Interesting and unexpected results from borings for salt-water in Kentucky were not exhausted by the initial experiment on South Fork. Special peculiarities invest that venture with a romantic halo essentially its own, but “there are others.” Wayne county was not to monopolize the petroleum-feature of salt-wells by a large majority. “Westward the star of empire takes its way” affirmed Bishop Berkeley two-hundred years ago, with the instinct of a born prophet, and it was so with the petroleum-star of Kentucky, however it might be with brilliant Henri Watterson’s “star-eyed goddess of Reform.”

The storm-center next shifted to Cumberland county, the second west of Wayne, Clinton separating them. Hardy breadwinners, braving the hardships and privations of pioneer-life in the backwoods, early in this century settled much of the country along the Cumberland River. Upon one section of irregular shape, its southern end bordered by Tennessee, the state of Davy Crockett and Andrew Jackson, the name of the winding river intersecting it was appropriately bestowed. A central location, between the west bank of the Cumberland and the foot of a lordly hill, was selected for the county-seat and christened Burksville, in honor of a respected citizen who owned the site of the embryo hamlet. From a cross-roads tavern and blacksmith-shop the place expanded gradually into an inviting village of one-thousand population. It has fine stores, good churches and schools, a brick court-house, and for years it boasted the only college in Kentucky for the education of girls.

Burksville pursued “the even tenor of its way” slowly and surely. Forty miles from a railroad or a telegraph-wire, its principal outlet is the river during the season of navigation. The Cumberland retains the fashion of rising sixty to eighty feet above its summer-level when the winter rains set in and dwindling to a mere brooklet in the dry, hot months. Old-timers speak of “the flood of 1826” as the greatest in the history of the community. The rampant waters overflowed fields and streets, invaded the ground-floors of houses and did a lot of unpleasant things, the memory of which tradition has kept green. In January of 1877 the moist experience was repeated almost to high-water mark. Saw-logs floated into kitchens and parlors and improvised skiffs navigated back-yards and gardens. Seldom has the town cut a wide swath in the metropolitan press, because it avoided gross scandals and attended strictly to home-affairs. The chief dissipation is a trip by boat to Nashville or Point-Burnside, or a drive overland to Glasgow, the terminus of a branch of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad.

The first great event to stir the hearts of the good people of Cumberland county occurred in 1829. A half-mile from the mouth of Rennix Creek, a minor stream that empties into the Cumberland two miles north of the county-town, a well was sunk one-hundred-and-eighty feet for salt-water. Niles’ Register, published the same year, told the tale succinctly:

“Some months since, in the act of boring for salt-water on the land of Mr. Lemuel Stockton, situated in the county of Cumberland, Kentucky, a run of pure oil was struck, from which it is almost incredible what quantities of the substance issued. The discharges were by floods, at intervals of from two to five minutes, at each flow vomiting forth many barrels of pure oil. I witnessed myself, on a shaft that stood upright by the aperture in the rock from which it issued, marks of oil 25 or 30 feet perpendicularly above the rock. These floods continued for three or four weeks, when they subsided to a constant stream, affording many thousand gallons per day. This well is between a quarter and a half-mile from the bank of the Cumberland River, on a small rill (creek) down which it runs to the Cumberland. It was traced as far down the Cumberland as Gallatin, in Sumner county, Tennessee, nearly a hundred miles. For many miles it covered the whole surface of the river and its marks are now found on the rocks on each bank.

“About two miles below the point on which it touched the river, it was set on fire by a boy, and the effect was grand beyond description. An old gentleman who witnessed it says he has seen several cities on fire, but that he never beheld anything like the flames which rose from the bosom of the Cumberland to touch the very clouds.”

This was the beginning of what was afterwards known from the equator to the poles as the “American Well.” The flow of oil spoiled the well for salt and the owners quitted it in disgust, sinking another with better success in an adjacent field. For years it remained forsaken, an object of more or less curiosity to travelers who passed close by on their way to or from Burksville. It was very near the edge of the creek, on flat ground most of which has been washed away. Neighboring farmers dipped oil occasionally for medicine, for axle-grease and—“tell it not in Gath, publish it not in Askelon”—to kill vermin on swine!

Job Moses, a resident of Buffalo, N. Y., visited the locality about the year 1848. He had read of the oil-springs in New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio and he decided that the hole on Rennix Creek ought to be a prize-package. His moderate offer for the well was accepted by the Bakers, into whose hands the Stockton tract had come. He drilled the well to four-hundred feet and erected a pumping-rig. The five or six barrels a day of greenish-amber fluid, 42° gravity, he put up in half-pint bottles, labeled “American Rock Oil” and sold at fifty cents, commending it as a specific for numberless complaints. He reaped a harvest for several years, until trade languished and the well was abandoned.

