THE AMEN CORNER.

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

“He doesn’t stand on one foot fust,

An’ then stand on the other,

An’ on which one he feels the wust

He couldn’t tell you nuther.”

LEWIS F. WATSON.

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

CHARLES W. STONE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

T. J. VANDERGRIFT.

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

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

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

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

W. H. STALEY.

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

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

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

THE AMEN CORNER.

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

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

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

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

Stick to the right with iron nerve,

Nor from the path of duty swerve,

Then your reward you will deserve.

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

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

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

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

You “want to be an angel?”

Well, no need to look solemn;

If you haven’t got what you desire,

Put an ad. in the want column.

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

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

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

“Like a sawyer’s work is life—

The present makes the flaw,

And the only field for strife

Is the inch before the saw.”

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

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

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

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

To spare for me—if you have tears to shed

That I have suffered—keep them not I pray

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

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

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

UP THE ALLEGHENY RIVER.

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

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

GENERAL VIEW OF BRADFORD.

ECONOMITE WELLS OPPOSITE TIDIOUTE

A GLIMPSE OF WARREN

-BABYLON-

EXCHANGE HOTEL TIDIOUTE 1863

TIDIOUTE 1876

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