While cannel-coal in the western end of Pennsylvania and other sections of the country, bitumen and shales from the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Huron, chapapote or mineral pitch in Cuba and San Domingo, oozings in Peru and Ecuador, asphaltum in Canada and oil-springs in Columbia and a half-dozen states of the Union from California to New York denoted the presence of petroleum over the greater part of this hemisphere, wells bored for salt were leading factors in bringing about its full development. Scores of these wells pumped more or less oil long before it “entered into the mind of man” to utilize the unwelcome intruder. Indeed, so often were brine and petroleum found in the same geological formation that scientists ascribed to them a kindred origin. The first borings to establish this peculiarity were on the Kanawha River, in West Virginia, a state destined to play an important part in oleaginous affairs. Dr. J. P. Hale, a reputable authority, claims oil caused much annoyance in Ruffner Brothers’ salt-well, begun in 1806, bored sixty feet with an iron-rod and two-inch chisel-bit attached by a rope to a spring-pole, completed in 1808 and memorable as the first artesian-well on this continent. The fluid came from the territory once famous as the “Kanawha Salines,” reputed to produce an unsurpassed table-salt. Before the advent of the white man the Indians made salt from the saline springs a short distance above the site of Charleston. There Daniel Boone had a log-cabin and George Washington, as long ago as 1775, for military services was awarded lands containing a “burning spring.” Fired by the tidings of the saline springs, Joseph Ruffner sold his possessions in the Shenandoah Valley and journeyed beyond the mountains in 1794 to establish salt-works on the Kanawha. He leased the salt-interest to Elisha Brooks, who took brine from the shallow quicksands. Joseph Ruffner dying, his sons, Joseph and David, acquired his lands and salt-springs and resolved to try some better plan of procuring the brine. A section of a hollow sycamore-tree, sunk into the quicksands, suggested the idea of wooden casing and the wisdom of boring a little way from the spring. A piece of oak, bored from end to end as log-pumps used to be, was set in the hole. The ingenious brothers devised a chisel-like drill to pierce the rock, fastened it to a rope fixed to a spring-pole and bounced the tools briskly. To shut out the weak brine above from the strong brine beneath they put in tin-tubing, around which they tied a leather-bag filled with flax-seed. Thus, three generations ago, Joseph and David Ruffner, aided later by William Morris and his invention of “jars” in drilling-tools, stumbled upon the basis of casing, seed-bagging and boring oil-wells. All honor to the memory of these worthy pioneers, groping in the dark to clear the road for the great petroleum-boom! Dr. Hale continues:

“Nearly all the Kanawha salt-wells have contained more or less petroleum, and some of the deeper wells a considerable flow.flow. Many persons now think, trusting to their recollections, that some of the wells afforded as much as twenty-five to fifty barrels per day. This was allowed to flow over from the top of the salt-cisterns to the river, where, from its specific gravity, it spread over a large surface, and by its beautiful iridescent hues and not very savory odor could be traced for many miles down the stream. It was from this that the river received the nickname of ‘Old Greasy,’ by which it was long known by Kanawha boatmenboatmen and others.”

At the mouth of Hawkinberry Run, three miles north of Fairmount, in Marion county, a well for salt was put down in 1829 to the depth of six-hundred feet. “A stinking substance gave great trouble,” an owner reported, “forming three or four inches on the salt-water tank, which was four feet wide and sixteen feet long.” They discovered the stuff would burn, dipped it off with buckets and consumed it for fuel under the salt-pan. J. J. Burns in 1865 leased the farm, drilled the abandoned well deeper, stuck the tools in the hole and had to quit after penetrating sixty feet of “a fine grit oil-rock.” Mr. Burns wrote in 1871:

“The second well put down in this county was about the year 1835, on the West Fork River, just below what is now known as the Gaston mines. The well was sunk by a Mr. Hill, of Armstrong county, Pa., who found salt-water of the purest quality and in a great quantity, same as in the first well. He died just after the well was finished, so nothing was done with it. About the time this well was completed one was drilled in the Morgan settlement, just below Rivesville. Salt-water was found with great quantities of gas. Twenty-five years since the farmers on Little Bingamon Creek formed a company and drilled a well—I think to a depth of eight-hundred feet—in which they claimed to have found oil in paying quantities. You can go to it to-day and get oil out of it. The president told me he saw oil spout out of the tubing forty or fifty feet, just as they started the pump to test it. The company got to quarreling among themselves, some of the stockholders died and part of the stock got into the hands of minor heirs, so nothing more was done.”

Similar results attended other salt-wells in West Virginia. The first oil-speculators were Bosworth, Wells & Co., of Marietta, Ohio, who as early as 1843 bought shipments of two to five barrels of crude from Virginians who secured it on the Hughes River, a tributary of the Little Kanawha. This was sold for medical purposes in Pittsburg, Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia.

