Along the Allegheny from Oil Creek—The First Petroleum Company’s Big Strike—Ruler of President—Fagundas, Tidioute and Triumph Hill—The Economites—Warren and Forest—Cherry Grove’s Bombshell—Scouts and Mystery Wells—Exciting Experiences in the Middle Field—Draining a Juicy Section of Oildom.

“The ocean is vast and our craft is small.”—Norman Gunnison.

“Heaven sends us good meat, but the devil sends cooks.”—Garrick.

“Keep account of crises and transactions in this life.”—Mrs. Browning.

“Five minutes in a crisis is worth years.”—Freeman Hunt.

“It does upset a man’s calculationscalculations most confoundedly.”—Grant Allen.

“Run if you like, but try to keep your breath.”—Holmes.

“Then it was these Philistine sinners’ turn to be skeered and they broke for the brush.”—Dr. Pierson.

“And all may do what has by man been done.”—Edward Young.

“Spurr’d boldly on and dashed through thick and thin.”—Dryden.

In transforming the unfruitful, uninteresting Valley of Oil Creek into the rich, attractive Valley of Petroleum the course of developments was southward from the Drake well. Although some persons imagined that a pool or a strip bordering the stream would be the limit of successful operations, others entertained broader ideas and believed the petroleum-sun was not doomed to rise and set on Oil Creek. The Evans well at Franklin confirmed this view. Naturally the Allegheny River was regarded with favor as the base of further experiments. Quite as naturally the town at the junction of the river and the creek was benefited. The Michigan Rock-Oil-Company laid out building-lots and Oil City grew rapidly in wealth, ambition, enterprise and population. From a half-dozen dwellings, two unbridged streams, the remnants of an iron-furnace and a patch of cleared land on the flats it speedily advanced to a hustling settlement of five-thousand souls, “out for the stuff” and all eager for profit. Across the Allegheny, on the Downing and Bastian farms, William L. Lay laid out the village of Laytonia in 1863 and improved the ferriage. Phillips & Vanausdall, who struck a thirty-barrel well on the Downing farm in 1861, established a ferry above Bastian’s and started the suburbs of Albion and Downington. In 1865 these were merged into Imperial City, which in 1866 was united with Laytonia and Leetown to form Venango City. In 1871 the boroughs of Venango City and Oil City were incorporated as the city of Oil City, with William M. Williams as mayor. Three passenger-bridges, one railroad bridge and an electric street-railway connect the north and south sides of the “Hub of Oildom.” Beautiful homes, first-class schools and churches, spacious business-blocks, paved streets, four railroads, electric-lights, water-works, pipe-line offices, strong banks, enormous tube-works, huge refineries, bright newspapers, a paid fire-department, all the modern conveniences and twelve-thousand clever people make Oil City one of the busiest and most desirable towns in or out of Pennsylvania.

The largest of twenty-five or thirty wells drilled around Walnut Bend, six miles up the river, in 1860-65, was rated at two-hundred barrels. Four miles farther, two miles north-east of the mouth of Pithole Creek, John Henry settled on the north bank of the river in 1802. Henry’s Bend perpetuates the name of this brave pioneer, who reared a large family and died in 1858. The farm opposite Henry’s, at the crown of the bend, Heydrick Brothers, of French Creek township, leased in the fall of 1859. Jesse Heydrick organized the Wolverine Oil-Company, the second ever formed to drill for petroleum. Thirty shares of stock constituted its capital of ten-thousand-five-hundred dollars. The first well, one-hundred-and-sixty feet deep, pumped only ten barrels a day, giving Wolverine shares a violent chill. The second, also sunk in 1860, at three-hundred feet flowed fifteen-hundred barrels! Beside this giant the Drake well was a midget. The Allegheny had knocked out Oil Creek at a stroke, the production of the Heydrick spouter doubling that of all the others in the region put together. It was impossible to tank the oil, which was run into a piece of low ground and formed a pond through which yawl-boats were rowed fifty rods! By this means seven-hundred barrels a day could be saved. At last the tubing was drawn, which decreased the yield and rendered pumping necessary. The well flowed and pumped about one-hundred-thousand barrels, doing eighty a day in 1864-5, when the oldest producer in Venango county. It was a celebrity in its time and proved immensely profitable. In December of 1862 Jesse Heydrick went to Irvine, forty miles up the river, to float down a cargo of empty barrels. Twenty-five miles from Irvine, on the way back, the river was frozen from bank to bank. He sawed a channel a mile, ran the barrels to the well, filled them, loaded them in a flat-boat and arrived at Pittsburg on a cold Saturday before Christmas. Oil was scarce, the zero-weather having prevented shipments, and he sold at thirteen dollars a barrel. A thaw set in, the market was deluged with crude and in four days the price dropped to two dollars! Stock-fluctuations had no business in the game with petroleum.

Wolverine shares climbed out of sight. Mr. Heydrick bought the whole batch, the lowest costing him four-thousand dollars and the highest fifteen-thousand. He sold part of his holdings on the basis of fifteen-hundred-thousand dollars for the well and farm of two-hundred acres, forty-three-thousand times the original value of the land! Heydrick Brothers bored seventy wells on three farms in President township, one of which cost eighteen months’ labor and ten-thousand dollars in money and produced nine barrels of oil. They disposed of it, the new owner fussed with it and for five years received fifteen barrels of oil a day.

