VII.THE VALLEY OF PETROLEUM.

Wonderful Scenes on Oil Creek—Mud and Grease Galore—Rise and Fall of Phenomenal Towns—Shaffer, Pioneer and Petroleum Centre—Fortune’s Queer Vagaries—Wells Flowing Thousands of Barrels—Sherman, Delamater and “Coal-Oil Johnnie”—From Penury to Riches and Back—Recitals That Discount Fairy-Tales.

“I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry, ‘’Tis all barren.’”—Sterne.

“This beginning part is not made out of anybody’s head; it’s real.”—Dickens.

“Some ships come into port that are not steered.”—Seneca.

“God has placed in his great bank—mother earth—untold wealth and many a poor man’s check has been honored here for large amounts of oil.”—T. S. Scoville, A. D. 1861.

“Ain’t that well spittin’ oil?”—Small Boy, A. D. 1863.

“Wonderful, most wonderful, marvelous, most marvelous, are the stories told of the oil-region. It is another California.”—John W. Forney, A. D. 1863.

“Derricks peered up behind the houses of Oil City, like dismounted steeples, and oil was pumping in the back-yards.”—London Post, A. D. 1865.

“From this place and from this day henceforth commences a new era.”—Goethe.

“The chandelier drives off with its splendor the darkness of night.”—Henry Stanton.

“The onlookers were struck dumb with astonishment.”—Charles Kingsley.

“Either I will find a way or make one.”—Norman Proverb.

“I bid you look into the past as if it were a mirror.”—Terence.

Forty-three farms of manifold shapes and sizes lay along the stream from the Drake well to the mouth of Oil Creek, sixteen miles southward. For sixty years the occupants of these tracts had forced a bare subsistence from the reluctant soil. “Content to live, to propagate and die,” their requirements and their resources were alike scanty. They knew nothing of the artificial necessities and extravagances of fashionable life. To most of them the great, busy, plodding world was a sealed book, which they had neither the means nor the inclination to unclasp. The world reciprocated by wagging in its customary groove, blissfully unconscious of the scattered settlers on the banks of the Allegheny’s tributary. A trip on a raft to Pittsburg, with the privilege of walking back, was the limit of their journeyings from the hills and rocks of Venango. Hunting, fishing and hauling saw-logs in winter aided in replenishing the domestic larder. None imagined the unproductive valley would become the cradle of an industry before which cotton andcoal and iron must “hide their diminished heads.” No prophet had proclaimed that lands on Oil Creek would sell for more than corner-lots in London or New York. Who could have conceived that these bold cliffs and patches of clearing would enlist ambitious mortals from every quarter of the globe in a mad race to secure a foothold on the coveted acres? What seventh son of a seventh son could foresee that a thousand dollars spent on the Willard farm would yield innumerable millions? Who could predict that a tiny stream of greenish fluid, pumped from a hole on an island too insignificant to have a name, would swell into the vast ocean of petroleum that is the miracle of the nineteenth century? Fortune has played many pranks, but the queerest of them all were the vagaries incidental to the petroleum-development on Oil Creek.

The Bissell, Griffin, Conley, two Stackpole, Pott, Shreve, two Fleming, Henderson and Jones farms, comprising the four miles between the Drake well and the Miller tract, were not especially prolific. Traces of a hundred oil-pits, in some of which oak-trees had grown to enormous size, are visible on the Bissell plot of eighty acres. A large dam, used for pond-freshets, was located on Oliver Stackpole’s farm. Two refineries of small capacity were built on the Stackpole and Fletcher lands, where eighteen or twenty wells produced moderately. The owner of a flowing well on the lower Fleming farm, imitating the man who killed the goose that laid the golden eggs, sought to increase its output by putting the tubing and seed-bagging farther down. The well resented the interference, refusing to yield another drop and pointing the obvious moral: “Let well enough alone!” The Miller farm of four-hundred acres, on both sides of the creek, was purchased in 1863 from Robert Miller by the Indian Rock-Oil Company of New York. Now a railroad-station and formerly the principal shipping-point for oil, refineries were started, wells were drilled and the stirring town of Meredith blossomed for a little space. The Lincoln well turned out sixty barrels a day, the Boston fifty, the Bobtail forty, the Hemlock thirty and others from ten to twenty-five, at an average depth of six-hundred feet. The Barnsdall Oil-Company operated on the Miller and the Shreve farms, drilling extensively on Hemlock Run, and George Bartlett ran the Sunshine Oil-Works. The village, the refineries and the derricks have disappeared as completely as Herculaneum or Sir John Franklin.

George Shaffer owned fifty acres below the Miller farm, divided by Oil Creek into two blocks, one in Cherrytree township and the other in Allegheny. Twenty-four wells, eight of them failures, were put down on the flats and the abrupt hill bordering the eastern shore of the stream. Samuel Downer’s Rangoon and three of Watson & Brewer’s were the largest, ranking in the fifty-barrel list. In July of 1864 the Oil-Creek Railroad was finished to Shaffer farm, which immediately became a station of great importance. From one house and barn the place expanded in sixty days to a town of three-thousand population. And such a town! Sixteen-hundred teams, mainly employed to draw oil from the wells down the creek, supported the stables, boarding-houses and hotels that sprang up in a night. Every second door opened into a bar-room. The buildings were “balloon frames,” constructed entirely of boards, erected in a few hours and liable to collapse on the slightest pretext. Houses of cards would be about as comfortable and substantial. Outdo Hezekiah, by rolling back time’s dial thirty-one years, and in fancy join the crowd headed for Shaffer six months after the advent of the railway.