Notable instances of this kind occurred on the Allegheny River, opposite Tarentum, twenty miles above Pittsburg, as early as 1800. Wells sunk for brine to supply the salt-works were troubled with what the owners called “odd, mysterious grease.” Samuel M. Kier, a Pittsburg druggist, whose father worked some of these wells, conceived the idea of saving the “grease,” which for years had run waste, and in 1846 he bottled it as a medicine. He knew it had commercial and medicinal value and spared no exertions to introduce it widely. He believed implicitly in the greenish fluid taken from his salt-wells, at first as a healing agent and farther on as an illuminant. A bottle of the oil, corked and labeled by Kier’s own hands, lies on my desk at this moment, in a wrapper dingy with age and redolent of crude. A four-page circular inside recites the good qualities of the specific in gorgeous language P. T. Barnum himself would not have scorned to father. For example:

“Kier’s Petroleum, or Rock Oil, Celebrated for its Wonderful Curative Powers. A Natural Remedy! Procured from a Well in Allegheny Co., Pa., Four-Hundred Feet below the Earth’s Surface. Put up and Sold by Samuel M. Kier, 363 Liberty Street, Pittsburgh, Pa.

“The Petroleum has been fully tested! It was placed before the public as A Remedy of Wonderful Efficacy. Every one not acquainted with its virtues doubted its healing qualitiesqualities. The cry of humbug was raised against it. It had some friends—those who were cured through its wonderful agency. Those spoke in its favor. The lame through its instrumentality were made to walk—the blind to see. Those who had suffered for years under the torturing pains of Rheumatism, Gout and Neuralgia were restored to health and usefulness. Several who were blind were made to see. If you still have doubts, go and ask those who have been cured! * * * We have the witnesses, crowds of them, who will testify in terms stronger than we can write them to the efficacy of this remedy; cases abandoned by physicians of unquestionable celebrity have been made to exclaim, “This Is the Most Wonderful Remedy Yet Discovered!” * * * Its transcendent power to heal MUST and WILL become known and appreciated. * * * The Petroleum is a Natural Remedy; it is put up as it flows from the bosom of the earth, without anything being added to or taken from it. It gets its ingredients from the beds of substances which it passes over in its secret channel. They are blended together in such a way as to defy all human competition. * * * Petroleum will continue to be used and applied as a Remedy as long as man continues to be afflicted with disease. Its discovery is a new era in medicine.”

A host of certificates of astonishing cases of curable and incurable ailments, from blindness to colic, followed this preliminary announcement. The “remedy” was trundled about by agents in vehicles elaborately gilt and painted with representations of the Good Samaritan ministering to a wounded Hebrew writhing in agony under a palm-tree. Two barrels of oil a day were sold at fifty cents a half-pint. The expense of bottling and peddling it consumed the bulk of the profits. Kier experimented with it for light, about 1848, burning it at his wells and racking his fertile brain for some means to get rid of the offensive smoke and odor. To be entirely successful the oil must have some other than this crude form. The tireless experimenter went to Philadelphia to consult a chemist, who advised distillation, without a hint as to the necessary apparatus. Fitting a kettle with a cover and a worm, the first outcome of the embryo refiner’s one-barrel still was a dark substance little superior to the crude. Learning to manage the fires so as not to send the oil over too rapidly, by twice distilling he produced an article the color of cider, which had a horrible smell, as he knew nothing of the treatment with acids that has revolutionized the light of the world and brought petroleum to the front.

Slight changes in the camphene-lamp enabled him to burn the distillate without smoke. Improvements in the lamp, especially the addition of the “Virna burner,” and in the quality of the fluid brought the “carbon-oil,” as it was usually termed, to a goodly measure of perfection. One lot of oil used in these experiments was a purchase of three barrels in April, 1853, from Charles Lockhart, now an officer of the Standard Oil-Company in Pittsburg. It came from the Huff well, a mile down the river from Tarentum. “Carbon-oil” sold readily for a dollar-fifty per gallon and provided a market for all the petroleum the salt-wells in the vicinity could produce. The day was dawning and the great light of the nineteenth century had been foreshadowed in the broad commonwealth that was to send it forth on its shining mission to all mankind.

Samuel M. Kier slumbers in Allegheny cemetery, resting in peace “after life’s fitful fever.” He was the first to appreciate the value of petroleum and to purify it by ordinary refining. His product was in brisk demand for illuminating purposes. He invented a lamp with a four-pronged burner, arranged to admit air and give a steady light. If he failed to reap the highest advantage from his researches, to patent his process and to sink wells for petroleum alone, he paved the way for others, enlarged the field of the product’s usefulness and by his labors suggested its extensive development. Has not he earned a monument more enduring than brass or marble?

These operations at Tarentum and Pittsburg led to an extraordinary attempt to fathom the petroleum-basin by digging to the oil-bearing rock! Through Kier’s experiments the crude had become worth from fifty cents to one dollar a gallon. Among the owners of Tarentum’s salt-wells was Thomas Donnelly, who sold his well on the Humes farm to Peterson & Irwin. The senior partner, ex-Mayor Louis Peterson, of Allegheny, lived until recently to recount his interesting experiences with the coming light. He thought the Donnelly well, which produced salt-water only, if enlarged and pumped vigorously, would produce oil. Humes received twenty-thousand dollars for his farm. The hole was reamed out and yielded five barrels of petroleum a day. This was in 1856. A specimen sent to Baltimore was used successfully in oiling wool at the carding-mills and the total production was shipped to that city for eight years. Eastern capitalists bought the farm and well in 1864, organized “The Tarentum Salt-and-Oil-Company” and determined to dig a shaft down to the source of supply! The wells were four-hundred to five-hundred feet deep. The officers of the company argued that it was feasible to reach that far into the bowels of the earth with pick and shovel and discover a monstrous cave of brine and oil! They picked a spot twenty rods from the Donnelly well, sent to England for skilled miners and started a shaft about eight feet square. Over two years were employed and forty-thousand dollars spent in sinking this shaft. Heavy timbers walled the upper portion, the hard rock below needing none. The water was pumped through iron-pipes, nine men formed each shift and the work progressed merrily to the depth of four-hundred feet. Then the salt-water in the Donnelly well was affected by the fresh-water in the shaft, losing half its strength whenever the latter was let stand a few hours, showing their intimate connection by veins or crevices. Mr. Peterson said of it:

“The digging of the shaft was finally abandoned in the darkest period of the war, from the necessities of the time. A New Yorker named Ferris, and Wm. McKeown, of Pittsburg, bought the property, shaft and all. The daring piece of engineering was neglected and finally commenced to fill up with cinders and dirt, until at last it was level again with the surface of the ground. You may walk over it to-day and I could point it out to you if I was up there. Dig it out and you will find those iron pipes and timbers still there, just as they were originally put in.”

Dyed-in-the-wool Tarentumites insist that natural gas caused the suspension of work, flowing into the shaft at such a gait that the miners refused to risk the chances of a speedy trip to Kingdom Come by suffocation or the ignition of the subtile vapor. This was the case with two shafts at Tidioute and Petroleum Centre, neither of them nearly the depth of “the daring piece of engineering” which “set the pace” for enterprises of this novel brand. The New-York Enterprise-and-Mining-Company projected the former, intending to sink a shaft eight feet by twelve to the third sand and tunnel the rock for petroleum by wholesale. The shaft reached oil-producing sand at one-hundred-and-sixty feet. The miners worked in squads, eight-hour turns. Holes had been drilled into the rock at various angles and a lot of conglomerate brought to the surface. Once a short delay occurred in changing squads, during which the air-pump, employed to exhaust the gases from the pit and supply pure ozone from above, was let stand idle. Mr. Hart was seated on a timber across the shaft when the men were ready to go down. As was the custom, a man dropped a taper into the opening to test the air. Natural gas had filled the shaft and it ignited from the burning torch, causing a terrific explosion. The workmen were thrown in all directions and lay stunned and burned. When they regained consciousnessconsciousness Hart was nowhere to be seen and flames rose from the mouth of the pit to the tree-tops. Hart’s body was eventually recovered from the bottom of the shaft, horribly mangled and charred. Work was abandoned and the hole was partly filled up and covered, none caring to pry farther into the petroleum-secrets of nature. Were meddlers who seek to poke their noses into the secrets of other people dealt with thus summarily, what a thinning out of the population there would be!

Peterson & Irwin’s treatment of the Donnelly well brings out clearly that the sole object was to procure oil. This is important, in view of the claim that the first well drilled exclusively for petroleum was put down in 1859. Practically the two Pittsburgers anticipated this by three years, a circumstance to remember when considering the varied events which led up to the petroleum development.

“We do homage to the claims of the ancients and neglect those of later date.”

Charles Lockhart, still an honored resident of Pittsburg, may fairly claim to be the oldest oil-operator in the United States. His first transaction in petroleum was the purchase, in April of 1853, of three barrels of crude from Isaac Huff, who brought the stuff in a skiff from a salt-well at Tarentum. Huff sold the lot at thirty-two cents a gallon to his friend Lockhart, then connected with a leading mercantile house, and agreed to furnish him all the well produced during the year at the same price. The contract might seem like an elephant on his hands, but Lockhart’s faith in the new industry was not a plant too delicate to stand alone. Shrewd and far-seeing, the young dealer did not need a Lick telescope with a Peate lens to discern that this “mysterious grease” must soon be utilized for the general benefit. Believing a grand future was about to dawn upon petroleum, he disposed of the Huff oil and contract at a handsome profit to Samuel M. Kier, who had a small refinery on Seventh Avenue and the old Canal, and at once secured control of the Tarentum salt-works. From that date to the present—1853 to 1897—a period of forty-four years, Charles Lockhart has been an oil-producer, active in furthering the best interests of the business, a leader in improvements to foster its growth and never lacking the pluck and enterprise essential to the highest success.

In the fall of 1859 he formed a partnership with William Frew, William Phillips, John Vanausdall and A. V. Kipp to lease lands and put down oil-wells in Venango County. The five partners drilled on the Tarr Farm and the east bank of the Allegheny River. The Crystal Palace, an old keel-boat that cost them twenty-five dollars, horses towed to Oil City with their machinery and provisions. Accommodations were decidedly scarce in the settlement, just sprouting at the mouth of Oil Creek, and the boat served the workmen as a lodging and boarding-place. They cooked their own meals, of which pork and beans, coffee and molasses were prime constituents, washed their own clothes and not seldom carried flour three miles into the country to have a farmer’s wife bake it into digestible bread. The hardy fellows could navigate the Ohio or the Allegheny, brave the terrors of a Chilkoot Pass, punch a hole hundreds of feet into the rock, fry bacon to a turn and dish up a savory meal, but baking real loaves stumped them every time. The first well—the Albion, across the river—yielded forty barrels a day. From it, in March of 1860, the owners shipped sixty barrels of crude, per the steamboat Venango, Captain Reynolds commanding, the first oil boated to Pittsburg from the Pennsylvania oil-fields. It was hauled to the store of J. McCully & Co., on Wood street, near Liberty—Lockhart and Frew were junior members of the firm—and rolled upon the pavement. Much excitement followed the landing of the barrels, to which thick layers of Venago’s mud stuck wickedly. Hundreds of curious Pittsburgers viewed the importation with extreme interest, curling their noses upwards as the petroleum-aroma assailed them with an odor resembling liquid Limburger rather than brut wine. Bungs were taken out to let visitors inspect the fluid, inhale the unmixed odor and wonder what “in the name of Sam Hill” people wanted with “the nasty stuff.” A small refinery on the Fifth-Avenue extension of the city paid thirty-four cents a gallon for the oil. Such was the humble beginning of a traffic fated to outstrip coal, iron and cotton and give even breadstuffs a stiff run for first money.