With the proceeds of his enterprise Moses bought a large block of land at Limestone, N. Y., adjoining the northern boundary of McKean county, Pa., and built a mansion big enough for a castle. He farmed extensively, raised herds of cattle, employed legions of laborers and dispensed a bountiful hospitality. In 1862-3 he drilled three wells near his dwelling, finding a trifling amount of gas and oil. Had he drilled deeper he would inevitably have opened up the phenomenal Bradford field a dozen years in advance of its actual development. Wells twelve-hundred to three-thousand feet deep had not been dreamt of in petroleum-philosophy at that date, else Job Moses might have diverted the whole current of oil-operations northward and postponed indefinitely the advent of the Clarion and Butler districts! Boring a four-inch hole a few hundred feet farther would have done it!

On what small causes great effects sometimes depend! Believing a snake-story induced our first parents to sample “the fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought sin into our world and all our woe.” Ambition to be a boss precipitated Lucifer “from the battlements of heaven to the nethermost abyss.” A dream released Joseph from prison to be “ruler over Egypt.” The smiles of a wanton plunged Greece into war and wiped Troy from the face of the earth. A prod on the heel slew Achilles, a nail—driven by a woman at that—finished Sisera and a pebble ended Goliath. The cackling of a goose saved Rome from the barbarous hordes of Brennus. A cobweb across the mouth of the cave secreting him preserved Mahomet from his pursuers and gave Arabia and Turkey a new religion. The scorching of a cake in a goatherd’s hut aroused King Alfred and restored the Saxon monarchy in England. The movements of a spider inspired Robert Bruce to renewed exertions and secured the independence of Scotland. An infected rag in a bundle of Asiatic goods scourged Europe with the plague. The fall of an apple from a tree resulted in Sir Isaac Newton’s sublime theory of gravitation. The vibrations of a tea-kettle lid suggested to the Marquis of Worcester the first conception of the steam-engine. A woman’s chance-remark led Eli Whitney to invent the cotton-gin. The twitching of a frog’s muscles revealed galvanism. A diamond-necklace hastened the French Revolution and consigned Marie Antoinette to the guillotine. Hacking a cherry-tree with a hatchet earned George Washington greater glory than the victory of Monmouth or the overthrow of Cornwallis. A headache helped cost Napoleon the battle of Waterloo and change the destiny of twenty kingdoms. An affront to an ambassador drove Germany to arms, exiled Louis Napoleon and made France a republic. Mrs. O’Leary’s kicking cow laid Chicago in ashes and burst up no end of insurance-companies. An alliterative phrase defeated James G. Blaine for President of the United States. An epigram, a couplet or a line has been known to confer immortality. A new bonnet has disrupted a sewing-society, split a congregation and put devout members on the toboggan in their hurry to backslide. An onion-breath has severed doting lovers, cheated parsons of their wedding-fees and played hob with Cupid’s calculations. Statistics fail to disclose the awful havoc wrought in millions of homes by such observations, on the part of thoughtless young husbands, as “this isn’t the way mother baked,” or “mother’s coffee didn’t taste like this!”

Moses lived to produce oil from his farms and to witness, five miles south of Limestone, the grandest petroleum-development of any age or nation. He was built on the broad-gauge plan, physically and mentally, and “the light went out” peacefully at last. The Kentucky well was never revived. The rig decayed and disappeared, a timber or two lingering until carried off by the flood in 1877.

In the autumn of 1876 Frederic Prentice, a leading operator, engaged me to go to Kentucky to lease and purchase lands for oil-purposes. Shortly before Christmas he wished me to meet him in New York and go from there to Boston, to give information to parties he expected to associate with him in his Kentucky projects. Together we journeyed to the city of culture and baked-beans and met the gentlemen in the office of the Union-Pacific Railroad-Company. The gathering was quite notable. Besides Mr. Prentice, who had long been prominent in petroleum affairs, Stephen Weld, Oliver Ames, Sen., Oliver Ames, Jun., Frederick Ames, F. Gordon Dexter and one or two others were present. Mr. Weld was the richest citizen of New England, his estate at his death inventorying twenty-two millions. The elder Oliver Ames, head of the giant shovel-manufacturing firm of Oliver Ames & Sons, was a brother of Oakes Ames, the creator of the Pacific Railroads, whom the Credit-Mobilier engulfed in its ruthless destruction of statesmen and politicians. His nephew and namesake was a son of Oakes Ames and Governor of Massachusetts in 1887-8-9. He began his career in the shovel-works, learning the trade as an employÉ, and at thirty-five had amassed a fortune of ten-millions. He occupied the finest house in Boston, entertained lavishly, spent immense sums for paintings and bric-a-brac and died in October of 1895. Frederick Ames, son of the senior Oliver, has inherited his father’s executive talent and he maintains the family’s reputation for sagacity and the acquisition of wealth. F. Gordon Dexter is a multi-millionaire, a power in the railroad-world and a resident of Beacon street, the swell avenue of the Hub.

Such were the men who heard the reports concerning Kentucky. They did not squirm and hesitate and wonder where they were at. Thirty-five minutes after entering the room the “Boston Oil Company” was organized, the capital was paid in, officers were elected, a lawyer had started to get the charter and authority was given me to draw at sight for whatever cash was needed up to one-hundred-thousand dollars! This record-breaking achievement was about as expeditious as the Chicago grocer, who closed his store one forenoon and pasted on the door a placard inscribed in bold characters: “At my wife’s funeral—back in twenty minutes!”

