John J. McLaurin

Butler’s Rich Pastures Unfold Their Oleaginous Treasures—The Cross-Belt Deals Trumps—Petrolia, Karns City and Millerstown—Thorn Creek Knocks the Persimmons for a Time—McDonald Mammoths Break All Records—Invasion of Washington—Green County Has Some Surprises—Gleanings of More or Less Interest.

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“I’m comin’ from de Souf, Susanna, do’ant yo cry.”—Negro Melody.

“Again the lurid light gleamed out.”—J. Boyle O’Reilly.

“I have never been known to miss one end of the trail.”—J. Fennimore Cooper.

“An eagle does not catch flies.”—Latin Proverb.

“Step by step one goes very far.”—French Proverb.

“The light fell like a halo upon their bent heads.”—Rev. John Watson.

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

“I stretch lame hands of faith and grope.”—Tennyson.

“We but catch at the skirts of the thing we would be.”—Owen Meredith.

“Where are frost and snow when the hawthorn blooms?”—Julius Stinde.

“The things we see are shadows of the things to be.”—Phoebe Cary.

“Oh! but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp.”—Robert Browning.

“These little things are great to little man.”—Oliver Goldsmith.

“So will a greater fame redound to thee.”—Dante.

“Every white will have its black and every sweet its sour.”—Dr. Percy.

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DAVID DOUGALL.

Klondyke nuggets, cold, yellow and glittering, could not be more fascinating to lovers of the most exciting methods of gaining wealth than were the oil-wells that started Parker on the highway to prosperity. All eyes turned instinctively southward, believing the next center of activity lay in that direction. The Israelites scanning the horizon for a glimpse of the promised land were less earnest and anxious. Butler, not Canaan, was on everybody’s lips. “On to Richmond,” the frenzied cry during the civil war, appeared in the new dress of “On to Butler!” For a time, just to catch breath for the supreme movement, operators groped their way cautiously. But Napoleon scaled the Alps and the advance-couriers of the coming host of oilmen climbed Farren Hill and the slopes beyond. Julius CÆsar crossed the Rubicon in days of old, so Campbell and Lambing in 1871 crossed Bear Creek, three miles south-west of Parker, to plant the tall derricks which signified that the invasion of Butler by the petroleumites was about to begin and to be carried through to a finish. With Richard each of the bold invaders might declare:

“I have set my life upon a cast,

And I will stand the hazard of the die.”

Butler, the county-seat of Butler county, was laid out in 1802 by the Cunninghams, two brothers from Lancaster, who repose in the old cemetery. The surveyor was David Dougall, who lived seventy-five years alone, in a shanty near the court-house, dying at ninety-eight. He owned a row of tumble-down frames on the public-square, eye-sores to the community, but would not sell lest his poor tenants might suffer by a change of proprietors! His memory of local events was marvelous. He walked from Detroit through the forest to Butler, following an Indian trail, and remembered when Pittsburg had only three brick-buildings. He was agent of the McCandless family and once consented to spend a night at the mansion of his friends in Pittsburg. To do honor to the occasion he wore trousers made of striped bed-ticking. Fearing fire, he would not sleep up-stairs and a bed was provided in the parlor. About midnight an alarm sounded. Dougall jumped up, grabbed his shoes and hat and walked home-thirty-three miles-before breakfast. He was an eccentric bachelor and had his coffin ready for years. It was constructed of oak, grown on one of his farms, which he willed to a friend upon condition that the legatee buried him at the foot of a particular tree and kept a night-watchman at his grave one year. He was the last of his race and the last survivor of the bold pioneers to whom Butler owed its settlement.