Accidents and incidents resulting from the Wolverine operations would fill a dime-novel. Jesse Heydrick, organizer of the company, went east with two or three-hundred-thousand dollars, presumably to “play Jesse” with the bulls and bears of Wall Street. He returned in a year or more destitute of cash, but loaded with entertaining tales of adventure. He told a thrilling story of his abduction from a New-York wharf and shipment to Cuba by a band of kidnappers, who stole his money and treated him harshly. He endured severe hardships and barely escaped with his life and a mine of experience. Working his way north, he resumed surveying, prepared valuable maps of the Butler field and was a standard authority on oil-matters in the district. For years he was connected with a pipe-line in Ohio, returning thence to Butler, his present residence, to engage in oil-operations. Mr. Heydrick is cultured and social, brimful of information and interesting recitals, and not a bilious crank who thinks the world is growing worse because he lost a fortune. A brother at Franklin was president of the Oil-City Bank, incorporated in 1864 as a bank of issue and forced to the wall in 1866, and served a year on the Supreme Bench. James Heydrick was a skilled surveyor and Charles W. resided at the old homestead on French Creek. Heydrick Brothers were “the Big Four” in developments that brought the Allegheny-River region into the petroleum-column. It is singular that the Heydrick well, located at random thirty-seven years ago, was the largest ever struck on the banks of the zig-zagged, ox-bowed stream.

Eight rods square on the Heydrick tract leased for five-thousand dollars and fifty per cent. of the oil, while the Wolverine shares attested the increasing wealth of the oil-interest and the pitch to which oil-stocks might rise. Hussey & McBride secured the Henry farm and obtained a large production in 1860-1. The Walnut Tree and Orchard wells headed the list. Warren & Brother pumped oil from Pithole to Henryville, a small town on the flats, of whose houses, hotels, stores and shipping-platforms no scrap survives. The Commercial Oil-Company bought the Culbertson farm, above Henry, and drilled extensively on Muskrat and Culbertson Runs. Patrick McCrea, the first settler on the river between Franklin and Warren, the first Allegheny ferryman north of Franklin and the first Catholic in Venango county, migrated from Virginia in 1797 to the wilds of North-western Pennsylvania. C. Curtiss purchased the McCrea tract of four-hundred acres in 1861 and stocked it in the Eagle Oil-Company of Philadelphia. Fair wells were found on the property and the town of Eagle Rock attained the dignity of three-hundred buildings. An eagle could fly away with all that is left of the town and the wells.

Farther along Robert Elliott, who removed from Franklin, owned one-thousand acres on the south side of the river and built the first mill in President township. Rev. Ralph Clapp built a blast-furnace in 1854-5, a mile from the mouth of Hemlock Creek, at the junction of which with the Allegheny a big hotel, a store and a shop are situated. Mr. Clapp gained distinction in the pulpit and in business, served in the Legislature and died in 1865. His son, Edwin E. Clapp, had a block of six-thousand acres, the biggest slice of undeveloped territory in Oildom. Productive wells have been sunk on the river-front, but Clapp invariably refused to sell or lease except once. To Kahle Brothers, for the sake of his father’s friendship for their father, he leased two-hundred acres, on which many good wells are yielding nicely. Preferring to keep his own lands untouched until he “got good and ready,” he operated largely at Tidioute, he and his brother, John M. Clapp, acquiring great wealth. He was chairman of the Producers’ Council and active in the memorable movements of 1871-3. He built for his home the President Hotel, furnishing it with every comfort and luxury except the one no bachelor can possess. From him Macadam, Talbot and Nicholson could have learned much about road-making. At his own expense he constructed many a mile of first-class roads in President, grading, ditching and leveling in a fashion to make a bicycler’s mouth water. There was not a scintilla of pride or affectation in his composition. It is told that an agent of the Standard Oil-Company appointed a time to meet him “on important business.” The interview lasted two minutes. “What is the business?” interrogated Clapp. “Our company authorizes me to offer you one-million dollars for your lands in President and I am prepared to pay you the money.” “Anything else?” “No.” “Well, the land isn’t for sale; good-morning!” Off went Clapp as coolly as though he had merely received a bid for a bushel of potatoes. Whether true or not, the story is characteristic. As a friend to swear by, a helper of the poor, a believer in fair-play, a prime joker and an inimitable weaver of comic yarns few could equal, none excel, the “President of President.” He died in July, 1897.

