Friends, Romans, countrymen! lend me your ears;

I will return them next Saturday. I come

To bury Cæsar because the times are hard

And his folks can’t afford to hire an undertaker.

The evil that men do lives after them,

In the shape of progeny, who reap

The benefit of their life insurance.

So let it be with the deceased.

Brutus hath told you that Cæsar was ambitious,

What does Brutus know about it?

It is none of his funeral.

But that it isn’t is no fault of the undersigned.

Here under leave of you I come to

Make a speech at Cæsar’s funeral.

He was my friend, faithful and just to me;

He loaned me five dollars once when I was in a pinch,

And signed my petition for a post-office.

And Brutus says he was ambitious.

Brutus should chase himself around the block.

Cæsar hath brought many captives home to Rome

Who broke rock on the streets until their ransoms

Did the general coffers fill.

When that the poor hath cried, Cæsar hath wept,

Because it didn’t cost anything

And made him solid with the masses. [_Cheers._

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

Yet Brutus says he was ambitious.

Brutus is a liar, and I can prove it.

You all did see that on the Lupercal

I thrice presented him a kingly crown,

Which he did thrice refuse, because it did not fit him quite.

Was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious.

Brutus is not only the biggest liar in this country

But is a politician of the deepest dye. [_Applause._

If you have tears prepare to shed them now.

You all do know this ulster. [_Laughter._

I remember the first time ever Cæsar put it on;

It was on a summer’s evening in his tent,

With the thermometer registering ninety degrees in the shade;

But it was an ulster to be proud of,

And it cost him $3 at Marcalus Swartzheimer’s,

Corner of Broad and Ferry streets, sign of the red flag.

Old Swartz wanted $40 for it,

But finally came down to $3, because it was Cæsar!

Look! in this place ran Casca’s dagger through;

Through this the son of a gun of a Brutus stabbed,

And when he plucked his cursed steel away,

Good gracious, how the blood of Cæsar followed it!

[_Cheers, and cries of “Give us something on the Wilson bill!” “Hit him

again;” etc._]

I came not, friends, to steal away your hearts;

I am no thief as Brutus is.

Brutus has a monopoly in all that business,

And if he had his deserts, he would be

In the State prison and don’t you forget it.

Kind friends, sweet friends, I do not wish to stir you up

To such a sudden flood of mutiny,

And, as it looks like rain,

The pallbearers will please place the body in the wheelbarrow

And we will proceed to bury Cæsar,

Not to praise him.”

Edwin C. Bell, a son of the Pine-Tree state, landed at Petroleum Centre

in 1866, spent 1869 in the west, returned to Oil Creek in 1870 and for

three years punched down oil-wells. In 1874 he started a job-printery at

Pioneer, using a press he built from iron-scraps and an oak-rail and

learning the trade without an instructor. That fall he transplanted his

kit to Titusville and continued in the jobbing-line fourteen years.

Early in 1878 he published the _Leader_, a weekly that petered out in

two months. Mr. Bell in 1882 flew the flag of the _Republic_, a

campaign-oracle of the Greenbackers and supporter of Thomas A. Armstrong

for governor. The _Republic_, like the _Argus_, the _Observer_ and

others of that ilk, didn’t attain old age. Bell’s first grists—stories

and sketches—went into the _Courier_ hopper in 1872, supplemented from

1878 to 1882 by bundles of live matter in the Meadville _Vindicator_ and

the Richburg _Echo_. He edited the _Republican_ at Casselton, N. D., in

1882-3, and during the nine years following his return to Titusville

sent a news-letter almost daily to the Oil-City _Blizzard_. He has long

contributed to the _Sunday World_ and in 1888-9 was its

assistant-editor. In 1892 he began a history of the Pennsylvania

oil-regions, instalments of which the _Derrick_ printed, and he hopes to

finish the task on a comprehensive scale befitting the subject.

[Illustration: GEORGE A. NEEDLE.]

[Illustration: STEPHEN W. HARLEY.]

[Illustration: EDWIN C. BELL.]

Warren has been blessed with two weeklies, the _Ledger_ and the _Mail_,

for two generations. Ephraim Cowan founded the _Mail_ in 1848 and owned

it until his death in 1894. Three dailies vigilantly watch each other

and guard the pretty town. At Tidioute the _Journal_, inaugurated by J.

B. Close in 1867, jogged along seven years. George A. Needle and Frank

H. Taylor were the owners. Needle, whose sharp lance could prick the

fiends of the opposition like a needle, followed the tide to Parker and

boosted the _Daily_, which shortly plunged into perpetual night. Its

chief contributor was Stephen W. Harley, who furnished rich budgets of

Petrolia odds and ends over the name of “Keno.” “Steve” was kindly,

obliging, congenial and well-liked. Six summers have come and gone since

he was laid beneath the sod. Clark Wilson removed the _Oilman’s Journal_

to Smethport and the _Phœnix_ is in undisputed possession of the

Parker territory, with the youngest editor—son of G. A. Needle—in the

State guiding it capably. In October of 1874 the Warren-County _News_

was moved from Youngsville to Tidioute. C. E. White, who took charge in

December, bought the plant in 1875 and he has been in the harness

continuously since. Mr. White is among the best all-round newspaper-men

in the country. He was born at Newburg in 1842, boyhooded at

Binghampton, learned his trade at Elmira, served the Jamestown _Journal_

six years, spent a year with the Oil-City _Derrick_ and went to Tidioute

in 1872 to manage the _Journal’s_ job-department. His record as a

citizen, soldier, printer and editor is solid nonpareil.

Clarion county did not escape the frantic rush to stick a paper in every

mushroom-town. F. H. Barclay inflicted the _Record_ on the

long-suffering St. Petersburgers, mooring his bark in California when

the paper turned up its toes. Tozer’s _Crude-Local_, which never sported

a crude-local or editorial, the Fern-City _Illuminator_, brighter in

name than in real substance, the Clarion _Banner_, a species of rag on

the bush, the Edenburg _National Record_ and several more slid off the

perch with a dull thud, fatal as Humpty Dumpty’s irretrievable tumble.

[Illustration: P. A. RATTIGAN.]

[Illustration: JOHN H. NEGLEY.]

Frank A. Herr’s _Record_ has long kept up a good record at Petrolia.

Colonel Young and the three papers he propagated in Butler county, with

a half-dozen elsewhere, have mouldered into dust. He was intensely

earnest and industrious, able to maintain his end of a discussion and

seldom unwilling to dare opponents knock the chip off his stout

shoulder. Rev. W. A. Thorne attempted to reform the race with his

Greece-City _Review_, hauling the traps to Millerstown upon the

depletion of the frontier-town. His path was strewn with thorns, mankind

resenting his review of everybody and everything. Ex-Postmaster Rattigan

braces up the unterrified with his sturdy Chicora _Herald_, which he has

conducted successfully for twenty years. St. Joe’s bantam, never

distinguished for its strength, crowed mildly and dropped from the

roost. The county-seat is fully stocked with political organs, the

_Citizen_, the _Eagle_ and the _Herald_ coaching their respective

parties. J. H. Negley & Son are not negligent in their conduct of the

_Citizen_. The _Eagle_ is the proud bird of Thomas H. Robertson, a

trained writer and journalist, now Superintendent of Public-Printing in

Harrisburg. The _Herald_ was for many years the pet of Jacob Zeigler, to

whom all Butlerites took off their hats. “Uncle Jake” was the soul of

the social circle, a treasury of wit and wisdom, an exhaustless

reservoir of pat stories, a mine of practical knowledge and a welcome

guest in every corner of Pennsylvania. His soubriquet of “Uncle”

fastened upon him in a curious way. At the funeral of a youthful

acquaintance the distracted mother, as her boy was consigned to the

grave, in a frenzy of grief laid her head upon young Zeigler’s breast

and exclaimed: “Oh, were you ever a stricken mother?” “No, madam,” was

the cool reply, “but I expect to be an uncle before sundown to-morrow.”

Bystanders noted the strange incident and thenceforth the “Uncle” stuck

like a fly-blister. His parents are buried in the Harrisburg cemetery,

near Joseph Jefferson’s father, and whenever he visited the capital he

strewed their resting-place with flowers. Who can doubt that the filial

son, in whom mingled the strength of a man and the tenderness of a

woman, found his loved ones not far away when he entered the pearly

gates? Truly “this was the noblest Roman of them all.”