Oliver Ames, the future governor, invited the party to lunch at the Parker House, Boston’s noted hostelry. An hour sped quickly. My return-trip had been arranged by way of Buffalo and the Lake-Shore Road to Franklin. The time to start arrived, the sleigh to take me to the depot was at the door, the good-byes were said, the driver tucked in the robes and grasped the lines. At that instant Oliver Ames, Sen., called: “Please come into the hotel one moment; I want to jot down something you told us about the American Well.” The other gentlemen looked on, the explanation was penciled rapidly, my seat in the sleigh was resumed and Mr. Dexter jokingly said to the Jehu: “You’ll have to hustle, or your fare will miss his train!”

Through the narrow, twisted, crowded streets the horses trotted briskly. Rushing into the station, the train was pulling out and the ticket-examiner was shutting the iron-gates. He refused to let me attempt to catch the rear car and my disappointment was extreme. A train for New York and Pittsburg left in fifteen minutes. It bore me, an unwilling passenger, safely and satisfactorily to the “Smoky City.” There the news reached me of the frightful railway-disaster at Ashtabula, in which P. P. Bliss and fourscore fellow-mortals, filled with fond anticipations of New-Year reunions, perished in the icy waters ninety feet beneath the treacherous bridge that dropped them into the yawning chasm! The doomed train was the same that would have borne me to Ashtabula and—to death, had not Mr. Ames detained me to make the entry in his memorandum-book! Call it Providence, Luck, Chance, what you will, an incident of this stamp is apt to beget “a heap of tall thinking.”

Returning to Burksville in January, the work of leasing went ahead merrily. The lands around the American Well were taken at one-eighth royalty. Forty rods northeast of the American, in a small ravine, a well was drilled eight-hundred feet. At two-hundred feet some gas and oil appeared, but the well proved a failure. While it was under way the gas in a deserted salt-well twenty rods northwest of the American burst forth violently, sending frozen earth, water and pieces of rock high into the air. The derrick at the Boston Well, rising to the height of seventy-two feet, was a perennial delight to the natives. Youths, boys and old men ascended the ladder to the topmost round to enjoy the beautiful view. Pretty girls longed to try the experiment and it was whispered that six of them, one night when only the man in the moon was peeping, performed the perilous feat. Certain it is that a winsome teacher at the college, who climbed the celestial stair years ago, succeeded in the effort and wrecked her dress on the way back to solid ground. A dining-room girl at Petrolia, in 1873, stood on top of a derrick, to win a pair of shoes banteringly offered by a jovial oilman to the first fair maiden entitled to the prize. Lovely woman and Banquo’s ghost will not “down!”“down!”

Three miles northeast of the American Well, at the mouth of Crocus Creek, C. H. English drilled eight shallow wells in 1865. They were bunched closely and one flowed nine-hundred barrels a day. Transportation was lacking, the product could not be marketed and the promising field was deserted. Twelve years later the Boston Oil-Company drilled in the midst of English’s cluster, to discover the quality of the strata, and could not exhaust the surface-water by the most incessant pumping. The company also drilled on the Gilreath farm, across the Cumberland from Burksville, where Captain Phelps found heavy oil in paying quantity back in the sixties. The well produced nicely and would have paid handsomely had a railroad or a pipe-line been within reach. A well two miles west of the American, drilled in 1891, had plenty of sand and showed for a fifty-barreler.

Six miles south-west of Burksville, at Cloyd’s Landing, J. W. Sherman, of Oil-Creek celebrity, drilled a well in 1865 which spouted a thousand barrels of 40° gravity oil in twenty-four hours. He loaded a barge with oil in bulk, intending to ship it to Nashville. The ill-fated craft struck a rock in the river and the oil floated off on its own hook. Sherman threw up the sponge and returned to Pennsylvania. Three others on the Cloyd tract started finely, but the wonderful excitement at Pithole was breaking out and operations elsewhere received a cold chill. Dr. Hunter purchased the Cloyd farm and leased it in 1877 to Peter Christie, of Petrolia, who did not operate on any of the lands he secured in Kentucky and Tennessee. Micawber-like, Cumberland county is “waiting for something to turn up” in the shape of facilities for handling oil. When these are assured the music of the walking-beam will tickle the ears of expectant believers in Kentucky as the coming oil-field.

Wayne and Cumberland had been heard from and Clinton county was the third to have its inning. On the west bank of Otter Creek, a sparkling tributary of Beaver Creek, a well bored for salt fifty or more years ago yielded considerable oil. Instead of giving up the job, the owners pumped the water and oil into a tank, over the side of which the lighter fluid was permitted to empty at its leisure. The salt-works came to a full stop eventually and the well relapsed into “innocuous desuetude.” L. D. Carter, of Aurora, Ill., sojourning temporarily in Clinton for his health, saw the old well in 1864. He dipped a jugful of oil, took it to Aurora, tested it on the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, found it a good lubricant and concluded to give the well a square trial. The railroad-company agreed to buy the oil at a fair price. Carter pumped six or eight barrels a day, hauled it in wagons over the hills to the Cumberland River and saved money. He granted Mr. Prentice an option on the property in 1877. The day the option expired J. O. Marshall bought the well, farm and ten-thousand acres of leases conditionally, for a Butler operator who “didn’t have the price,” and the deal fell through.