Around Tionesta, the county-seat of Forest, numerous holes were punched. Thomas Mills, who operated in Ohio and missed opening the SistersvilleSistersville field by a scratch, drilled in 1861-2. The late George S. Hunter—he built Tionesta’s first bridge and ought to have a monument for enterprise—hunted earnestly for paying territory. Up Tionesta Creek operations extended slowly, but developments in 1882-3 atoned for the delay. Then Forest county was “the cynosure of all eyes,” each week springing fresh surprises. Balltown had a crop of dry-holes, followed by wells of all grades from twenty barrels to fifteen-hundred. At Henry’s Mills and on the Cooper lands, north-east of Balltown and running into Warren county, spouters were decidedly in vogue. Reno No. 1 well, finished in December of 1882, flowed twenty-eight-hundred barrels! Reno No. 2, McCalmont Oil-Company’s No. 1, Patterson’s and the Anchor Oil-Company’s No. 14 went over the fifteen-hundred mark. In the midst of these gushers Melvin, Walker & Shannon’s duster indicated spotted territory, uncertain as the verdict of a petit jury. The Forest splurge held the entire oil-trade on the ragged edge for months. Every time one or more fellows took to the woods to manipulate a wildcat-well oil took a tumble. Notwithstanding the magnitude of the business, with thirty-six-million barrels of oil in stock and untold millions of dollars invested, the report from Balltown or Cooper of a new strike caused a bad break. Some owners of important wells worked them as “mysteries” to “milk the trade.” Derricks were boarded tightly, armed men kept intruders from approaching too near and information was withheld or falsified until the gang of manipulators “worked the market.” To offset this leading dealers employed “scouts,” whose mission was to get correct news at all hazards. The duties of these trusty fellows involved great labor, night watches, incessant vigilance and sometimes personal danger. The “mystery” racket and the introduction of “scouts” were new elements in the business, necessitated by the peculiar tactics of a small clique whose methods were not always creditable. The passing of the Forest field, which declined with unprecedented rapidity, practically ended the system that had terrorized the oil-exchanges in New York, Oil City, Bradford and Pittsburg. The collapse of the Cooper pool was more unexpected than the striking of a gusher would be under any circumstances. Its influence upon oil-values was ridiculously disproportionate to its merits, just as the tail sometimes wags the dog.

Closely allied to Balltown and Cooper in its principal features, its injurious effects and sudden depreciation, was the field that taught the Forest lesson. On May nineteenth, 1882, the oil-trade was paralyzed by the report of a big well in Cherry-Grove township, Warren county, miles from previous developments. The general condition of the region was prosperous, with an advancing market and a favorable outlook. The new well—the famous “646”—struck the country like a cyclone. Nobody had heard a whisper of the finding of oil in the hole George Dimick was drilling near the border of Warren and Forest. The news that it was flowing twenty-five-hundred barrels flashed over the wires with disastrous consequences. The excitement in the oil-exchanges, as the price of certificates dropped thirty to fifty per cent. in a few moments, was indescribable. Margins and small-fry holders were wiped out in a twinkling and the losses aggregated millions. It was a panic of the first water, far-reaching and ruinous. A plunge from one-thirty to fifty-five cents for crude meant distress and bankruptcy to thousands of producers and persons carrying oil. Men comfortably off in the morning were beggared by noon. Other wells speedily followed “646.” The Murphy, the Mahoopany and scores more swelled the daily yield to thirty-thousand barrels. Five-hundred wells were rushed down with the utmost celerity. Big companies bought lands at big prices and operated on a big scale. Pipe-lines were laid, iron-tanks erected and houses reared by the hundred. Cherry Grove dwarfed the richest portions of the region into insignificance. It bade fair to swamp the business, to flood the world with cheap oil, to compel the abandonment of entire districts and to crush the average operator. But if the rise of Cherry Grove was vividly picturesque, its fall was startlingly phenomenal. One dark December morning the workmen noticed that the Forest Oil-Company’s largest gusher had stopped flowing. Within a week the disease had spread like an epidemic. Spouters ceased to spout and obstinately declined to pump. The yield was counted by dozens of barrels instead of thousands. In January one-fourth the wells were deserted and the machinery removed. Three-hundred wells on April first yielded hardly two-thousand barrels, three-quarters what “646” or the Murphy had done alone! The suddenness of the topple cast Oil Creek into the shade and eclipsed Pithole itself. Piles of junk represented miles of pipe-lines and acres of tanks. The Cooper fever was breaking out and, with Henry’s Mills and Balltown, repeated in 1883 the hurrah of 1882. For eleven months the Forest-Warren pools fretted and fumed, producing five-million barrels of oil and having the trade by the throat. In that brief period Cherry Grove came and went, Cooper threatened and subsided, and Balltown was bowled out. Nine-tenths of the operators figured as heavy losers. Pennsylvania’s production shrank from ninety-thousand barrels to sixty-thousand and a healthy reaction set in. Petroleum-developments often presented remarkable peculiarities, but the strangest of all was the readiness with which speculators time and again fell a prey to the schemes of Forest-Warren jobbers, whose “picture is turned to the wall.”

The professional “oil-scout” first became prominent at Cherry Grove. He was neither an Indian fighter nor a Pinkerton detective, although possessing the courage and sharpness of both. He combined a knowledge of woodcraft and human-nature with keen discernment, acute judgment and infinite patience. S. B. Hughes, J. C. Tennent, P. C. Boyle, J. C. McMullen, Frank H. Taylor, Joseph Cappeau, James Emery and J. H. Rathbun were captains in the good work of worrying and circumventing the “mystery” men. Hughes rendered service that won the confidence of his employers and brought him a competence. Never caught napping, for one special feat he was said to have received ten-thousand dollars. It was not uncommon for him and his comrades to keep their boots on a week at a stretch, to snatch a nap under a tree or on a pile of casing, to creep on all-fours inside the guard-lines and watch pale Luna wink merrily and the bright stars twinkle while reclining on the damp ground to catch the faintest sound from a mystified well. Boyle and Tennent made brilliant plays in the campaign of 1882-3. Captain J. T. Jones, failing to get correct information regarding “646,” lost heavily on long oil when the Cherry-Grove gusher hypnotized the market and sent Tennent from Bradford to size up the wells and the movements of those manipulating them. Michael Murphy, learning that Grace & Dimick were quietly drilling a wildcat-well on lot 646, smelled a large-sized rodent and concluded to share in the sport. For one-hundred dollars an acre and one-eighth the usufruct Horton, Crary & Co., the Sheffield tanners, sold him lot 619, north-east of 646. Murphy had cut his eye-teeth as an importer—John S. Davis was his partner—of oil-barrels, an exporter of crude and an operator at Bradford. He pushed a well on the south-west corner of his purchase and secured lands in the vicinity. Grace & Dimick held back their well a month to tie up lots and complete arrangements regarding the market. Everything was managed adroitly. The trade had not a glimmer of suspicion that a bombshell might be fired at any moment. Murphy’s rig burned down on May fifteenth, he was in Washington trying to close a deed for another tract and “646” was put through the sand. On June second Murphy’s No. 1, which he guarded strictly after rebuilding the rig, flowed sixteen-hundred barrels. His No. 2, finished on July third, flowed thirty-six-hundred barrels in twenty-four hours! The Mahoopany and a half-dozen others aided in the demoralization of prices. Murphy sold eighty acres of lot 619 for fifty-thousand dollars to the McCalmont Oil-Company. The Anchor Oil-Company’s gusher on lot 647 caught fire, without curtailing the flow, and was burning furiously as “Jim” Tennent arrived from Bradford. The scouts had their hands full, with the “white-sand pools” and the keenest masters of “mystery wells” to demand their best licks.