Start from Corry, “the city of stumps,” with the Downer refinery and a jumble of houses thrown around the fields. Here the Atlantic & Great-Western,the Philadelphia & Erie and the Oil-Creek Railroads meet. The station will not shelter one-half the motley assemblage bound for Oildom. “Mother Cary is plucking her geese” and snow-flakes are dropping thickly. Speculators from the eastern cities, westerners in quest of “a good thing,” men going to work at the wells, capitalists and farmers, adventurers and drummers clamor for tickets. It is the reverse of “an Adamless Eden,” for only three women are to be seen. At last the train backs to the rickety depot and a wild struggle commences. Scrambling for the elevated cars in New York or Chicago is a feeble movement compared with this frantic onslaught. Courtesy and chivalry are forgotten in the rush. Men swarm upon the steps, clog the platforms, pack the baggage-car, thrust the women aside, stick to the cowcatcher and clamber on the roofs of the coaches. Over the roughest track on earth, which winds and twists and skirts the creek most of the way, the train rattles and jolts and pitches. The conductor’s job is no sinecure, as he squeezes through the dense mass that leaves him without sufficient elbow-room to “punch in the presence of the passenjare.” Derricks—tall, gaunt skeletons, pickets of the advancing army—keep solemn watch here and there, the number increasing as Titusville comes in sight.

A hundred people get off and two-hundred manage somehow to get on. Past the Drake well, past a forest of derricks, past steep cliffs and tortuous ravines the engineer speeds the train. Did you ever think what a weight of responsibility rests upon the brave fellow in the locomotive-cab, whose clear eye looks straight along the track and whose steady hand grasps the throttle? Should he relax his vigilance or lose his nerve one moment, scores of lives might be the fearful penalty. A short stop at Miller Farm, a whiff of refinery-smells and in five minutes Shaffer is reached. The board-station is on the right hand, landings on the left form a semi-circle hundreds of feet in length, freight-cars jam the double track and warehouses dot the bank. The flat-about thirty rods wide-contains the mushroom-town, bristling with the undiluted essence of petroleum-activity. Three-hundred teamsters are unloading barrels of oil from wagons dragged by patient, abused horses and mules through miles of greasy, clayey mud. Everything reeks with oil. It pervades the air, saturates clothes and conversation, floats on the muddy scum and fills lungs and nostrils with its peculiar odor. One cannot step a yard without sinking knee-deep in deceptive mire that performs the office of a boot-jack if given “a ghost of a show.” Christian’s Slough of Despond wasn’t a circumstance to this adhesive paste, which engulfs unwary travelers to their trouser-pockets and begets a dreadful craving for roads not

“Wholly“Whollyunclassable,Almost impassable,Scarcely jackassable.”

“Wholly“Whollyunclassable,

Almost impassable,

Scarcely jackassable.”

The trip of thirty-five miles has shaken breakfast clear down to the pilgrims’ boots. Out of the cars the hungry passengers tumble as frantically as they had clambered in and break for the hotels and restaurants. A dollar pays for a dinner more nearly first-class in price than in quality. The narrow hall leading to the dining-room is crammed with men—Person’s Hotel fed four-hundred a day—waiting their turn for vacant chairs at the tables. Bolting the meal hurriedly, the next inquiry is how to get down the creek. There are no coupés, no prancing steeds, no stages, no carriages for hire. The hoarse voice of a hackman would be sweeter music than Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” or Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March.” Horseback-riding is impracticable andwalking seems the only alternative. To wade and flounder twelve miles—Oil City is that far off—is the dreary prospect that freezes the blood. Hark! In strident tones a fierce-looking fellow is shouting: “Packet-boat for Oil City! This way for the packet-boat! Packet-boat! Packet-boat!” Visions of a pleasant jaunt in a snug cabin lure you to the landing. The “packet-boat” proves to be an oily scow, without sail, engine, awning or chair, which horses have drawn up the stream from Oil City. It will float back at the rate of three miles an hour and the fare is three-fifty! The name and picture of “Pomeroy’s Express,” the best of these nondescript Oil-Creek vessels, will bring a smile and warm the cockles of many an old-timer’s heart!

“POMEROY’S EXPRESS” BETWEEN SHAFFER AND OIL CITY.

Perhaps you decide to stay all night at Shaffer and start on foot early in the morning. A chair in a room thick with tobacco-smoke, or a quilt in a corner of the bar, is the best you can expect. By rare luck you may happen to pre-empt a half-interest in a small bed, tucked with two or three more in a closet-like apartment. Your room-mates talk of “flowing wells—five-hundred-thousand dollars—third sand—big strike—rich in a week—thousand-dollars a day,” until you fall asleep to dream of wells spouting seas of mud and hapless wights wading in greenbacks to their waists. Awaking cold and unrefreshed, your brain fuddled and your thoughts confused, you gulp a breakfast of “ham ’n eggs ’n fried potatoes ’n coffee” and prepare to strike out boldly. Encased in rubber-boots that reach above the thighs, you choose one of the two paths—each worse than the other—pray for sustaining grace and begin the toilsome journey. Having seen the tips of the elephant’s ears, you mean to see the end of his tail and be able to estimate the bulk of the animal. Night is closing in as you round up at your destination, exhausted and mud-coated to the chin. But you have traversed a region that has no duplicate “in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth,” and feel recompensed athousand-fold for the fatigue and exposure. Were your years to exceed Thomas Parr’s and Methuselah’s combined, you will never again behold such a scene as the Oil-Creek valley presented in the days of “the middlepassage”passage”between Shaffer and Oil City. Rake it over with a fine-comb, turn on the X-rays, dig and scrape and root and to-day you couldn’t find a particle of Shaffer as big as a toothpick! When the railroad was extended the buildings were torn down and carted to the next station.