Another honored resident of Butler was Samuel P. Irvin, author of “The

Oil-Bubble,” a pamphlet abounding with delicious satire and bits of

personal experience. It was printed in 1868 and produced a sensation.

Enjoying very few advantages in his boyhood, Mr. Irvin was emphatically

a self-made man. Born in a backwoods-township seventy years ago, his

schooling was limited and he toiled “down on the farm.” Like Lincoln,

Garfield, Simon Cameron and many other country-boys, he rose to

distinction by his own exertions. He read assiduously, studied law and

stood well at the bar. His literary bent found expression in

newspaper-articles of very high grade. He lived some years at Franklin

in the earlier stages of petroleum-developments, drilling wells and

handling oil-properties on commission. He met death with fortitude,

“like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him and lies down to

pleasant dreams.”

[Illustration:

SAMUEL P. IRVIN.

JACOB ZEIGLER.

SAMUEL YOUNG.

]

The Bradford semi-weekly _New Era_, harbinger of the new era dawning

upon McKean county, saw daylight in the spring of 1875. The main object

of its founder, Colonel J. H. Haffey, was to invite attention to the

possibilities of the locality as a prospective oil-field. Colonel Haffey

was a man of varied talents—public speaker, writer, soldier, surveyor,

promoter of oil-enterprises, rail-roader and expounder of the gospel.

Irish by birth, he came to America at fourteen, lived three years in

Canada, was licensed to preach and in 1851, at the age of twenty-one,

accepted a call to the Baptist church at Bradford, then Littleton.

Marrying Diantha, youngest daughter of Nathan De Golier, in December of

1852, a year later he quit the pulpit, sensibly concluding that the Lord

had not called him to starve his family. As surveyor and geologist, he

was employed to prospect for coal and iron in McKean and adjacent

counties. In 1858-9 he had charge of a gang of men grading the Erie

railroad to Buttsville. The first man in Bradford township to enlist in

1861, he raised a force for Colonel Kane’s famous “Bucktails,” shared in

the fighting around Richmond and was honorably discharged with the rank

of major. Governor Hartranft appointed him a member of his staff and the

title of colonel resulted. He sold his Bradford home in 1877 and removed

to Beverly, N.J., where his active, helpful career ended in November,

1881.

Ferrin & Weber, of Salamanca, publishers of the Cattaraugas

_Republican_, in 1876 bought the _New Era_ from Col. Haffey and placed

it in charge of Charles F. Persons. He had been in their establishment

at Little Valley two years. For nine or ten months he washed rollers,

fed presses, carried wood and did the varied chores allotted to the

“printer’s devil.” His aptitude impressed his employers, who sent him

first to Salamanca and then to Bradford, an important post for a youth

of twenty-two. Hoping to be an editor some day, he had corresponded for

neighboring papers from boyhood on his father’s farm, a practice he

maintained during his apprenticeship. A few months after reaching

Bradford he and the Salamanca firm established the _Daily Era_, with the

names of Ferrin, Weber & Persons at the mast-head. Very soon Persons

bought out his partners and conducted the paper alone. His ability and

energy had full play. The _Era_ met the demands of the eager, restless

crowds that thronged the streets of Bradford and scoured the hills in

quest of territory. Its news was concise and fresh, its oil-reports were

not doctored for speculative ends, it had opinions and presented them

tersely. Persons sold to W. H. Longwell and W. F. Jordan early in 1879

and in the fall bought the Olean _Democrat_. The nobby New-York town was

feeling the stimulus of oil-operations and he started the _Daily

Herald_, enhancing his wallet and well-won reputation. The American

Press-Association, which furnishes plate-matter to thousands of

newspapers, secured him in 1888 as Local Manager of its New-York office.

Two years ago he was promoted to General Eastern-Manager and in 1894 was

elected Secretary, Assistant General-Manager and one of the five

directors. Mr. Persons occupies a snug home in Brooklyn, with his wife

and two little daughters. He is a live representative of the go-ahead,

enterprising, sagacious, executive American.

[Illustration:

COL. J. H. HAFFEY.

D. A. DENNISON. CHAS. F. PERSONS.

THOMAS A. KERN.

]

Longwell & Jordan also bought the _Breeze_—it first breathed the

oil-laden air of Bradford in 1878 and was edited by David Armstrong,

“organizer” of the producers in one of their movements to “get

together”—and consolidated it with the _Era_. Col. Edward Stuck, of

York, worked the combination successfully some months. Colonel Leander

M. Morton was night-editor until his lamented death. Thomas A. Kern

attended to the field, preparing the “monthly reports” and posting

readers on oil-developments in his bailiwick. Years have flown since

poor “Tom,” young and enthusiastic, and J. K. Graham, exact and upright,

responded to the message that brooks no excuse or postponement. “Musing

on companions gone, we doubly feel ourselves alone.” Bradshaw, McMullen

and others scattered. Jordan, whose first work for papers was done at

Petrolia in 1873, died in Harrisburg in 1897. P. C. Boyle secured the

_Era_ and infused into it much of his own prompt, courageous spirit.

David A. Dennison has for years been its efficient editor. His parents

removed from Connecticut to a farm south of Titusville when he was a

baby. At thirteen David wrote a batch of items, which it tickled him to

see in print, without a thought of one day blossoming into a

full-fledged “literary feller.” Not caring to be a tiller of the soil,

he juggled the hammer and lathe in machine-shops to the music of “the

Anvil Chorus.” A short season on the boards convinced him that he was

not commissioned to elevate the stage and wrest the scepter from Edwin

Booth, Lawrence Barrett, John McCullough or Alexander Salvini. He

whisked to a Bradford shop to strike the iron while it was hot, writing

smart descriptions of oil-region scenes for outside papers as a

side-issue for several years. A series of his articles on gas-monopoly,

in the Elmira _Telegram_, brought reduced rates to consumers and

pleasant notoriety to the ironworker, who had proved himself a

blacksmith with the sledge and no “blacksmith” with the quill. His name

was neither Dennis nor Mud, and the _Daily Oil News_, McMullen &

Bradshaw’s game-fowl, wanted him forthwith. The salary was not alluring

and in the Indian-summer days of 1886 he cast in his lot with the _Era_.

Promotion chased him persistently. From reporter he was boosted to

city-editor and in 1894 to the editorial management, a flawless

selection. He has tussled with all sorts of topics, constructed tales of

woe in jingling verse and even tempted fate by firing off a drama, which

has not yet run the gamut of publicity. Dennison has been offered good

sits in metropolitan offices, but he likes Bradford and clings to the

_Era_. He married Miss Katharine Grady in 1883 and three boys gladden

the home of the exultant D. A. D. “May his shadow never grow less.”

E. W. Butler started the Bradford _Sunday News_ on April first, 1879,

with Joseph Moorhead as editor. Mr. Moorhead grew up on a farm near

Newcastle, served in the army as captain in Matthew Stanley Quay’s

regiment, landed at Petroleum Centre in 1869, worked about oil-wells

five years, taught school at St. Petersburg in 1874-5, published a

short-lived fraternal paper at Newcastle in 1870, aided in editing the

Millerstown _Review_ and in 1878 filled a position on the Bradford

_Era_. He edited the Sunday News one year, helped launch a similar sheet

at Minneapolis, returned to Bradford in 1880, resumed his position a few

months and resigned to edit the _Sunday-Mail_. Early in 1885 he settled

in Kansas, farming there five years and coming back to Pennsylvania in

1890. Since that time he has lived in Pittsburg and been connected with

various dailies of the sooty city. His vigor and experience are

manifested in his writings, which always go direct to the spot. At

sixty-two the veteran unites the activity of buoyant youth with the

wisdom of robust age. Butler reeled off the Buffalo _Sunday-News_ in

1880, the sharpest, quickest, breeziest afternoon-paper in the Bison

City, and in 1885 sold his Bradford bantling to Philip H. Lindeman,

_Era_ book-keeper and manager. Lindeman navigated against wind and tide

until the _News_ ran ashore in 1894, the “Commodore” himself ending

life’s voyage in June of 1897.

[Illustration: JOSEPH MOORHEAD.]

[Illustration: H.F. BARBER.]

[Illustration: EDWARD C. JONES.]

A number of producers agreeing to stand sponsors for the bills, McMullen

& Bradshaw floated the _Daily News_ in 1886. Its backers grew tired of

emptying their pockets and the bright venture gave up the ghost. Eben

Brewer’s _Evening Star_ tinted the sky under its founder’s artistic

touch. He sold to Andrew Carr, who found the load unbearable and shoved

it upon Rufus B. Stone, brother of Congressman Charles W. Stone. Mr.