The well stood idle until 1892, when J. Hovey, an ex-broker from New York and relative of a late Governor of Indiana, drilled a short distance down the creek. The result was a strike which produced twenty-four hundred barrels of dark, heavy, lubricating oil in fifty days. It was shut down for want of tankage and means to transport the product to market. The Carter again yielded nicely, as did three more wells in this neighborhood. In 1895 the Standard Oil-Company was given a refusal of the Hovey and surrounding interests, in order to test the territory fully and lay a pipe-line to Glasgow or Louisville, should the production warrant the expenditure. Wells have been sunk east of the Carter nearly to Monticello, eighteen miles off, finding gas and indications of oil. Every true Clintonite is positive an ocean of petroleum underlies his particular neck of woods, impatient to be relieved and burden landholders and operators alike with excessive wealth!

A hard-headed youth, out walking with his best girl in the dog-days, told her a fairy-story of the dire effects of ice-cream upon the feminine constitution. “I knew a girl,” he declared, “who ate six plates of the dreadful stuff and died next day!” The shrewd damsel exclaimed rapturously: “Oh, wouldn’t it be sweet to die that way? Let us begin on six plates now!” And wouldn’t it be nice to be loaded with riches, not gained by freezing out some other fellow, by looting a bank, by wedding an unloved bride, by grinding the poor, by manipulating stocks, by cornering grain or by practices that make the angels weep, but by bringing oil honestly from the bowels of the earth?

About the year 1839 a salt-well in Lincoln county, eight miles from the pretty town of Stanford, struck a vein of oil unexpectedly. The inflammable liquid gushed out with great force, took fire and burned furiously for weeks. The owner was a grim joker in his way and he aptly remarked, upon viewing the conflagration: “I reckon I’ve got a little hell of my own!” Four more wells were drilled farther up the stream, two getting a show of oil. One was plugged and the other, put down by the late Marcus Hulings, the wealthy Pennsylvania operator, proved dry. Surface indications in many quarters gave rise to the belief that oil would be found over a wide area, and in 1861 a well was bored at Glasgow, Barren county, one-hundred-and-ten miles below Louisville. It was a success and a hundred have followed since, most of which are producing moderately. Col. J. C. Adams, formerly of Tidioute, Pa., was the principal operator for twenty years. A suburban town, happily termed Oil City, is “flourishing like a green bay-horse.” The oil, dark and ill-flavored, smelling worse than “the thousand odors of Cologne,” is refined at Glasgow and Louisville. It can be deodorized and converted into respectable kerosene. Sixteen miles south of Glasgow, on Green River, four shallow wells were bored thirty years ago, one flowing at the rate of six-hundred barrels, so that Barren county is by no means barren of interest to the oil-fraternity.

At Bowling Green a well was sunk two-hundred feet, a few gallons of green-oil bowling to the surface. Torpedoing was unknown, or the fate of many Kentucky wells might have been reversed. John Jackson, of Mercer, Pa., in 1866 drilled a well in Edmonson county, twenty-five miles north-west of Glasgow. The tools dropped through a crevice of the Mammoth Cave, but neither eyeless fish nor slippery petroleum repaid the outlay of muscle and greenbacks. As if to add insult to injury, the well hatched a mammoth cave that buried the tools eight-hundred feet out of sight!

Loyal to his early training and hungry for appetizing slapjacks, Jackson once imported a sack of the flour from Louisville and asked the obliging landlady of his boarding-house to have buckwheat-cakes for breakfast. He was on hand in the morning, ready to do justice to the savory dish. The “cakes” were brought in smoking hot, baked into biscuit, heavy as lead and irredeemably unpalatable! The sack of flour went to fatten the denizens of a neighbor’s pig-pen. Jackson was a pioneer in the Bradford region, head of the firm of Jackson & Walker, clever and generous. The grass and the flowers have grown on his grave for ten years, “the insatiate archer” striking him down in the prime of vigorous manhood.

Sandy Valley, in the north-eastern section of the state, contributed its quota to the stock of Kentucky petroleum. From the first settlement of Boyd, Greenup, Carter, Johnson and Lawrence counties oil had been gathered for medical purposes by skimming it from the streams. About 1855 Cummings & Dixon collected a half-dozen barrels from Paint Creek and treated it at their coal-oil refinery in Cincinnati, with results similar to those attained by Kier in Pittsburg. They continued to collect oil from Paint Creek and Oil-Spring Fork until the war, at times saving a hundred barrels a month. In 1861 they drilled a well three-hundred feet on Mud Lick, a branch of Paint Creek, penetrating shale and sandstone and getting light shows of oil and gas. Surface-oil was found on the Big-Sandy River, from its source to its mouth, and in considerable quantities on Paint, Blaine, Abbott, Middle, John’s and Wolf Creeks. Large springs on Oil-Spring Fork, a feeder of Paint Creek, yielded a barrel a day. At the mouth of the Fork, in 1860, Lyon & Co. drilled a well two-hundred feet, tapping three veins of heavy oil and retiring from the scene when “the late unpleasantness” began to shake up the country. The same year a well was sunk one-hundred-and-seventy feet, on the headwaters of Licking River, near the Great Burning Spring. Gas and oil burst out for days, but the low price of crude and the impending conflict prevented further work. What an innumerable array of nice calculations this cruel war nipped in the bud!