BUTLER COUNTY

Well-known operators figured in the vicinity of Bear Creek. Joseph Overy drilled rows of good wells, pushed south and founded the town embalmed as St. Joe in compliment to its progenitor. Marcus Brownson—he was active in Venango and McKean and died at Titusville—had a walkover on the Walker farm, a mile in advance. On Donnelly’s eleven-hundred acres, offered in 1868 for six-thousand-dollars, scores of medium wells yielded from 1871 to 1878. S. D. Karns drained the Morrison farm and John McKeown hit the “sucker-rod belt”—so called from its extreme narrowness—near Martinsburg. Ralph Brothers tickled the sand on the Sheakley farm. Up the stream operations jogged and Argyle City sprouted on the hillside. Two miles ahead, upon the line dividing the Jameson and Blaney farms, Dimick, Nesbit & Co. finished a wildcat well on April seventeenth, 1892. This was the noted Fanny Jane—gallantly named in honor of a pretty girl—which pumped one-hundred barrels and gave birth to Petrolia, seven miles south by west of Parker. George H. Dimick, examining lands in Fairview township, Butler county, decided that a natural basin at the junction of South Bear Creek and Dougherty Run was oil-territory. Fifty men were raising a barn on the Campbell farm, overlooking this basin. Proceeding to the spot, he proposed to drill a test well if the owners of the soil would lease enough land to warrant the undertaking. Terms were agreed upon which secured twenty acres of the Blaney farm, sixteen of the Jameson, ten of the W. A. Wilson, ten of the James Wilson and ten of the Graham, at one-eighth royalty. The nearest producing wells at that date were three miles north. The Fanny Jane stirred the blood of the oil-clans. The moving mass began to-arrive in May and by July two-thousand people had their home at Petrolia.

A charter was obtained and Mr. Dimick was chosen burgess at the first borough-election, in February of 1873. The town expanded like the turnip Longfellow said “grew and it grew and it grew all it was able.” Hotels, stores, shops and offices lined the valley and dwellings crowned the hills. A narrow-gauge railroad from Parker was built in 1874, extended to Karns City and Millerstown and ultimately to Butler. Fisher Brothers paid sixty-thousand dollars for the Blaney farm and wells multiplied in all directions. A dog-fight or a street-scrap would gather hundreds of spectators. The Argyle Savings Bank handled hundreds-of-thousands of dollars daily. Ben Hogan erected a big opera-house and May Marshall was the Cora Pearl of the frail sisterhood. R. W. Cram ran the post-office and news-room. “Steve” Harley wafted newsy items to the newspapers. Dr. Frank H. Johnston, now of Franklin, was the first physician. Kindred spirits met at “Sam” McBride’s drug-store and Peter Christie’s Central Hotel. Poor “Sam,” “Dave” Mosier, H. L. McCance and S. S. Avery are in their graves and others have wandered nobody knows whither. Petrolia continued the metropolis four years and then dropped out of the game. Some straggling houses and left-over derricks alone remain of the gayest, sprightliest, hottest, busiest town that bloomed and withered in old Butler.

RICHARD JENNINGS
GEO NESBITS. D. KARNS.
GEORGE DIMICK

George H. Dimick, the son of a Wisconsin farmer and sire of Petrolia, is liberally stocked with the never-say-die qualities of the breezy Westerner. At nineteen he taught a Milwaukee school, landed on Oil Creek in 1860 and was appointed superintendent of the two Buchanan farms by Rouse & Mitchell. He drilled on his own account in the spring of 1861, aided in settling the Rouse estate, enrolled as a private in “Scott’s Nine-Hundred” and came out a captain at the close of the war. In May of 1865 he bent his footsteps towards Pithole, sold lands for the United States Petroleum-Company and drilled eleven dry-holes on the McKinney farm! Interests in the Poole, Grant, Eureka and Burchill spouters offset these losses and added thousands of dollars a week to his wealth. Staying at Pithole too long, values had shrunk to such a degree that he was virtually penniless at his departure from the “Magic City” in 1867. A whaling voyage of fifteen months in the Arctic seas and a sojourn at his boyhood home improved his health and he returned in time to share in the Pleasantville excitement. He located at Parker’s Landing in 1871 as partner of McKinney & Nesbit in the sale of oil-well supplies. He operated in the Parker field, at St. Petersburg, Petrolia, Greece City and Slippery Rock. Disposing of his properties in these localities, he and Captain Peter Grace drilled the wildcat-well that opened Cherry Grove and paralyzed the market in 1882. He had been active at Bradford and the middle field felt the influence of his shrewd movements. He has kept abreast of developments in the southern districts, sometimes getting several lengths ahead. He is now interested in West Virginia and Kentucky. Those who know his quick perception, his executive ability and his intense love for opening new fields would not wonder to hear of his striking a gusher at Oshkosh or Kamtschatka. Mr. Dimick is a man of active temperament, high character and sturdy industry, a genuine pathfinder and tireless explorer.