Widow Sanney’s hundred-acre farm, south of the Shaffer, had three refineries and a score of unremunerative wells. David Gregg’s two-hundred acres on the west side of Oil Creek, followed suit with forty non-paying wells, three that yielded oil and the Victoria and Continental refineries. The McCoy well, the first put down below the Drake, at two-hundred feet averaged fifteen barrels a day from March until July, 1860. Fire burning the rig, the well was drilled to five-hundred feet and proved dry. R. P. Beatty sold his two-hundred acres on Oil Creek and Hemlock Run to the Clinton Oil-Company of New York, a bunch of medium wells repaying the investment. James Farrell, a teamster, for two-hundred dollars purchased a thirty-acre bit of rough land south of Beatty, on the east side of Oil Creek and Bull Run, the extreme south-west corner of Allegheny—now Oil Creek—township. In the spring of 1860 Orange Noble leased sixteen acres for six hundred dollars and one-quarter royalty. Jerking a “spring-pole” five months sank a hole one-hundred-and-thirty feet, without a symptom of greasiness, and the well was neglected nearly three years. The “third sand” having been found on the creek, the holders of the Farrell lease decided to drill the old hole deeper. George B. Delamater and L. L. Lamb were associated with Noble in the venture. They contracted with Samuel S. Fertig, of Titusville, whose energy and reliability had gained the good-will of operators, to drill about five-hundred feet. Fertig went to work in April of 1863, using a ten-horse boiler and engine and agreeing to take one-sixteenth of the working-interest as part payment. He had lots of the push that long since placed him in the van as a successful producer, enjoying a well-earned competence. Early in May, at four-hundred-and-fifty feet, a “crevice” of unusual size was encountered. Fearing to lose his tools, the contractor shut down for consultation with the well-owners. Noble was at Pittsburg on a hunt for tubing, which he ordered from Philadelphia. The well stood idle two weeks, waiting for the tubing, surface-water vainly trying to fill the hole.

SAMUEL S. FERTIG.

On the afternoon of May twenty-seventh, 1863, everything was ready. “Start her slowly,” Noble shouted from the derrick to Fertig, who stood beside the engine and turned on the steam. The rods moved up and down with steady stroke, bringing a stream of fresh water, which it was hoped a day’s pumping might exhaust. Then it would be known whether two of the owners—Noble and Delamater—had acted wisely on May fifteenth in rejecting one-hundred-thousand dollars for one-half of the well. Noble went to an eating-house near by for a lunch. He was munching a sandwich when a boy at the door bawled: “Golly! Ain’tthat well spittin’ oil?” Turning around, he saw a column of oil and water rising a hundred feet, enveloping the trees and the derrick in dense spray! The gas roared, the ground fairly shook and the workmen hastened to extinguish the fire beneath the boiler. The “Noble well,” destined to be the most profitable ever known, had begun its dazzling career at the dizzy figure of three-thousand barrels a day!

Crude was four dollars a barrel, rose to six, to ten, to thirteen! Compute the receipts from the Noble well at these quotations—twelve-thousand, eighteen-thousand, thirty-thousand, thirty-nine-thousand dollars a day! Sinbad’s fabled Valley of Diamonds was a ten-cent side-show in comparison with the actual realities of the valley of Oil Creek.

Soon the foaming volume filled the hollow close to the well and ran into the creek. What was to be done? In the forcible jargon of a driller: “The divil wuz to pay an’ no pitch hot!” For two-hundred dollars three men crawled through the blinding shower and contrived to attach a stop-cock device to the pipe. By sunset a seven-hundred-barrel tank was overflowing. Boatmen down the creek, notified to come at once for all they wanted at two dollars a barrel, by midnight took the oil directly from the well. Next morning the stream was turned into a three-thousand-barrel tank, filling it in twenty-one hours! Sixty-two-thousand barrels were shipped and fifteen-thousand tanked, exclusive of leakage and waste, in thirty days. Week after week the flow continued, declining to six-hundred barrels a day in eighteen months. The superintendent of the Noble & Delamater Oil Company—organized in 1864 with a million capital—in February of 1865 recommended pulling out the tubing and cleaning the well. Learning of this intention, Noble and Delamater unloaded their stock at or above par. The tubing was drawn, the well pumped fifteen barrels in two days, came to a full stop and was abandoned as a dry-hole!

The production of this marvelous gusher—over seven-hundred-thousand barrels—netted upwards of four-million dollars! One-fourth of this lordly sum went to the children of James Farrell—he did not live to see his land developed—James, John, Nelson and their sister, now Mrs. William B. Sterrett, of Titusville. Noble and Delamater owned one-half the working-interest, less the sixteenth assigned to S. S. Fertig, who bought another sixteenth from John Farrell while drilling the well and sold both to William H. Abbott for twenty-seven-thousand dollars. Ten persons—L. L. Lamb, Solomon and W. H. Noble, Rev. L. Reed, James and L. H. Hall, Charles and Thomas Delamater, G. T. Churchhill and Rollin Thompson—held almost one-quarter. Even this fractional claim gave each a splendid income. The total outlay for the lease and well—not quite four-thousand dollars—was repaid one-thousand times in twenty months! Is it surprising that men plunged into speculations which completely eclipsed the South-Sea Bubble and Law’s Mississippi-Scheme? Is it any wonder that multitudes were eager to stake their last dollar, their health, their lives, their very souls on the chance of such winnings?