The quintette drilled numerous wells, one of them the largest on Oil Creek, and prospered greatly. Phillips, Vanausdall and Kipp sold out to their partners, who organized as Lockhart & Frew. It was an ideal union of capacity and capital, not a mismating of cut-glass aspiration with tin-cup attainment, and its wheel of fortune did not travel with a punctured tire. The new firm shipped extensively, built the Brilliant Refinery in 1861 and speedily stepped to the front in handling the greasy staple. In May of 1860 Mr. Lockhart went to Europe with samples of crude and refined-distillate to establish a market in England. These were the first samples of crude-petroleum and its products ever carried across the Atlantic. The mission was most successful, a large foreign demand springing up quickly. Lockhart & Frew exerted vast influence in the petroleum-trade, opened branch-agencies throughout the oil-regions and eventually combined with the Standard Oil-Company. Major Frew, a man of rare sagacity and broad ideas, died in March of 1880. He disliked ostentation, was quiet in his tastes and habits, managed the accounts and office-work of the firm with scrupulous exactness, was always kindly and genial, helped the needy, served as treasurer of the Christian Commission and left a fine estate. Time has dealt gently with Mr. Lockhart, who is young in heart and sympathy and good-fellowship. His compliments have the juiciness of the peach, his pleasant jokes are spiced with originality, his years sit upon him lightly and his old friends are not forgotten. He is happy in his social and business relations, in recalling the past and awaiting the future, in wealth gained worthily and enjoyed wisely and in a life crowded with usefulness and blessing.

The late Joseph Bates was closely associated with the early shippers of petroleum on the Allegheny River. He held the confidence of Lockhart & Frew and was esteemed everywhere for probity and enterprise. Coming to the oil-regions in the sixties, he resided at Oil City many years and operated in different sections of the field. With his friends he was ever jaunty, jolly and perfectly at home. Judging by the French standard, that a man is only as old as he feels, he had to the very end of his sixty years few juniors at Oil City, Parker, Petrolia or Pittsburg. He was never ill-natured nor uncompanionable, whether his wells proved unexpectedly large or disappointingly small. His sunny composition bore no “thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice” to repel and chill those with whom he came in contact. His steadfast friend, Samuel B. Harper, who has had charge of the books from about the commencement of Lockhart & Frew’s partnership, is in Mr. Lockhart’s office to-day. A record so honorable to all concerned, with its long performance of duty and unwavering appreciation, is deserving of special remark in these days of lightning-changes, impaired confidence and devil-may-care recklessness generally.

On an old map of the United States, printed in England in 1787, the word “petroleum” is marked twice, indicating that the “surface-shows” of oil had attracted the notice of the earliest explorers of Southern Ohio and Northwestern Pennsylvania a century ago. In one instance it is placed at the mouth of the stream since famed the world over as Oil Creek, where Oil City is situated; in the other on a stream represented as emptying into the Ohio River, close to the site of what is now the village of Macksburg. When that section of Ohio was first settled, various symptoms of greasiness were detected, thin films of oil floating on the waters of Duck Creek and its tributaries, globules rising in different springs and seepings occurring frequently in the same manner as in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Thirty miles north of Marietta, on Duck Creek, a salt-well sunk by Mr. McKee, in 1814, to the depth of four-hundred-and-seventy-five feet, discharged “periodically, at intervals of from two to four days and from three to six hours’ duration, thirty to sixty gallons of petroleum at each inception.” Eighteen years afterwards the discharges were less frequent and the yield of oil diminished to one barrel a week, finally ceasing altogether. Once thirty or forty barrels stored in a cistern took fire from the gas at the well having been ignited by a workman carrying a light. The burning oil ran into the creek, blazed to the tops of the trees and exhibited for hours to the amazed settlers the novelty of a rivulet on fire. Ten miles above McConnellsville, on the Muskingum River, results almost identical attended the boring of salt-wells in 1819. Dr. S. P. Hildreth, of Marietta, in an account of the region, written that year, says of the borings for salt-water:

“They have sunk two wells more than four-hundred feet; one of them affords a strong and pure water, but not in great quantity; the other discharges such vast quantities of petroleum, or as it is vulgarly called “Seneca Oil,” and besides is subject to such tremendous explosions of gas * * * that they make little or no salt. Nevertheless, the petroleum affords considerable profit and is beginning to be in demand for workshops and manufactories. It affords a clear, brisk light, when burned in this way, and will be a valuable article for lighting the street-lamps in the future cities of Ohio.”