Watching Murphy’s dry-hole on lot 633 was Tennent’s initial job. The Whale Oil-Company’s duster on lot 648 next claimed the attention of the scouts. It had been drilled below the sand-level and the tools left at the bottom. On Sunday night, July ninth, 1882, Boyle, Tennent and two companions raised the tools by hand, measured the well with a steel-line and telegraphed their principals that it was dry. This report jumped the market on Monday morning from forty-nine cents to sixty. The Shannon well on the Cooper tract needed constant care and the scouts divided the labor. Tennent and Rathbun one night sought to crawl near the well. A twig snapped off and a guard fired, the ball grazing “Jim’s” ear. In December Boyle and W. C. Edwards drilled Grandin No. 4 below the sand before the owners knew the rock had been reached. Its failure surprised the trade as much as the success of “646.” Boyle actually posted the guards to keep intruders away and they refused to let W. W. Hague, an owner of the well, inside the line until the contractor appeared and permitted him to pass! Boyle and Tennent did fine work north of the Cooper field. At the Shultz well Tennent, in order to make a quick trip of a half-mile to the pipe-line telegraph, clung to the tail of Cappeau’s horse and kept up with the animal’s gallop. Mercury might not have endorsed that style of locomotion, but it served the purpose and got the news to Jones ahead of everybody else. Tennent played the market skillfully, cleared twenty-five-thousand dollars on Macksburg lands and operated with tolerable success in McKean county. Nine years ago he removed to his thousand-acre prairie-farm in Kansas, the land of sockless statesman and nimble grasshoppers.

Boyle, brimful of novel resources, puzzled the “mystery” chaps by his bold ingenuity and usually beat them at their own game. He squarely overmatched the field-marshals of manipulation. His fertile brain originated the plan of drilling Grandin No. 4 and other test wells. The night he went to drill the Grace well through the sand he paid the ferryman at Dunham’s Mills not to answer any calls until morning, thus cutting off all chance of pursuit and surprise. At the well Boyle wrote an order to deliver the well to Tennent, signing it Pickwick, and the drillers retired to bed! Somebody had been there before them and poured back the sand-pumpings. At the Patterson well Boyle devised a code of tin-horn signals that outwitted the men inside the derrick and flashed the result to Gusher City. The number of expedients continually devised was a marvel. Thanks to the energy and ability of these tireless scouts, of whose midnight exploits, wild rides, hairbreadth escapes and queer adventures many pages could be written, the effect of “mysteries” was frequently neutralized and at length the whole system of guarded wells, bull-dogs and shot-guns was eliminated.

The Forest-Warren white-sand pools marked a new era in developments, with new ideas and new methods to hoodoo speculation. Cherry Grove had wilted from twenty-five-thousand barrels in September to three-thousand in December, when Cooper Hill loomed above the horizon and Balltown appeared on deck. Shallow wells had been sunk far up Tionesta Creek in 1862-3. Near the two dwellings, saw-mill, school-house and barn dubbed Foxburg, the stamping-ground of deer-hunters and bark-peelers, Marcus Hulings—his name is a synonym for successful wildcatting—in 1876 drilled a well that smacked of oil. The derrick stood ten years and globules of grease bubbled up from the depths, a thousand feet beneath. C. A. Shultz, a piano-tuner, taking his cue from the Hulings well, interested Frederick Morck, a Warren jeweler, and leased the Fox estate and contiguous lands in 1881. The Blue-Jay and two Darling wells, small producers, created a ripple which dry-holes evaporated. They were on Warrant 2991, Howe township, known to fame as the Cooper tract, north-west of Foxburg. The conditions of the lease required a well at the western end of the warrant. Cherry Grove was at its zenith, crude was flirting with the fifties and operators considered the Blue-Jay chick a lean bird. J. Mainwaring leased one-hundred acres from Morck & Shultz and built a rig at the head of a wild ravine, in the sunless woodland, a half-mile from Tionesta Creek. He lost faith and the Mainwaring lease and rig passed to P. M. Shannon, of Bradford. Born in Clarion county, Philip Martin Shannon enlisted at fourteen, served gallantly through the war, traveled as salesman for a Pittsburg house and in 1870 cast his lot with the oilmen at Parker. A pioneer at Millerstown and its burgess in 1874, he filled the office capably and in 1876 received a big majority at the Republican primary for the legislative nomination. The county-ring counted him out. He drifted with the tide to Bullion, removed to Bradford in 1879, was elected mayor in 1885 and discharged his official duties with excellent discretion. Temperate in habits and upright in conduct, Mayor Shannon had been an observer and not a participant in the nether side of oil-region life and knew where to draw the line. He was a favorite in society, high in Masonic circles and efficient in securing lands for firms with which he had become connected. Pittsburg is now his home and he manages the company that is developing the Wyoming field. Mr. Shannon is always generous and courteous. He could give a scout “the marble heart,” lecture an offender, denounce a wrong or decline to furnish points regarding his mystery-well in a good-natured way that disarmed criticism. He retains his old-time geniality and prosperity has not compelled him to buy hats three sizes larger than he wore at Parker and Millerstown “in the days of auld lang-syne.”