Thirteen wells were drilled on the Farrell strip. The Craft had yielded a hundred-thousand barrels and was doing two-hundred a day when the seed-bag burst, flooding the well with water and driving the oil away. The Mulligan and the Commercial did their share towards making the territory the finest property in Oildom, with third sand on the flats and in the ravine of Bull Run forty feet thick. Not a fragment of tanks or derricks is left to indicate that twenty fortunes were acquired on the desolate spot, once the scene of tremendousactivity, more coveted than Naboth’s vineyard or Jason’s Golden Fleece. On the Caldwell farm of two-hundred acres, south of the Farrell, twenty-five or thirty wells yielded largely. The Caldwell, finished in March of 1863, at the north-west corner of the tract, flowed twelve-hundred barrels a day for six weeks. Evidently deriving its supply from the same pool, the Noble well cut this down to four-hundred barrels. A demand for one-fourth the output of the Noble, enforced by a threat to pull the tubing and destroy the two, was settled by paying one-hundred-and-forty-five-thousand dollars for the Caldwell well and an acre of ground. “Growing smaller by degrees and beautifully less,” within a month of the transfer the Caldwell quit forever, drained as dry as the bones in Ezekiel’s vision!

Hon. Orange Noble, the son of a New-York farmer, dealt in sheep and cattle, married in 1841 and in 1852 removed to Randolph, Crawford county, Pa. He farmed, manufactured “shooks” and in 1855 opened a store at Townville in partnership with George B. Delamater. The partners and L. L. Lamb inspected the Drake well in October of 1859, secured leases on the Stackpole and Jones farms and drilled two dry-holes. Other wells on different farms in 1860-1 resulted similarly, but the Noble compensated richly for these failures. The firm wound up the establishment at Townville in 1863, squared petroleum-accounts, and in 1864 Mr. Noble located at Erie. There he organized banks, erected massive blocks, served as mayor three terms, built the first grain elevator and contributed greatly to the prosperity of the city. Blessed with ample wealth—the Noble well paid him eight-hundred-thousand dollars—a vigorous constitution and the regard of his fellows, he has lived to a ripe age to enjoy the fruits of his patient industry and remarkable success.

GEORGE W. DELAMATER.

Hon. George B. Delamater, whose parents settled in Crawford county in 1822, studied law and was admitted to the Meadville bar in 1847. He published a newspaper at Youngsville, Warren county, two years and in 1852 started in business at Townville. Clients were not plentiful in the quiet village, where a lawsuit was a luxury, and the young attorney found boring juries much less remunerative than he afterwards found boring oil-wells. Returning to Meadville in 1864, with seven-hundred-thousand dollars and some real-estate at his command, he built the magnificent Delamater Block, opened a bank, promoted many important enterprises and engaged actively in politics. Selected to oppose George K. Anderson—he, too, had a bar’l—for the State Senate in 1869, Delamater carried off the prize. It was a case of Greek meeting Greek. Money flowed like water, Anderson spending thirty-thousand dollars and his opponent twenty-eight-thousand on the primaries alone! This was the beginning of the depletion of the Delamater fortune and the political demoralization that scandalized Crawford county for years. Mr. Delamater served one term, declined to run again and Anderson succeeded him. His son, George W., a young lawyer of ability and superior address, entered the lists and was elected Mayor of Meadville and State-Senator. He married an accomplished lady, occupied a brick-mansion, operated at Petrolia, practicedlaw and assisted in running the bank. Samuel B. Dick headed a faction that opposed the Delamaters bitterly. Nominated for Governor of Pennsylvania in 1890, George W. Delamater was defeated by Robert E. Pattison. He conducted an aggressive campaign, visiting every section of the state and winning friends by his frank courtesy and manly bearing. Ruined by politics, unable longer to stand the drain that had been sapping its resources, the Delamater Bank suspended two weeks after the gubernatorial election. The brick-block, the homes of the parents and the sons, the assets of the concern—mere drops in the bucket—met a trifling percentage of the liabilities. Property was sacrificed, suits were entered and dismissed, savings of depositors were swept away and the failure entailed a host of serious losses. The senior Delamater went to Ohio to start life anew at seventy-one. George W. located in Chicago and quickly gathered a law-practice. That he will regain wealth and honor, pay off every creditor and some day represent his district in Congress those who know him best are not unwilling to believe. The fall of the Delamater family—the beggary of the aged father—the crushing of the son’s honorable ambition—the exile from home and friends—the suffering of innocent victims—all these illustrate the sad reverses which, in the oil-region, have “come, not single spies, but in battalions.”

James Bonner, son of an Ohio clergyman and book-keeper for Noble & Delamater, lodged in the firm’s new office beside the well. Seized with typhoid fever, his recovery was hopeless. The office caught fire, young Bonner’s father carried him to the window, a board was placed to slide him down and he expired in a few moments. His father, overcome by smoke, was rescued with difficulty; his mother escaped by jumping from the second story.

James Foster owned sixty acres on the west side of Oil Creek, opposite the Farrell and Caldwell tracts. The upper half, extending over the hill to Pioneer Run, he sold to the Irwin Petroleum Company of Philadelphia, whose Irwin well pumped two-hundred barrels a day. The Porter well, finished in May of 1864, flowed all summer, gradually declining from two-hundred barrels to seventy and finally pumping twenty. Other wells and a refinery paid good dividends. J. W. Sherman, of Cleveland, leased the lower end of the farm and bounced the “spring-pole” in the winter of 1861-2. His wife’s money and his own played out before the second sand was penetrated. It was impossible to drill deeper “by hand-power.” A horse or an engine must be had to work the tools. “Pete,” a white, angular equine, was procured for one-sixteenth interest in the well. The task becoming too heavy for “Pete,” another sixteenth was traded to William Avery and J. E. Steele for a small engine and boiler. Lack of means to buy coal—an expensive article, sold only for “spot cash”—caused a week’s delay. The owners of the well could not muster “long green” to pay for one ton of fuel! For another sixteenth a purchaser grudgingly surrendered eighty dollars and a shot-gun! The last dollar had been expended when, on March sixteenth, 1862—just in season to celebrate St. Patrick’s day—the tools punctured the third sand. A “crevice” was hit, the tools were drawn out and in five minutes everything swam in oil. The Sherman well was flowing two-thousand barrels a day! Borrowing the phrase of the parrot stripped of his feathers and blown five-hundred feet by a powder-explosion, people might well exclaim: “This beats the Old Scratch!”