The last sentence bears the force of a prophecy. Writing about the year 1832 the same observant author directs attention to another peculiar feature:

“Since the first settlement of the regions west of the Appalachian range the hunters and pioneers have been acquainted with this oil. Rising in a hidden and mysterious manner from the bowels of the earth, it soon arrested their attention and acquired great value in the eyes of the simple sons of the forest. * * * From its success in rheumatism, burns, coughs, sprains etc., it was justly entitled to its celebrity. * * * It is also well adapted to prevent friction in machinery, for, being free of gluten, so common to animal and vegetable oils, it preserves the parts to which it is applied for a long time in free motion; where a heavy vertical shaft runs in a socket it is preferable to all or any other articles. This oil rises in greater or less abundance in most of the salt-wells and, collecting where it rises, is removed from time to time with a ladle.”

Is it not strange that, with the sources of supply thus pointed out in different counties and states and the useful applications of petroleum fairly understood, its real value should have remained unappreciated and unrecognized for more than thirty years and be at last determined through experiments upon the distillation of bituminous shales and coals? Wells sunk hundreds of feet for salt water produced oil in abundance, yet it occurred to no one that, if bored expressly for petroleum, it could be found in paying quantity! Hamilton McClintock, owner of the “oil-spring” famed in history and romance, when somebody ventured to suggest that he should dig into the rock a short distance, instead of skimming the petroleum with a flannel-cloth, retorted hotly: “I’m no blanked fool to dig a hole for the oil to get away through the bottom!”

If West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio played trumps in the exciting game of Brine vs. Oil, Kentucky held the bowers. The home of James Harrod and Daniel Boone, Henry Clay and George D. Prentice was noted for other things besides backwoods fighters, statesmanship, sparkling journalism, thoroughbred horses, superb women and moonshine-whiskey. Off in the southeast corner of Wayne county, near the northeast corner of a six-thousand-acre tract of wild land, David Beatty bored a well for salt about the year 1818. The land extended four miles westward from the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River, its eastern boundary, and three miles down the Fork from Tennessee, its southern line. The well was located on a strip of flat ground between the stream and a rocky bluff, streaked with veins of coal and limestone. Five yards from the water a hole nine feet square was dug ten feet to the rock and timbered. The well, barely three inches in diameter, was punched one-hundred-and-seventy feet by manual labor, steam-engines not having penetrated the trackless forests of Wayne at that period. To the intense disgust of the workmen a black, sticky, viscid liquid persisted in coming up with the salt-water and a new location was chosen two miles farther down the creek. Extra care not to drill too deep averted an influx of the disagreeable fluid which spoiled the first venture. Salt-works were established and flourished for years, a simon-pure oasis in the interminable wilderness.

Beatty was elected to Congress, serving his constituents faithfully and illustrating the Mulberry-Sellers policy of “the old flag and an appropriation.” He secured a liberal grant for a road to his property on the South Fork and constructed a passable thoroughfare. Traces of deep cuttings, log-culverts and blasted rocks, still discernible amid the underbrush that well-nigh hides them from view, are convincing evidences of the magnitude and difficulty of the task. “The rocky road to Dublin” was a mere bagatelle in comparison with this long-deserted pathway. “Jordan is a hard road to travel,” says an old song, and the sentiment would fit equally well in this case. At one rugged point holes were cut in a rock as steep as the roof of a house, to afford footing for the mules engaged in drawing salt from the works! Considering the roughness of the country, the height of the hills, the depth of the chasms and the scanty facilities available, Beatty’s road was quite as remarkable a feat as Bonaparte’s passage across the Alps or Ben Butler’s “Dutch-Gap Canal.” Its spirited projector lived and died at Monticello, the county-seat, where his descendants resided until recently.

The abandoned well did not propose to be snuffed out unceremoniously or to enact the role of “Leah the Forsaken.” In its bright lexicon the word fail was not to be inserted merely because it was too fresh to participate in the salt-trade. Far from retiring permanently, it spouted petroleum at a NancyNancy-Hanks quickstep, filling the pit, running into the Fork and covering mile after mile of the water with a top-dressing of oil. Somehow the floating mass caught fire and mammoth pyrotechnics ensued. The stream blazed and boiled and sizzled from the well to the Cumberland River, thirty-five miles northward, calcining rocks and licking up babbling brooks on its fiery march! Trees on its banks burned and blistered and charred to their deepest roots. Iron-pans at the salt-wells got red-hot, shriveled, warped, twisted and joined the junk-pile! Was not that a sweet revenge for plucky No. 1, the well its owner “had no use for” and devoutly wished at the bottom of the sea?

The Chicago fire “couldn’t hold a candle” to this rural conflagration, which originated the expressive phrase of “hell with the lid off,” applied sixty years afterwards by James Parton to the flaming furnaces at Pittsburg. Unluckily, the region was populated so sparsely that few spectators had front seats at “the greatest show on earth.” The deluge of oil ceased eventually, the fire following suit. Anon the salt industry began to languish and the works were dismantled. No more the forest-road echoed the sharp crack of the teamster’s whip or heard his lusty oaths. The district along the South Fork was left as silent as “the harp that once through Tara’s halls the soul of music shed,” ready to be labeled “Ichabod,” and tradition alone preserved the name and record of the “Beatty Well,” the first oil-spouter in America!

