The advantages of Franklin heavy-oil as a lubricant were quickly recognized. It possessed a “body” that artificial oils could not rival. In the crude state it withstood a cold-test twenty degrees below zero. Here is where it “had the bulge” on alleged lubricants which solidify into a sort of liver with every twitch of frost. The producing-area of heavy-oil is restricted to a limited section, where the first sand is thirty to sixty feet thick and the lower sands were entirely omitted in the original distribution of strata. For years operators hugged the banks of the streams and the low grounds, keeping off the hills more willingly than General Coxey kept off the Washington grass. The famous “Point Hill,” across French Creek from the Evans well, went begging for a purchaser. At its southern base Mason & Lane, Cook & Co., Welsby & Smith, Shuster, Andrews, Green and others had profitable wells, but nobody dreamed of boring through the steep “Point” for oil. J. Lowry Dewoody offered the lordly hill, with its forty acres of dense evergreen-brush, to Charles Miller for fifteen-hundred dollars. He wanted the money to drill on the flats and the hill was an elephant on his hands.

During the Columbian Exposition an aged man alighted from a western train at the union-depot in Chicago. His rifle and his buckskin-suit indicated the Kit-Carson brand of hunter. He gazed about him in amazement and a crowd assembled. “Wal,” ejaculated the white-haired Nimrod, “this be Chicago, eh? Sixty years ago I killed lots ov game right whar we stan’ an’ old man Kinzey fell all over hisse’f to trade me a hunnerd acre ov land fur a pair ov cowhide boots! I might hev took him up, but, consarn it, I didn’t hev the boots!”

Something of this kind would apply to Mr. Miller and the Dewoody proposition. He had embarked in the business that was to bring him wealth and honor, but just at that time “didn’t hev” the fifteen-hundred to spare from his working-capital for the fun of owning a hill presumed to be worthless except for scenery. Colonel Bleakley and Dr. A. G. Egbert bought it later at a low figure. Operators scaled the slopes and hills and the first well on the “Point” was of the kind to whet the appetite for more. Bleakley & Egbert pocketed a keg of cold-cash from their wells and the royalty paid by lessees. Daniel Grimm’s production put him in the van of Franklin oilmen. He came to the town in 1861, had a dry-goods store in partnership with the late William A. Horton and in 1869 drilled his first well. W. J. Mattem and Edward Rial & Son had a rich slice. The foundation of a dozen fortunes was laid on the “Point,” which yields a few barrels daily, although only a shadow of its former self. From the western end of the hill thousands of tons of a peculiar shale have been manufactured into paving-brick, the hardest and toughest in America. A million dollars would not pay for the oil taken from the hill that found no takers at fifteen-hundred!

Dewoody, over whose grave the storms of a dozen winters have blown, was a singular character. He cared not a continental for style and was independent in speech and behavior. Bagging a term in the Legislature as a Democratic-Greenbacker, his rugged honesty was proof against the allurements of the lobbyists, jobbers and heelers who disgrace common decency. His most remarkable act was a violent assault on the Tramp-Bill, a measure cruel as the laws of Draco, which Rhoads of Carlisle contrived to pass. He paced the central aisle, spoke in the loudest key and gesticulated fiercely. Tossing his long auburn hair like a lion’s mane, he wound up his torrent of denunciation with terrible emphasis: “If Jesus Christ were on earth this monstrous bill would jerk him as a vagrant and dump him into the lock-up!”

Gradually developments crept north and east. The Galloway—its Dolly Varden well was a daisy—Lamberton and McCalmont farms were riddled with holes that repaid the outlay lavishly. Henry F. James drilled scores of paying wells on these tracts. In his youth he circled the globe on whaling voyages and learned coopering. Spending a few months at Pithole in 1865, he returned to Venango county in 1871, superintended the Franklin Pipe-Line five years and operated judiciously. He was active in agriculture and served three terms in the Legislature with distinguished fidelity. He defeated measures inimical to the oil-industry and promoted the passage of the Marshall Bill, by which pipe-lines were permitted to buy, sell or consolidate. This sensible law relieves pipe-lines in the older districts, where the production is very light, from the necessity of maintaining separate equipments at a loss or ruining hundreds of well-owners by tearing up the pipes for junk and depriving operators of transportation. The late Casper Frank, William Painter—he was killed at his wells—Dr. Fee, the Harpers, E. D. Yates and others extended the field into Sugarcreek township. Elliott, Nesbett & Bell’s first well on the Snyder farm, starting at thirty barrels and settling down to regular work at fifteen, elongated the Galloway pool and brought adjoining lands into play. Kunkel & Newhouse, Stock & Co., Mitchell & Parker, Crawford & Dickey, Dr. Galbraith and M. O’Connor kept many sets of tools from rusting. The extension to the Carter and frontier-farms developed oil of lighter gravity, but a prime lubricator. Mrs. Harold, a Chicago lady, dreamed a certain plot, which she beheld distinctly, would yield heavy-oil in abundance. She visited Franklin, traversed the district a mile in advance of developed territory, saw the land of her dream, bargained for it, drilled wells and obtained “lashin’s of oil!” Still there are bipeds in bifurcated garments who declare woman’s “sphere” is the kitchen, with dish-washing, sock-darning and meal-getting as her highest “rights!”

Jacob Sheasley, who came from Dauphin county in 1860 and branched into oil in 1864, is the largest operator in the bailiwick. He drilled at Pithole, Parker, Bradford, on all sides of Franklin and put down a hundred wells the last two years. He enlarged the boundaries of the lubricating section by leasing lands previously condemned and sinking test-wells in 1893-4, with gratifying results. Rarely missing his guess on territory, he has been almost invariably fortunate. His son, George R., has operated in Venango and Butler counties and owns a bunch of desirable wells on Bully Hill, with his brother Charles as partner. The father and two sons are “three of a kind” hard to beat.

A mile north of Franklin, in February of 1870, the Surprise well on Patchel Run, a streamlet bearing the name of the earliest hat-maker, surprised everybody by its output. It foamed and gassed and frothed excessively, filling the pipe with oil and water. Throngs tramped the turnpike over the toilsome hill to look at the boiling, fuming tank into which the well belched its contents. “Good for four-hundred barrels” was the verdict. A party of us hurried from Oil Creek to judge for ourselves. Although the estimate was six times too great, a lease of adjacent lands would not be bad to take. Rev. Mr. Johns, retired pastor of the Presbyterian church at Spartansburg, Crawford county, had charge of the property. My acquaintance with Mr. Johns devolved upon me the duty of negotiating for the tract. He received me graciously and would be pleased to lease twenty acres for one-half the oil and one-thousand dollars an acre bonus! Br’er John’s exalted notions soared far too high to be entertained seriously. The Surprise fizzled down to four or five barrels in a week and the good minister—for twenty years he has been enjoying his treasure in heaven—never fingered a penny from his land save the royalty of two or three small wells.

Major W. T. Baum has operated in the heavy-oil field thirty-two years, beginning in 1864. He passed through the Pithole excitement and drilled largely at Foster, Pleasantville, Scrubgrass, Bullion, Gas City, Clarion, Butler and Tarkiln. His faith in Scrubgrass territory has been recompensed richly. In 1894 he sank a well on the west bank of the Allegheny, opposite Kennerdell Station, in hope of a ten-barrel strike. It pumped one-hundred-and-fifty barrels a day for months and it is doing fifty barrels to-day, with three more of similar caliber to keep it company! The Major’s persevering enterprise deserves the reward Dame Fortune is bestowing. He owns the wells and lands on Patchel Run, which yield a pleasant revenue. Colonel J. H. Cain, Colonel L. H. Fassett and J. W. Grant, all successful operators, have their wells in the vicinity. Modern devices connect wells far apart, by coupling them with rods two to ten feet above ground, so that a single engine can pump thirty or forty in shallow territory. The downward stroke of one helps the upward stroke of the other, each pair nearly balancing. This enables the owners of small wells to pump them at the least expense. Heavy-oil has sold for years at three-sixty to four dollars a barrel, consequently a quarter-barrel apiece from forty wells, handled by one man and engine, would exceed the income from a quarter-million dollars salted down in government bonds. It is worth traveling a long distance to stand on the hill and watch the pumping of Baum’s, Grimm’s, Cain’s, Grant’s, Sheasley’s and James’s wells, some of them a mile from the power that sets the strings of connecting-rods in motion.

On Two-Mile Run, up the Allegheny two miles, W. S. McMullan drilled several wells in 1871-2. The product was the blackest of black oils, indicating a deposit separated from the main reservoir of the lubricating region. Subsequent operations demonstrated that a dry streak intervened. Captain L. L. Ray put down fair wells near the river in 1894. Mr. McMullan resided at Rouseville and had valuable interests on Oil Creek. He served a term in the State Senate, reflecting honor upon himself and his constituents. A man of integrity and capacity, he could be trusted implicitly. Fifteen years ago he removed to Missouri to engage in lumbering. Senator McMullan, Captain WilliamWilliam Hasson, member of Assembly, and Judge Trunkey, who presided over the court and later graced the Supreme Bench, were three Venango-county men in public life whom railroad-passes never swerved from the path of duty. They refused all such favors and paid their way like gentlemen. If lawgivers and judges of their noble impress were the rule rather than the exception—“a consummation devoutly to be wished”—grasping corporations would not own legislatures and “drive a coach and four” through any enactment with impunity.

George P. Smith’s tract of land between Franklin and Two-Mile Run netted him a competence in oil and then sold for one-hundred-thousand dollars. Mr. Smith dispenses liberally to charitable objects, assists his friends and uses his wealth properly. He owns his money, instead of letting it own him. He has traveled much, observed closely and profited by what he has seen and read. He is verging on fourscore, his home is in Philadelphia and “the world will be the better for his having lived in it.”