J. Hinkley bored two-hundred feet in 1860, on Paint Creek, eight miles above Paintville, meeting a six-inch crevice of heavy-oil, for which there was no demand, and the capacity of the well was not tested. Salt-borers on a multitude of streams had much difficulty, fifty or sixty years ago, in getting rid of oil that persisted in coming to the surface. These old wells have been filled with dirt, although in some the oil works to the top and can be seen during the dry seasons. The Paint-Creek region had a severe attack of oil-fever in 1864-5. Hundreds of wells were drilled, boats were crowded, the hotels were thronged and the one subject of conversation was “oil—oil—oil!” Various causes, especially the extraordinary developments in Pennsylvania, compelled the plucky operators to abandon the district, notwithstanding encouraging symptoms of an important field. Indeed, so common was it to find petroleum in ten or fifteen counties of Kentucky that land-owners ran a serious risk in selling their farms before boring them full of holes, lest they should unawares part with prospective oil-territory at corn-fodder prices!

Tennessee did not draw a blank in the awards of petroleum-indications. Along Spring Creek many wells, located in 1864-5 because of “surface-shows,” responded nobly, at a depth comparatively shallow, to the magic touch of the drill. The product was lighter in color and gravity than the Kentucky brand. Twelve miles above Nashville, on the Cumberland River, wells have been pumped at a profit. Around Gallatin, Sumner county, decisive tests demonstrated the presence of petroleum in liberal measure. On Obey Creek, Fentress county, sufficient drilling has been done to justify the expectation of a rich district. Near Chattanooga, on the southern border of the state, oil seepages are “too numerous to mention.” The Lacy Well, eighteen miles south of the Beatty, drilled in 1893, is good for thirty barrels every day in the week. The oil is of superior quality, but the cost of marketing it is too great. A dozen wells are going down in Fentress, Overton, Scott and Putnam. Some fine day the tidal wave of development will sweep over the Cumberland-River region, with improved appliances and complete equipment, and give the country a rattling “show for its white alley!” Surely all these spouting-wells, oil-springs and greasy oozings mean something. To quote a practical oilman, who knows both states from a to z: “Twenty counties in Kentucky and Tennessee are sweating petroleum!”

Picking up a million acres of supposed oil-lands in the Blue-Grass and Volunteer States had its serio-comic features. The ignorant squatters in remote latitudes were suspicious of strangers, imagining them to be revenue-officers on the trail of “moonshiners,” as makers of untaxed whisky were generally called. More than one northern oilman narrowly escaped premature death on this conjecture. J. A. Satterfield, the successful Butler operator, went to Kentucky in the winter of 1877 to superintend the leasing of territory for his firm, between which and the Prentice combination a lively scramble had been inaugurated. Somebody thought he must be a Government agent and passed the word to the lawless mountaineers. The second night of his stay a shower of bullets riddled the window, two lodging in the bed in which Satterfield lay asleep! Daylight saw him galloping to the railroad at a pace eclipsing Sheridan’s ride to Winchester, eager to “get back to God’s country.” “Once was enough for him” to figure as the target of shooters who seldom failed to score “a hit, a palpable hit.” The grim archer didn’t miss him in 1894.

Arriving late one Saturday at Mt. Vernon, the county-seat of Rockcastle, the colored waiter on Sunday morning inquired: “Hes yo done gone an’ seen em?” Asking what he meant, he informed me that three men were dangling from a tree in the court-house yard, lynched by an infuriated mob during the night on suspicion of horse-stealing, “the unpardonable sin” in Kentucky. A party of citizens had started for the cabin of a notorious outlaw, observed skulking homeward under cover of darkness, intending to string him up. The desperado was alert. He fired one shot, which killed a man and stampeded the assailants. They returned to the village, broke into the jail, dragged out three cowering wretches and hanged them in short metre! The bodies swung in the air all day, a significant warning to whoever might think of “walkin’ off with a hoss critter.”

On that trip to Rockcastle county the train stopped at a wayside-station bearing the pretentious epithet of Chicago. A tall, gaunt, unshaven, uncombed man, with gnarled hands that appealed perpetually for soap and water, high cheekbones, imperfect teeth and homespun-clothes of the toughest description, stood on the platform in a pool of tobacco-juice. A rustic behind me stuck his head through the car-window and addressed the hard-looking citizen as “Jedge.” Honors are easy in Kentucky, where “colonels,” “majors” and “judges” are “thick as leaves in Vallambrosa,” but the title in this instance seemed too absurd to pass unheeded. When the train started, in reply to my question whether the man on the platform was a real judge, his friendly acquaintance took the pains to say: “Wal, I can’t swar es he’s zackly, but las’ year he wuz jedge ov a chicken-fight down ter Si Mason’s an’ we calls ’im jedge ever sence!”