Stone, an able lawyer, was Chancellor of Mississippi in the

reconstruction-days. The reconstructed legislature lopped off his salary

and he located at Bradford to practice law. He owned the _Star_ several

years, writing most of the political editorials that carried weight and

gave the paper high standing. H. F. Barber, a man of fine intellect and

noble purpose, dropped the Smethport _Miner_, relieved Stone and honed

the _Star_ a few years, assisted at times by George Allen’s clever

stroke. Protracted sickness, during which he showed “how sublime it is

to suffer and be strong,” at last “withered the garlands on his brow.”

He is dead, but “his speaking dust has more of life than half its

breathing moulds.” Allen slid to Buffalo to polish up a

railroad-periodical. “Judge” Johnson—in 1875 he landed at Bradford,

served a term in the Legislature and another as postmaster, operated in

oil and died three years ago—controlled the _Star_ after Barber, whose

widow still retains an interest in the paper. Ex-Senator Emery fitted

out the _Daily Record_, which seeks to trail the standard of the

Standard in the dust and ticket independent producers, refiners and

pipe-liners to a petroleum-Utopia. “Ed.” Jones, the adept who toed the

chalk-mark on the Harrisburg _Call_, whirled the emery-wheel so expertly

that the _Record_ has never approached Davy Jones’s locker. It is snappy

and full of fight as a shillaleh at Donnybrook Fair. Carr’s

_Sunday-Mail_, freighted with a car of delicate morsels, barked up the

wrong tree and went to the bow-wows. Carr rolled down to Pittsburg to

sell buggies, bagging a cargo of ducats. “Tom” L. Wilson—he’s as

humorous as they make ’em—got out three numbers of _Sunday Morning_, a

four-page blanket in size and a ten-course banquet in contents. Col. Ege

shut it down for publishing a rank extract from Walt Whitman’s “Blades

o’ Grass” and boomed the _Evening-Times_, which expired in infancy. Ege

was a banker who hankered to be State-Treasurer, banked upon

newspaper-support, went into bankruptcy, received an appointment in the

Philadelphia Mint and traveled westward when Cleveland shuffled the pack

for a new deal. Wilson wrote for the oil-region press, handled the

Reading branch of a Harrisburg paper, edited the Washington

_Review_—Sistersville has a sisterly _Review_ now—and rounded up in

Buffalo. The _Post_, Bradford’s latest Sunday experiment, owes its good

looks and good matter to Edward F. McIntyre and George O. Sloan.

[Illustration:

J.C. McMULLEN.

A.L. SNELL. W.C. ARMOR.

]

One evening in 1877 a young stranger walked into the St. Petersburg

post-office, bought a package of stationery at the book-counter and told

J. M. Place he was looking for a situation. Place hired him as a clerk.

He had come from the homestead farm in Orange county, N. Y., to Cornell

University, worked his way and graduated in civil-engineering. Marshall

Swartzwelder lectured at St. Petersburg on temperance and Place’s clerk

sat up all night to report the masterpiece for the _Derrick_. It was his

first production in print, a voluntary act on his part, and the article

attracted most favorable notice. Its author was at once offered a

position on the _Derrick_. He came in contact with oil-statistics and

his real genius asserted itself. His painstaking, conscientious reports

were accepted as strictly reliable. He would trudge over the hills, wade

through miles of mud and ford swollen streams to ascertain the precise

status of an important well, rather than approximate it from hearsay.

This care and thoroughness gave the highest value to the statistical

work of Justus C. McMullen. In 1879 he went to Bradford and worked on

the _Breeze_, the _Era_ and the _Star_, always with the same devotion

that was a ruling maxim of his life. In 1883 he scouted in Warren and

Forest counties and became part owner of the _Petroleum Age_. Alfred L.

Snell and Major W. C. Armor were associated with him in this admirable

monthly, of which he became sole proprietor on the first of December,

1887. A. C. Crum, now on the editorial staff of the Pittsburg

_Dispatch_, contributed many a newsy crumb to the _Age_. A newsboy at

Pickwick hailed me in front of his stand one cool morning and asked—not

in a Pickwickian sense—if it would be worth while to get somebody to

send locals to the _Derrick_. “Why not do it yourself?” was my answer.

He tried and he succeeded. His work expanded and improved and he adopted

journalism permanently. He catered for Oil City and Bradford papers,

spun yarns for Pittsburg dailies and was a legislative correspondent

several sessions. Snell, a statistical hummer and hard-to-beat purveyor

of news, hangs his manuscript on the _Derrick_ hook. Armor sponsored a

historic book and laid off his armor to second Dr. Egle in the State

Library. He has a book-store in Harrisburg and a museum that distances

the “Old Curiosity Shop.” McMullen established and edited the _Daily

Oil-News_ in 1886. He died of pleurisy, contracted from exposure in

collecting oil-data, on January thirty-first, 1888, cut off at

thirty-seven. The _Petroleum Age_ did not stay long behind its

unswerving projector. Justus C. McMullen is enshrined in the affections

of the people. An unrelenting foe of oppression, he had a warm heart for

the poor and pursued his own path of right through thorns or flowers. He

married Miss Cora, daughter of Col. L. M. Morton, who lives in Bradford

and has one little girl. A brave, grand, exalted spirit passed from

earth when J. C. McMullen’s light was quenched.

“On the sands of life

Sorrow treads heavily and leaves a print

Time cannot wash away.”

Parker has been called “the graveyard of newspapers,” yet G. A. Needle

has run his popular _Phœnix_ twenty-three years, accumulating

sufficient wealth to own a book-store and oil-wells and let the paper

canter along under charge of his son, the youngest editor in

Pennsylvania.

[Illustration: FULTON PHILLIPS.]

The Washington _Reporter_, established in 1892 as a daily and

semi-weekly, owes its abundant success largely to the wide-awake editor,

William Christman. His practical knowledge and ready pen keeps the

_Reporter_ right in the swim. Fulton Phillips in 1888 launched the

_Outlook_ at McDonald, then merely a flag-station on the Panhandle

Railway, with no great outlook in prospect. His editorials are

essentially independent and vigorous, the man dominating the paper. It

is Fulton Phillips, rather than the paper, who is read and quoted by the

thousands of _Outlook_ readers. He was born within a mile of McDonald

and the boom following oil-operations did not catch the tall editor—he

is considerably above six feet—napping. The _Outlook_ was the first to

put a reporter in the field and write up the wells in picturesque style.

Phillips served through the war, taught school at Pittsburg, ran a paper

at Canonsburg, drifted westward, did editorial work in Missouri and

California and returned to start the only failure in his pilgrimage, a

temperance-organ at Washington. It went the way of former

temperance-sheets in the local-option town where they take theirs in

jugs. In other portions of the oil-world journalism holds up its end

creditably, newspapers and developments marching neck and neck on their

grand errand of enlightenment. The Sistersville _Review_ and Parkersburg

_Sentinel_ do the West-Virginia field proud, the Toledo _Journal_ is

always primed with Ohio oil-news, nor is there a spot in which oil plays

trump that literature does not hold a royal flush. Intelligence and

petroleum are a good pair to tie to, to bet on and to rake in the

jack-pot.

[Illustration: REV. S. J. M. EATON, D.D.]

The Rev. S. J. M. Eaton—his name is ever spoken with

reverence—thirty-three years pastor of the Presbyterian church at

Franklin, filled a large place in the literary guild. He loved

especially to delve into old books and papers and letters pertaining to

the pioneers of Northwestern Pennsylvania. His faithful labors in this

neglected nook unearthed a troop of traditions and facts which “the

world will not willingly let die.” For the “History of Venango County”

he furnished a number of leading chapters. His published works include

“Petroleum,” an epitome of oil-affairs down to 1866, “Lakeside,” a tale

based upon his father’s ministerial experiences in the wilds of Erie

county, biographies of eminent divines, sketches of the Erie Presbytery,

pamphlets and sermons. “The Holy City” and “Palestine,” embodying his

observations in the orient, were issued as text-books by the Chautauqua

Circle. Dr. Eaton was my near neighbor for years and hours in his

well-stocked library, enriched by his “affluence of discursive talk,”

are recalled with deep satisfaction. On the sixteenth of July, 1889,

while walking along the street, he raised his hands suddenly and fell to

the pavement, struck down by heart-failure. “He was not, for God took

him” to wear the victor’s crown. Farewell, “until the day dawn and the

shadows flee away.”