A. B. Walker and T. J. Melvin joined Shannon in his Cooper venture. A road was cut through the dense forest from the Fox farm-house up the steep hill to the Mainwaring derrick. An engine and boiler were dragged to the spot and Captain Haight contracted to drill the hole. Melvin and Walker, believing the well a failure at eighteen-hundred feet, went to Cherry Grove on July twenty fifth, 1882. Shannon stayed to urge the drill a trifle farther and it struck the sand at one o’clock next day. He drove in two pine-plugs, sent a messenger for his partners and filled the well with water to shut in the oil. The well wouldn’t consent to be plugged and drowned. The stream broke loose at three o’clock, hurling the tools and plugs into the Forest ozone. Shannon and Haight, standing in the derrick, narrowly escaped death as the tools crashed through the roof and fell to the floor. More plugs, sediment and old clothes were jammed down to conceal the true inwardness of the well, news of which was expected to pulverize the market. Heavy flows following the expulsion of the tools led the owners to anticipate a big strike. Outposts were established and guards, each armed with a Winchester rifle, were changed every six hours. The wildcat-well, eight miles from a telegraph-wire, became an entrenched camp with a half-dozen wakeful scouts besieging the citadel. Vicksburg was not guarded more vigilantly. If a twig cracked or an owl hooted a shower of bullets whizzed in the direction of the noise. Through August the well was permitted to slumber, oil that forced a passage in spite of the obstructions running into pits inside “the dead-line.” The trade staggered under the adverse fear of the mystery. Bradford operators formed a syndicate with the owners in lands and speculation and sold a million barrels of crude short. When everything was ready to spring the trap some of the parties went to drill out the plugs and usher in the market-crusher. “We have a jack-pot to open at our pleasure” remarked one of them, voicing the sentiment of all. None looked for anything smaller than fifteen-hundred barrels. The four drillers were discharged and two trusted lieutenants turned the temper-screw and dressed the bits. Ten plugs and a mass of dirt must be cleaned out. From a distance the scouts timed every motion of the walking-beam, gluing their eyes to field-glasses that not a symptom of a flow might slip their eager gaze, “like stout Cortez when he stared at the Pacific upon a peak in Darien.” Swift horses were fastened to convenient trees, saddled and bridled for a race to the telegraph-office. A slice of bread and a can of beans served for food. For days the drilling continued. On September fourteenth the last splinter of the plugs was extracted, the sand was cut deeper and—the well didn’t respond worth a cent! The faithful scouts, who had stood manfully between the trade and the manipulators, rushed the report. It was a bracer to the market. Bears who pinned their hopes to the Shannon well, the pivot upon which petroleum hinged, scrambled to cover their shorts at heavy loss. Balltown duplicated some of the Cooper experiences, mystery-wells on Porcupine Run agitating the trade in the spring of 1883. The Cherry-Grove, Cooper-Hill and Balltown pools yielded eight or nine-million barrels. Operations extended to Sheffield and the cream was soon skimmed off. The middle field had enjoyed a very lively inning.

Two miles back of Trunkeyville, on the west side of the Allegheny, Calvert, Gilchrist & Risley drilled the Venture well in April, 1870, on the Tuttle farm. Fisher Brothers, of Oil City, and O. D. Harrington, of Titusville, bought the well for fifteen-thousand dollars when it touched the third sand. It was eight-hundred feet deep, flowed three-hundred barrels and started the Fagundas field. The day after it began flowing the Fishers, Adnah Neyhart, Grandin Brothers and David Bently paid one-hundred-and-twenty-thousand dollars for the Fagundas farm of one-hundred-and-sixty acres. Mrs. Fagundas, one son and one daughter died within three months of the sale. Neyhart & Grandin bought a half-interest in David Beatty’s farm for ninety-thousand dollars. The Lady Burns well, on the Wilkins farm, finished in June, seconded the Venture. A daily production of three-thousand barrels and a town of twenty-five-hundred population followed quickly. A mile from Fagundas operations on the Hunter, Pearson, Guild and Berry farms brought the suburb of Gillespie into being. The territory lasted and a small yield is obtained to-day. A half-dozen houses, the Venture derrick, Andrews & Co.’s big store and the office in which whole-souled M. Compton—he’s in Pittsburg with the Forest Oil-Company now—labored as secretary of the Producers’ Council, hold the fort on the site of well-nigh-forgotten Fagundas. William H. Calvert, who projected the Venture well, died at Sistersville, West Virginia, on February seventeenth, 1896. He had drilled on Oil Creek and at Pithole, operated in the southern field and was negotiating for a block of lands near Sistersville when a clot of blood on the brain cut short his active life.