Kentucky vendettas have often figured in thrilling narratives.narratives. Business took me to the upper end of Laurel county one week. Litigants, witnesses and hangers-on crowded the village, for a suit of unusual interest was pending before the “’squar.” The principals were farmers from the hilly region, whose fathers and grandfathers had been at loggerheads and transmitted the quarrel to their posterity. Blood had been shed and hatred reigned supreme. The important case was about to begin. Two shots rang out so closely together as to be almost simultaneous, followed by a regular fusilade. Everybody ran into the street, where four men lay dead, a fifth was gasping his last breath and two others had ugly wounds. The tragedy was soon explained. The two parties to the suit had met on their way to the justice’s house. Both were armed, both drew pistols and both dropped in their tracks, one a corpse and the second ready for the coroner in a few moments. Relatives and adherents continued the dreadful work and five lives paid the penalty of ungovernable passion. The dead were wrapped in horse-blankets and carted home. The case was not called. It had been “settled out of court.”

The spectators of this dreadful scene manifested no uncommon concern. “It’s what might be expected,” echoed the local oracle; “when them mountain fellers gets whiskey inside them they don’t care fur nuthin’!” Within an hour of the shooting a young man stopped me on the street-corner, where stood a wagon containing two bodies. “Kunnel,” he went on to say, “I’ve h’ard es yo’s th’ man es got our farm fur oil. Dad an’ Cousin Bill’s ’n that ar wagon, an’ I want yo ter giv’ me a job haulin’ wood agin yo starts work up our way.” He mounted the vehicle and drove off with his ghastly freight without a quiver of emotion.

At Crab Orchard, one beautiful Sunday, the clerk chatted with me on the hotel-porch. A stalwart individual approached and my companion ejaculated: “Thar’s a bigger man ’n Gen’ral Grant!” Next instant Col. Kennedy was added to my list of Kentucky acquaintances. He was very affable, wished oil-operations in the neighborhood success and, with characteristic Southern hospitality, invited me to visit him. After he left us the clerk, in answer to my desire to learn the basis of Kennedy’s greatness, naively said: “Why, he’s killed eight men!”

Politics and religion were staple wares, the susceptible negroes inclining strongly to the latter. Their spasms of piety were extremely inconvenient at times. News of a “bush meetin’” would be circulated and swarms of darkeys would flock to the appointed place, taking provisions for a protracted siege. No matter if it were the middle of harvest and rain threatening, they dropped everything and went to the meeting. “Doant ’magine dis niggah’s gwine ter lose his ’mo’tal soul fer no load uv cow-feed” was the conclusive rejoinder of a colored hand to his employer, who besought him to stay and finish the haying.

“In de Lawd’s gahden ebery cullud gentleman has got ter line his hoe.”

Rev. George O. Barnes, the gifted evangelist, who resigned a five-thousand-dollar Presbyterian pastorate in Chicago to assist Moody, was reared in Kentucky and lived near Stanford. He would traverse the country to hold revivals, staying three to six weeks in a place. His personal magnetism, rare eloquence, apostolic zeal, fine education, intense fervor and catholic spirit made him a wonderful power. Converts he numbered by thousands. He preferred Calvary to Sinai, the gentle pleadings of infinite mercy to the harsh threats of endless torment. His daughter Marie, with the voice of a Nilsson and the face of a Madonna, accompanied her father in his wanderings, singing gospel-hymns in a manner that distanced Sankey and Philip Phillips. Her rendering of “Too Late,” “Almost Persuaded,” and “Only a Step to Jesus,” electrified and thrilled the auditors as no stage-song could have done. Raymon Moore’s hackneyed verses had not been written, yet the boys called Miss Barnes “Sweet Marie” and thronged to the penitent-bench. The evangelist and his daughter tried to convert New York, but the Tammany stronghold refused to budge an inch. They invaded England and enrolled hosts of recruits for Zion. The Prince of Wales is said to have attended one of their meetings in the suburbs of London. Mr. Barnes finally proposed to cure diseases by “anointing with oil and laying on of hands.” His pink cottage became a refuge for cranks and cripples and patients, until a mortgage on the premises was foreclosed and the queer aggregation scattered to the winds.

Albany, the county-seat of Clinton, experienced a Barnes revival of the tip-top order. Business with Major Brentz, the company’s attorney, landed me in the cosy town on a bright March forenoon. Not a person was visible. Stores were shut and comer-loungers absent. What could have happened? Halting my team in front of the hotel, nobody appeared. Ringing the quaint, old-fashioned bell attached to a post near the pump, a lame, bent colored man shuffled out of the barn.

“Pow’ful glad ter see yer, Massa,” he mumbled, “a’l put up de hosses.”

“Where is the landlord?”

“Done gone ter meetin’.”

“Will dinner soon be ready?”

“Soon the folkses gits back frum meetin’.”

“All right, take good care of the horses and I’ll go over to the court-house.”court-house.”

“No good gwine dar, dey’s at the meetin’.”