To provide tankage was the first concern. Teams were dispatched for lumber and carpenters hurried to the scene. Near the well a mudhole, between two stumps, could not be avoided. In this one of the wagons stuck fast andhad to be pried out, John A. Mather chanced to come along with his photograph apparatus. The men posed an instant, the horses “looked pleasant,” the wagon didn’t stir and he secured the artistic picture reproduced here thirty-five years after. It is an interesting souvenir of former times—times that deserve the best work of pen and pencil, camera and brush, “to hold them in everlasting remembrance.”

STUCK IN A MUDHOLE NEAR THE SHERMAN WELL IN 1862.

The Sherman well “whooped it up” bravely, averaging nine-hundred barrels daily for two years and ceasing to spout in February of 1864. Pumping restored it to seventy-five barrels, which dwindled to six or eight in 1867, when fire consumed the rig and the veteran was abandoned. The product sold at prices ranging from fifty cents to thirteen dollars a barrel, the total aggregating seventeen-hundred-thousand dollars! How was that for a return? It meant one-hundred-thousand dollars for the man who traded “Pete,” one-hundred-thousand for the man who invested eighty dollars and a rusty gun, one-hundred-thousand for the two men who furnished the second-hand engine, and a million—deducting the royalty—for the man who had neither cash nor credit for a load of coal!

None of the other fifty or sixty wells on the Foster farm, some of them Sherman’s, was particularly noteworthy. The broad flat, the sluggish stream and the bluffs across the creek remain as in days of yore, but the wells, the shanties, the tanks, the machinery and the workmen have vanished. Sherman, long hale and hearty, struck a spouter in Kentucky, operated two or three years at Bradford and took up his abode at Warren. It was a treat to hear his vivid descriptions of life on Oil Creek in the infancy of developments—life crowded with transformations far surpassing the fantastic changes of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” He died at Cleveland last year.

Among the teamsters who hauled oil from the Sherman well in its prime was “Con” O’Donnell, a fun-loving, impulsive Irishman. He saved hisearnings, secured leases for himself, owned a bevy of wells at Kane City and operated in the Clarion field. Marrying a young lady of Ellicottville, N. Y., his early home, he lived some years at Foxburg and St. Petersburg. He was the rarest of practical jokers and universally esteemed. Softening of the brain afflicted him for years, death at last stilling as warm and kindly a heart as ever throbbed in a manly breast. “Con” often regaled me with his droll witticisms as we rode or drove through the Clarion district. “Peace to his ashes.”

Late in the fall of 1859, “when th’ frost wuz on th’ punkin’ an’ th’ bloom wuz on th’ rye,” David McElhenny sold the upper and lower McElhenny farms—one-hundred-and-eighty acres at the south-east corner of Cherrytree township—to Captain A. B. Funk, for fifteen-hundred dollars and one-fourth of the oil. Joining the Foster farm on the north, Oil Creek bounded the upper tract on the east and south and Pioneer Run gurgled through the western side. Oil Creek flowed through the northern and western sides of the lower half, which had the Espy farm on the east, the Boyd south and the Benninghoff north and west. McElhenny’s faith in petroleum was of the mustard-seed order and he jumped at Hussey & McBride’s offer of twenty-thousand dollars for the royalty. Captain Funk—he obtained the title from running steamboats lumbering on the Youghiogheny river—in February of 1860 commenced the first well on the lower McElhenny farm. All spring and summer the “spring-pole” bobbed serenely, punching the hole two-hundred-and-sixty feet, with no suspicion of oil in the first and second sands. The Captain, believing it a rank failure, would gladly have exchanged the hole “for a yellow dog.” His son, A. P. Funk, bought a small locomotive-boiler and an engine and resumed work during the winter. Early in May, 1861, at four-hundred feet, a “pebble rock”—the “third sand”—tested the temper of the center-bit. Hope, the stuff that “springs eternal in the human breast,” took a fresh hold. It languished as the tools bored thirty, forty, fifty feet into the “pebble” and not a drop of oil appeared. Then something happened. Flecks of foam bubbled to the top of the conductor, jets of water rushed out, oil and water succeeded and a huge pillar of pure oil soared fifty yards! The Fountain well had tapped a fountain in the rock ordained thenceforth to furnish mankind with Pennsylvania petroleum. Thefirst well put down to“the third sand,” and really thefirst on Oil Creek that flowedfrom any sand, it revealed oil-possibilities before unknown and unsuspected.

More tangible than the mythical Fountain of Youth, the Fountain well tallied three-hundred barrels a day for fifteen months. The flow ended as suddenly as it began. Paraffine clogged and strangled it to death, sealing the pores and pipes effectually. A young man “taught the young idea how to shoot” at Steam Mills, east of Titusville, where Captain Funk had lumber-mills. A visit to the Drake and Barnsdall wells, in December of 1859, determined the schoolmaster to have an oil-well of his own. Funk liked the earnest, manly youth and leased him five acres of the upper McElhenny farm. Plenty of brains, a brave heart, robust health, willing hands and thirty dollars constituted his capital. Securing two partners, “kicking down” started in the spring of 1860. Not a sign of oil could be detected at two-hundred feet, and the partners departed from the field. Summer and the teacher’s humble savings were gone. He earned more money by drilling on the Allegheny river, four miles above Oil City. While thus engaged the Fountain well revolutionized the business by “flowing” from a lower rock. The ex-wielder of the birch—he had resigned the ferrule for the “spring-pole”—hastened to sink thedeserted well to the depth of Funk’s eye-opener. The second three-hundred-barrel gusher from the third sand, it rivaled the Fountain and arrived in time to help 1861 crimson the glorious Fourth!

