THE SEX MEN ADORE.

“The stars shall fade away, the sun himselfGrow dim with age and nature sink in years;But thou shall flourish in immortal youth.”

“The stars shall fade away, the sun himself

Grow dim with age and nature sink in years;

But thou shall flourish in immortal youth.”

As might be imagined, Shaw’s venture gave rise to operations of great magnitude. Hosts flocked to the scene in quest of lands and developments began on an extensive scale. Among others a rig was built and a well drilled without delay as close to the Shaw as it was possible to place the timbers. The sand was soon reached by the aid of steam-power and once more the oil poured forth enormously, the new strike proving little inferior to its neighbor. It was named the Bradley, in honor of the principal owner, E. C. Bradley, afterwards a leading operator in Pennsylvania, president of the Empire Gas-Company and still a resident of Oildom. The yield continued large for a number of months, then ceased entirely and both wells were abandoned. Of the hundreds in the vicinity a good percentage paid nicely, but none rivalled the initial spouters. The influx of restless spirits led to an “oil-town,” which for a brief space presented a picture of activity rarely surpassed. Oil Springs, as the mushroom city was fittingly termed, flourished amazingly. The excessive waste of oil filled every ditch and well, rendering the water unfit for use and compelling the citizens to quench their thirst with artificial drinks. The bulk of the oil was conveyed to Mandaumin, Wyoming or Port Sarnia, over roads of horrible badness,giving employment to an army of teamsters. A sort of “mud canal” was formed, through which the horses dragged small loads on a species of flat-boats, while the drivers walked along the “tow-path” on either side. The mud had the consistency of thin batter and was seldom under three feet deep. To those who have never seen this unique system of navigation the most graphic description would fail to convey an adequate idea of its peculiar features. Unlike the Pennsylvania oil-fields, the petroleum-districts of Canada are low and swampy, a circumstance that added greatly to the difficulty of moving the greasy staple during the wet season. Ultimately roads were cut through the soft morasses and railways were constructed, although not before Oil Springs had seen its best days and begun a rapid descent on the down grade. Salt-water quickly put a stop to many wells, the production declined rapidly and the town was depopulated. Operations extended towards the north-west, where Petrolea, which is yet a flourishing place, was established in 1864. Bothwell, twenty-six miles south of Oil Springs, had a short career and light production. Canadian operators were slower than the Yankees of the period and the tireless push of the Americans who crowded to the front at the beginning of the developments around Oil Springs was a revelation to the quiet plodders of Enniskillen and adjacent townships. The leading refineries are at London, fifty miles east of Wyoming and one of the most attractive cities in the Dominion.

OIL ON THEPENINSULA OF GASPE.

Petroleum has long been known to exist in considerable quantity in the Gaspe Peninsula, at the extreme eastern end of Quebec. The Petroleum Oil-Trust, organized by a bunch of Canadians to operate the district, put down eight wells in 1893, finding a light green oil. The Trust continued its borings in 1894, on the left bank of the York River, south of the anticlinal of Tar Point. Several of the ten wells yielded moderately, and operations extended to the portion of Gaspe Basin called Mississippi Brook. One well in that section, completed in July of 1897, flowed from a depth of fifteen-hundred feet. Hundreds of barrels were lost before the well could be controlled. Its first, pumping produced forty barrels, and two others in the vicinity are of a similar stripe. The results thus far are deemed sufficiently encouraging to warrant further tests in hope of developing an extensive field. The oil comes from a coarse rock of sandy texture, and in color and gravity resembles the Pennsylvania article. The formation around the newest strikes is nearly flat, while the shallow wells in the section first prospected were bored at a sharp angle, to keep in touch with the dip of the rock, just as diamond drills follow the gold-bearing ledges in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Crossing the continent, oil has been tapped in the gold-diggingsof British Columbia, although in amounts too small to be important commercially.