It was true. Mr. Barnes was holding three services a day and the villagevillage emptied itself to get within sound of his voice. For five weeks this kept up. Lawyers quit their desks, merchants locked their stores, woman deserted their houses and young and old thought only of the meetings. Hardly a sinner was left to work upon, even the village-editor and the disciples of Blackstone joining the hallelujah band! No wonder Satan’s imps wailed sadly:sadly:

An African congregation at Stanford had a preacher black as the ace of spades and wholly illiterate, whom many whites liked to hear. “Brudders an’ sistahs, niggahs and white folks,” he closed an exhortation by saying, “dar’s no use ’temptin’ to sneak outen de wah ’tween de good Lawd an’ de black debbil, ’cos dar’s on’y two armies in dis worl’ an’ bofe am a-fitin’ eberlastingly! So ’list en de army ob light, ef yer want ter gib ole Satan er black eye an’ not roast fureber an’ eber in de burnin’ lake whar watah-millions on ice am nebber se’ved for dinnah!” Could the most astute theological hair-splitter have presented the issue more concisely and forcibly to the hearers of the sable Demosthenes?

The first and only circus that exhibited at Burksville produced an immense sensation. It was “Bartholomew’s Equescurriculum,” with gymnastics and ring exercises to round out the bill. Barns, shops and trees for miles bore gorgeous posters. Nast’s cartoons, which the most ignorant voters could understand, did more to overthrow Boss Tweed than the masterly editorials of the New-York Times. The flaming pictures aroused the Cumberlanders, hundreds of whom could not read, to the highest pitch of expectation. Monday was the day set for the show. On Saturday evening country-patrons began to camp in the woods outside the village. A couple from Overton county, Tennessee, and their four children rode twenty-eight miles on two mules, bringing food for three days and lodging under the trees! A Burksville character of the stripe Miss Ophelia styled “shiftless” sold his cooking-stove for four dollars to get funds to attend! “Alf,” the ebony-hued choreman at Alexander College, who built my fires and blacked my shoes, was worked up to fever-heat. “Befo’ de Lawd,” he sobbed, “dis chile’s er gone coon, ’less yer len’ er helpin’ han’! Mah wife’s axed her mudder an’ sister ter th’ ci’cus an’ dar’s no munny ter take ’em an’ mah sister!” Giving him the currency for admission dried the mourner’s tears and “pushed them clouds away.”

At noon on Sunday the circus arrived by boat from Nashville. Service was in progress in one church, when an unearthly sound startled the worshippers. The wail of a lost soul could not be more alarming. Simon Legree, scared out of his boots by the mocking shriek of the wind blowing through the bottle-neck Cassy fixed in the garret knot-hole, had numerous imitators. Again and again the ozone was rent and cracked and shivered. The congregation broke for the door, the minister jerking out a sawed-off benediction and retreating with the rest. A half-mile down the river a boat was rounding the bend. A steam-calliope, distracting, discordant and unlovely, belched forth a torrent of paralyzing notes. The whole population was on the bank by the time the boat stopped. The crowd watched the landing of the animals and belongings of the circus with unflinching eagerness. Few of the surging mass had seen a theatre, a circus, or a show of any sort except the Sunday-school Christmas performance. They were bound to take in every detail and that Sunday was badly splintered in the peaceful, orderly settlement.

With the earliest streak of dawn the excitement was renewed. Groups of adults and children, of all ages and sizes and complexions, were on hand to see the tents put up. By eleven o’clock the town was packed. A merry-go-round, the first Burksville ever saw, raked in a bushel of nickels. The college domestics skipped, leaving the breakfast-dishes on the table and the dinner to shift for itself. A party of friends went with me to enjoy the fun. Beside a gap in the fence, to let wagons into the field, sat “Alf,” the image of despair. Four weeping females—his wife, sister, mother-in-law and sister-in-law—crouched at his feet. As our party drew near he beckoned to us and unfolded his tale of woe. “Dem fool-wimmin,” he exclaimed bitterly, “hes done spended de free dollars yer guv me on de flyin’-hosses! Dey woodn’t stay off nohow an’ now dey caint see de ci’cus! Oh, Lawd! Oh, Lawd!” The purchase of tickets poured oil on the troubled waters. The Niobes wiped their eyes on their jean-aprons and “Richard was himself again.” How the antics of the clowns and the tricks of the ponies pleased the motley assemblage! Buck Fanshaw’s funeral did not arouse half the enthusiasm in Virginia City the first circus did in Burksville.

It was necessary for me to visit Williamsburg, the county-seat of Whitley, to record a stack of leases. Somerset was then the nearest railway-point and the trip of fifty miles on horseback required a guide. The arrival of a Northerner raised a regular commotion in the well-nigh inaccessible settlement of four-hundred population. The landlord of the public-house slaughtered his fattest chickens and set up a bed in the front parlor to be sure of my comfort. The jailer’s fair daughter, who was to be wedded that evening, kindly sent me an invitation to attend the nuptials. By nine o’clock at night nearly every business-man and official in the place had called to bid me welcome. Before noon next day seventeen farmers, whose lands had been leased, rode into town to greet me and learn when drilling would likely begin. Each insisted upon my staying with him a week, “or es much longer es yo kin,” and fourteen of them brought gallon-jugs of apple-jack, their own straight goods, for my acceptance! Such a reception a king might envy, because it was entirely unselfish, hearty and spontaneous. Williamsburg has got out of swaddling-clothes, the railway putting it in touch with the balance of creation.