Accompanied by Dr. W. G. Hunter, and a native as guide, it was my good fortune to visit this memorable locality in 1877. The start was from Burksville, Cumberland county, the doctor’s home and my headquarters for a twelvemonth. At Albany, Clinton county, sure-footed mules, the only animals that could be ridden safely through the rough country, took the place of our horses. Soon the last signs of civilization disappeared and we plunged into the thick woods, a crooked, tortuous trail pointing the way. Hills, rocks, ravines, fallen trees and mountain-streams by turns impeded our progress, as we rode in Indian file for thirty miles. Birds twittered and snakes hissed at the invasion of their solitudes. Several times the path touched the line of Beatty’s forgotten road and once a ruined cabin, with three grave-like mounds in a corner of the small clearing, met our gaze. The guide explained how, twenty years before, the poor family tenanting the wretched hovel had been poisoned by eating some kind of berries, the parents and their only child dying alone and unattended. No human eye beheld their struggles, no soft hand cooled the fevered brows of the sufferers whose lives went out in that desolate waste.

Provisions in our saddle-bags, a clear brook and evergreen boughs supplied us with food, drink and an open-air bed. Next morning we traversed a broad plateau, ending abruptly at the top of a precipitous bluff a hundred feet high. Beneath us lay a stretch of bottom-land, with the Big South Fork on its east side and the Cumberland Mountains rearing their bold crests five miles away. In the center of a patch of cleared ground stood a shanty, built of poles and roofed with split slabs of oak. From an open space in one end smoke escaped freely, showing that the place was inhabited. Tethering the mules and throwing the saddles upon the grass, we crawled down a slope formed by the collapse of a portion of the bluff. A shot from my revolver—everybody carried a pistol—shattered the atmosphere and brought the inmates to the side of the dwelling. The father, mother, a child in arms and two boys entering their teens watched our approach. As we drew nigh they scampered into the shanty and took refuge under a queer structure of rails, straw and blankets that did duty as a bed for the household! A blanket hung over the space cut for a door. Drawing this aside, the frightened family could be seen crouching on the bare soil, for the abode had neither door, window, floor nor chinking between the logs. It was quite unfit to shelter a decent porker. Not a chair, table, stove, looking-glass, bureau or any of the articles of furniture deemed necessary for modern comfort was in sight! A bench hewn out of timber with an axe, two metal-pots, some tin-dishes and knives and forks composed the domestic outfit! Yet it was “home” to the squalid beings huddled in the dark, damp, musty angle farthest from the intruders who had dropped in upon them as unexpectedly as a Peary meteor.

Calling them to come out and speak with us a moment, the woman appeared, bearing the inevitable baby. She was truly a revelation, with unkempt brindle-hair and sallow skin to match. Her raiment consisted of a single jean-garment, dirty and tattered beyond description, too narrow to encircle her waist and too short to reach within a dozen inches of her naked feet. Compared with the flimsy toilet of “a living picture,” this costume was simplicity itself. The poor creature smoked a cob-pipe viciously. A request to see her husband evoked the command: “Old man, I reckon you best git out hyer!” The “old man” heeded this summons and emerged from his hiding-place, trembling violently. His attire was in harmony with his wife’s, threadbare jean-pants and shirt comprising it. Head and feet were bare. His trembling ceased the instant he saw our guide, whom he knew and greeted cordially. Introductions followed and we asked if he could show us the way to the Beatty Well. He answered in perfect English, with the grace of a Chesterfield: “It will be the greatest pleasure I have known for many a day.”

A brisk walk brought us to the well. Dirt and leaves had filled the pit nearly level, forming a depression which one might pass without special notice. Scraping away the rubbish, blackened fragments of the timbered walls appeared. But not a drop of oil had issued from the veteran-well for scores of years. One man alone survived of those who had gazed upon the flow of petroleum previous to the fire which checked the greasian tide forever. He lived ten miles northwest and his short story was learned on the return-trip by another route. The scattered rustics were accustomed to go to the well once or twice a year and dip enough oil to medicate and lubricate whoever or whatever needed it. The fluid was dark and heavy and for years rose to within a few feet of the surface. At length the well clogged up and was almost obliterated. The dim eyes of the aged narrator sparkled as he recalled the big blaze, concluding with the emphatic words: “It jes’ looked ez if the devil had hitched up the hull bottomless pit fur a torch-light percession!”

Except the squatter on the tract of land, which Dr. Hunter and myself had secured the winter of our visit, the nearest settler lived five miles distant! The Cincinnati-Southern Railroad, now the Queen & Crescent route, had not crossed the meandering Kentucky River and the country was practically inaccessible. Men and women grew up without ever hearing of a church, a school, a book, a newspaper, a preacher, a doctor, a wheeled vehicle or a lucifer-match! The heathen of Bariaboola-Gha were as well informed concerning God and a future state. They herded in miserable cabins, lived on “corn-dodgers and sow-belly,” drank home-made whiskey and never wandered ten miles from their own fireside. Of the great outside world, of moral obligations, of religious conviction and of current events they were profoundly ignorant. Think of people fifty, sixty, seventy years old, born and reared in the United States, who never saw a loaf of wheat-bread, a wagon, a cart or a baby-carriage, to say nothing of a plum-pudding, railway-coach, a trolley-car or a tandem-bicycle! It seems incredible, in this advanced age and bang-up nation, that such conditions should be possible, yet they existed in Southeastern Kentucky. And the American eagle flaps his wings, while Americans boast of their culture and send barrels of cold cash to buy flannel-shirts for perspiring Hottentots and goody-goody tracts for jolly cannibals!