In the Franklin office of the Galena Oil-Works are three successful

weavers of rich textures in the literary loom—Dr. Frank H. Johnston, E.

H. Sibley and Samuel H. Gray. Dr. Johnston was born in Canal township,

reared on a farm, severely wounded in battling for the Union, studied

medicine, practiced at Cochranton and in 1872 located at Petrolia. There

“he first essayed to write” for the Oil-City _Derrick_. From the very

outset his articles were up to concert-pitch. Abandoning medicine for

letters, he acquired a thorough knowledge of stenography, read the

choicest books and wrote in his best vein for the press. He represented

the _Derrick_ as its Franklin correspondent with credit to himself and

the paper. For sixteen years he has been connected with the Galena

Oil-Works as secretary of Hon. Charles Miller, a place demanding the

superior qualifications with which the doctor is unstintingly endowed.

Edwin Henry Sibley, born at Bath, N. Y., in 1857, is a brother of Hon.

Joseph C. Sibley and has resided in Franklin twenty-three years. He was

graduated from Cornell University in 1880. For several years he has been

treasurer of the Galena Oil-Works and manager of Miller & Sibley’s

famous Prospect-Hill Stock-Farm, positions of responsibility to which

his personal address, his training and his business-methods adapt him

pre-eminently. Three years in succession he has been unanimously elected

President of the Pennsylvania Jersey-Cattle Club. He has been active and

efficient in promoting the laudable work of the University Extension

Society. Under guise of “Polybius Crusoe Smith, Sage of Cranberry

Cross-Roads”—the Smiths are big folks since the by-play of Pocahontas—he

contributes to _Puck_ and other well-known publications humorous

articles and short, quaint, pithy sayings. These display a keen insight

into human nature and rare gift of happy, accurate expression. One of

his recent effusions—an address welcoming the delegates to an

agricultural convention—is a bit of burlesque that deserves to rank with

Artemus Ward’s brightest efforts or the richest paragraphs in the Biglow

Papers. A few buds plucked at random from the flowery mead will serve to

illustrate the high-class stamp of Mr. Sibley’s work in the field his

genius adorns. They are literary nosegays from his terse observations as

a philosophic “looker-on in Vienna:”

“The wife that manages her husband is a genius, the one that bosses him

is a tartar, the one that fights him is a fool, while the one that does

none of them is now as much out of fashion as her grandmother’s

wedding-gown.”

“The pygmies of Africa are such by nature, but elsewhere they are

produced artificially by a diet of petty and envious thoughts.”

“‘Truth is mighty and will prevail,’ but Error generally has the better

of it till the seventy-seventh round.”

“One of the greatest evils that humanity has to contend with is that so

many icebergs have floated down from the North Pole and persist in

passing themselves off for men.”

“Former lovers in making out their title-deeds of the heart to their

successors always reserve at least a narrow pathway across a corner.”

“Wise men and fools have foolish thoughts; fools tell them, wise men

keep them to themselves.”

“Parents that haven’t time to correct their children when they are small

have time to weep over them when they are grown.”

“Affectation (alias of Deceitfulness) has three picked cronies from whom

she is seldom separated. Their names are False Pride, Weakmindedness and

Bad Temper.”

“If one has too much vitality in his brains he can get rid of it by

taking them out and boiling them. If he finds this too much bother, he

can accomplish the same result by swallowing a few doses of a decoction

of faith-cure, spook-lore and hypnotism.”

“For peace of mind and length of days, put this inscription above the

doorway of workshop and home: _Troubles that will not be worth worrying

over seven years hence are not worth worrying over now._”

“The ancient Israelites once worshiped a golden calf, but the modern

Americans would worship a golden polecat if they couldn’t get the gold

in any other form to worship.”

“The young man who starts out in life with character and brains and

energy as his outfit will distance the one whose sole capital is the

money his father left him.”

[Illustration:

E. H. SIBLEY.

S. H. GRAY.

F. H. JOHNSTON.

]

Samuel H. Gray carries under his hat plenty of the gray-matter that

makes bright writers and bright wooers of the Muses. He has been court

stenographer of Venango county and holds a confidential position with

the firm of Miller & Sibley, applying his spare moments to

newspaper-writing. His pictures of petroleum-traits and incidents are

finished word-paintings, with “light and shade and color properly

disposed.” Like Silas Wegg, he “drops into poetry” in a friendly way.

Such papers as the New-York _Truth_ strive for his emanations, which

savor of Bret Harte and “hold the mirror up to nature” in oleaginous

circles. Judge of this “By the Order of the Lord,” founded on an actual

occurrence in Scrubgrass township:

“It was back, if I remember, in the year of sixty-five,

When we formed a part and parcel of that rushin’, busy hive

That extended from Oil City up the crooked crick until

It reached its other endin’ in the town of Titusville;

When every rock an’ hillside was included in a lease,

An’ everyone was huntin’ fer the fortune-makin’ grease;

When a poor man pushed and elbowed ’gainst the oily millionaire,

An’ ‘the devil take the hindmost’ seemed the all-pervadin’ prayer.

“An’ we hed formed a pardnership, jest Tom an’ Jim an’ me,

That was properly recorded as the ‘Tough and Hungry Three,’

An’ hed gone an’ leased a portion of some hard an’ rocky soil

That we thought looked like the cover of a fountain filled with oil.

An’ we set the drill a’goin’ on its long an’ greasy quest,

That meant so much or little to the capital possessed.

Our money was all in the well, in Providence our trust,

An’ we waited for a fortune, or to liquidate an’ bu’st.

“An’ while the drill was chuggin’ at its hard an’ rocky way

We three would hold a meetin’ at a certain time each day,

The ‘resolves’ an’ the ‘whereases’ that the secretary took

Were properly recorded ’twixt the covers of a book.

An’ we passed a resolution by a vote unanimous

Thet if Providence would condescend to sorter favor us,

An’ assist the operations on the ‘Tough and Hungry’ lease,

We would give to Him a quarter of the total flow of grease.

“Next day the drill broke through into a very oily sand

An’ Providence remembered us with strong, unsparin’ hand;

The oil came out with steady flow an’ loaded up the tanks,

An’ the Lord was due rewarded by a solid vote of thanks.

A resolution then came up thet caused the vote to split,

A sort of an amendment, readin’ somethin’ like, to wit—

‘Whereas, a tenth is all the Lord was ever known to crave,

Resolved we give it to Him; but resolved the rest we save.’

“I fit that resolution, an’ I fit it tooth an’ nail,

Spoke of dangers such proceedin’s was most likely to entail;

But two votes were in its favor, an’ two votes it only took

Fer to have it due recorded in the resolution-book.

Next day the oil stopped flowin’ an’ it never flowed no more,

An’ the ‘Tough and Hungry’ combine was a’ feelin’ blue an’ sore.

But they nailed upon the derrick this notice, on a board,

‘This well has stopped proceedin’s, by the order of the Lord.’”

The late Rev. Harry L. Yewens, rector of St. John’s church, was an

accomplished writer and contributed many timely articles to the press.

Rev. Dr. Fradenburg, formerly of Oil City and Franklin, has published

seven scholarly volumes on religious subjects of vital interest.

The Bolivar _Breeze_, seven years old, under the able management of J.

P. Herrick is one of the most readable sheets published in any section

of the country. Editor Herrick is a philosopher and wit, who looks on

the bright side of life and, better still, helps others to do likewise.

P. A. Rattigan, the very-much-alive perpetrator of the Millerstown

_Herald_, once received an article entitled “Why Do I Live?” It was

written on both sides of the sheet of foolscap, whereupon P. Anthony in

next issue printed this conclusive answer: “You live because you sent

your dog-goned rot by mail instead of bringing it in person.”

[Illustration: MELVILLE J. KERR.]

Melville J. Kerr, a Franklin boy, son of the senior proprietor of the

marble-works, is a popular writer of facetiæ and society small-talk.