The production of heavy-oil in 1875 aggregated one-hundred-and-thirty-thousand barrels. In 1877 it dropped to eighty-eight-thousand barrels and in 1878 to seventy thousand. Thirteen-hundred wells produced sixty-thousand barrels in 1883. Taft & Payn’s pipe-line was laid in 1870 from the Egbert and Dewoody tracts to the river, extended to Galloway in 1872 and combined with the Franklin line in 1878. The Producers’ Pipe-Line Company began to transport oil in 1883. J. A. Harris, who died in 1894, had the first refinery in the oil-regions in 1860. His plant was extremely primitive. Colonel J. P. Hoover built the first refinery of note, which burned in the autumn of 1861. Sims & Whitney had one in 1861 and the Norfolk Oil-Works were established the same year, below the Allegheny bridge. Samuel Spencer, of Scranton, expended thirty-thousand dollars on the Keystone Oil-Works, near the cemetery, in 1864. Nine refineries, most of them running the lighter oils, were operated in 1854-5, after which the business collapsed for years. Dr. Tweddle, a Pittsburg refiner who had suffered by fire, organized a company in 1872 to start the Eclipse Works. At different periods many of the local operators have been interested in refining, now the leading Franklin industry.

For some time heavy-oil was used principally in its natural state. At length improvements of great value were devised, out of which have grown the oil-works devoted solely to the manufacture of lubricants. Among these the most important and successful was that adopted in 1869 by Charles Miller, of Franklin, protected by letters-patent of the United States and since by patents covering the complete method. Besides improvements in the method of manufacturing, he recognized the value of lead-oxide as an ingredient in lubricating oils and a patent was secured for the combination of whale-oil, oxide of lead and petroleum. The Great-Northern Oil-Company, once a big organization, had built a refinery in 1865 on the north bank of French Creek, below the Evans Well, and leased it in 1868 to Colonel Street. In May of 1869 Mr. Miller and John Coon purchased the Point Lookout Oil-Works, as the refinery was called, Street retiring. The total tankage was one-thousand barrels and the daily manufacturing capacity scarcely one-hundred. The new firm, of which R. L. Cochran became a member in July, pushed the business with characteristic energy, doubling the plant and extending the trade in all directions. Mr. Cochran withdrew in January of 1870, R. H. Austin buying his interest. The following August fire destroyed the works, entailing severe loss. A calamity that would have disheartened most men seemed only to imbue the partners with fresh vigor. Colonel Henry B. Plumer, a wealthy citizen of Franklin, entered the firm and the Dale light-oil refinery, a half-mile up the creek, was bought and remodeled throughout. Reorganized on a solid basis as the “Galena Oil-Works,” a name destined to gain world-wide reputation, within one month from the fire the new establishment, its buildings and entire equipment changed and adapted to the treatment of heavy-oil, was running to its full capacity night and day! Such enterprise and pluck augured happily for the future and they have been rewarded abundantly.

Orders poured in more rapidly than ever. The local demand spread to the adjoining districts. Customers once secured were sure to stay. In addition to the excellence of the product, there was a vim about the business and its management that inspired confidence and won patronage. Messrs. Coon, Austin and Plumer disposed of their interest, at a handsome figure, to the Standard Oil Company in 1878. The Galena Oil-Works, Limited, was chartered and continued the business, with Mr. Miller as president. Increasing demands necessitated frequent enlargements of the works, which now occupy five acres of ground. Every appliance that ingenuity and experience can suggest has been provided, securing uniform grades of oil with unfailing precision.

The machinery and appurtenances are the best money and skill can supply. The same sterling traits that distinguished the smaller firm have all along marked the progress of the newer and larger enterprise. The standard of its products is always strictly first-class, hence patrons are never disappointed in the quality of any of the celebrated Galena brands of “Engine,” “Coach,” “Car,” “Machinery,” or “Lubricating” oils. Steadfast adherence to this cardinal principle has borne its legitimate fruit. Railway-oils are manufactured exclusively. The daily capacity is three-thousand barrels. “Galena Oils” are used on over ninety per cent. of the railway-mileage of the United States, Canada and Mexico. Such patronage has never before been gained by any one establishment and it is the result of positive merit. The Franklin district furnishes more and better lubricating oil than all the rest of the continent and the Galena treatment brings it to the highest measure of perfection. Reflect for a moment upon the enormous expansion of the Galena Works and see what earnest, faithful, intelligent effort and straightforward dealing may accomplish.

The first three railroads that tried the “Galena Oils” in 1869 have used none other since. Could stronger proof of their excellence be desired? It was a pleasing novelty for railway-managers to find a lubricant that would neither freeze in winter nor dissipate in summer and they made haste to profit by the experience. The severest tests served but to place it far beyond all competition. At twenty degrees below zero it would not congeal, while the fiercest heat of the tropical sun affected it hardly a particle. As the natural consequence it speedily superseded all others on the principal railroads of the country. The axles of the magnificent Pullman and Wagner coaches on the leading lines have their friction reduced to the minimum by “Galena Oil.” It adds immeasurably to the smoothness and speed of railway-travel between the Atlantic and the Pacific, from Maine to the Isthmus, from British Columbia to Florida. Passengers detained by a “hot box” and annoyed by the fumes of rancid grease frying in the trucks beneath their feet may be certain that the offending railways do not use “Galena Oil.” The “Galena” is not constructed on that plan, but stands alone and unapproachable as the finest lubricator of the nineteenth century.

This is a record-breaking age. The world’s record for fast time on a railroad was again captured from the English on September eleventh, 1895. The New-York-Central train, which left New York that morning, accomplished the trip to Buffalo at the greatest speed for a continuous journey of any train over any railroad in the world. The distance—four-hundred-and-thirty-six miles—was covered in four-hundred-and-seven minutes, a rate of sixty-four-and-one-third miles per hour. Until that feat the English record of sixty-three-and-one-fifth miles an hour for five-hundred miles was the fastest. In other words, the American train of four heavy cars, hauled to Albany by engine No. 999, the famous World’s Fair locomotive, smashed the English record more than a mile an hour, in the teeth of a stiff head-wind. Father Time, who has insisted for many years that travelers spend at least twenty-four hours on the journey between Chicago and New York, received a fatal shock on October twenty-fourth, 1895. Two men who left Chicago at three-thirty in the morning visited five theatres in New York that night! A special New-York-Central train, with Vice-President Webb and a small party of Lake-Shore officials, ran the nine-hundred-and-eighty miles in seventeen-and-three-quarter hours, averaging sixty-five miles an hour to Buffalo, beating all previous long-distance runs. For the first time copies of Chicago newspapers, brought by gentlemen on the train, were seen in New York on the day of their publication. Every axle, every journal, every box, every wheel of both these trains, from the front of the locomotive to the rear of the hind-coach, was lubricated with “Galena Oil.”

Later a train in Scotland, keeping step with the oatmeal-and-haggis fad that has deluged the land with Highland-dialect tales, snatched the garland by adding a mile or more to the Central’s achievement. The Scottish triumph was very brief. “Ian McLaren,” Barree and Crockett might shine in literature, but no foreign line could be permitted to fix the record for railroad-speed. Engineer Charles H. Fahl, of the Reading system, believed American railways to be the best on earth and backed up his opinion by solid proof. During the past summer he ran the famous flyer between Camden and Atlantic City the entire season on time every trip. The train, scheduled to travel the fifty-six miles in fifty-two minutes, always started at least two minutes late, owing to the ferryboats not connecting promptly. Yet Engineer Fahl made up this loss and reached Atlantic City a trifle ahead of time, without missing once. The trips averaged forty-eight minutes, or a fraction above sixty-nine miles an hour! This was not one experimental test, but a regular run day after day the whole season, generally with six passenger-coaches crowded from end to end. Week in and week out the flyer sped across the sandy plains of New Jersey, with never a skip or a break, at the pace which placed the record of Train 25, of the Atlantic-City branch of the Reading Railroad, upon the top rung of the ladder. This performance, unequaled in railway-history at home or abroad, brought Engineer Fahl a commendatory letter from Vice-President Theodore Voorhees. It was rendered possible only by the exclusive use, on locomotive and coaches alike, of the Galena Oils, which prevented the hot-journals and excessive friction that are fatal to speed-records.

The works are situated in the very heart of the heavy-oil district. Two railroads, with a third in prospect, and a paved street front the spacious premises. The main building is of brick, covering about an acre and devoted chiefly to the handling of oil for manufacture or in course of preparation, the repairing and painting of barrels and the accommodation of the engines and machinery. To the rear stands a substantial brick-structure, containing the steam-boilers, the electric-light outfit and the huge agitators in which the oil is treated. Big pumps next force the fluid into large vessels, where it is submitted to a variety of special processes, which finally leave it ready for the consumer. A dozen iron-tanks, each holding many thousand barrels, receive and store crude to supply the works for months. As this is piped directly from the wells the largest orders are filled with the utmost dispatch. Nothing is lacking that can ensure superiority. The highest wages are paid and every employee is an American citizen or proposes to become one. The men are regarded as rational, responsible beings, with souls to save and bodies to nourish, and treated in accordance with the Golden Rule. They are well-fed, well-housed, prosperous and contented. A strike, or a demand for higher wages or shorter hours, is unknown in the history of this model institution. Is it surprising that each year adds to its vast trade and wonderful popularity? The unrivalled “Galena Oil-Works,” of Franklin, Venango county, Pennsylvania, must be ranked among the most noteworthy representative industries of Uncle Sam’s splendid domain.