Small need of barbed-wire fences to shut out the cattle and chickens of neighbors five miles apart! Their children did not quarrel and sulk and yell “You can’t play in our yard!” Our host, who took us over the property and told us all he knew about it, had not seen a strange face for twenty-nine weary months! Then the neighbor five miles off had come in the vain search of a cruse of oil from the old well to rub on an afflicted hog! Three years had rolled by since his last expedition to the cross-roads, fourteen miles away, to trade “coon-skins” for jeans and groceries. Could isolation be more complete? Was Alexander Selkirk less blessed with companionship on his secluded island? Had Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, “on a wide, wide sea,” greater cause for an attack of the blues?

The steel-track and the iron-horse are prime civilizers and eighteen years have wrought a wondrous change in the section bordering upon the Cumberland Mountains. The schoolmaster has come in with the railroad and improvement is the prevailing order. Farmers have turned their forests into cultivated fields and bought the latest implements. Their boys read the papers, yearn for the city, smoke cigarettes, dabble in politics and dream of unbounded wealth. The girls, no longer content with homespun frocks and sunbonnets, dress in silk and velvet, wear stylish hats, devour French novels, sport high-heeled shoes and balloon-sleeves, play Beethoven and Chopin, waltz divinely and are altogether lovable!

An apparition muttering “I am thy father’s ghost” would not have surprised us so much as the politeness of our half-clad, barefooted, bareheaded pilot to the neglected well. His manners and his language were faultless. Not a coarse word or grammatical error marred his fluent speech. At noon he invited us to share his humble dinner, apologizing with royal dignity for the poverty of his surroundings. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I regret that parched corn and fat bacon are all I can offer, but I beg you to honor me with your presence at my table!” Remembering the cabin and its presiding divinity, we felt obliged to decline and requested him to lunch with us. It was a positive pleasure to see with what relish he ate the baked chicken, biscuit and good things Mrs. Hunter had packed in our saddle-bags. After the meal we prepared to depart. The end of a Louisville paper under the flap of my saddle attracted the old man’s attention.

“Is that a newspaper?” he inquired.

“Yes, do you want it?”

“Oh, thank you a thousand times! It is fifteen years since I have seen a paper and this will be such a treat!”

He seized the sheet eagerly, dropped upon the grass and glanced over the printed page. In an instant he jumped to his feet and tears coursed down his wrinkled cheeks.

“I did not mean to be rude,” he said earnestly, “but you cannot imagine how my feelings mastered me, after so many years of separation from the world, at sight of a paper from the city of my birth!”

The next moment the good-byes were uttered and we had left the hermit of South Fork, to meet no more this side of eternity. He stood peering after us until the woods shut us from his wistful gaze. Six years later death, the grim detective no vigilance can elude, claimed the guardian of the Beatty Well. His family removed to parts unknown. He rests in an unmarked grave, beneath a spreading oak, near the murmuring stream. The lonely exile has reached home at last!

Who on earth was this educated, courteous, gentlemanly personage, and how did he drift into such a place? This perplexing problem beat the fifteen-puzzle, “Pigs in Clover,” or the confusing dogma of Freewill and Predestination. Our guide enlightened us. The old man was reared in Louisville, graduated from college and entered an office to study law. In a bar-room row one night a young man, with whom he had some trouble, was stabbed fatally. Fearing he would be accused of the deed, the student fled to the woods. For years he shunned mankind, subsisting on game and fruit and sleeping in a cave. Every rustling leaf or snapping twig terrified him with the idea that officers were at his heels. Ultimately he gained courage and sought the acquaintance of the few settlers in his vicinity. Striving to forget the past, he cohabited with the woman he called his wife, erected a shanty and brought up three children. Fire destroyed his hut and its contents, leaving him destitute, and he located where we met him. The fear of arrest could not be shaken off and he supposed we had come to take him a prisoner, after twenty-five years of hiding, for a crime of which he was innocent. This explained his retreat under the bed and violent trembling. He carried his secret in his own bosom until 1873, when he was believed to be dying and disclosed it to a friend, our guide, with a sealed letter giving his true name. He recovered, the letter was handed back unopened and the fugitive’s identity was never revealed. What an existence for a man of refinement and collegiate training! What volumes of unwritten, unsuspected tragedies environ us, could we but pierce the outward mask and read the tablets of the heart!

Eight or ten years ago J. O. Marshall, a Pennsylvania oil-operator, cleaned out the Beatty Well and drilled another a half-mile north. Neither yielded any oil, although the second was put down nine-hundred feet. Mr. Marshall leased a great deal of land in Wayne and adjacent counties, expecting to operate extensively, but he died without seeing his purposes accomplished. He was a genial, enterprising, whole-souled fellow, whose faith in Kentucky as an oil-field never faltered.

Dr. Hunter, my esteemed associate on many a delightful trip, was practicing at Newcastle, Pa., when the civil war broke out. He sold his drug-store, offered his services to the Government and was placed in charge of a medical department, where he made a first-class record. He amputated the leg of General James A. Beaver, subsequently Governor of Pennsylvania. At the close of the war he settled in Cumberland county, married a prominent young lady, built up an immense practice and acquired a competence. He served with signal ability and credit in the Legislature and in Congress, elected time and again in a district overwhelmingly against his party. He was chairman of the Republican State-CommitteeState-Committee, and ought to be the successor of Blackburn in the United-States Senate.