Possibly “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” but his

cognomen of “Joe Ker” is known to thousands of smiling readers who never

heard of Melville. The aspiring youth, believing in the advantages of a

big city, journeyed to New York to look for an opportunity that might

want a party about his size and style. Unlike Jacob for Rachel, Penelope

for Ulysses, the zealots who prayed for Ingersoll’s conversion or the

Governor of South Carolina for the Governor of North Carolina to “fill

’em up again,” he didn’t wait long. A soap-mogul liked the ambitious,

sprightly young man, introduced him to the swell set and booked him as

editor of _The Club_. Kerr’s refined humor popped and effervesced with

more “bead” than ever. He hobnobbed with millionaires, delighted Ward

McAlister and married a lovely girl. Blood will tell as surely as a

gossip or a tale-bearer. He is now editing _The Yellow Kid_, a

semi-monthly crowded with good things, and raking in wealth at a

Klondyke-gait from his newest book, “The World Over,” a graphic and

geographic burlesque that is fated to be read the world over. And this

is how the “Joe Ker” is the winning card in one oil-region instance.

Last year a compact “Life of Napoleon Bonaparte,” in harmony with the

age of steam and electricity that won’t winnow a bushel of chaff for a

grain of wheat, which had run through the winter and spring of 1894-5 in

_McClure’s Magazine_, was published in book-form. Napoleonic ground had

been so plowed and harrowed and raked and scraped and sifted by Hugo,

Scott, Abbott, Hazlitt, Bourrienne, Madame Junot and a host of smaller

fry that it seemed idle to expect anything new concerning the arbiter of

Europe. Yet the beauty and freshness and acumen of this “Life” surprised

and captivated its myriad readers, whose pleasure it increased to learn

that the book was the production of a young woman. The authoress is Miss

Ida M., daughter of Franklin S. Tarbell, a wealthy oil-operator. Her

childhood was spent at Rouseville, where her parents lived prior to

occupying their present home at Titusville. The romantic surroundings

were calculated to awaken glowing fancies in the acute mind of the

little girl. After graduating from Allegheny College, Meadville, she

taught in the seminary at Poland, O., assisted to edit _The Chautauquan_

at Meadville and spent three years in Europe gathering materials for

articles on the dark days of Robespierre, Danton, Marat and Marie

Antoinette. She wrote for _Scribners’_, _McClure’s_ and the _New-England

Magazine_, adding to her fame by an exhaustive study of Abraham

Lincoln’s youth. _Scribners’_ will soon publish her biography of Madame

Roland, the heroine of the French Revolution. Her success thus early in

her career gives fruitful promise of a resplendent future for the

vivacious, winsome biographer of the “Little Corporal.”

While many names and terms and phrases peculiar to oil-operations are

unintelligible to the tenderfoot as “the confusion of tongues” at Babel,

others will be valuable additions to the language. “He has the sand”

aptly describes a gritty, invincible character. The fortunate adventurer

“strikes oil,” the pompous strutter is “a big gasser,” foolish anger is

“pumping roily” and fruitless enterprise is “boring in dry territory.”

Misdirected effort is “off the belt,” failure “stops the drill,” a lucky

investment “hits the jugular,” a hindrance “sticks the tools” and an

abandoned effort “plugs the well.” A man or well that keeps at it is “a

stayer,” one that doesn’t pan out is “a duster,” one that cuts loose is

“a gusher” or “a spouter.” Fair promise means “a good show,” the owner

of pipe-line certificates “has a bundle,” fleeced speculators are “shorn

lambs”—not limited to Oildom by a large majority—and the ruined operator

“shuts ’er down.” In a moment of inspiration John P. Zane created “the

noble producer,” Lewis F. Emery invented “the downtrodden refiner” and

Samuel P. Irvin exploited “the Great Invisible Oil-Company.” Some of

these epigrammatic phrases deserve to go thundering down the ages with

Grant’s “let us have peace,” Cleveland’s “pernicious activity,” and “a

sucker is born every minute.”

Nor is the jargon of places and various appliances devoid of interest to

the student of letters. Oil City, Petroleum Centre, Oleopolis, Petrolia,

Greece City—first spelled G-r-e-a-s-e—Gas City, Derrick City and Oil

Springs were named with direct reference to the slippery commodity. From

prominent operators came Funkville, Shamburg, Tarr Farm, Rouseville,

McClintockville, Fagundas, Prentice, Cochran, Karns City, Angelica,

Criswell City, Gillmor, Duke Centre and Dean City. Noted men or early

settlers were remembered in Titusville, Shaffer, Plumer, Trunkeyville,

Warren, Irvineton, McKean, De Golier, Custer City, Garfield, Franklin,

Reno, Foster, Cooperstown, Kennerdell, Milton, Foxburg, Pickwick,

Parker, Troutman, Butler, Washington, Mannington and Morgantown.

Emlenton commemorates Mrs. Emlon Fox. St. Joe recalls Joseph Oberly, a

pioneer-operator in that portion of Butler county. Standoff City kept

green a contractor who wished to “stand-off” his men’s wages until he

finished a well. A deep hole or pit on the bank of the creek, from which

air rushed, suggested Pithole. Tip-Top, near Pleasantville, signified

its elevated site. Cornplanter, the township in which Oil City is

situated, bears the name of the stalwart chief—six feet high and one

hundred years old—to whom the land was ceded for friendly services to

the government and the white settlers. This grand old warrior died in

1836 and the Legislature erected a monument over his grave, on the

Indian reservation near Kinzua. Venango, Tionesta, Conewago, Allegheny,

Modoc and Kanawha smack of the copper-hued savage once monarch of the

whole plantation. Red-Hot, Hardscrabble, Bullion, Babylon, St.

Petersburg, Fairview, Antwerp, Dogtown, Turkey City and Triangle are

sufficiently obvious. Sistersville, the centre of activity in West

Virginia, is blamed upon twin-islets in the river. Alemagooselum is a

medley as uncertain in its origin as the ingredients of boarding-house

hash. Diagrams are needed to convey a reasonable notion of “clamps,”

“seed-bags,” “jars,” “reamers,” “sockets,” “centre-bits,” “mud-veins,”

“tea-heads,” “conductors,” “Samson-posts,” “bull-wheels,” “band-wheels,”

“walking-beams,” “grasshoppers,” “sucker-rods,” “temper-screws,”

“pole-tools,” “casing,” “tubing,” “working-barrels,” “standing-valves,”

“check-valves,” “force-pumps,” “loading-racks,” “well-shooters,”

“royalty,” “puts,” “calls,” “margins,” “carrying-rates,” “spot,”

“regular,” “pipage,” “storage,” and the thousand-and-one things that

make up the past and present of the lingo of petroleum.

The Literary Guild is not the smallest frog in the petroleum-pool.

THE WOMAN’S EDITION.

To raise twenty-five-hundred dollars for an annex to the hospital, the

ladies of Oil City, on February twelfth, 1896, issued the “Woman’s

Edition” of the _Derrick_. It was a splendid literary and financial

success, realizing nearly five-thousand dollars. This apt poem graced

the editorial page:

Oh! sad was her brow and wild was her mien,

Her expression the blankest that ever was seen;

She was pained, she was hurt at the plain requisition:

“We expect you to write for the Woman’s Edition.”

Her babies wept sadly, her husband looked blue,

Her house was disordered, each room in a stew;

Do you ask me to tell why this sad exhibition?

She was trying to write for the Woman’s Edition.

Oh, what should she write? she had nothing to say;

She pondered and thought all the long weary day;

The question of woman, her life and her mission,

Must all be touched up in the Woman’s Edition.

But what could she do—oh, how could she write?

She could bake, she could brew from morning to night;

She had even been known to get up a petition:

But now she must write for “The Woman’s Edition.”

She felt that she must; her sisters all did it,

Would she fall behind? The saints all forbid it!

If the rest of her life should be spent in contrition,

She felt she must write for the Woman’s Edition.

She did it, she wrote it, now read it and ponder;

She treated a subject a little beyond her,

But that was much better than total omission

Of her name from the list on the Woman’s Edition.

Now her home is restored, her husband has smiled,

But, alas! that pleased look on his face was beguiled

By her cheerful assent to his simple condition:

That she’ll not write again for a Woman’s Edition.

THE GIRL AND THE EDITOR.

D. A. Denison, the lively editor of the Bradford _Era_, is rarely

vanquished in any sort of encounter. A “sweet-girl graduate” wrote a

story and wanted him to print it. Thinking to let her down gently, he

remarked: “Your romance suits me splendidly, but it has trivial faults.

For instance, you describe the heroine’s canary as drinking water by

‘lapping it up eagerly with her tongue.’ Isn’t that a peculiar way for a

canary to drink water?” “Your criticism surprises me,” said the blushing

girl in a pained voice. “Still, if you think your readers would prefer

it, perhaps it would be better to let the canary drink water with a

teaspoon.” Dennison wilted like an ice-cream in July, promised to

publish the story and the girl walked away mistress of the situation.