JOHN FERTIG. \CAPT. A. B. FUNK.

Hon. John Fertig, of Titusville, the plucky schoolmaster of 1859-60, has been largely identified with oil ever since his initiation on the McElhenny lease. The Fertig well, in which David Beatty and Michael Gorman were his partners originally, realized him a fortune. Born in Venango county, on a farm below Gas City, in 1837, he completed a course at Neilltown Academy and taught school several terms. Soon after embarking in the production of oil he formed a partnership with the late John W. Hammond, which lasted until dissolved by death twenty years later. Fertig & Hammond operated in different sections with great success, carried on a refinery and established a bank at Foxburg. Mr. Fertig was Mayor of Titusville three terms, School-Controller, State Senator and Democratic candidate for Lieutenant-Governor in 1878. He has been vice-president of the Commercial Bank from its organization in 1882 and is president of the Titusville Iron-Works. Head of the National Oil-Company, he was also chief officer of the Union Oil-Company, an association of refining companies. For three years its treasurer—1892-5—he tided the United-States Pipe-Line Company over a financial crisis in 1893. As a pioneer producer—one of the few survivors connected with developments for a generation—a refiner and shipper, banker, manufacturer and business-man, John Fertig is most distinctively a representative of the oil-country. From first to last he has been admirably prudent and aggressive, conservative and enterprising in shaping a career with much to cherish and little to regret.

Frederick Crocker drilled a notable well on the McElhenny, near the Foster line, jigging the “spring-pole” in 1861 and piercing the sand at one-hundred-and-fifty feet. He pumped the well incessantly two months, getting clear water for his pains. Neighbors jeered, asked if he proposed to emptythe interior of the planet into the creek and advised him to import a Baptist colony. Crocker pegged away, remembering that “he laughs best who laughs last.” One morning the water wore a tinge of green. The color deepened, the gas “cut loose,” and a stream of oil shot upwards! The Crocker well spurted for weeks at a thousand-barrel clip and was sold for sixty-five-thousand dollars. Shutting in the flow, to prevent waste, wrought serious injury. The well disliked the treatment, the gas sought a vent elsewhere, pumping coaxed back the yield temporarily to fifty barrels and in the fall it yielded up the ghost.

Bennett & Hatch spent the summer of 1861 drilling on a lease adjoining the Fountain, striking the third sand at the same depth. On September eighteenth the well burst forth with thirty-three-hundred barrels per day! This was “confusion worse confounded,” foreigners not wanting “the nasty stuff” and Americans not yet aware of its real value. The addition of three-thousand barrels a day to the supply—with big additions from other wells—knocked prices to twenty cents, to fifteen, to ten! All the coopers in Oildom could not make barrels as fast as the Empire well—appropriate name—could fill them. Bradley & Son, of Cleveland, bought a month’s output for five-hundred dollars, loading one-hundred-thousand barrels into boats under their contract! The despairing owners, suffering from “an embarrassment of riches,” tried to cork up the pesky thing, but the well was like Xantippe, the scolding wife of Socrates, and would not be choked off. They built a dam around it, but the oil wouldn’t be dammed that way. It just gorged the pond, ran over the embankment and greased Oil Creek as no stream was ever greased before! Twenty-two-hundred barrels was the daily average in November and twelve-hundred in March. The torrent played April-fool by stopping without notice, seven months from its inception. Cleaning out and pumping restored it to six-hundred barrels, which dropped two-thirds and stopped again in 1863. An “air blower” revived it briefly, but its vitality had fled and in another year the grand Empire breathed its last.

These wells boomed the territory immensely. Derricks and engine-houses studded the McElhenny farms, which operators hustled to perforate as full of holes as a strainer. To haul machinery from the nearest railroad doubled its cost. Pumping five to twenty barrels a day, when adjacent wells flowed more hundreds spontaneously, lost its charm and most of the small fry were abandoned. Everybody wanted to get close to the third-sand spouters, although the market was glutted and crude ruinously cheap. A town—Funkville—arose on the northern end of the upper farm, sputtered a year or two, then “folded its tent like the Arabs and silently stole away.” A search with a microscope would fail to unearth an atom of Funkville or the wells that created it. Fresh strikes in 1862 kept the fever raging. Davis & Wheelock’s rattler daily poured out fifteen-hundred barrels. The Densmore triplets, bunched on a two-acre lease, were good for six-hundred, four-hundred and five-hundred respectively. The Olmstead, American, Canfield, Aikens, Burtis and two Hibbard wells, of the vintage of 1863, rated from two-hundred to five-hundred each. A band of less account—thirty to one-hundred barrels—assisted in holding the daily product of the McElhenny farms, from the spring of 1862 to the end of 1863, considerably above six-thousand barrels. The mockery of fate was accentuated by a dry-hole six rods from the Sherman and dozens of poor wells in the bosom of the big fellows. Disposing of his timber-lands and saw-mills in 1863, Captain Funk built a mansion and removed to Titusville. Early in 1864 he sold his wells and oil-properties and died on August second, leaving an estate oftwo-millions. He built schools and churches, dispensed freely to the needy and was honest to the core. Pleased with the work of a clerk, he deeded him an interest in the last well he ever drilled, which the lucky young man sold for one-hundred-thousand dollars.