The Signal Oil-Works, Franklin, manufacture Sibley’s Perfection Valve-Oil for locomotive-cylinders and Perfection Signal-Oil. More than twenty-five years ago Joseph C. Sibley commenced experimenting with petroleum-oils for use in steam-cylinders under high pressure. He found that where the boiler-pressure was not in excess of sixty pounds the proper lubrication of a steam-cylinder with petroleum was a matter of little or no difficulty. With increase in pressure came increase in temperature. As a result the oil vaporized and passed through the exhaust. The destruction of steam-chests and cylinders through fatty acids incident to tallow, or tallow and lard-oils, cost millions of dollars annually; but it was held as a cardinal point in mechanical engineering that these were the only proper steam-lubricants. Mr. Sibley carried on his experiments for years. He conversed with leading superintendents-of-machinery in the United States and with leading chemists. Almost invariably he was laughed at when asserting his determination to produce a product of petroleum, free from fatty acids, capable of better lubrication even than the tallow then in use. Many of his friends in the oil-business, who thought they understood the nature of petroleum, expressed the deepest sympathy with Mr. Sibley’s hallucination. Amid partial successes, interspersed with many failures, he continued the experiments. So incredulous were chemists and superintendents-of-machinery, so fearful of disasters to their machinery through the use of such a compound, that he had in many instances to guarantee to assume any damages which might occur to a locomotive through its use. He rode thousands of miles upon locomotives, watching the use of the oil, daily doubling the distance made by engineers. Success at last crowned his efforts and the Perfection Valve-Oil has been for nearly twenty years the standard lubricant of valves and cylinders. To-day there is scarcely a locomotive in the United States that does not use some preparation of petroleum and the steam-chests and cylinders of more than three-fourths of all in the United States are lubricated with Perfection Valve-Oil.

The results have been astounding. Destruction of steam-joints by fatty acids from valve-lubricants is now an unknown thing. Not only this, but as a lubricant the Perfection Valve-Oil has proved itself so much superior that, where valve-seats required facing on an average once in sixty days, they do not now require facing on an average once in two years. The steam-pressure carried upon the boilers at that time rarely exceeded one-hundred-and-twenty pounds. With the increase of pressure and the corresponding increase of temperature it was found next to impossible to properly lubricate the valves and cylinders to prevent cutting. The superintendent-of-machinery of a leading American railway sent for Mr. Sibley at one time, told him that he proposed to build passenger-locomotives carrying one-hundred-and-eighty pounds pressure and asked if he would undertake to lubricate the valves and cylinders under that pressure. The reply was: “Go ahead. We will guarantee perfect lubrication to a pressure very much higher than that.” And to-day the higherhigher type of passenger-locomotives carry one-hundred-and-eighty pounds pressure regularly.

When it was clearly demonstrated that the Perfection Valve-Oil was a success, oil-men who had pronounced it impossible and had been backed in their opinion by noted chemists commenced to make oils similar to it in appearance. While many of them may have much confidence in their own product, the highest testimonial ever paid to Perfection Valve-Oil is that no competitor claims he has its superior. Some urge their product with the assurance that it is the equal of Perfection Valve-Oil, thus unconsciously paying the highest tribute possible to the latter.

The works also make Perfection Signal-Oil for use in railway-lamps and lanterns. Since 1869 this oil has been before the public. It is in daily use in more than three-fourths of the railway-lanterns of the United States and it is the proud boast of Mr. Sibley that, during that time, there has never occurred an accident which has cost either a human limb or life or the destruction of one penny’s worth of property, through the failure of this oil to perform its work perfectly. Making but the two products, Valve and Signal-Oils, catering to no other than railroad-trade, studying carefully the demands of the service, keeping in touch with the latest developments of locomotive-engineering and thoroughly acquainted with the properties of all petroleum in Pennsylvania, the company may well believe that, granted the possession of equal natural abilities with competitors, under the circumstances it is entitled to lead all others in the production of these two grades of oils for railroad-use.

Hon. Charles Miller, president of the Galena Oil-Works, and Hon. Joseph C. Sibley, president of the Signal Oil-Works, are brothers-in-law and proprietors of the great stock-farms of Miller & Sibley. Mr. Miller is of Huguenot ancestry, born in Alsace, France, in 1843. The family came to this country in 1854, settling on a farm near Boston, Erie county, New York. At thirteen Charles clerked one year in the village-store for thirty-five dollars and board. He clerked in Buffalo at seventeen for one-hundred-and-seventy-five dollars, without board. In 1861 he enlisted in the New-York National Guard. In 1863 he was mustered into the United States service and married at Springville, N. Y., to Miss Ann Adelaide Sibley, eldest child of Dr. Joseph C. Sibley. In 1864 he commenced business for himself, in the store in which he had first clerked, with his own savings of two-hundred dollars and a loan of two-thousand from Dr. Sibley. In 1866 he sold the store and removed to Franklin. Forming a partnership with John Coon of Buffalo, the firm carried on a large dry-goods house until 1869, when a patent for lubricating oil and a refinery were purchased and the store was closed out at heavy loss. The refinery burned down the next year, new partners were taken in and in 1878 the business was organized in its present form as “The Galena Oil-Works, Limited.” The entire management was given Mr. Miller, who had built up an immense trade and retained his interest in the works. He deals directly with consumers. Since 1870 his business-trips have averaged five days a week and fifty-thousand miles a year of travel. No man has a wider acquaintance and more personal friends among railroad-officials. His journeys cover the United States and Mexico. Wherever he may be, in New Orleans or San Francisco, on the train or in the hotel, conferring with a Vanderbilt or the humblest manager of an obscure road, receiving huge orders or aiding a deserving cause, he is always the same genial, magnetic, generous exemplar of practical belief in “the universal fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.”

Major Miller is one whom money does not spoil. He is the master, not the servant, of his wealth. He uses it to extend business, to foster enterprise, to further philanthropy, to alleviate distress and to promote the comfort and happiness of all about him. His benefactions keep pace with his increasing prosperity. He is ever foremost in good deeds. He gives thousands of dollars yearly to worthy objects, to the needy, to churches, to schools, to missions and to advance the general welfare. In 1889 he established a free night-school for his employÉs and the youth of Franklin, furnishing spacious rooms with desks and apparatus and engaging four capable teachers. This school has trained hundreds of young men for positions as accountants, book-keepers, stenographers and clerks. The First Baptist church, which he assisted in organizing, is the object of his special regard. He bore a large share of the cost of the brick-edifice, the lecture-room and the parsonage. He and Mr. Sibley have donated the massive pipe-organ, maintained the superb choir, paid a good part of the pastor’s salary, erected a branch-church and supported the only services in the Third Ward. For twenty-five years Mr. Miller has been superintendent of the Sabbath-school, which has grown to a membership of six-hundred. His Bible-class of three-hundred men is equalled in the state only by John Wanamaker’s, in Philadelphia, and James McCormick’s, in Harrisburg. The instruction is scriptural, pointed and business-like, with no taint of bigotry or sectarianism. No matter how far away Saturday may find him, the faithful teacher never misses the class that is “the apple of his eye,” if it be possible to reach home. Often he has hired an engine to bring him through on Saturday night, in order to meet the adult pupils of all denominations who flock to hear his words of wisdom and encouragement. Alike in conversation, teaching and public-speaking he possesses the faculty of interesting his listeners and imparting something new. He has raised the fallen, picked poor fellows out of the gutter, rescued the perishing and set many wanderers in the straight path. Not a few souls, “plucked as brands from the burning,” owe their salvation to the kindly sympathy and assistance of this earnest layman. Eternity alone will reveal the incalculable benefit of his night-school, his Bible-class, his church-work, his charity, his personal appeals to the erring and his unselfish life to the community and the world.

Twice Mr. Miller served as mayor of Franklin. Repeatedly has he declined nominations to high offices, private affairs demanding his time and attention. He is president or director of a score of commercial and industrial companies, with factories, mines and works in eight states. He has been president time after time of the Northwestern Association of Pennsylvania of the Grand Army of the Republic, Ordnance-Officer and Assistant Adjutant-General of the Second Brigade of Pennsylvania and Commander of Mays Post. He is a leading spirit in local enterprises. He enjoys his beautiful home and the society of his wife and children and friends. He prizes good horses, smokes good cigars and tells good stories. In him the wage-earner and the breadwinner have a steadfast helper, willing to lighten their burden and to better their condition. In short, Charles Miller is a typical American, plucky, progressive, energetic and invincible, with a heart to feel, genius to plan and talent to execute the noblest designs.

Hon. Joseph Crocker Sibley, eldest son of Dr. Joseph Crocker Sibley, was born at Friendship, N.Y.,N.Y., in 1850. His father’s death obliging him to give up a college-course for which he had prepared, in 1866 he came to Franklin to clerk in Miller & Coon’s dry-goods store. From that time his business interests and Mr. Miller’s were closely allied. In 1870 he married Miss Metta E. Babcock, daughter of Simon M. Babcock, of Friendship. He was agent of the Galena Oil-Works at Chicago for two years, losing his effects and nearly losing his life in the terrible fire that devastated that city. His business-success may be said to date from 1873, when he returned to Franklin. After many experiments he produced a signal-oil superior in light, safety and cold-test to any in use. The Signal Oil-Works were established, with Mr. Sibley as president and the proprietors of the Galena Oil-Works, whose plant manufactured the new product, as partners. Next he compounded a valve-oil for locomotives, free from the bad qualities of animal-oils, which is now used on three-fourths of the railway mileage of the United States.