John Shaw, whose gusher brought the “gum-beds” of Enniskillen into the petroleum-column, narrowly escaped anticipating Drake three years. Shaw removed from Massachusetts to Canada in 1838, and was regarded as a visionary schemer. In 1856 he sought to interest his neighbors in a plan todrill a well through the rockin search of the reservoir that supplied Bear Creek with a thick scum of oil. They hooted at the idea and proposed to send Shaw to the asylum. This tabooed the subject and postponed the advent of petroleum until the end of August, 1859.

Not content to crown Alaska with mountains of gold and valleys of yellow nuggets, inventors of choice fables have invested the hyperborean region with an exhaustless store of petroleum. In July of 1897 this paragraph, dated Seattle, went the rounds of the press:

“What is said to be the greatest discovery ever made is reported from Alaska. Some gold-prospectors several months ago ran across what seemed to be a lake of oil. It was fed by innumerable springs and the surrounding mountains were full of coal. They brought supplies to Seattle and tests proved it to be of as high grade as any ever taken out of Pennsylvania wells. A local company was formed and experts sent up. They have returned on the steamer Topeka, and their report has more than borne out first reports. It is stated there is enough oil and coal in the discovery to supply the world. It is close to the ocean; in fact, the experts say that the oil oozes out into the salt-water.”

William H. Seward’s purchase from Russia, for years ridiculed as good only for icebergs and white-bears, may be credited with Klondyke placers and vast bodies of gold-bearing quartz, but a “lake of oil” is too great a stretch of the long bow. If “a lake of oil” ever existed, the lighter portions would have evaporated and the residue would be asphaltum. The story “won’t hold water” or oil.

A thief broke into a Bradford store and pilfered the cash-drawer. Some months later the merchant received an unsigned letter, containing a ten-dollar bill and this explanatory note: “I stole seventy-eight dollars from your money-drawer. Remorse gnaws at my conscience. When remorse gnaws again I will send you some more.”

It is not surprising that evil travels faster than good, since it takes only two seconds to fight a duel and two months to drill an oil-well at Bradford.

“The Producers’ Consolidated Land-and-Petroleum-Company,” the formidable title over the Bradford office of the big corporation, is apt to suggest to observant readers the days of old long sign.

REUBEN CARROLL.

Hon. Reuben Carroll, a pioneer-operator, was born in Mercer county in 1823, went to Ohio to complete his education, settled in the Buckeye State, and was a member of the Legislature when developments began on Oil Creek. Solicited by friends to join them in an investment that proved fortunate, he removed to Titusville and cast his lot with the producers. He operated extensively in the northern fields, residing at Richburg during the Allegheny excitement. He took an active interest in public affairs, and contributed stirring articles on politics, finance and good government to leading journals. He opposed Wall-street domination and vigorously upheld the rights of the masses. Upon the decline of Richburg he located at Lily Dale, New York. As a representative producer he was asked to become a member of the South Improvement-Company in 1872. The offer aroused his inflexible sense of justice and was indignantly spurned. He knew the sturdy quality and large-heartedness of the Oil-Creek operators and did not propose to assist in their destruction. Atseventy-four, Mr. Carroll is vigorous and well-preserved, ready to combat error and champion truth with tongue and pen. An intelligent student of the past and of current events, a close observer of the signs of the times and a keen reasoner, Reuben Carroll is a fine example of the men who are mainly responsible for the birth and growth of the petroleum-development.

RALPH W. CARROLL.