An Erie boy of fifteen when he left his father’s house for the oil-region in 1862, George H. Nesbit first fired a still in a Titusville refinery and in 1863 engaged with Dinsmore Brothers at Tarr Farm. He built a small refinery at Shaffer, sold it in 1864 and in the spring of 1865 drilled wells for himself on Benninghoff and Cherry-Tree Runs. He spent two years at Pithole, gaining a fortune and remaining until the collapse swallowed the bulk of his profits. He operated at Pioneer in 1867 and a year later at Pleasantville. He and George H. Dimick prospected in 1869 for oil-belts and fresh territory, located rich leases on Hickory Creek and established the line of the Venture well at Fagundas. In 1870 Nesbit moved to Parker and, in company with John L. McKinney, sold oil-well machinery and oil-lands. McKinney & Nesbit drilled along Bear Creek, especially on the Black and Dutchess farms, prospering greatly. The firm ranked with the most enterprising and realized large returns from wells at St. Petersburg and Parker. Dimick & Nesbit, with Mr. McKinney as their associate, opened the Petrolia field in 1872. William Lardin, the contractor of the Fanny Jane, bought McKinney’s interest in the well and leases. The three partners were right in the swim, their first six wells at Petrolia yielding them a thousand barrels a day. Nesbit bought the Patton farm, below town, in 1872 for twenty-thousand dollars, selling five-eighths. Five third-sand wells ranged from thirty to one-hundred barrels and oil ruled at three to five dollars. The fourth-sand was found in 1873, and in January of 1874 Nesbit & Lardin struck a thousand-barrel gusher on the Patton. The farm paid enormously and Nesbit became an “oil-prince.” He developed hundreds of acres and displayed masterly tact. His check was good for a half-million any day and his luck was so remarkable that, had he fallen into the river, probably he would not have been wet. He paid the highest wages and met his bills at sight. He entered the oil-exchange at Parker, for a time was a high-roller and ended a bankrupt! The desk on which he wrote his bold, round signature on checks aggregating many hundred-thousand dollars was stored away among shocks of corn and sheaves of oats in the weather-stained barn on the Patton farm. J. N. Ireland bought the tract for seven-thousand dollars. Nesbit drifted about aimlessly, heard from occasionally at Macksburg and fetching up at last in Cincinnati. His prestige was gone, his star had waned and he never “caught on” again. He was no sluggard in business, no dullard in society, no niggard with money, no laggard in the petroleum-column. Surely the oil-region has furnished its full allotment of sad romances from real life. Nesbit died July eighth, 1897.

“Time, with a face like a mystery,

And hands as busy as hands can be,

Sits at the loom with its warp outspread,

To catch in its meshes each glancing thread.

Click, click! there’s a thread of love wove in!

Click, click! and another of wrong and sin!

What a checkered thing this web will be

When we see it unrolled in eternity!”