Every newspaper-reader in the land has heard of the remarkable Congressional fight of 1892 in the Erie-Crawford district. Both counties were overwhelmingly Republican. People learned with surprise that Hon. Joseph C. Sibley, a resident of another district, had accepted the invitation of a host of good citizens, by whom he was selected as the only man who could lead them to victory over the ring, to try conclusions with the nominee of the ruling party, who had stacks of money, the entire machine, extensive social connections, religious associations—he was a preacher—and a regular majority of five-thousand to bank upon. Some wiseacres shook their heads gravely and predicted disaster. Such persons understood neither the resistless force of quickened public sentiment nor the sterling qualities of the candidate from Venango county. Democrats, Populists and Prohibitionists endorsed Sibley. He conducted a campaign worthy of Henry Clay. Multitudes crowded to hear and see a man candid enough to deliver his honest opinions with the boldness of “Old Hickory.” The masses knew of Mr. Sibley’s courage, sagacity and success in business, but they were unprepared to find so sturdy a defender of their rights. His manly independence, ringing denunciations of wrong, grand simplicity and incisive logic aroused unbounded enthusiasm. The tide in favor of the fearless advocate of fair-play for the lowliest creature no earthly power could stem. His opponent was buried out of sight and Sibley was elected by a sweeping majority.

Mr. Sibley’s course in Congress amply met the expectations of his most ardent supporters. The prestige of his great victory, added to his personal magnetism and rare geniality, at the very outset gave him a measure of influence few members ever attain. During the extra-session he expressed his views with characteristic vigor. A natural leader, close student and keen observer, he did not wait for somebody to give him the cue before putting his ideas on record. In the silver-discussion he bore a prominent part, opposing resolutely the repeal of the Sherman act. His wonderful speech “set the ball rolling” for those who declined to follow the administration program. The House was electrified by Sibley’s effort. Throughout his speech of three hours he was honored with the largest Congressional audience of the decade. Aisles, halls, galleries and corridors were densely packed. Senators came from the other end of the Capitol to listen to the brave Pennsylvanian who dared plead for the white metal. For many years Mr. Sibley has been a close student of political and social economics and he so grouped his facts as to command the undivided attention and the highest respect of those who honestly differed from him in his conclusions. Satire, pathos, bright wit and pungent repartee awoke in his hearers the strongest emotions, entrancing the bimetalists and giving their enemies a cold chill, as the stream of eloquence flowed from lips “untrained to flatter, to dissemble or to play the hypocrite.” Thenceforth the position of the representative of the Twenty-sixth district was assured, despite the assaults of hireling journals and discomfited worshippers of the golden calf.

He took advanced ground on the Chinese question, delivering a speech replete with patriotism and common-sense. An American by birth, habit and education, he prefers his own country to any other under the blue vault of heaven. The American workman he would protect from pauper immigration and refuse to put on the European or Asiatic level. He stands up for American skill, American ingenuity, American labor and American wages. Tariff for revenue he approves of, not a tariff to diminish revenue or to enrich one class at the expense of all. The tiller of the soil, the mechanic, the coal-miner, the coke-burner and the day-laborer have found him an outspoken champion of their cause. Small wonder is it that good men and women of all creeds and parties have abiding faith in Joseph C. Sibley and would fain bestow on him the highest office in the nation’s gift.

Human nature is a queer medley and sometimes manifests streaks of envy and meanness in queer ways. Mr. Sibley’s motives have been impugned, his efforts belittled, his methods assailed and his neckties criticised by men who could not understand his lofty character and purposes. The generous ex-Congressman must plead guilty to the charge of wearing clothes that fit him, of smoking decent cigars, of driving fine horses and of living comfortably. Of course it would be cheaper to buy hand-me-down misfits, to indulge in loud-smelling tobies, to walk or ride muleback, to curry his own horses and let his wife do the washing instead of hiring competent helpers. But he goes right ahead increasing his business, improving his farms, developing American trotters and furnishing work at the highest wages to willing hands in his factories, at his oil-wells, on his lands, in his barns and his hospitable home. He dispenses large sums in charity. His benevolence and enterprise reach far beyond Pennsylvania. He does not hoard up money to loan it at exorbitant rates. As a matter of fact, from the hundreds of men he has helped pecuniarily he never accepted one penny of interest. He has been mayor of Franklin, president of the Pennsylvania State-Dairymen’s Association, director of the American Jersey-Cattle Club and member of the State Board of Agriculture. He is a brilliant talker, a profound thinker, a capital story-teller and a loyal friend. “May he live long and prosper!”

Miller & Sibley’s Prospect-Hill Stock-Farm is one of the largest, best equipped and most favorably known in the world. Different farms comprising the establishment include a thousand acres of land adjacent to Franklin and a farm, with stabling for two-hundred horses and the finest kite-track in the United States, at Meadville. On one of these farms is the first silo built west of the Allegheny mountains. Trotting stock, Jersey cattle, Shetland ponies and Angora goats of the highest grades are bred. For Michael Angelo, when a calf six weeks old, twelve-thousand-five-hundred dollars in cash were paid A. B. Darling, proprietor of the Fifth-Avenue Hotel, New York City. Animals of the best strain were purchased, regardless of cost. In 1886 Mr. Sibley bought from Senator Leland Stanford, of California, for ten-thousand dollars, the four-year-old trotting-stallion St. Bel. Seventy-five thousand were offered for him a few weeks before the famous sire of numerous prize-winners died. Cows that have broken all records for milk and butter, and horses that have won the biggest purses on the leading race-tracks of the country are the results of the liberal policy pursued at Prospect-Hill. Charles Marvin, the prince of horsemen, superintends the trotting department and E. H. Sibley is manager of all the Miller & Sibley interests. Hundreds of the choicest animals are raised every year. Prospect-Hill Farm is one of the sights of Franklin and the enterprise represents an investment not far short of one-million dollars. Wouldn’t men like Charles Miller and Joseph C. Sibley sweep away the cobwebs, give business an impetus and infuse new life and new ideas into any community?

Franklin had tallied one for heavy-oil, but its resources were not exhausted. On October seventeenth, 1859, Colonel James P. Hoover, C. M. Hoover and Vance Stewart began to drill on the Robert-Brandon—now the Hoover—farm of three-hundred acres, in Sandycreek township, on the west bank of the Allegheny river, three miles south of Franklin. They found oil on December twenty-first, the well yielding one-hundred barrels a day! This pretty Christmas gift was another surprise. Owing to its distance from “springs” and the two wells—Drake and Evans—already producing, the stay-in-the-rut element felt confident that the Hoover Well would not “amount to a hill of beans.” It was “piling Ossa on Pelion” for the well to produce, from the second sand, oil with properties adapted to illumination and lubrication. The Drake was for light, the Evans for grease and the Hoover combined the two in part. Where and when was this variegated dissimilarity to cease? Perhaps its latest phase is to come shortly. Henry F. James is beginning a well south-west of town, on the N. B. Myers tract, between a sweet and a sour spring. Savans, scientists, beer-drinkers, tee-totalers and oil-operators are on the ragged edge of suspense, some hoping, some fearing, some praying that James may tap a perennial fount of creamy ’alf-and-’alf.

Once at a drilling-well on the “Point” the tools dropped suddenly. The driller relieved the tension on his rope and let the tools down slowly. They descended six or eight feet! The bare thought of a crevice of such dimensions paralyzed the knight of the temper-screw, all the more that the hole was not to the first sand. What a lake of oil must underlie that derrick! He drew up the tools. They were dripping amber fluid, which had a flavor quite unlike petroleum. Did his nose deceive him? It was the aroma of beer! A lick of the stuff confirmed the nasal diagnosis—it had the taste of beer! The alarm was sounded and the sand-pump run down. It came up brimming over with beer! Ten times the trip was repeated with the same result. Think of an ocean of the delicious, foamy, appetizing German beverage! Word was sent to the owners of the well, who ordered the tubing to be put in. They tried to figure how many breweries the production of their well would retire. Pumping was about to begin, in presence of a party of impatient, thirsty spectators, when an excited Teuton, blowing and puffing, was seen approaching at a breakneck pace. Evidently he had something on his mind. “Gott in Himmel!” he shrieked, “you vas proke mit Grossman’s vault!” The mystery was quickly explained. Philip Grossman, the brewer, had cut a tunnel a hundred feet into the hill-side to store his liquid-stock in a cool place. The well chanced to be squarely over this tunnel, the roof of which the tools pierced and stove in the head of a tun of beer! Workmen who came for a load were astonished to discover one end of a string of tubing dangling in the tun. It dawned upon them that the drillers three-hundred feet above must have imagined they struck a crevice and a messenger speeded to the well. The saddened crowd slinked off, muttering words that would not look nice in print. The tubing was withdrawn, the hogshead was shoved aside, the tools were again swung and two weeks later the well was pumping thirty barrels a day of unmistakable heavy-oil.

The Hoover strike fed the flame the Evans Well had kindled. Lands in the neighborhood were in demand on any terms the owners might impose. From Franklin to the new well, on both sides of the Allegheny, was the favorite choice, on a theory that a pool connected the deposits. Leases were snapped up at one-half royalty and a cash-bonus. Additional wells on the Hoover rivaled No. 1, which produced gamely for four years. The tools were stuck in cleaning it out and a new well beside it started at sixty barrels. The “Big-Emma Vein” was really an artery to which for years “whoa, Emma!” did not apply. Bissell & Co. and the Cameron Petroleum-Company secured control of the property, on which fifteen wells were producing two-hundred barrels ten years from the advent of the Hoover & Vance. Harry Smith, a city-father, is operating on the tract and drilling paying wells at reasonable intervals. Colonel James P. Hoover died on February fourth, 1871, aged sixty-nine. Born in Centre county, he settled in the southern part of Clarion, was appointed by Governor Porter in 1839 Prothonotary of Venango county and removed to Franklin. The people elected him to the same office for three years and State-Senator in 1844. The Canal-Commissioners in 1851 appointed him collector of the tolls at Hollidaysburg, Blair county, for five years. He filled these positions efficiently, strict adherence to principle and a high sense of duty marking his whole career. The esteem and confidence he enjoyed all through his useful life were attested by universal regret at his death and the largest funeral ever witnessed in Franklin. His estimable widow survived Colonel Hoover twenty years, dying at the residence of her son-in-law, Arnold Plumer, in Minnesota. Their son, C. M. Hoover, ex-sheriff of the county, has been interested in the street railway. Vance Stewart, who owned a farm near the lower river-bridge, removed to Greenville and preceded his wife and several children, one of them Rev. Orlando V. Stewart, to the tomb. Another son, James Stewart, was a prominent member of the Erie bar.