There is much uncertainty as to the youngest soldier in the civil-war, the oldest Mason, the man who first nominated McKinley for President, and who struck Billie Patterson, but none as to the youngest dealer in oil-well supplies in the oil-region. This distinction belongs to Ralph W. Carroll, a native of Youngstown, Ohio, and son of Hon. Reuben Carroll. Born in 1860, at eighteen he was at the head of a large business at Rock City, in the Four-Mile District, five miles south-west of Olean. Three brothers were associated with him. The firm was the first to open a supply-store at Richburg, with a branch at Allentown, four miles east, and an establishment later at Cherry Grove. In 1883 Ralph W. succeeded the firm, his brothers retiring, and located at Bradford. In 1886 he opened offices and warehouses at Pittsburg and in 1894 removed to New York to engage in placing special investments. The young merchant was secretary of the Producers’ Protective Association, organized at Richburg in 1891, and a member of the executive committee that conducted the fight against the Roberts Torpedo-Company. Hon. David Kirk, Asher W. Milner, J. E. Dusenbury and “Farmer” Dean were his four associates on this important committee. Roscoe Conkling, for the Roberts side, and General Butler, for the Producers’ Association, measured swords in this legal warfare. Mr. Carroll has a warm welcome for his oil-region friends, a class of men the like of whom for geniality, sociability, liberality and enterprise the world can never duplicate.

The Beardsleys, Fishers, Dollophs and Fosters were the first inhabitants in the wilds of Northern McKean. Henry Bradford Dolloph, whose house above Sawyer City was shattered by a glycerine-explosion, was the first white child who saw daylight and made infantile music in the Tuna Valley. One of the first two houses where Bradford stands was occupied by the Hart family, parents and twelve children. When the De Golias settled up the East Branch a road had to be cut through the forest from Alton. Hon. Lewis Emery’s No. 1, on the Tibbets farm, the first good well up the Branch, produced oil that paid two or three times the cost of the entire property.

The United-States Pipe-Line has overcome legal obstructions, laid its tubes under railroads that objected to its passage to the sea and will soon pump oil direct to refineries on the Jersey coast. Senator Emery, the sponsor of theline, is not the man to be bluffed by any railroad-popinjay who wants him to get off the earth. The National-Transit Line has ample facilities to transport all the oil in Pennsylvania to the seaboard, but Emery is a true descendant of the proud Highlander who wouldn’t sail in Noah’s ark because “ilka McLean has a boat o’ his ain.” He was born in New-York State, reared in Michigan, whither the family removed in his boyhood, and learned to be a miller. Arriving at Pioneer early in the sixties, he cut his eye-teeth as an oil-operator on Oil Creek and had much to do with bringing the great Bradford district to the front. He served one term in the Legislature and two in the Senate, gaining a high reputation by his fearless opposition to jobbery and corruption.

Michael Garth, a keen-witted son of the Emerald Isle, has the easiest snap in the northern region. Scraping together the funds to put down a well on his rocky patch of ground near Duke Centre, he rigged a water-wheel to pump the ten barrels of crude the strike yielded daily. Another well of similar stripe was drilled and the faithful creek drives the wooden-wheel night and day, without one cent of expense or one particle of attention on the part of the owner. Garth can go fishing three days at a lick, to find the wells producing upon his return just as when he left. Such a picnic almost compels a man to be lazy.

The Devonian Oil Company, of which Charles E. Collins is the clear-brained president and guiding star, has operated on the wholesale plan in the northern region and in West Virginia. In October of 1897 the Devonian, the Watson and the Emery companies sold a part of their holdings north and south to the West Penn, a producing wing of the Standard, for fourteen-hundred-thousand dollars in spot cash. The largest cash sale of wells and territory on record, this transaction was negotiated by John L. and J. C. McKinney acting in behalf of the buyer, and Charles E. Collins and Lewis Emery representing the sellers.

“Hell in harness!” Davy Crockett is credited with exclaiming the first time he saw a railroad train tearing along one dark night. Could he have seen an oil-train on the Oil-Creek Railroad, blazing from end to end and tearing down from Brocton at sixty miles an hour, the conception would have been yet more realistic. Engineer Brown held the throttle, which he pulled wide open upon discovering a car of crude on fire. Mile after mile he sped on, thick smoke and sheets of flame each moment growing denser and fiercer. At last he reached a long siding, slackened the speed for the fireman to open the switch and ran the doomed train off the main track. He detached the engine and two cars, while the rest of the train fell a prey to the fiery demon. A similar accident at Bradford, caused by a tank at the Anchor Oil-Company’s wells overflowing upon the tracks of the Bradford & Bordell narrow-gauge, burned two or three persons fatally. The oil caught fire as the locomotive passed the spot and enveloped the passenger-coach in flames so quickly that escape was cut off.