James E. Brown, to whom Nesbit sold one-quarter of the Patton farm, made his mark upon the industries of the state. A carpenter’s son, he started a store on the site of Kittanning, saved money, purchased lands and at his death in 1880 left his family four-millions. He manufactured iron at various furnaces and owned a big block of stock in the rolling-mills at East Brady. Samuel J. Tilden was a stockholder in the works, which employed sixteen hundred men, turned out the first T-rails west of the Alleghenies and tottered to their fall in 1874. Mr. Brown cleared eight-hundred-thousand dollars in 1872 by the advance in iron. He owned oil-farms in Butler county, took stock in the Parker Bridge, the Parker & Karns City Railroad and the Karns Pipe-Line Company and conducted a bank at Kittanning. His granddaughter, Miss Findley, who inherited half his wealth, married Lord Linton, a British baronet. The aged banker—he stuck it out to eighty-two—knew how to pile up money.

Stephen Duncan Karns, who had a railroad and a town named in his honor, was a picturesque figure in the Armstrong-Butler district. With his two uncles he operated the first West-Virginia well, at the mouth of Burning-Spring Run, in 1860. His experience at his father’s Tarentum salt-wells enabled him to run engine, to sharpen tools and clean out an old salt-well to be tested for oil. The well pumped forty barrels a day during the winter of 1860-1. Fort Sumter was bombarded, several Kanawha operators were killed and young Karns escaped by night in a canoe. He enlisted, served three years, led his company at Antietam and Chancellorsville and in 1866 leased one acre at Parker’s Landing from Fullerton Parker. His first well, starting at one barrel a day, by months of pumping was increased to twelve barrels and earned him twenty-thousand dollars. From the Miles Oil-Company of New York he leased a farm and an abandoned well a mile below Parker. He drilled the well through the sand and it produced twenty-five barrels a day. This settled the question of oil south of Parker. “Dunc,” as he was usually called by his friends, leased the Farren farm, drilled on Bear Creek, secured the famous Stonehouse farm of three-hundred acres and in 1872 enjoyed an income of five-thousand dollars a day! A mile south of Petrolia, on the McClymonds farm, Cooper Brothers were about to give up their first well as a hopeless duster. Karns thought the hole not deep enough, bought the property, resumed drilling and in two days the well was flowing one-hundred barrels! The town of Karns City blossomed into a community of twenty-five-hundred people, with three big hotels, stores, offices and dwellings galore. It fell a prey to the flames eventually. The McClymonds, Riddle and J. B. Campbell farms doubled “Dunc’s” big income for many moons. He had the second well at Greece City and for a year or more was the largest producer in the oil-region. He built a pipe-line from Karns City to Harrisburg to fight the United Lines, held fifty-five-thousand dollars’ stock in the Parker Bridge and controlled the Parker & Karns-City Railroad and the Exchange Bank.

Near Freeport, on the Allegheny River, thirty miles above Pittsburg, he lassoed a great farm and erected a fifty-thousand-dollar mansion. Fourteen race-horses fed in his palatial stables. Guests might bathe in champagne and the generous host spent money royally. A good strike or a point gained meant a general jollification. He played billiards skillfully, handled cards expertly and wagered heavily on anything that hit his fancy. He and his wife were in Paris during the siege. Upon his return from Europe he built the Fredericksburg & Orange Railroad, in Virginia. The glut of crude from Butler wells dropped the price in 1874 to forty cents. Losses of different kinds cramped Karns and the man worth three-millions in 1872-3 was obliged to surrender his stocks and lands and wells and begin anew! James E. Brown secured Glen-Karns, the beautiful home below Freeport. In 1880 Karns induced E. O. Emerson, the wealthy Titusville producer, to start a cattle-ranch in Western Colorado. For six years he superintended the herds on the immense plains, joining the round-ups, sleeping on the ground with the boys, roping and branding cattle and accumulating a stock of health and muscle which he thinks will carry him to the hundred-year mark. Emerson had bought from Karns the Riddle farm for eleven-thousand dollars. He deepened one well—supposed dry—to the fourth sand. It flowed six-hundred barrels and Emerson sold the tract in sixty days for ninety-thousand dollars. Karns returned from the west, practiced law a short while in Philadelphia and for some years has managed a Populist paper at Pittsburg. He ran against John Dalzell for Congress and walked at the head of the parade when General Coxey’s “Army of the Commonweal” marched through the Smoky City. He enjoyed making money more than handling it, was honorable in his dealings, intensely active, comprehensive in his views and positive in his opinions. His “yes” or “no” was given promptly. “Dunc” is of slender build and nervous temperamenttemperament, easy in his manners, frank in his utterances and not scared by spooks in politics or trade. He had his share of light and shade, struggle and triumph, defeat and victory, incident and adventure in his pilgrimage.