[Illustration:

WELL FLOWING OIL AFTER TORPEDOING.

E. A. L. ROBERTS

W. B. ROBERTS

]

XVII.

NITRO-GLYCERINE IN THIS.

EXPLOSIVES AS AIDS TO THE PRODUCTION OF OIL—THE ROBERTS TORPEDO MONOPOLY

AND ITS LEADERS—UNPRECEDENTED LITIGATION—MOONLIGHTERS AT

WORK—FATALITIES FROM THE DEADLY COMPOUND—PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES OF

VICTIMS—MEN BLOWN TO FRAGMENTS—STRANGE ESCAPES—THE LOADED

PORKER—STORIES TO ACCEPT OR REJECT AS IMPULSE PROMPTS.

----------

“There is no distinguished Genius altogether exempt from some infusion

of Madness.”—_Aristotle._

“Genius must be born and never can be taught.”—_Dryden._

“Labor with what zeal we will, something still remains

undone.”—_Longfellow._

“Come, bright improvement, on the car of Time.”—_Campbell._

“Revenge, at first though sweet, bitter ere long, back on itself

recoils.”—_Milton._

“Only these fragments and nothing more!

Can naught to our arms the lost restore?”—_Anonymous._

“Death itself is less painful when it comes upon us unawares.”—_Pascal._

“Dead? did you say he was dead? or is it only my brain?

He went away an hour ago; will he never come again?”—_Tamar

Kermode._

“There is no armor against fate.”—_Shirley._

“Dreadful is their doom * * * like yonder blasted bough by thunder

riven.”—_Beattie._

“By forms unseen their dirge is sung.”—_Collins._

“Death, a necessary evil, will come when it will come.”—_Shakespeare._

“Where is the reed on which I leant?”—_Tennyson._

“To-morrow is with God alone.

And man hath but to-day.”—_Whittier._

“Who so shall telle a tale after a man moste reherse everich

word.”—_Chaucer._

----------

[Illustration: NITRO-GLYCERINE LETS GO.]

When in 1846 a patient European chemist hit upon a new compound by

mixing fuming nitric-acid, sulphuric-acid and glycerine in certain

proportions, he didn’t know it was loaded. Glycerine is a harmless

substance and its very name signifies sweetness. Combining it with the

two acids changed the three ingredients materially. The action of the

acids caused the glycerine to lose hydrogen and take up nitrogen and

oxygen. The product, which the discoverer baptized Nitro-Glycerine,

appeared meek and innocent as Mary’s little lamb and was readily

mistaken for lard-oil. It burned in lamps, consuming quietly and

emitting a gentle light. But concussion proved the oily-looking liquid

to be a terrible explosive, more powerful than gun-cotton, gunpowder or

dynamite. For twenty years it was not applied to any useful purpose in

the arts. Strangely enough, it was first put up as a homœopathic

remedy for headache, because a few drops rubbed on any portion of the

body pained the head acutely. James G. Blaine was given doses of it on

his death-bed. An energetic poison, fatalities resulted from imbibing it

for whisky, which it resembles in taste. After a time attention was

directed unexpectedly to its explosive qualities. A small consignment,

sent to this country as a specimen, accidentally exploded in a New-York

street. This set the newspapers and the public talking about it and

wondering what caused the stuff to go off. Investigation solved the

mystery and revealed the latent power of the compound, which had

previously figured only as a rare chemical in a half-score foreign

laboratories. Miners and contractors gradually learned its value for

blasting masses of rock. Five pounds, placed in a stone-jar and

suspended against the iron-side of the steamer Scotland, sunk off Sandy

Hook, cut a fissure twelve feet long in the vessel. A steamship at

Aspinwall was torn to atoms and people stood in mortal terror of the

destructive agent. Girls threw away the glycerine prescribed for chapped

lips, lest it should burst up and distribute them piecemeal over the

next county. Their cotton-padding or charcoal-dentifrice was as

dangerous as the glycerine alone, which is an excellent application for

the skin. A flame or a spark would not explode Nitro-Glycerine readily,

but the chap who struck it a hard rap might as well avoid trouble among

his heirs by having had his will written and a cigar-box ordered to hold

such fragments as his weeping relatives could pick from the surrounding

district. Such was the introduction to mankind of a compound that was to

fill a niche in connection with the production of petroleum.

Paraffine is the unrelenting foe of oil-wells. It clogged and choked

some of the largest wells on Oil Creek and diminished the yield of

others in every quarter of the field. It incrusts the veins of the rock

and the pipes, just as lime in the water coats the tubes of a

steam-boiler or the inside of a tea-kettle. How to overcome its ill

effects was a question as serious as the extermination of the potato-bug

or the army-worm. Operators steamed their wells, often with good

results, the hot vapor melting the paraffine, and drenched them with

benzine to accomplish the same object. A genius patented a liquid that

would boil and fizz and discourage all the paraffine it touched,

cleaning the tubing and the seams in the sand much as caustic-soda

scours the waste-pipe of a sink or closet. These methods were very

limited in their scope, the steam condensing, the benzine mixing with

the oil and the burning fluid cooling off before penetrating the

crevices in the strata any considerable distance. Exploding powder in

holes drilled at the bottom of water-wells had increased the quantity of

fluid or opened new veins and the idea of trying the experiment in

oil-wells suggested itself to various operators. In 1860 Henry H.

Dennis, who drilled and stuck the tools in the first well at Tidioute,

procured three feet of two-inch copper-pipe, plugged one end, filled it

with rifle-powder, inserted a fuse-cord and exploded the charge in

presence of six men. The hole was full of water, oil and bits of rock

were blown into the air and “the smell of oil was so much stronger that

people coming up the hollow noticed it.” The same year John F. Harper

endeavored to explode five pounds of powder in A. W. Raymond’s well, at

Franklin. The tin-case holding the powder collapsed under the pressure

of the water and the fuse had gone out. William Reed assisted Raymond

and W. Ayers Brashear, who had expected James Barry—he put up the first

telegraph-line between Pittsburg and Franklin—to fire the charge by

electricity. Reed developed the idea and invented the “Reed Torpedo,”

which he used in a number of wells. A large crowd in 1866 witnessed the

torpedoing of John C. Ford’s well, on the Widow Fleming farm, four miles

south of Titusville. Five pounds of powder in an earthen bottle,

attached to a string of gas-pipe, were exploded at two-hundred-and-fifty

feet by dropping a red-hot iron through the pipe. The shock threw the

water out of the hole, threw out the pipe with such force as to knock

down the walking-beam and samson-post, agitated the water in Oil Creek

and “sent out oil.” Tubing was put in, the old horse worked the pump

until tired out and the result encouraged Ford to buy machinery to keep

the well going constantly. This was _the first successful torpedoing of

an oil-well_! The Watson well, near by, was similarly treated by Harper,

who had brought four bottles of the powder from Franklin and was

devoting his time to “blasting wells.” For his services at the Ford well

he received twenty dollars. Harper, William Skinner and a man named

Potter formed a partnership for this purpose. They torpedoed the Adams

well, on the Stackpole farm, below the Fleming, putting the powder in a

glass-bottle. The territory was dry and no oil followed the explosion.

In the fall of 1860 they shot Gideon B. Walker’s well at Tidioute. Five

torpedoes were exploded in 1860 at Franklin, Tidioute and on Oil Creek.

Business was disturbed over the grave political outlook, oil was

becoming too plentiful, the price was merely nominal and the

torpedo-industry languished.