Almost simultaneously with the Empire, in September of 1861, the Buckeye well, on the George P. Espy farm, east of lower McElhenney, set off at a thousand-barrel jog. It was located on a strip of level ground too narrow for tanks, which had to be erected two-hundred feet up the hill. The pressure of gas sufficed to force the oil into these tanks for a year. The production fell to eighty barrels and then, tiring of a climbing job that smacked of Sisyphus and the rolling stone, took a permanent rest. From this famous well J. T. Briggs, manager of the Briggs and the Gillettee Oil-Companies, shipped to Europe in 1862 the first cargo of petroleum ever sent across the Atlantic. The Buckeye Belle stood about hip-high to its consort, a dozen other wells on the Epsy produced mildly and Northrup Brothers operated a refinery.

“Vare“Varevos dose oil-wells now? Gone vhare dogs can’t bow-wow.”

PIONEER AS IT LOOKED IN 1864-5.

Improved methods of handling and new uses for the product advanced crude to five dollars in the spring of 1864. Operations encroached upon the higher lands, exploding the notion that paying territory was confined to flats bordering the streams. Pioneer Run, an affluent of Oil Creek, bisecting the western end of the upper McElhenney and Foster farms, panned out flatteringly. Substantial wells, yielding fifteen barrels to three-hundred lined the ravine thickly. The town of Pioneer attracted the usual throngs. David Emery and Lewis Emery, Frank W. Andrews and not a few leading operators resided there for a time. The Morgan House, a rude frame of one story, dished up meals at which to eat beef-hash was to beefashionable. Clark & McGowen had a feed-store, offices and warehouses abounded, tanks and derricks mixed in the mass and boats loaded oil for refineries down the creek or the Allegheny river. The characteristic oil-town has faded from sight, only the weather-beaten rail road-station and a forlorn iron-tank staying. John Rhodes,the last resident, was killed in February of 1892 by a train. He lived alone in a small house beside the track, which he was crossing when the engine hit him, the noisy waters in the culvert drowning the sound of the cars. Rhodes hauled oil in the old days to Erie and Titusville, became a producer, met with reverses, attended to some wells for a company, worked a bit of garden and felt independent and happy.

Matthew Taylor, a Cleveland saloonist, whom the sequel showed to be no saloonatic, took a four-hundred-dollar flyer at Pioneer, on his first visit to Oildom. A well on the next lease elevated values and Taylor returned home in two weeks with twenty-thousand dollars, which subsequent deals quadrupled. A Titusville laborer—“a broth of a b’y wan year frum Oireland”—who stuck fifty dollars into an out-of-the-way Pioneer lot, sold his claim in a month for five-thousand. He bought a farm, sent across the water for his colleen and “they lived happily ever after.” The driver of a contractor’s team, assigned an interest in a drilling-well for his wages, cleaned up thirty-thousand dollars by the transaction and went to Minnesota. Could the mellowest melodrama unfold sweeter melodies?

“The jingle of gold is earth’s richest music.”

Although surrounded by farms unrivaled as oil-territory and sold to Woods & Wright of New York at a fancy price, James Boyd’s seventy-five acres in Cornplanter township, south of the lower McElhenny, dodged the petroleum-artery. The sands were there, but so barren of oil that nine-tenths of the forty wells did not pay one-tenth their cost. The Boyd farm was for months the terminus of the railroad from Corry. Hotels and refineries were built and the place had a short existence, a brief interval separating its lying-in and its laying-out.

G. W. McClintock, in February of 1864, sold his two-hundred-acre farm, on the west side of Oil Creek, midway between Titusville and Oil City, to the Central Petroleum Company of New York, organized by Frederic Prentice and George H. Bissell. This notable farm embraced the site of Petroleum Centre and Wild-Cat Hollow, a circular ravine three-fourths of a mile long, in which two-hundred paying wells were drilled. Brown, Catlin & Co.’s medium well, finished in August of 1861, was the first on the McClintock tract. The company bored a multitude of wells and granted leases only to actual operators, for one-half royalty and a large bonus. For ten one-acre leases one-hundred-thousand dollars cash and one-half the oil, offered by a New-York firm in 1865, were refused. The McClintock well, drilled in 1862, figured in the thousand-barrel class. The Coldwater, Meyer, Clark, Anderson, Fox, Swamp-Angel and Bluff wells made splendid records. Altogether the Central Petroleum-Company and the corps of lessees harvested at least five-millions of dollars from the McClintock farm!

RYND FARM “KING OF THE HILLS”PETROLEUM CENTRE-1894-BOYD FARM-1864STORY FARM.

RYND FARM “KING OF THE HILLS”

PETROLEUM CENTRE-1894-

BOYD FARM-1864

STORY FARM.