The opening months of 1860 were decidedly lively on the Cochran Farm, in Cranberry township, opposite the Hoover. The first well, the Keystone, on the flats above where the station now stands, was a second-sander of the hundred-barrel class. The first oil sold for fourteen dollars a barrel, at which rate land-owners and operators were not in danger of bankruptcy or the poor-house. Fourteen-hundred dollars a day from a three-inch hole would have seemed too preposterous for Munchausen before the Pennsylvania oil-regions demonstrated that “truth is stranger than fiction.” The Monitor, Raymond, Williams, McCutcheon and other wells kept the production at a satisfactory figure. Dale & Morrow, Horton & Son, Hoover & Co., George R. Hobby, Cornelius Fulkerson and George S. McCartney were early operators. B. E. Swan located on the farm in May of 1865 and drilled numerous fair wells. He has operated there for thirty-two years, sticking to the second-sand territory with a tenacity equal to the “perseverance of the saints.” When thousands of producers, imitating the dog that let go the bone to grasp the shadow in the water, quit their enduring small wells to take their chance of larger ones in costlier fields, he did not lose his head and add another to the financial wrecks that strewed the greasian shore. Appreciating his moral stamina, his steadfastness and ability, Mr. Swan’s friends insist that he shall serve the public in some important office. Walter Pennell—his father made the first car-wheels—and W. P. Smith drilled several snug wells on the uplands, Sweet & Shaffer following with six or eight. Eighteen wells are producing on the tract, which contains one-hundred-and-fortyone-hundred-and-forty acres and has had only two dry-holes in its thirty-six years of active developments.

Alexander Cochran, for forty years owner of the well-known farm bearing his name, is one of the oldest citizens of Franklin. Winning his way in the world by sheer force of character, scrupulous integrity and a fixed determination to succeed, he is in the highest and best sense a self-made man. Working hard in boyhood to secure an education, he taught school, clerked in general stores, studied law and was twice elected Prothonotary without asking one voter for his support. In these days of button-holing, log-rolling, wire-pulling, buying and soliciting votes this is a record to recall with pride. Marrying Miss Mary Bole—her father removed from Lewistown to Franklin seventy-five years ago—he built the home at “Cochran Spring” that is one of the land-marks of the town and established a large dry-goods store. As his means permitted he bought city-lots, put up dwelling-houses and about 1852 paid sixteen-hundred dollars for the farm in Cranberry township for which in 1863, after it had yielded a fortune, he refused seven-hundred-thousand! The farm was in two blocks. A neighbor expostulated with him for buying the second piece, saying it was “foolish to waste money that way.” In 1861, when the same neighbor wished to mortgage his land for a loan, he naively remarked: “Well, Aleck, I guess I was the fool, not you, in 1852.” A man of broad views, Mr. Cochran freely grants to others the liberality of thought he claims for himself. A hater of cant and sham and hollow pretence, he believes less in musty creeds than kindly deeds, more in giving loaves than tracts to the hungry, and takes no stock in religion that thinks only of dodging punishment in the next world and fails to help humanity in this. In the dark days of low-priced oil and depressed trade, he would accept neither interest from his debtors nor royalty from the operators who had little wells on his farm. He never hounded the sheriff on a hapless borrower, foreclosed a mortgage to grab a coveted property or seized the chattels of a struggling victim to satisfy a shirt-tail note. There is no shred of the Pecksniff, the Shylock or the Uriah-Heep in his anatomy. At fourscore he is hale and hearty, rides on horseback, cultivates his garden, attends to business, likes a good play and keeps up with the literature of the day. The productive oil-farm is now owned by his daughters, Mrs. J. J. McLaurin, of Harrisburg, and Mrs. George R. Sheasley, of Franklin. The proudest eulogy he could desire is Alexander Cochran’s just desert: “The Poor Man’s Friend.”

Down to Sandy Creek many wells were drilled from 1860 to 1865, producing fairly at an average depth of four-hundred-and-fifty to five-hundred feet. These operations included the Miller, Smith and Pope farms, on the west side of the river, and the Rice, Nicklin, Martin and Harmon, on the east side, all second-sand territory. North of the Cochran and the Hoover work was pushed actively. George H. Bissell and Vance Stewart bored twelve or fifteen medium wells on the Stewart farm of two-hundred acres, which the Cameron Petroleum Company purchased in 1865 and Joseph Dale operated for some years. It lies below the lower bridge, opposite the Bleakley tract, from which a light production is still derived. Above the Stewart are the Fuller and the Chambers farms, the latter extending to the Allegheny-Valley depot. Scores of eager operators thronged the streets of Franklin and drilled along the Allegheny. Joseph Powley and Charles Cowgill entered the lists in the Cranberry district. Henry M. Wilson and George Piagett veered into the township and sank a bevy of dry-holes to vary the monotony. That was a horse on Wilson, but he got ahead of the game by a deal that won him the nicest territory on Horse Creek. Stirling Bonsall and Colonel Lewis—they’re dead now—were in the thickestthickest of the fray, with Captain Goddard, Philip Montgomery, Boyd, Roberts, Foster, Brown, Murphy and many more whom old-timers remember pleasantly. Thomas King, whole-souled, genial “Tom”—no squarer man e’er owned a well or handled oil-certificates—and Captain Griffith were “a good pair to draw to.” King has “crossed over,” as have most of the kindred spirits that dispelled the gloom in the sixties.

Colonel W. T. Pelton, nephew of Samuel J. Tilden, participated in the scenes of that exciting period. He lived at Franklin and drilled wells on French Creek. He was a royal entertainer, shrewd in business, finely educated and polished in manner and address. He and his wife—a lovely and accomplished woman—were fond of society and gained hosts of friends. They boarded at the United-States Hotel, where Mrs. Pelton died suddenly. This affliction led Colonel Pelton to sell his oil-properties and abandon the oil-regions. Returning to New York, when next he came into view as the active agent of his uncle in the secret negotiations that grew out of the election of 1876, it was with a national fame. His death in 1880 closed a busy, promising career.

In the spring of 1864 a young man, black-haired, dark-eyed, an Apollo in form and strikingly handsome, arrived at Franklin and engaged rooms at Mrs. Webber’s, on Buffalo street. The stranger had money, wore good clothes and presented a letter of introduction to Joseph H. Simonds, dealer in real-estate, oil-wells and leases. He looked around a few days and concluded to invest in sixty acres of the Fuller farm, Cranberry township, fronting on the Allegheny river. The block was sliced off the north end of the farm, a short distance below the upper bridge and the Valley station. Mr. Simonds consented to be a partner in the transaction. The transfer was effected, the deed recorded and a well started. It was situated on the hill, had twenty feet of second-sand and pumped twenty barrels a day. The owner drilled two others on the bluff, the three yielding twenty barrels for months. The ranks of the oil-producers had received an addition in the person of—John Wilkes Booth.

The firm prospered, each of the members speculating and trading individually. M. J. Colman, a capital fellow, was interested with one or both in various deals. Men generally liked Booth and women admired him immensely. His lustrous orbs, “twin-windows of the soul,” could look so sad and pensive as to awaken the tenderest pity, or fascinate like “the glittering eye” of the Ancient Mariner or the gaze of the basilisk. “Trilby” had not come to light, or he might have enacted the hypnotic role of Svengali. His moods were variable and uncertain. At times he seemed morose and petulant, tired of everybody and “unsocial as a clam.” Again he would court society, attend parties, dance, recite and be “the life of the company.” He belonged to a select circle that exchanged visits with a coterie of young folks in Oil City. A Confederate sympathizer and an enemy of the government, his closest intimates were staunch Republicans and loyal citizens. William J. Wallis, the veteran actor who died in December of 1895, in a Philadelphia theater slapped him on the mouth for calling President Lincoln a foul name. Booth’s acting, while inferior to his brother Edwin’s, evinced much dramatic power. He controlled his voice admirably, his movements were graceful and he spoke distinctly, as Franklinites whom he sometimes favored with a reading can testify.

One morning in April, 1865, he left Franklin, telling Mr. Simonds he was going east for a few days. He carried a satchel, which indicated that he did not expect his stay to be prolonged indefinitely. His wardrobe, books and papers remained in his room. Nothing was heard of him until the crime of the century stilled all hearts and the wires flashed the horrible news of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. The excitement in Franklin, the murderer’s latest home, was intense. Crowds gathered to learn the dread particulars and discuss Booth’s conduct and utterances. Not a word or act previous to his departure pointed to deliberate preparation for the frightful deed that plunged the nation in grief. That he contemplated it before leaving Franklin the weight of evidence tended to disprove. He made no attempt to sell any of his property, to convert his lands and wells into cash, to settle his partnership accounts or to pack his effects. He had money in the bank, wells bringing a good income and important business pending. All these things went to show that, if not a sudden impulse, the killing of Lincoln was prompted by some occurrence in Washington that fired the passionate nature John Wilkes Booth inherited from his father. The world is familiar with the closing chapters of the dark tragedy—the assassin’s flight, the pursuit into Virginia, the burning barn, Sergeant Corbett’s fatal bullet, the pathetic death-scene on the Garrett porch and the last message, just as the dawn was breaking on the glassy eyes that opened feebly for a moment: “Tell my mother I died for my country. I did what I thought was best.”