William F. Kingsbury advertised in 1860 that he would “put blasts in

oil-wells to increase their production.” He torpedoed a well in 1861 on

the island at Tidioute, using a can of powder and a fuse, which ignited

perfectly. Mark Wilson and L. G. Merrill lectured on electricity in

1860-61, traveling over the country and exhibiting the principle of

“Colt’s Submarine Battery,” by which “the rock at any distance beneath

the surface of the earth may be rent asunder, thereby enabling the oil

to flow to the well.” Frederick Crocker in 1864 arranged a torpedo to be

dropped into a well and fired by a pistol-cartridge inserted in the

bottom of the tin-shell. About thirty torpedoes were exploded from 1860

to 1865, all of them in wells filled with water, which served as

tamping. Erastus Jones, James K. Jones and David Card exploded them in

wells at Liverpool, Ohio. Joseph Chandler handled two or three at

Pioneer and George Koch fired one of his own construction in May of

1864. Mr. Beardslee—he struck a vein of water by drilling a hole five

feet and exploding a case of powder at the bottom of a well in 1844,

near Rochester, N. Y.—came to the oil-region and put in a score of shots

in 1865. As long ago as 1808 the yield of water in a well at Fort Regent

was doubled by drilling a small hole and firing a quantity of powder. A

flowing-well on the lease beside the Crocker stopped when the latter was

torpedoed and was rigged for pumping. It pumped “black powder-water,”

showing that the torpedo had opened an underground connection between

the two wells, the effects of the explosion reaching from the Crocker to

its neighbor. William Reed made a can strong enough to resist the

pressure of the water, let it down the Criswell well on Cherry Run in

1863, failed to discharge it by electricity and exploded it by sliding a

hollow weight down a string to strike a percussion-cap.

Notwithstanding these facts, which demonstrated that the yield of oil

and water had been increased by exploding powder hundreds of feet under

water, in November of 1864 Col. E. A. L. Roberts applied for a patent

for “a process of increasing the productiveness of oil-wells by causing

an explosion of gunpowder or its equivalent at or near the oil-bearing

point, in connection with superincumbent fluid-tamping.” He claimed that

the action of a shell at Fredericksburg in 1862, which exploded in a

mill-race, suggested to him the idea of bombarding oil-wells. However

this may be—it has been said he was not at Fredericksburg at the date

specified in his papers—the Colonel furnished no drawings and presented

no application for Letters Patent for over two years. He constructed six

of his torpedoes and arrived with them at Titusville in January of 1865.

Captain Mills permitted him to test his process in the Ladies’ well,

near Titusville, on January twenty-first. Two torpedoes were exploded

and the well flowed oil and paraffine. Reed, Harper and three or four

others filed applications for patents and commenced proceedings for

interference. The suits dragged two years, were decided in favor of

Roberts and he secured the patent that was to become a grievous

monopoly.

A company was organized in New York to construct torpedoes and carry on

the business extensively. Operators were rather sceptical as to the

advantages of the Roberts method, fearing the missiles would shatter the

rock and destroy the wells. The Woodin well, a dry-hole on the Blood

farm, received two injections and pumped eighty barrels a day in

December of 1866. During 1867 the demand increased largely and many

suits for infringements were entered. Roberts seemed to have the courts

on his side and he obtained injunctions against the Reed Torpedo-Company

and James Dickey for alleged infringements. Justices Strong and McKennan

decided against Dickey in 1871. Producers subscribed fifty-thousand

dollars to break down the Roberts patent and confidently expected a

favorable issue. Judge Grier, of Philadelphia, mulcted the Reed Company

in heavy damages. Nickerson and Hamar, ingenious, clever fellows, fared

similarly. Roberts substituted Nitro-Glycerine for gunpowder and

established a manufactory of the explosive near Titusville. The

torpedo-war became general, determined and uncompromising. The monopoly

charged exorbitant prices—two-hundred dollars for a medium shot—and an

army of “moonlighters”—nervy men who put in torpedoes at night—sprang

into existence. The “moonlighters” effected great improvements and first

used the “go-devil drop-weight” in the Butler field in 1876. The Roberts

crowd hired a legion of spies to report operators who patronized the

nocturnal well-shooters. The country swarmed with these emissaries. You

couldn’t spit in the street or near a well after dark without danger of

hitting one of the crew. Unexampled litigation followed. About

_two-thousand_ prosecutions were threatened and most of them begun

against producers accused of violating the law by engaging

“moonlighters.” The array of counsel was most imposing. It included

Bakewell & Christy, of Pittsburg, and George Harding, of Philadelphia,

for the torpedo-company. Kellar & Blake, of New York, and General

Benjamin F. Butler were retained by a number of defendants. Most of the

individual suits were settled, the annoyance of trying them in

Pittsburg, fees of lawyers and enormous costs inducing the operators to

make such terms as they could. By this means the coffers of the company

were filled to overflowing and the Roberts Brothers rolled up millions

of dollars.

The late H. Bucher Swope, the brilliant district-attorney of Pittsburg,

was especially active in behalf of Roberts. The bitter feeling

engendered by convictions deemed unjust, awards of excessive damages and

numerous imprisonments found expression in pointed newspaper paragraphs.

Col. Roberts preserved in scrap-books every item regarding his

business-methods, himself and his associates. One poetical squib,

written by me and printed in the Oil-City _Times_, incensed him to the

highest pitch and was quoted by Mr. Swope in an argument before Judge

McKennan. The old Judge bristled with fury. Evidently he regretted that

it was beyond his power to sentence somebody to the penitentiary for

daring hint that law was not always justice. He had not traveled quite

so far on the tyrannical road as some later wearers of the ermine, who,

“dressed in a little brief authority, play such fantastic tricks before

high heaven as make the angels weep” and consign workingmen to limbo for

presuming to present the demands of organized labor to employers! It is

not Eugene V. Debs or the mouthing anarchist, but the overbearing

corporation-tool on the bench, who is guilty of “contempt of court.”

The Roberts patent re-issued in June of 1873, perpetuating the

burdensome load upon oil-producers. In November of 1876 suit was brought

in the Circuit Court against Peter Schreiber, of Oil City, charged with

infringing the Roberts process. Schreiber’s torpedo duplicated the

unpatented Crocker cartridge and Roberts wanted his scalp. The case was

contested keenly four years, coming up for final argument in May of

1879. Henry Baldwin and James C. Boyce, of Oil City, and Hon. J. H.

Osmer, of Franklin, were the defendant’s attorneys. Mr. Boyce collected

a mass of testimony that seemed overwhelming. He spent years working up

a masterly defense. By unimpeachable witnesses he proved that explosives

had been used in water-wells and oil-wells, substantially in the manner

patented by Roberts, years before the holder of the patent had been

heard of as a torpedoist. But his masterly efforts were wasted upon

Justices Strong and McKennan. They had sustained the monopoly in the

previous suits and apparently would not reverse themselves, no matter

how convincing the reasons. Mr. Schreiber, wearied by the law’s

interminable delays and thirty-thousand dollars of expenditure, decided

not to suffer the further annoyance of appealing to the United-States

Supreme Court. The great body of producers, disgusted with the courts

and despairing of fair-play, did not care to provide the funds to carry

the case to the highest tribunal and lock it up for years awaiting a

hearing. The flood of light thrown upon it by Boyce’s researches had the

effect of preventing an extension of the patent and reducing the price

of torpedoes, thus benefiting the oil-region greatly. Mr. Boyce is now

practicing his profession in Pittsburg. He resided at Oil City for years

and was noted for his bright wit, his incisive logic, his profound

interest in education and his social accomplishments.

Col. Edward A. L. Roberts died at Titusville on Friday morning, March

twenty-fifth, 1881, after a short illness. His demise was quite

unexpected, as he continued in ordinary health until Tuesday night. Then

he was seized with intermittent fever, which rapidly gained ground until

it proved fatal. A moment before dissolution he asked Dr. Freeman, who

was with him, for a glass of water. Drinking it and staring intently at

the doctor, his eyes filled with tears and he said, “I am gone.”

Pressing back upon the pillow, he expired almost instantly. Col. Roberts

was born at Moreau, Saratoga county, New York, in 1829. At seventeen he

enlisted as a private, served with commendable bravery in the Mexican

war and was honorably discharged after a service of two years. Returning

to his native place, he entered an academy and passed several years

acquiring a higher education. Subsequently he entered the dental office

of his brother at Poughkeepsie, N. Y. Still later he removed to the city

and with his brother, W. B. Roberts, engaged in the manufacture of

dental material. For his improvements in dental science and articles he

was awarded several gold-medals by the American Institute. He patented

various inventions that have been of great service and are now in

general use. In the oil-region he was best known as the owner of the

torpedo-patent bearing his name. He came to Titusville in January of

1865 and the same month exploded two shells in the Ladies’ well,

increasing its yield largely. From that time to the present the use of

torpedoes has continued. The litigation over the patent and

infringements attracted widespread attention. The last week of his life

Col. Roberts said he had expended a quarter-million dollars in

torpedo-litigation. He was responsible for more lawsuits than any other

man in the United States. A man of many eccentricities and strong

feelings, he was always liberal and enterprising. He left a large

fortune and one of the most profitable monopolies in the State. In 1869

he married Mrs. Chase, separated from her in 1877 and lived at the

Brunswick Hotel. His widow and two children survived him. Col. Roberts

did much to build up Titusville and his funeral was the largest the town

has ever witnessed. He sleeps in the pretty cemetery and a peculiar

monument, emblematic of the torpedo, marks the burial-plot.