“How chances mock,

And changes fill the cup of alteration

With divers liquors!”

Richard Jennings, over whose head the grass and flowers are growing, and his brother-in-law, the late Jacob L. Meldren, did much to develop the territory east of Petrolia. Coming from England to Armstrong county a half-century ago, they located at what is now Queenstown. Meldren bought the farm at the head of Armstrong Run on which the noted Armstrong well was struck in 1870. It opened “the Cross-Belt,” an abnormal strip running nearly at right angles to the main lines and remarkable for mammoth gushers. This unprecedented “belt” upset the theories of geologists and operators. The first and only one of its kind, it resembled the mule that “had no pride of ancestry and no hope of posterity.” Mr. Jennings drilled on many farms and gathered a large fortune. He was a man of character and ability, with a priceless reputation for integrity and truthfulness. Once he sent his foreman, Daniel Evans, to secure the Dougherty farm, on the southern edge of Petrolia, owned by two maiden sisters. The foreman knocked at the door, engaged board for a week, was engaged to the elder sister before the week expired and had the pleasure of reaping a harvest of greenbacks from the property in due course. It is satisfactory to find such enterprise abundantly recompensed. Not so lucky was a gay and festive operator with an ancient maiden who owned a tempting patch of land near Millerstown. He exhausted every art to get a lease, in desperation finally hinting at matrimony. The indignant lady exploded like a ton of dynamite, seizing a broom and compelling the bold visitor to beat an ungraceful retreat through the window, minus his hat and gloves! Evans leased part of the farm to his former employer, who finished the Dougherty spouter on November twenty-second, 1873. It flowed twenty-seven-hundred barrels a day from the fourth sand, loading Jennings with greenbacks and sending the speculative trade into convulsions. A patriotic citizen, devoted parent and genuine philanthropist, Richard Jennings was sincerely respected and his death was deeply mourned. His sons inherited their father’s sagacity and manly principle. They have operated in the McDonald field and are prominent in banking and business at Pittsburg.

The “Cross-Belt” crossed the petroleum-horizon in dead earnest in March of 1874. Taylor & Satterfield’s Boss well, on the James Parker farm, two miles east of Petrolia, flowed three-thousand barrels a day! William Hartley—General Harrison Allen defeated him for Auditor-General in 1872—organized the Stump Island Oil-Company and drilled from the mouth of the Clarion River six miles south, in 1866-7. He and John Galey owned the Island-King well at Parker’s Landing and a hundred others, some of which crept well down into Armstrong county. Richard Jennings and Jacob L. Meldren had punched holes on Armstrong Run and around Queenstown, but the spouter in the Parker-farm ravine was the fellow that touched the spot and hypnotized the trade. A solid stream of oil poured into the tank as if butted through the pipe by a hundred hydraulic-rams. The billowy mass of fluid heaved and foamed and boiled and tried its level best to climb over the wooden walls and unload the roof. David S. Criswell, of Oil City, had an interest in the gusher, and Criswell City—a shop, a lunch-room and five or six dwellings—was imprinted on Heydrick & Stevenson’s map. Stages between Petrolia and Brady halted at the bantling town for the convenience of pilgrims to the shrine of the Boss—a “boss” representing innumerable “bar’ls.” Wells were hurried down at a spanking gait, to divy up the oily freshet. “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley” and the uncertainty of fourth-sand wells was forcibly illustrated. Jennings had dry-holes on the Steele and Bedford farms, the latter ten rods north-west of the mastodon. Taylor & Satterfield’s No. 2, thirty rods west, was a small affair. Dusters and light pumpers studded the road from Criswell to Petrolia, with the Hazelwood Oil-Company’s two-hundred-barreler a trifle north to tantalize believers in a straight “belt.” Lines and belts and theories and former experiences amounted to little or nothing. The only safe method was to “go it blind” and bear with exemplary resignation whatever might turn up, be it a big gusher or a measly duster.