Bradford, Tarport, Limestone, Sawyer, Gillmor, Derrick, Red Rock, State Line, Four-Mile, Duke Centre, Rexford, Bordell, Rew City, Coleville, Custer and De Golia, with their thousands of wells, their hosts of live people, their boundless activity, their crowded railways, their endless procession of teams and their unlimited energy, were for the nonce the brightest galaxy of oil-towns that ever flourished in the busy realm of petroleum. Some have vanished, others are mere skeletons and Bradford alone retains a fair semblance of its pristine greatness.

The bee-line for the north was fairly and squarely “on the belt.”

THE SEX MEN ADORE.

A little girl at Titusville, when she prayed to have herself and all of her relations cared for during the night, added: “And, dear God, do try and take good care of yourself, for if anything should happen to you we should all go to pieces. Amen.”

A young lady at Sawyer City accepted a challenge to climb a derrick on the Hallenback farm, stand on top and wave her handkerchief. She was to receive a silk-dress and a ten-dollar greenback. The feat was performed in good shape. It is probably the only instance on record where a woman had the courage to climb an eighty-foot derrick, stand on top and wave her handkerchief to those below. It was done and the enterprising girl gathered in the wager.

Mrs. Sands, formerly a resident of Oil City, built the Sands Block and owned wells on Sage Run. McGrew Brothers, of Pittsburg, struck a spouter in 1869 that boomed Sage Run a few months. A lady at Pleasantville, who had coined money by shrewd speculations in oil-territory, purchased two-hundred acres near the McGrew strike, while the well was drilling and nobody thought it worth noticing. The lady was Mrs. Sands, who enacted the role of “a poor lone widow,” anxious to secure a patch of ground to raise cabbage and garden-truck, to get the property. She worked so skillfully upon the sensibilities of the Philadelphians owning the land that they sold it for a trifle “to help a needy woman!” Her first well, finished the night before the “thirty-day shut down,” flowed five-hundred barrels each twenty-four hours. The “poor lone widow” valued the tract at a half-million dollars and at one time was rated at six-hundred-thousand, all “earned by her own self.” Yet weak-minded men and strong-minded women talk of the suppressed sex!

A Franklin lady asked her husband one morning to buy five-thousand barrels of oil on her account, saying she had an impression the price would advance very soon. To please her he promised to comply. At dinner she inquired about it and was told the order had been filled by an Oil-City broker. In the afternoon the price advanced rapidly. Next morning the lady asked hubby to have the lot sold and bring her the profits. The miserable husband was in for it. He dared not confess his deception and the only alternative was to pay the difference and keep mum. His sickly smile, as he drew fifteen-hundred dollars out of the bank to hand his spouse, would have cracked a mirror an inch thick. Solomon got a good deal of experience from his wives and that Franklin husband began to think “a woman might know something about business after all.”

Mrs. David Hanna, of Oil City, is not one of the women whose idea of a good time is to go to a funeral and cry. She tried a bit of speculation in certificates and the market went against her. She tried again and again, but the losses exceeded the profits by a large majority. The phenomenal spurt in April of 1895 was her opportunity. She held down a seat in the Oil-Exchange gallery three days, sold at almost the top notch and cleared twelve-thousand dollars. People applauded and declared the plucky little woman “had a great head.”

SCHRUBRASS FERRY 1873SUMMIT CITYACROSS THE BELT AT BARRINGERTURKEY CITY IN 1874FIRST HOUSE AT TRIANGLE CITYMAIN STREET, ST. PETERSBURG.VIEW IN EDENBURG.

SCHRUBRASS FERRY 1873

SUMMIT CITY

ACROSS THE BELT AT BARRINGER

TURKEY CITY IN 1874

FIRST HOUSE AT TRIANGLE CITY

MAIN STREET, ST. PETERSBURG.

VIEW IN EDENBURG.

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