The wells and the land on the river were held by Booth’s heirs until 1869, when the tract changed hands. The farm is producing no oil and the Simonds-Booth wells have disappeared. Had he not intended to return to Franklin, Booth would certainly have disposed of these interests and given the proceeds to his mother. “Joe” Simonds removed to Bradford to keep books for Whitney & Wheeler, bankers and oil-operators, and died there years ago. He was an expert accountant, quick, accurate and neat in his work and most fastidious in his attire. A blot on his paper, a figure not exactly formed, a line one hair-breath crooked, a spot on his linen or a speck of dust on his coat was simply intolerable. He was correct in language and deportment and honorable in his dealings. Colman continued his oil-operations, in company with W. R. Crawford, a real-estate agency, until the eighties. He married Miss Ella Hull, the finest vocalist Franklin ever boasted, daughter of Captain S. A. Hull, and removed to Boston. For years paralytic trouble has confined him to his home. He is “one of nature’s nobleman.”

“French Kate,” the woman who aided Ben Hogan at Pithole and followed him to Babylon and Parker, was a Confederate spy and supposed to be very friendly with J. Wilkes Booth. Besides his oil-interests at Franklin, the slayer of Abraham Lincoln owned a share in the Homestead well at Pithole. A favorite legend tells how, by a singular coincidence, which produced a sensation, the well was burned on the evening of the President’s assassination. It caught fire about the same instant the fatal bullet was fired in Ford’s Theater and tanks of burning oil enveloped Pithole in a dense smoke when the news of the tragedy flashed over the trembling wires. The Homestead well was not down until Lincoln had been dead seven weeks, Pithole had no existence and there were no blazing tanks; otherwise the legend is correct. Two weeks before his appalling crime Booth was one of a number of passengers on the scow doing duty as a ferry-boat across the Allegheny, after the Franklin bridge had burned. The day was damp and the water very cold. Some inhuman whelp threw a fine setter into the river. The poor beast swam to the rear of the scow and Booth pulled him on board. He caressed the dog and bitterly denounced the fellow who could treat a dumb animal so cruelly. At another time he knocked down a cowardly ruffian for beating a horse that was unable to pull a heavy load out of a mud-hole. He has been known to shelter stray kittens, to buy them milk and induce his landlady to care for them until they could be provided with a home. Truly his was a contradictory nature. He sympathized with horses, dogs and cats, yet robbed the nation of its illustrious chief and plunged mankind into mourning. To newsboys Booth was always liberal, not infrequently handing a dollar for a paper and saying: “No change; buy something useful with the money.” The first time he went to the Methodist Sunday-school, with “Joe” Simonds, he asked and answered questions and put a ten-dollar bill in the collection-box.

Over the hills to the interior of the townships developments spread. Bredinsburg, Milton and Tarkiln loomed up in Cranberry, where Taylor & Torrey, S. P. McCalmont, Jacob Sheasley, B. W. Bredin and E. W. Echols have sugar-plums. In Sandycreek, between Franklin and Foster, Angell & Prentice brought Bully Hill and Mount Hope to the front. The biggest well in the package was a two-hundred barreler on Mount Hope, which created a mount of hopes that were not fully realized. George V. Forman counted out one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars for the Mount Hope corner. The territory lasted well and averaged fairly. Bully Hill merited its somewhat slangy title. Dr. C. D. Galbraith, George R. Sheasley and Mattern & Son are among its present operators. Angell and Prentice parted company, each to engage in opening up the Butler region. Prentice, Crawford, Barbour & Co. did not let the grass grow under their feet. They “knew a good thing at sight” and pumped tens-of-thousands of barrels of oil from the country south of Franklin. The firm was notable in the seventies. Considerable drilling was done at Polk, where the state is providing a half-million-dollar Home for Feeble-Minded Children, and in the latitude of Utica, with about enough oil to be an aggravation. The Shippen wells, a mile north of the county poor-house, have produced for thirty years. West of them, on the Russell farm, the Twin wells, joined as tightly as the derricks could be placed, pumped for years. This was the verge of productive territory, test wells on the lands of William Sanders, William Bean, A. Reynolds, John McKenzie, Alexander Frazier and W. Booth, clear to Cooperstown, finding a trifle of sand and scarcely a vestige of oil. The Raymonds, S. Ramage, John J. Doyle and Daniel Grimm had a very tidy offshoot at Raymilton. On this wise lubricating and second-sand oils were revealed for the benefit of mankind generally. The fly in the ointment was the clerical crank who wrote to President Lincoln to demand that the producing of heavy-oil be stopped peremptorily, as it had been stored in the ground to grease the axletree of the earth in its diurnal revolution! This communication reminded Lincoln of a “little story,” which he fired at the fellow with such effect that the candidate for a strait-jacket was perpetually squelched.

Hon. William Reid Crawford, a member of the firm of Prentice, Crawford, Barbour & Co., lives in Franklin. His parents were early settlers in north-western Pennsylvania. Alexander Grant, his maternal grandfather, built the first stone-house in Lancaster county, removed to Butler county and located finally in Armstrong county, where he died sixty-five years ago. In 1854 William R. and four of his brothers went to California and spent some time mining gold. Upon his return he settled on a farm in Scrubgrass township, Venango county, of which section the Crawfords had been prominent citizens from the beginning of its history. Removing to Franklin in 1865, Mr. Crawford engaged actively in the production of petroleum, operating extensively in various portions of the oil-regions for twenty years. He acquired a high reputation for enterprise and integrity, was twice a city-councillor, served three terms as mayor, was long president of the school-board, was elected sheriff in 1887 and State-Senator in 1890. Untiring fidelity to the interests of the people and uncompromising hostility to whatever he believed detrimental to the general welfare distinguished his public career. Genial and kindly to all, the friend of humanity and benefactor of the poor, no man stands better in popular estimation or is more deserving of confidence and respect. His friends could not be crowded into the Coliseum without bulging out the walls. Ebenezer Crawford, brother of William R., died at Emlenton in August of 1897, on his seventy-sixth birthday. John P. Crawford, another brother, who made the California trip in 1849, still resides in the southern end of the county and is engaged in oil-operations. E. G. Crawford, a nephew, twice prothonotary of Venango and universally liked, passed away last June. His cousin, C. J. Crawford, a first-class man anywhere and everywhere, served as register and recorder with credit and ability. The Crawfords “are all right.”

Captain John K. Barbour, a man of imposing presence and admirable qualities, removed to Philadelphia after the dissolution of the firm. The Standard Oil-Company gave him charge of the right-of-way department of its pipe-line service and he returned to Franklin. Two years ago, during a business visit to Ohio, he died unexpectedly, to the deep regret of the entire community. S. A. Wheeler operated largely in the Bradford field and organized the Tuna-Valley Bank of Whitney & Wheeler. For a dozen years he has resided at Toledo, his early home. Like Captain Barbour, “Fred,” as he was commonly called, had an exhaustless mine of bright stories and a liberal share of the elements of popularity. One afternoon in 1875, three days before the fire that wiped out the town, a party of us chanced to meet at St. Joe, Butler county, then the centre of oil-developments. An itinerating artist had his car moored opposite the drug-store. Somebody proposed to have a group-picture. The motion carried unanimously and a toss-up decided that L. H. Smith was to foot the bill. The photographer brought out his camera, positions were taken on the store-platform and the pictures were mailed an hour ahead of the blaze that destroyed most of the buildings and compelled the artist to hustle off his car on the double-quick. Samuel R. Reed, at the extreme right, operated in the Clarion field. He had a hardware-store in company with the late Dr. Durrant and his home is in Franklin. James Orr, between whom and Reed a telegraph-pole is seen, was connected with the Central Hotel at Petrolia and later was a broker in the Producers’ Exchange at Bradford. On the step is Thomas McLaughlin, now oil-buyer at Lima, once captain of a talented base-ball club at Oil City and an active oil-broker. Back of him is “Fred” Wheeler, with Captain Barbour on his right and L. H. Smith sitting comfortably in front. Mr. Smith figured largely at Pithole, operated satisfactorily around Petrolia and removed years ago to New York. Cast in a giant mould, he weighs three-hundred pounds and does credit to the illustrious legions of Smiths. He is a millionaire and has an office over the Seaboard Bank, at the lower end of Broadway. Joseph Seep, the king-bee of good fellows, sits besides Smith. Pratt S. Crosby, formerly a jolly broker at Parker and Oil City, stands behind Seep. Next him is “Tom” King, who has “gone to the land of the leal,” J. J. McLaurin ending the row. James Amm, who went from an Oil-city clerkship to coin a fortune at Bradford—a street bears his name—sits on the platform. Every man, woman, child and baby near Oil City knew and admired “Jamie” Amm, who is now enjoying his wealth in Buffalo. Two out of the eleven in the group have “passed beyond the last scene” and the other nine are scattered widely.