David Beatty had drilled on Oil Creek in 1859-60 with John Fertig. He settled on a farm in Warren county “to get away from the oil.” His farm was smothered in oil by the Fagundas development. He removed to the pretty town of Warren, building an elegant home on the bank of Conewango Creek. Fortune hounded him and insisted upon heaping up his riches. John Bell drilled a fifty-barrel well eighty rods above the mansion. Wells surrounding his lot and in his yard emitted oil. Mr. Beatty resigned himself to the inevitable and lived at Warren until called to his final rest some years ago. His case resembled the heroine in Milton Nobles’s Phenix, where “the villain still pursued her.” The boys used to relate how a negro, the first man to die at Oil City after the advent of petroleum, was buried in a lot on the flats. Somebody wanted that precise spot next day to drill a well and the corpse was planted on the hill-side. The next week that particular location was selected for a well and the body was again exhumed. To be sure of getting out of reach of the drill the friends of the deceased boated his remains down the river to Butler county. Twelve years later the bones were disinterred—an oil-company having leased the old graveyard—and put in the garden of the dead man’s son, to be handy for any further change of base that may be required.

At East Hickory the Foster well, drilled in 1863, flowed three-hundred barrels of amber oil. Two-hundred wells were sunk in the Hickory district, which proved as tough as Old Hickory to nineteen-twentieths of the operators. Three Hickory Creeks—East Hickory and Little Hickory on the east and West Hickory—enter the river within two miles. Near the mouth of West Hickory three Scotchmen named McKinley bored a well two-hundred-and-thirty feet in 1861. They found oil and were preparing to tube the well when the war broke out and they abandoned the field. A well on the flats, drilled in 1865, flowed two-hundred barrels of lubricating oil, occasioning a furore. One farm sold for a hundred-thousand dollars and adjacent lands were snapped up eagerly.

Ninety-five years ago hardy lumbermen settled permanently in Deerfield township, Warren county, thirty miles above the mouth of Oil Creek. Twenty years later a few inhabitants, supported by the lumber trade, had collected near the junction of a small stream with the Allegheny. Bold hills, grand forests, mountain rills and the winding river, sprinkled with green islets, invested the spot with peculiar charms. Upon the creek and hamlet the poetic Indian name of Tidioute, signifying a cluster of islands, was fittingly bestowed. Samuel Grandin, who located near Pleasantville, Venango county, in 1822, removed to Tidioute in 1839. He owned large tracts of timber-lands and increased the mercantile and lumbering operations that gave him prominence and wealth. Mr. Grandin maintained a high character and died at a ripe age. His oldest son, John Livingston Grandin, returned from college in 1857 and engaged in business with his father, assuming almost entire control when the latter retired from active pursuits. News of Col. Drake’s well reached the four-hundred busy residents of the lumber-center in two days. Col. Robinson, of Titusville, rehearsed the story of the wondrous event to an admiring group in Samuel Grandin’s store. Young J. L. listened intently, saddled his horse and in an hour purchased thirty acres of the Campbell farm, on Gordon Run, below the village, for three-hundred dollars. An “oil-spring” on the property was the attraction. Next morning he contracted with H. H. Dennis, a man of mechanical skill, to drill a well “right in the middle of the spring.” The following day a derrick—four pieces of scantling—towered twenty feet, a spring-pole was procured, the “spring” was dug to the rock, and the “tool” swung at the first oil-well in Warren county and among the first in Pennsylvania. Dennis hammered a drilling-tool from a bar of iron three feet long, flattening one end to cut two-and-a-half inches, the diameter of the hole. In the upper end of the drill he formed a socket, to hold an inch-bar of round iron, held by a key riveted though and lengthened as the depth required. Two or three times a day, when the “tool” was drawn out to sharpen the bit and clean the hole, the key had to be cut off at each joint! With this rude outfit drilling began the first week of September, 1859, and the last week of October the well was down one-hundred-and-thirty-four feet. Tubing would not go into the hole and it was enlarged to four inches. The discarded axle of a tram-car, used to carry lumber from Gordon Run to the river, furnished iron for the reamer. Days, weeks and months were consumed at this task. At last, when the hole had been enlarged its full depth, the reamer was let down “to make sure the job was finished.” It stuck fast, never saw daylight again and the well sunk with so much labor had not one drop of oil!

Other wells in the locality fared similarly, none finding oil nearer than Dennis Run, a half-mile distant. There scores of large wells realized fortunes for their owners. In two years James Parshall was a half-million ahead. He settled at Titusville and built the Parshall House—a mammoth hotel and opera-house—which fire destroyed. The “spring” on the Campell farm is in existence and the gravel is impregnated with petroleum, supposed to percolate through fissures in the rocks from Dennis Run.