[Illustration:

HOTEL BRUNSWICK.

C. J. ANDREWS

]

On the palatial Hotel Brunswick, which he built and nurtured as the

apple of his eye, Col. Roberts lavished part of his wealth. He decorated

and furnished it gorgeously from cellar to roof. The appointments were

luxurious throughout. If the landlords he engaged could not meet

expenses, the Colonel paid the deficiency ungrudgingly and sawed wood.

Finally the house was conducted in business-style and paid handsomely.

For years it has been run by Charles J. Andrews, who was born with a

talent for hotel-keeping. “Charlie” is well-known in every nook and

corner of Pennsylvania as a “jolly good fellow,” keen politician and

all-round thoroughbred. He has the rare faculty of winning friends and

of engineering bills through the Legislature. He is head of the Liquor

League, a tireless worker, a masterly joker and brimming over with

pat-stories that do not strike back. He operates in oil and base-ball as

a diversion, is a familiar figure in Philadelphia and Harrisburg and

popular everywhere.

Dr. Walter B. Roberts, partner of his brother in the torpedo-company,

clerked in an Albany bank, taught district-school, studied medicine and

rose to eminence in dentistry. Visiting Nicaragua in 1853, he

established a firm to ship deer-skins and cattle-hides to the United

States and built up a large trade with Central America. Resuming his

practice, he and E. A. L. Roberts opened dental-rooms in New York. His

brother enlisted and upon returning from the war assigned the Doctor a

half-interest in a torpedo for oil-wells he desired to patent. In 1865

Dr. Roberts organized the Roberts Torpedo-Company, was chosen its

secretary in 1866 and its president in 1867. He visited Europe in 1867

and removed to Titusville in 1868, residing there until his death. In

1872 he was elected mayor, but his intense longing for a seat in

Congress was never gratified. The oil-producers, whom the vexatious

torpedo-suits made hot under the collar, opposed him resolutely. He had

succeeded in his profession and his business and his crowning ambition

was to go to Washington. The arrow of political disappointment pricked

his temper at times, although to the last he supported the Republican

party zealously. Dr. Roberts was a man of marked characteristics, tall,

stoutly built and vigorous mentally. He did much to advance the

interests of his adopted city and was respected for his courage, his

earnestness and his benevolence to the poor.

[Illustration: WILLIAM H. ANDREWS.]

Hon. William H. Andrews managed the campaign of Dr. Roberts, who fancied

the adroitness, pluck and push of the coming leader and used his

influence to elect him chairman of the Crawford-County Republican

Committee. He performed the duties so capably that he served four terms,

was secretary of the State Committee in 1887-8 and its chairman in

1890-1. Mr. Andrews was born in Warren county and at an early age

entered upon a mercantile career. He established large dry-goods stores

at Titusville, Franklin and Meadville, introduced modern ideas and did a

tremendous business. He advertised by the page, ran excursion-trains at

suitable periods and sold his wares at prices to attract multitudes of

customers. Nobody ever heard of dull trade or hard times at any of the

Andrews stores. Removing to Cincinnati, he opened the biggest store in

the city and forced local merchants to crawl out of the old rut and

hustle. But the aroma of petroleum, the motion of the walking-beam, the

dash and spirit of oil-region life were lacking in Porkopolis and

Andrews returned to Titusville. He engaged in politics with the ardor he

had displayed in trade. His skill as an organizer saved the

Congressional district from the Greenbackers and won him the

chairmanship of the Republican State-Committee. He served two terms in

the Legislature and was elected to the Senate in 1894. He is chairman of

the senatorial committee appointed last session to “Lexow” Philadelphia

and Pittsburg. His brother, W. R. Andrews, edited the Meadville

_Tribune_ and was secretary of the State Committee. Another, Charles J.

Andrews, was proprietor of the Hotel Brunswick and an active politician.

Senator Andrews rarely wastes his breath on long-winded speeches, wisely

preferring to do effective work in committee. No member of the House or

Senate is more influential, more ready to oblige his friends, more

sought for favors and surer of carrying through a bill. He enjoys the

confidence of Senator Quay and his next promotion may be to the

United-States Senate as successor of Matthew S. himself. Mr. Andrews

lives at Allegheny, has oil-wells on Church Run and a big farm in the

suburbs of Titusville, is prominent in local industries and a

representative citizen.

Gradually the quantity of explosive in a torpedo was increased, in order

to shatter a wider area of oil-bearing rock. A hundred quarts of

Nitro-Glycerine have been used for a single shot. In such instances it

is lowered into the well in cans, one resting upon another at the bottom

of the hole until the desired amount is in place. A cap is adjusted to

the top of the last can, the cord that lowered the Nitro-Glycerine is

pulled up, a weight is dropped upon the cap and an explosion equal to

the force of a ton of gunpowder ensues. In a few seconds a shower of

water, oil, mud and pebbles ascends, saturating the derrick and pelting

broken stones in every direction. Frank H. Taylor graphically describes

a scene at Thorn Creek:

“On October twenty-seventh, 1884, those who stood at the brick

school-house and telegraph-offices in the Thorn Creek district and saw

the Semple, Boyd & Armstrong No. 2 torpedoed, gazed upon the grandest

scene ever witnessed in Oildom. When the shot took effect and the barren

rock, as if smitten by the rod of Moses, poured forth its torrent of

oil, it was such a magnificent and awful spectacle that no painter’s

brush or poet’s pen could do it justice. Men familiar with the wonderful

sights of the oil-country were struck dumb with astonishment, as they

beheld the mighty display of Nature’s forces. There was no sudden

reaction after the torpedo was exploded. A column of water rose eight or

ten feet and fell back again, some time elapsed before the force of the

explosion emptied the hole and the burnt glycerine, mud and sand rushed

up in the derrick in a black stream. The blackness gradually changed to

yellow; then, with a mighty roar, the gas burst forth with a deafening

noise, like the thunderbolt set free. For a moment the cloud of gas hid

the derrick from sight and then, as this cleared away, a solid golden

column half-a-foot in diameter shot from the derrick-floor eighty feet

through the air, till it broke in fragments on the crown-pulley and fell

in a shower of yellow rain for rods around. For over an hour that grand

column of oil, rushing swifter than any torrent and straight as a

mountain pine, united derrick-floor and top. In a few moments the ground

around the derrick was covered inches deep with petroleum. The branches

of the oak-trees were like huge yellow plumes and a stream as large as a

man’s body ran down the hill to the road. It filled the space beneath

the small bridge and, continuing down the hill through the woods beyond,

spread out upon the flats where the Johnson well is. In two hours these

flats were covered with a flood of oil. The hill-side was as if a yellow

freshet had passed over it. Heavy clouds of gas, almost obscuring the

derrick, hung low in the woods, and still that mighty rush continued.

Some of those who witnessed it estimated the well to be flowing

five-hundred barrels per hour. Dams were built across the stream, that

its production might be estimated; the dams overflowed and were swept

away before they could be completed. People living along Thorn Creek

packed up their household-goods and fled to the hill-sides. The

pump-station, a mile-and-a-half down the creek, had to extinguish its

fires that night on account of gas. All fires around the district were

put out. It was literally a flood of oil. It was estimated that the

production was ten-thousand barrels the first twenty-four hours. The

foreman, endeavoring to get the tools into the well, was overcome by the

gas and fell under the bull-wheels. He was rescued immediately and

medical aid summoned. He remained unconscious two hours, but

subsequently recovered fully. Several men volunteered to undertake the

job of shutting in the largest well ever struck in the oil-region. The

packer for the oil-saver was tied on the bull-wheel shaft, the tools

were placed over the hole and run in. But the pressure of the solid

stream of oil against it prevented its going lower, even with the

suspended weight of the two-thousand-pound tools. One-thousand pounds

additional weight were added before the cap was fitted and the well

closed. A casing-connection and tubing-lines connected the well with a

tank.”

Had the owners not torpedoed this well, which they believed to be dry,

its value would never have been known. Its conceded failure would have

chilled ambitious operators who held adjoining leases and changed the

entire history of Thorn Creek.

[Illustration: WILLIAM MUNSON.]