Aladdin’s lamp was a miserly glim in the light of fortunes accruing from petroleum. The product of a flowing-well in a year would buy a tract of gold-territory in California or Australia larger than the oil-producing regions. Millions of dollars changed hands every week. The Central Company staked off a half-dozen streets and leased building-lots at exorbitant figures. Board-dwellings, offices, hotels, saloons and wells mingled promiscuously. It mattered nothing that discomfort was the rule. Poor fare, worse beds and the worst liquors were tolerated by the hordes of people who flocked to the land of derricks. Edward Fox, a railroad contractor who “struck the town” with eighty-thousand dollars, felicitously baptised the bantling Petroleum Centre. Theowners of the ground opposed a borough-organization and the town traveled at a headlong go-as-you-please. Sharpers and prostitutes flourished, with no fear of human or divine law, in the metropolis of rum and debauchery. Dance-houses, beside which “Billy” McGlory’s Armory-Hall and “The.” Allen’s Mabille in New York were Sunday-school models, nightly counted their revelers by hundreds. In one of these dens Gus Reil, the proprietor, killed poor young Tait, of Rouseville. Fast women and faster men caroused and gambled, cursed and smoked, “burning the candle at both ends” in pursuit of—pleasure! Frequently the orgies eclipsed Monte Carlo—minus some of the glitter—and the Latin Quartier combined. Some readers may recall the night two “dead game sports” tossed dice twelve hours for one-thousand dollars a throw! But there was a rich leaven of first-class fellows. Kindred spirits, like “Sam” Woods, Frank Ripley, Edward Fox and Col. Brady were not hard to discover. Spades were trumps long years ago for Woods, who has taken his last trickand sleeps in an Ohio grave. Ripley is in Duluth, Fox is “out west” and Brady is in Harrisburg. Captain Ray and A. D. Cotton had a bank that handled barrels of money. For two or three years “The Centre”—called that for convenient brevity—acted as a sort of safety-valve to blow off the surplus wickedness of the oil-regions. Then “the handwriting on the wall” manifested itself. Clarion and Butler speedily reduced the four-thousand population to a mere remnant. The local paper died, houses were removed and the giddy Centre became “a back number.” The sounds of revelry were hushed, flickering lights no longer glared over painted harlots and the streets were deserted. Bissell’s empty bank-building, three dwellings, the public school, two vacant churches and the drygoods box used as a railway-station—scarcely enough to cast a shadow—are the sole survivors in the ploughed field that was once bustling, blooming, surging, foaming Petroleum Centre!

Across the creek from Petroleum Centre, on the east side of the stream, was Alexander Davidson’s farm of thirty-eight acres. A portion of this triangular “speck on the map” consisted of a mud-flat, a smaller portion of rising ground and the remainder set edgewise. Dr. A. G. Egbert, a young physician who had recently hung out his shingle at Cherrytree village, in 1860 negotiated for the farm. Davidson died and a hitch in the title delayed the deal. Finally Mrs. Davidson agreed to sign the deed for twenty-six-hundred dollars and one-twelfth the oil. Charles Hyde paid the doctor this amount in 1862 for one-half his purchase and it was termed the Hyde & Egbert farm. The Hollister well, drilled in 1861, the first on the land, flowed strongly. Owing to the dearness and scarcity of barrels, the oil was let run into the creek and the well was never tested. The lessees could not afford, as their contract demanded, to barrel the half due the land-owners, because crude was selling at twenty-five cents and barrels at three-fifty to four dollars! A company of Jerseyites, in the spring of 1863, drilled the Jersey well, on the south end of the property. The Jersey—it was a Jersey Lily—flowed three-hundred barrels a day for nine months, another well draining it early in 1864. The Maple-Shade, which cast the majority into the shade by its performance, touched the right spot in the third sand on August fifth, 1863. Starting at one-thousand barrels, it averaged eight-hundred for ten months, dropped to fifty the second year and held on until 1869. Fire on March second, 1864, burned the rig and twenty-eight tanks of oil, but the well kept flowing just the same, netting the owners a clear profit of fifteen-hundred-thousand dollars! “Do you notice it?” A plump million-and-a-half from a corner of the “measly patch” poor Davidson offered in 1860 for one-thousand dollars! And the Maple Shade was only one of twenty-three flowing wells on the despised thirty-eight acres!

Companies and individuals tugged and strained to get even the smallest lease Hyde & Egbert would grant. The Keystone, Gettysburg, Kepler, Eagle, Benton, Olive Branch, Laurel Hill, Bird and Potts wells, not to mention a score of minor note, helped maintain a production that paid the holders of the royalty eight-thousand dollars a day in 1864-5! E. B. Grandin and William C. Hyde, partners of Charles Hyde in a store at Hydetown, A. C. Kepler and Titus Ridgway obtained a lease of one acre on the west side of the lot, north of the wells already down, subject tothree-quarters royalty. A bit of romance attaches to the transaction. Kepler dreamed that an Indian menaced him with bow and arrow. A young lady, considered somewhat coquettish, handed him a rifle and he fired at the dusky foe. The redskin vamoosed and a stream of oil burst forth. Visiting his brother, who superintended the farm, he recognizedthe scene of his dream. The lease was secured, on the biggest royalty ever offered. Kepler chose the location and bored the Coquette well. The dream was a nightmare? Wait and see.

Drilling began in the spring of 1864 and the work went merrily on. Each partner would be entitled to one-sixteenth of the oil. Hyde & Ridgway sold their interest for ten-thousand dollars a few days before the tools reached the sand. This interest Dr. M. C. Egbert, brother of the original purchaser of the farm, next bought at a large advance. He had acquired one-sixth of the property in fee and wished to own the Coquette. Grandin and Kepler declined to sell. The well was finished and did not flow! Tubed and pumped a week, gas checked its working and the sucker-rods were pulled. Immediately the oil streamed high in the air! Twelve-hundred barrels a day was the gauge at first, settling to steady business for a year at eight-hundred. A double row of tanks lined the bank, connected by pipes to load boats in bulk. Oil was “on the jump” and the first cargo of ten-thousand barrels brought ninety-thousand dollars, representing ten days’ production! Three months later Grandin and Kepler sold their one-eighth for one-hundred-and-forty-five thousand dollars, quitting the Coquette with eighty-thousand apiece in their pockets. Kepler was a dreamer whom Joseph might be proud to accept as a chum.

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