During the summer of 1860 developments extended across and down the river a mile from Tidioute. The first producing well in the district, owned by King & Ferris, of Titusville, started in the fall at three-hundred barrels and boomed the territory amazingly. It was on the W. W. Wallace lands—five-hundred acres below town—purchased in 1860 by the Tidioute & Warren Oil-Company, the third in the world. Samuel Grandin, Charles Hyde and Jonathan Watson organized it. J. L. Grandin, treasurer and manager of the company, in eight years paid the stockholders twelve-hundred-thousand dollars dividends on a capital of ten-thousand! He leased and sub-leased farms on both sides of the Allegheny, drilling some dry-holes, many medium wells and a few large ones. He shipped crude to the seaboard, built pipe-lines and iron-tanks and became head of the great firm of Grandins & Neyhart. Elijah Bishop Grandin—named from the father of C. E. Bishop, founder of the Oil-City Derrick—who had carried on a store at Hydetown and operated at Petroleum Centre, resumed his residence at Tidioute in 1867 and associated with his brother and brother-in-law, Adnah Neyhart, in producing, buying, storing and transporting petroleum. Mr. Neyhart and Joshua Pierce, of Philadelphia, had drilled on Cherry Run, on Dennis Run and at Triumph and engaged largely in shipping oil to the coast. Pierce & Neyhart—J. L. Grandin was their silent partner—dissolved in 1869. The firm of Grandins & Neyhart, organized in 1868, was marvelously successful. Its high standing increased confidence in the stability of financial and commercial affairs in the oil-regions. The brothers established the Grandin Bank and Neyhart, besides handling one-fourth of the crude produced in Pennsylvania, opened a commission-house in New York to sell refined, under the skilled management of John D. Archbold, now vice-president of the Standard Oil-Company. They and the Fisher Brothers owned the Dennis Run and Triumph pipe-lines and piped the oil from Fagundas, where they drilled a hundred prolific wells and were the largest operators. They bought properties in different portions of the oil-fields, extended their pipe-lines to Titusville and erected tankage at Parker and Miller Farm. The death of Mr. Neyhart terminated their connection with oil-shipments.

Owning thousands of acres in Warren and Forest counties, the Grandins were heavily interested in developments at Cherry Grove, Balltown and Cooper. As those sections declined they gradually withdrew from active oil-operations, sold their pipe-lines and wound up their bank. J. L. Grandin removed to Boston and E. B. to Washington, to embark in new enterprises and enjoy, under most favorable conditions, the fruits of their prosperous career at Tidioute. Their business for ten years has been chiefly loaning money, farming and lumbering in the west. They purchased seventy-two-thousand acres in the Red-River Valley of Dakota—known the world over as “the Dalrymple Farm”—and in 1895 harvested six-hundred-thousand bushels of wheat and oats. They employ hundreds of men and horses, scores of ploughs and reapers and steam-threshers and illustrate how to farm profitably on the biggest scale. With Hunter & Cummings, of Tidioute, and J. B. White, of Kansas City, as partners, they organized the Missouri-Lumber-and-Mining-Company. The company owns two-hundred-and-forty-thousand acres of timber-land in Missouri and cut fifty-million feet of lumber last year in its vast saw-mills at Grandin, Carter county. Far-seeing, clear-headed, of unblemished repute and liberal culture, such men as J. L. and E. B. Grandin reflect honor upon humanity and deserve the success an approving conscience and the popular voice commend heartily.

Above Tidioute a number of “farmers’ wells”—shallow holes sunk by hand and soon abandoned—flickered and collapsed. On the islands in the river small wells were drilled, most of which the great flood of 1865 destroyed. Opposite the town, on the Economite lands, operations began in 1860. Steam-power was used for the first time in drilling. The wells ranged from five barrels to eighty, at one-hundred-and-fifty feet. They belonged to the Economites, a German society that enforced celibacy and held property in common. About 1820 the association founded the village of Harmony, Butler county, having an exclusive colony and transacting business with outsiders through the medium of two trustees. The members wore a plain garb and were distinguished for morality, simplicity, industry and strict religious principles. Leaving Harmony, they located in the Wabash Valley, lost many adherents, returned to Pennsylvania and built the town of Economy, in Beaver county, fifteen miles below Pittsburg. They manufactured silks and wine, mined coal and accumulated millions of dollars. A loan to William Davidson, owner of eight-thousand acres in Limestone township, Warren county, obliged them to foreclose the mortgage and bid in the tract. Their notions of economy applied to the wells, which they numbered alphabetically. The first, A well, yielded ten barrels, B pumped fifty and C flowed seventy. The trustees, R. L. Baker and Jacob Henrici, erected a large boarding-house for the workmen, whose speech and manners were regulated by printed rules. Pine and oak covered the Davidson lands, which fronted several miles on the Allegheny and stretched far back into the township. Of late years the Economite Society has been disintegrating, until its membership has shrunk to a dozen aged men and women. Litigation and mismanagement have frittered away much of its property. It seems odd that an organization holding “all things in common” should, by the perversity of fate, own some of the nicest oil-territory in Warren, Butler and Beaver counties. A recent strike on one of the southern farms flows sixty barrels an hour. Natural gas lighted and heated Harmony and petroleum appears bound to stick to the Economites until they have faded into oblivion.

Below the Economite tract numerous wells strove to impoverish the first sand. G. I. Stowe’s, drilled in 1860, pumped eight barrels a day for six years. The Hockenburg, named from a preacher who wrote an essay on oil, averaged twelve barrels a day in 1861. The Enterprise Mining-and-Boring-Company of New-York leased fifteen rods square on the Tipton farm to sink a shaft seven feet by twelve. Bed-rock was reached at thirty feet, followed by ten feet of shale, ten of gray sand, forty of slate and soap-rock and twenty of first sand. The shaft, cribbed with six-inch plank to the bottom of the first sand, tightly caulked to keep out water, was abandoned at one-hundred-and-sixty feet, a gas-explosion killing the superintendent and wrecking the timbers. Of forty wells on the Tipton farm in 1860-61 not a fragment remained in 1866.