Frederic Prentice, one of the pluckiest operators ever known in petroleum-annals, was the first white child born on the site of Toledo, when Indians were the neighbors of the pioneers of Northern Ohio. His father left a fine estate, which the son increased greatly by extensive lumbering, in which he employed three-thousand men. Losses in the panic of 1857 retired him from the business. He retrieved his fortune and paid his creditors their claims in full, with ten per cent. interest, an act indicative of his sterling character. Reading in a newspaper about the Drake well, he decided to see for himself whether the story was fast colors. Journeying to Venango county by way of Pittsburg, he met and engaged William Reed to accompany him. Reed had worked at the Tarentum salt-wells and knew a thing or two about artesian-boring. The two arrived at Franklin on the afternoon of the day Evans’s well turned the settlement topsy-turvy. Next morning Prentice offered Evans forty-thousand dollars for a controlling interest in the well, one-fourth down and the balance in thirty, sixty and ninety days. Evans declining to sell, the Toledo visitor bought from Martin & Epley an acre of ground on the north bank of French Creek, at the base of the hill, and contracted with Reed to “kick down” a well, the third in the district. Prentice and Reed tramped over the country for days, locating oil-deposits by means of the witch-hazel, which the Tarentumite handled skillfully. This was a forked stick, which it was claimed turned in the hands of the holder at spots where oil existed. Various causes delayed the completion of the well, which at last proved disappointingly small. Meanwhile Mr. Prentice leased the Neeley farm, two miles up the Allegheny, in Cranberry township, and bored several paying wells. A railroad station on the tract is named after him and R. G. Lamberton has converted the property into a first-class stock-farm. Favorable reports from Little Kanawha River took him to West Virginia, where he leased and purchased immense blocks of land. Among them was the Oil-Springs tract, on the Hughes River, from which oil had been skimmed for generations. Two of his wells on the Kanawha yielded six-hundred barrels a day, which had to be stored in ponds or lakes for want of tankage. Confederate raiders burned the wells, oil and machinery and drove off the workmen, putting an extinguisher on operations until the Grant-Lee episode beneath the apple-tree at Appomattox.

Assuming that the general direction of profitable developments would be north-east and south-west, Mr. Prentice surveyed a line from Venango county through West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. This idea, really the foundation of “the belt theory,” he spent thousands of dollars to establish. Personal investigation and careful surveys confirmed his opinion, which was based upon observations in the Pennsylvania fields. The line run thirty years ago touched numerous “springs” and “surface shows” and recent tests prove its remarkable accuracy. On this theory he drilled at Mount Hope and Foster, opening a section that has produced several-million barrels of oil. C. D. Angell applied the principle in Clarion and Butler counties, mapping out the probable course of the “belt” and leasing much prolific territory. His success led others to adopt the same plan, developing a number of pools in four states, although nature’s lines are seldom straight and the oil-bearing strata are deposited in curves and beds at irregular intervals.

In company with W. W. Clark of New York, to whom he had traded a portion of his West-Virginia lands, Mr. Prentice secured a quarter-interest in the Tarr farm, on Oil Creek, shortly before the sinking of the Phillips well, and began shipping oil to New York. They paid three dollars apiece for barrels, four dollars a barrel for hauling to the railroad and enormous freights to the east. The price dropping below the cost of freights and barrels, the firm dug acres of pits to put tanks under ground, covering them with planks and earth to prevent evaporation. Traces of these storage-vats remain on the east bank of Oil Creek. Crude fell to twenty-five cents a barrel at the wells and the outlook was discouraging. Clark & Prentice stopped drilling and turned their attention to finding a market. They constructed neat wooden packages that would hold two cans of refined-oil, two oil-lamps and a dozen chimneys and sent one to each United-States Consul in Europe. Orders soon rushed in from foreign countries, especially Germany, France and England, stimulating the erection of refineries and creating a large export-trade. Clark & Summer, who also owned an interest in the Tarr farm, built the Standard Refinery at Pittsburg and agreed to take from Clark & Prentice one-hundred-thousand barrels of crude at a dollar a barrel, to be delivered as required during the year. Before the delivery of the first twenty-five-thousand barrels the price climbed to one-fifty and to six dollars before the completion of the contract, which was carried out to the letter. The advance continued to fourteen dollars a barrel, lasting only one day at this figure. These were vivifying days in oleaginous circles, never to be repeated while Chronos wields his trusty blade.

When crude reached two dollars Mr. Prentice bought the Washington-McClintock farm, on which Petroleum Centre was afterwards located, for three-hundred-thousand dollars. Five New-Yorkers, one of them the president of the Shoe and Leather Bank and another the proprietor of the Brevoort House, advanced fifty-thousand dollars for the first payment. Within sixty days Prentice sold three-quarters of his interest for nine-hundred-thousand dollars and organized the Central Petroleum Oil-Company, with a capital of five-millions! Wishing to repay the New-York loan, the Brevoort landlord desired him to retain his share of the money and invest it as he pleased. For his ten-thousand dollars mine host received eighty-thousand in six months, a return that leaves government-bond syndicates and Cripple-Creek speculations out in the latitude of Nansen’s north-pole. The company netted fifty-thousand dollars a month in dividends for years and lessees cleared three or four millions from their operations on the farm. Greenbacks circulated like waste-paper, Jules Verne’s fancies were surpassed constantly by actual occurrences and everybody had money to burn.

Prentice and his associates purchased many tracts along Oil Creek, including the lands where Oil City stands and the Blood farm of five-hundred acres. In the Butler district he drilled hundreds of wells and built the Relief Pipe-Line. Organizing The Producers’ Consolidated Land-and-Petroleum-Company, with a capital of two-and-a-half millions, he managed it efficiently and had a prominent part in the Bradford development. Boston capitalists paid in twelve-hundred-thousand dollars, Prentice keeping a share in his oil-properties representing thirteen-hundred-thousand more. The company is now controlled by the Standard, with L. B. Lockhart as superintendent. Its indefatigable founder also organized the Boston Oil Company to operate in Kentucky and Tennessee, put down oil-wells in Peru and gas-wells in West Virginia, produced and piped thousands of barrels of crude daily and was a vital force in petroleum-affairs for eighteen years. The confidence and esteem of his compatriots were attested by his unanimous election to the presidency of the Oilmen’s League, a secret-society formed to resist the proposed encroachments of the South-Improvement Company. The League accomplished its mission and then quietly melted out of existence.

Since 1877 Mr. Prentice has devoted his attention chiefly to lumbering in West Virginia and to his brown-stone quarries at Ashland, Wisconsin. The death of his son, Frederick A., by accidental shooting, was a sad bereavement to the aged father. His suits to get possession of the site of Duluth, the city of Proctor Knott’s impassioned eulogy, included in a huge grant of land deeded to him by the Indians, were scarcely less famous than Mrs. Gaines’s protracted litigation to recover a slice of New Orleans. The claim involved the title to property valued at twelve-millions of dollars. From his Ashland quarries the owner took out a monolith, designed for the Columbian Exposition in 1893, forty yards long and ten feet square at the base. Beside this monster stone Cleopatra’s Needle, disintegrating in Central Park, Pompey’s Pillar and the biggest blocks in the pyramids are Tom-Thumb pigmies. At seventy-four Mr. Prentice, foremost in energy and enterprise, retains much of his youthful vigor. Earnest and sincere, a master of business, his word as good as gold, Frederic Prentice holds an honored place in the ranks of representative oil-producers, “nobles of nature’s own creating.”

A native of Chautauqua county, N. Y., where he was born in 1826, Cyrus D. Angell received a liberal education, served as School-Commissioner and engaged in mercantile pursuits at Forestville. Forced through treachery and the monetary stringency of the times to compromise with his creditors, he recovered his financial standing and paid every cent of his indebtedness, principal and interest. In 1867 he came to the oil-regions with a loan of one-thousand dollars and purchased an interest in property at Petroleum Centre that paid handsomely. Prior to this, in connection with Buffalo capitalists, he had bought Belle Island, in the Allegheny River at Scrubgrass, upon which soon after his arrival he drilled three wells that averaged one-hundred barrels each for two years, netting the owners over two-hundred-thousand dollars. Operations below Franklin, in company with Frederic Prentice, also proved highly profitable. His observations of the course of developments along Oil Creek and the Allegheny led Mr. Angell to the conclusion that petroleum would be found in “belts” or regular lines. He adopted the theory that two “belts” existed, one running from Petroleum Centre to Scrubgrass and the other from St. Petersburg through Butler county. Satisfied of the correctness of this view, he leased or purchased all the lands within the probable boundaries of the “belt” from Foster to Belle Island, a distance of six miles. The result justified his expectations, ninety per cent. of the wells yielding abundantly. With “the belt theory,” which he followed up with equal success farther south, Mr. Angell’s name is linked indissolubly. His researches enriched him and were of vast benefit to the producers generally. He did much to extend the Butler region, drilling far ahead of tested territory. The town of Angelica owed its creation to his fortunate operations in the neighborhood, conducted on a comprehensive scale. Reverses could not crush his manly spirit. He did a large real-estate business at Bradford for some years, opening an office at Pittsburg when the Washington field began to loom up. Failing health compelling him to seek relief in foreign travel, last year he went to Mexico and Europe to recuperate. Mr. Angell is endowed with boundless energy, fine intellectual powers and rare social acquirements. During his career in Oildom he was an excellent sample of the courageous, unconquerable men who have made petroleum the commercial wonder of the world.