Seventy years ago William Morris, a practical driller, whose name oilmen should perpetuate, invented the contrivance that culminated in “jars” for drilling-tools. This contrivance, which enabled the Ruffners and other salt-borers to go a thousand feet or more for brine, renders it possible to drill a mile for oil, if ambitious operators desire to get so far towards the antipodes. The manner in which the oil-resources of West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky were thrown away by the early pioneers is a surprising feature in the history of human affairs. Fifty years before Pennsylvania oil-wells had been heard of the Kanawha salt-seekers were drilling what to-day would be paying oil-wells. Instead of saving the oil, which is enriching West Virginia operators now, they wasted it and saved the salt-water. They wasted the natural gas, the best fuel of the century, and boiled their salt-water with wood, the most expensive and least satisfactory fuel of the valley. That is often the way humanity gropes in the dark. The men who rushed to California drove their ox-wagons past the big bonanzas of the Comstock lode, while the men who later went to the Comstock went past the rich carbonates of Leadville, just as later prospectors ran over the Cripple-Creek silver and gold-leads in the search for things farther distant and the crowds hurrying to Alaska ignored the teeming ledges of the Black Hills. The Kanawha salt-men scorned the oil, yet drilled the first oil-wells, and in doing it invented the methods which have come into use throughout the entire oil-territory. If Joseph and David Ruffner and William Morris had displayed half the wisdom in utilizing the oil they manifested in inventing tools to find salt-water, theirs would be the familiar names in Oildom down to the end of time.

“Fellow-citizens,” shouted a free-silver orator to a host of starving coal-miners three months after the last Presidential inauguration, “they tell us Major McKinley is the advance-agent of prosperity, but, if so, he seems to be a deuce of a way ahead of the show!” In like fashion the Ruffners were a long way ahead of the petroleum-development, but the show got there at last, heralded by salt-wells that pointed unerringly towards the dawn.

Writing of several Jesuits who, about 1642, penetrated the territory of the Eries, probablyprobably near what is now Cuba, N. Y., Charlevoix says:

“They found a thick, oily, stagnant matter which would burn like brandy.”

The map of the Missionaries Dollier and GalinÈe, printed in 1670, has a hint of the presence of petroleum in the north-western part of New York. Near the spot which was to become the site of Cuba these words are marked:

“Fonteaine de Bitume.”

In 1700 the Earl of Bellmont, Governor of New York, thus instructed Engineer Wolfgang W. Romer to visit the Five Nations:

“You are to go and view a well or spring which is eight miles beyond the Seneks’ farthest castle, which they told me blazes up in a flame when a lighted coal or firebrand is put into it. You will do well to taste the said water and * * * bring with you some of it.”

Sir William Johnson, who visited Niagara in 1767, in his journal says with reference to the spring at Cuba:

“Arcushan came in with a quantity of curious oyl, taken at the top of the water of some very small lake near the village he belongs to.”

David Leisberger, the Moravian Missionary, went up the Allegheny River in 1767, established a mission near the mouth of Tionesta Creek and in 1770 removed to Butler county. His manuscript records:

“I have seen three kinds of oil-springs—such as have an outlet, such as have none and such as rise from the bottom of the creeks. From the first water and oil flow out together, the oil impregnating the grass and soil; in the second it gathers on the surface of the water to the depth of the thickness of a finger; from the third it rises to the surface and flows with the current of the creek. The Indians prefer wells without an outlet. From such they first dip the oil that has accumulated, then stir the well and, when the water has settled, fill their kettles with fresh oil, which they purify by boiling. It is used medicinally, as an ointment for toothache, headache, swellings, rheumatism and sprains. Sometimes it is taken internally. It is of a brown color and can also be used in lamps. It burns well.”

Dr. John David Schopf, a surgeon in the British service, visited Pittsburg in 1783 and in an account of his journey remarked:

“Petroleum was found at several places up the Allegheny, particularly at a spring and a creek, which were covered with this floating substance.”

General William Irvine, in a letter to John Dickinson, dated “Carlisle, August 17, 1785,” tells of exploring the western part of Pennsylvania. He says:

“Oil Creek takes its name from an oily or bituminous matter being found floating on its surface. Many cures are attributed to this oil. * * * It rises in the bed of the creek at very low water. In a dry season I am told it is found without any mixture of water and is pure oil. It rises when the creek is high from the bottom in small globules.”

George Henry Loskiel, in his “Geschichte der Mission der Evangelischen Bruder unter der Indianen in Nordamerika,” published in 1789, noted:

“One of the most favorite medicines used by the Indians is Fossil-oil exuding from the earth, commonly with water * * * This oil is of a brown color and smells like tar. * * * They use it chiefly in external complaints. Some take it inwardly and it has not been found to do harm. It will burn in a lamp. The Indians sometimes sell it to the white people at four guineas a quart.”

An officer of the United States Army, who descended the Ohio River in 1811, wrote a book of travels in which he remarks:

“Not far from the mouth of the Little Beaver a spring has been found, said to rise from the bottom of the river, from which issues an oil which is highly inflammable and is called Seneca oil. It resembles Barbadoes tar and is used as a remedy for rheumatic pains.”