Thirteen miles of land, in an unbroken line, on a meandering stream, had been tied-up, with the exception of a single farm. The owner was obdurate and refused to lease on any terms. Often lands not regarded favorably as oil territory were taken to secure the right-of-way for pipe-lines, as the leases conveyed this privilege. Driving past the stubborn farmer’s homestead one afternoon, he was chopping wood in the yard and strode to the gate to talk. His bright-eyed daughter of four summers endeavored to clamber into the buggy. Handing the cute fairy in coarse jeans a new silver-dollar, fresh from the Philadelphia mint, the father caught sight of the shining coin.

“Hev yo mo’ ov ’em ’ar dollars about yo?” he asked.

“Plenty more.”

“Make out leases fur my three farms an’ me an’ the old woman’ll sign ’em! I want three ov ’em kines, for they be th’ slickest Demmycratic money my eyes hes sot onto sence I fit with John Morgan!”

The documents were filled up, signed, sealed and delivered in fifteen minutes. The chain of leased lands along Fanny Creek was intact, with the “missing link” missing at last.

The simplicity of these dwellers in the wilderness was equaled only by their apathy to the world beyond and around them. Parents loved their children and husbands loved their wives in a quiet, unobtrusive fashion. “She wuz a hard-workin’ woman,” moaned a middle-aged widower in Fentress county, telling me of his deceased spouse, “an’ she allers wore a frock five year, an’ she bed ’leven chil’ren, an’ she died right in corn-shuckin’!” He was not stony-hearted, but twenty-five years of married companionship meant to him just so many days’ work, so many cheap frocks, child-bearing, corn-cake and bacon always ready on time. Among these people woman was a drudge, who knew nothing of the higher relations of life. Children were huddled into the hills to track game, to follow the plough or to drop corn over many a weary acre. Reading and writing were unknown accomplishments. Jackson, “the great tradition of the uninformed American mind,” and Lincoln, whose name the tumult of a mighty struggle had rendered familiar, were the only Presidents they had ever heard of. “Where ignorance is bliss ’tis folly to be wise” may be a sound poetical sentiment, but it was decidedly overdone in South-eastern Kentucky and North-eastern Tennessee so recently as the year of the Philadelphia Centennial.

Opposite the Hovey and Carter wells in Clinton county lives a portly farmer who “is a good man and weighs two-hundred-and-fifty pounds.” He is known far and wide as “Uncle John” and his wife, a pleasant-faced little matron, is affectionately called “Aunt Rachel.” A log-church a mile from “Uncle John’s” is situated on a pretty hill. There the young folks are married, the children are baptized and the dead are buried. The “June meetin’,” when services are held for a week, is the grand incident of the year to the people for a score of miles. In December of 1893 Dr. Phillips, of Monticello, drove me to the wells. We stopped at “Uncle John’s.” As we neared the house a dog barked and the hospitable farmer came out to meet us. Behind him walked a man who greeted the Doctor cordially. He glanced at me, recognition was mutual and we clasped hands warmly. He was Alfred Murray, formerly connected with the Pennsylvania-Consolidated Land-and-Petroleum-Company in Butler and at Bradford. Fourteen years had glided away since we met and there were many questions to ask and answer. He had been in the neighborhood a twelvemonth, keeping tab on oil movements and indications, hoping, longing and praying for the speedy advent of the petroleum-millenium. We pumped the Hovey Well one hour, rambled over the hills and talked until midnight about persons and things in Pennsylvania. Meeting in so dreary a place, under such circumstances, was as thorough a surprise as Stanley’s discovery of Livingstone in Darkest Africa. During our conversation regarding the roughest portion of the county, bleak, sterile and altogether repellant, selected by a hermit as his lonely retreat, my friend remarked: “I have heard that the poor devil was troubled with remorse and, as a sort of penance, vowed to live as near Sheol as possible until he died!”

The stage that bore me from Monticello to Point Burnside on my homeward journey stopped half-way to take up a countryman and an aged woman. Room was found inside for the latter, a stout, motherly old creature, into whose beaming face it did jaded mortals good to look. She said “howdy” to the three passengers, a local trader, a farmer’s young wife and myself, sat down solidly and fixed her gaze upon me intently. It was evident the dear soul was fairly bursting with impatience to find out about the stranger. Not a word was spoken until she could restrain her inquisitive impulse no longer.

“Yo don’t liv’ eroun’ these air parts?” she interrogated.

“No, madam, my home is in Pennsylvania.”

“Land sakes! Be yo one ov ’em air ile-fellers?”

“Yes.”

“Wal, I be orful glad ter see yo!” and she stretched out her hand and shook mine vigorously. “Hope yo’re right peart, but yo’ be a long way from home! Did yo see ’em wells over thar by Aunt Rachel’s?”

“Oh, yes, I saw the wells and stayed at Aunt Rachel’s all night.”

“I BE ORFUL GLAD TER SEE YO!”