An old couple in Cranberry township, who eked out a scanty living on a rocky farm near the river, sold their land for sixty-thousand dollars at the highest pitch of the oil-excitement around Foster. This was more money than the pair had ever before seen, much less expected to handle and own. It was paid in bank-notes at noon and the log-house was to be vacated next day. Towards evening the poor old woman burst into tears and insisted that her husband should give back the money to the man that “wanted to rob them of their home.” She was inconsolable, declaring they would be “turned out to starve, without a roof to cover them.” The idea that sixty-thousand dollars would buy an ideal home brought no comfort to the simple-minded creature, whose hopes and ambitions were confined to the lowly abode that had sheltered her for a half-century. A promise to settle near her brother in Ohio reconciled her somewhat, but it almost broke her faithful heart to leave a spot endeared by many tender associations. John Howard Payne, himself a homeless wanderer, whose song has been sung in every tongue and echoed in every soul, jingled by innumerable hand-organs and played by the masters of music, was right:

The refusal of his wife to sign the deed conveying the property enabled a wealthy Franklinite to gather a heap of money. The tract was rough and unproductive and the owner proposed to accept for it the small sum offered by a neighboring farmer, who wanted more pasture for his cattle. For the first time in her life the wife declined to sign a paper at her husband’s request, saying she had a notion the farm would be valuable some day. The purchaser refused to take it subject to a dower and the land lay idle. At length oil-developments indicated that the “belt” ran through the farm. Scores of wells yielded freely, netting the land-owner a fortune and convincing him that womanly intuition is a sure winner.

A citizen of Franklin, noted for his conscientiousness and liberality, was interested in a test-well at the beginning of the Scrubgrass development. He vowed to set aside one-fourth of his portion of the output of the well “for the Lord,” as he expressed it. To the delight of the owners, who thought the venture hazardous, the well showed for a hundred barrels when the tubing was put in. On his way back from the scene the Franklin gentleman did a little figuring, which proved that the Lord’s percentage of the oil might foot up fifty dollars a day. This was a good deal of money for religious purposes. The maker of the vow reflected that the Lord could get along without so much cash and he decided to clip the one-fourth down to one-tenth, arguing that the latter was the scripture limit. Talking it over with his wife, she advised him to stick to his original determination and not trifle with the Lord. The husband took his own way, as husbands are prone to do, and revisited the well next day. Something had gone wrong with the working-valve, the tubing had to be drawn out and the well never pumped a barrel of oil! The disappointed operator concluded, as he charged two thousand dollars to his profit-and-loss account, that it was not the Lord who came out at the small end of the horn in the transaction.

Rev. Clarence A. Adams, the eloquent ex-pastor of the First Baptist Church at Franklin, is the lucky owner of a patch of paying territory at Raymilton. Recently he finished a well which pumped considerable salt-water with the oil. Contrary to Cavendish and the ordinary custom, another operator drilled very close to the boundary of the Adams lease and torpedoed the well heavily. Instead of sucking the oil from the preacher’s nice pumper, the new well took away most of the salt-water and doubled the production of petroleum! Commonly it would seem rather mean to rob a Baptist minister of water, but in this case Dr. Adams is perfectly resigned to the loss of aqueous fluid and gain of dollar-fifty crude. A profound student of Shakespeare, Browning and the Bible, a brilliant lecturer and master of pulpit-oratory, may he also stand on a lofty rung of the greasian ladder and attain the goodly age of Franklin’s “grand old man,” Rev. Dr. Crane. This “father in Israel,” whose death in February of 1896 the whole community mourned, left a record of devoted service as a physician and clergyman for over sixty years that has seldom been equaled. He healed the sick, smoothed the pillow of the dying, relieved the distressed, reclaimed the erring, comforted the bereaved, turned the faces of the straying Zionward and found the passage to the tomb “a gentle wafting to immortal life.” Let his memory be kept green.

The late Thomas McDonough, a loyal-hearted son of the Emerald Isle, was also an energetic operator in the lubricating region. He had an abundance of rollicking wit, “the pupil of the soul’s clear eye,” and an unfailing supply of the drollest stories. Desiring to lease a farm in Sandy-Creek township, supposed to be squarely “on the belt,” he started at daybreak to interview the owner, feeling sure his mission would succeed. An unexpected sight presented itself through the open door, as the visitor stepped upon the porch of the dwelling. The farmer’s wife was setting the table for breakfast and Frederic Prentice was folding a paper carefully. McDonough realized in a twinkling that Prentice had secured the lease and his trip was fruitless. “I am looking for John Smith” he stammered, as the farmer invited him to enter, and beat a hasty retreat. For years his friends rallied the Colonel on his search and would ask with becoming solemnity whether he had discovered John Smith. The last time we met in Philadelphia this incident was revived and the query repeated jocularly. The jovial McDonough died in 1894. It is safe to assume that he will easily find numerous John Smiths in the land of perpetual reunion. One day he told a story in an office on Thirteenth street, Franklin, which tickled the hearers immensely. A full-fledged African, who had been sweeping the back-room, broke into a tumultuous laugh. At that moment a small boy was riding a donkey directly in front of the premises. The jackass heard the peculiar laugh and elevated his capacious ears more fully to take in the complete volume of sound. He must have thought the melody familiar and believed he had stumbled upon a relative. Despite the frantic exertions of the boy, the donkey rushed towards the building whence the boisterous guffaw proceeded, shoved his head inside the door and launched a terrific bray. The bystanders were convulsed at this evidence of mistaken identity, which the jolly story-teller frequently rehearsed for the delectation of his hosts of friends.

Looking over the Milton diggings one July day, Col. McDonough met an amateur-operator who was superintending the removal of a wooden-tank from a position beside his first and only well. A discussion started regarding the combustibility of the thick sediment collected on the bottom of the tank. The amateur maintained the stuff would not burn and McDonough laughingly replied, “Well, just try it and see!” The fellow lighted a match and applied it to the viscid mass before McDonough could interfere, saying with a grin that he proposed to wait patiently for the result. He didn’t have to wait “until Orcus would freeze over and the boys play shinny on the ice.” In the ninetieth fraction of a second the deposit blazed with intense enthusiasm, quickly enveloping the well-rig and the surroundings in flames. Clouds of smoke filled the air, suggesting fancies of Pittsburg or Sheol. Charred fragments of the derrick, engine-house and tank, with an acre of blackened territory over which the burning sediment had spread, demonstrated that the amateur’s idea had been decidedly at fault. The experiment convinced him as searchingly as a Roentgen ray that McDonough had the right side of the argument. “If the ‘b. s.’ had been as green as the blamed fool, it wouldn’t have burned,” was the Colonel’s appropriate comment.

Miss Lizzie Raymond, daughter of the pioneer who founded Raymilton and erected the first grist-mill at Utica, has long taught the infant-class of the Presbyterian Sunday-school at Franklin. Once the lesson was about the wise and the foolish virgins, the good teacher explaining the subject in a style adapted to the juvenile mind. A cute little tot, impressed by the sad plight of the virgins who had no oil in their lamps, innocently inquired: “Miss ’Aymond, tan’t oo tell ’em dirls to turn to our house an’ my papa ’ll div’ ’em oil f’um his wells?” Heaven bless the children that come as sunbeams to lighten our pathway, to teach us lessons of unselfishness and prevent the rough world from turning our hearts as hard as the mill-stone.

Judge Trunkey, who presided over the Venango court a dozen years and was then elected to the Supreme Bench, was hearing a case of desertion. An Oil-City lawyer, proud of his glossy black beard, represented the forsaken wife, a comely young woman from Petroleum Centre, who dandled a bright baby of twenty months on her knee. Mother and baby formed a pretty picture and the lawyer took full advantage of it in his closing appeal to the jury. At a brilliant climax he turned to his client and said: “Let me have the child!” He was raising it to his arms, to hold before the men in the box and describe the heinous meanness of the wretch who could leave such beauty and innocence to starve. The baby spoiled the fun by springing up, clutching the attorney’s beard and screaming: “Oh, papa!” The audience fairly shrieked. Judge Trunkey laughed until the tears flowed and it was five minutes before order could be restored. That ended the oratory and the jury salted the defendant handsomely. Hon. James S. Connelly, an Associate Judge, who now resides in Philadelphia and enjoys his well-earned fortune, was also on the bench at the moment. Judge Trunkey, one of the purest, noblest men and greatest jurists that ever shed lustre upon Pennsylvania, passed to his reward six years ago.

KEEPING STEP.

The Shasta was Karns City’s first well.

Missouri has two wells producing oil.

North Dakota has traces of natural-gas.

Ninety wells in Japan pump four-hundred barrels.

Elk City, in the Clarion field, once had two-thousand population.

The Rob Roy well, at Karns City, has produced a quarter-million barrels of oil.

Alaska-oil is cousin of asphalt-pitch, very heavy, and thick as New-Orleans molasses in midwinter.

Wade Hampton, postmaster of Pittsburg, and cousin of Governor Wade Hampton, organized one of the first petroleum companies in the United States.

General Herman Haupt, of Philadelphia, now eighty-one years old, surveyed the route and constructed the first pipe-line across Pennsylvania.

Robert Nevin, founder of the Pittsburg Times, drilled a dry-hole four-hundred feet, ten miles west of Greensburg, in 1858, a year before Drake’s successful experiment in Oil Creek.

The Powell Oil-Company, superintended by Col. A. C. Ferris, still a resident of New York, paid fifty-thousand dollars in cash for the Shirk farm, half way between Franklin and Oil City, drilled a dry-hole and abandoned the property.

The new town of Guffey, the liveliest in Colorado, thirty miles from Cripple Creek, is fitly named in honor of James M. Guffey, the successful Pennsylvania oil-producer and political leader, who has big mining interests in that section.

The Fonner pool, Greene county, was the oil-sensation of 1897 in Pennsylvania. The Fonner well, struck in March, and territory around it sold for two-hundred-thousand dollars. Elk Fork wore the West-Virginia belt, Peru took the Hoosier biscuit and Lucas county the Buckeye premium.

When the biggest well in Indiana flowed oil fifty feet above the derrick, at Van Buren, a local paper noted the effect thus: “The strike has given the town a tremendous boom. Several real-estate offices have opened and the town-council has raised the license for faro-banks from five dollars a year to twelve dollars.” At this rate Van Buren ought soon to be in the van.