Tidioute’s laurel wreath was Triumph Hill, the highest elevation in the neighborhood. Wells nine-hundred feet deep pierced sixty feet of oil-bearing sand, which produced steadily for years. Grandins, Fisher Brothers, M. G. Cushing, E. E. Clapp, John M. Clapp and other leading operators landed bounteous pumpers. The east side of the hill was a forest of derricks, crowded like trees in a grove. Over the summit and down the west side the sand and the development extended. For five years Triumph was busy and prosperous, yielding hundreds-of-thousands of barrels of oil and advancing Tidioute to a town of five-thousand population. Five churches, the finest school-buildings in the county, handsome houses, brick blocks, superior hotels and large stores greeted the eye of the visitor. The Grandin Block, the first brick structure, built of the first brick made in Deerfield township, contained an elegant opera-house. Three banks, three planing-mills, two foundries and three machine-shops flourished. A dozen refineries turned out merchantable kerosene. Water-works were provided and an iron bridge spanned the river. Good order was maintained and Tidioute—still a tidy village—played second fiddle to no town in Oildom for intelligence, enterprise and all-round attractiveness.

The tidal wave effervesced at intervals clear to the Colorado district. Perched on a hill in the hemlock woods, Babylon was the rendezvous of sports, strumpets and plug-uglies, who stole, gambled, caroused and did their best to break all the commandments at once. Could it have spoken, what tales of horror that board-house under the evergreen tree might recount! Hapless wretches were driven to desperation and fitted for the infernal regions. Lust and liquor goaded men to frenzy, resulting sometimes in homicide or suicide. In an affray one night four men were shot, one dying in an hour and another in six weeks. Ben. Hogan, who laughed at the feeble efforts of the township-constable to suppress his resort, was arrested, tried for murder and acquitted on the plea of self-defence. The shot that killed the first victim was supposed to have been fired by “French Kate,” Hogan’s mistress. She had led the demi-monde in Washington and led susceptible congressmen astray. Ben met her at Pithole, where he landed in the summer of 1865 and ran a variety-show that would make the vilest on the Bowery blush to the roots of its hair. He had been a prize-fighter on land, a pirate at sea, a bounty-jumper and blockade-runner, and prided himself on his title of the “Wickedest Man in the World.” Sentenced to death for his crimes against the government, President Lincoln pardoned him and he joined the myriad reckless spirits that sought fresh adventures in the Pennsylvania oil-fields. In a few months the Scripture legend—“Babylon has fallen”—applied to the malodorous Warren town. The tiger can “change his spots”—by moving from one spot to another—and so could Hogan. He was of medium height, square-shouldered, stout-limbed, exceedingly muscular and trained to use his fists. He fought Tom Allen at Omaha, sported at Saratoga and in 1872 ran “The Floating Palace”—a boat laden with harlots and whiskey—at Parker. The weather growing too cold and the law too hot for comfort, he opened a den and built an opera-house at Petrolia. In “Hogan’s Castle” many a clever young man learned the short-cut to disgrace and perdition. Now and then a frail girl met a sad fate, but the carnival of debauchery went on without interruption. Hogan put on airs, dressed in the loudest style and would have been the burgess had not the election-board counted him out! A fearless newspaper forcing him to leave Petrolia, Hogan went east to engage in “the sawdust swindle,” returned to the oil-regions in 1875, built an opera-house at Elk City, decamped from Bullion, rooted at Tarport and Bradford and departed by night for New York. Surfeited with revelry and about to start for Paris to open a joint, he heard music at a hall on Broadway and sat down to wait for the show to begin. Charles Sawyer, “the converted soak,” appeared shortly, read a chapter from the Bible and told of his rescue from the gutter. Ben was deeply impressed, signed the pledge at the close of the service, agonized in his room until morning and on his knees implored forgiveness. How surprised the angels must have been at the spectacle of the prodigal in this attitude! After a fierce struggle, to quote his own words, “peace filled my soul chock-full and I felt awful happy.” He claimed to be converted and set to work earnestly to learn the alphabet, that he might read the Scriptures and be an evangelist. He married “French Kate,” who also professed religion, but it didn’t strike in very deep and she eloped with a tough. Mr. Moody welcomed Hogan and advised him to traverse the country to offset as far as possible his former misdeeds. Amid the scenes of his grossest offenses his reception varied. High-toned Christians, who would not touch a down-trodden wretch with a ten-foot pole, turned up their delicate noses and refused to countenance “the low impostor.” They forgot that he sold his jewelry and most of his clothes, lived on bread and water and endured manifold privations to become a bearer of the gospel-message. Even ministers who proclaimed that “the blood of Christ cleanses from all sin” doubted Hogan’s salvation and showed him the cold shoulder in the chilliest orthodox fashion. He stuck manfully and for eighteen years has labored zealously in the vineyard. Judging from his struggles and triumphs, is it too much to believe that a front seat and a golden crown are reserved for the reformed pugilist, felon, robber, assassin of virtue and right bower of Old Nick? Unlike straddlers in politics and piety, who want to go to Heaven on velvet-cushions and pneumatic tires,tires,

LEWIS F. WATSON.