H. H. CUMMINGS.JAHU HUNTER.

The Boss weakened to eleven-hundred barrels in July and to a humble pumper by the end of the year. Forty rods east, on the Crawford farm, Hunter & Cummings plucked a September pippin. Their Lady Hunter, sixteen-hundred feet deep and flowing twenty-five-hundred barrels, was a trophy to enrapture any hunter coming from the chase. The Boss and the Lady Hunter were the lord and lady of the manor, none of the others approaching them in importance. Hunter & Cummings laid a pipe-line to East Brady, to load their oil on the Allegheny-Valley Railroad. The railroad company refused to furnish cars, urging a variety of pretexts to disguise the unfair discrimination. The owners of the oil had a Roland for the Oliver of the officials. They quietly gauged their output and let it run upon the ground, notifying the company to pay for the oil. A new light dawned upon the railroaders, who discovered they had to deal with men who knew their rights and dared maintain them. Crawling off their high stool, they footed the bill, apologized meekly and thenceforth took precious care Hunter & Cummings should not have reason to complain of a car-famine. Simon Legree was not the only braggart whom good men have been obliged to knock down to inspire with decent respect for fair-play.

Hunter & Cummings stayed in the business, opening the “Pontius Pool,” east of Millerstown, and sinking many wells at Herman Station, where they acquired a snug production. They operated on the lands of the Brady’s Bend Iron-company, putting down the wells on the hills opposite East Brady and a number in the Bradford region. They owned the Tidioute Savings Bank and large tracts in North Dakota—the scene of their “bonanza farming”—and were interested with the Grandins in the great lumber-mills at Grandin, Missouri, the largest in the south-west. In connection with these mills they were building railroads to develop their two-hundred-thousand acres of timber lands and establish experimental farms. Both members of the firm were the architects of their own fortunes, public-spirited, generous and eminently deserving of the liberal measure of success that has attended their labors during the twenty-three years of their association as partners.

Jahu Hunter was born on a farm two miles above Tidioute in 1830. From seventeen to twenty-seven he lumbered and farmed, in 1857 engaged in merchandising and in 1861 sold his store and embarked in oil. He operated moderately five years, increasing his interests largely in 1866 and forming a partnership with H. H. Cummings in 1873, which death ended. Mr. Hunter married Miss Margaret R. Magee in 1860 and one son, L. L. Hunter, survives to aid in managing his extensive business-enterprises. He occupied a delightful home at Tidioute, was president of the Savings Bank and of the chair-factory, a Mason of the thirty-second degree and a leader in all progressive movements. He had lands in various states and was prospered in manifold undertakings. He served as school-director fifteen years, contributing time and money freely in behalf of education. He believed in bettering humanity, in relieving distress, in befriending the poor, in helping the struggling and in building up the community. Retired from active work, the evening of Jahu Hunter’s useful life was serene and unclouded. As the shadows lengthened he reviewed the past with calm content and awaited the future without apprehension. He died last March.

Captain H. H. Cummings removed from Illinois, his birthplace in 1840, to Ohio and was graduated from Oberlin College at twenty-two. Enlisting in July, 1862, he shared the privations and achievements of the Army of the Cumberland until mustered out in June, 1865. Three months later he visited the oil-regionoil-region and in January of 1866 located at Tidioute in charge of Day & Co.’s refinery. Becoming a partner, he refined and exported oil seven years and was interested in wells at Tidioute and Fagundas. The firm dissolving in 1873, he joined hands with Jahu Hunter and operated extensively in the lower country. Hunter & Cummings stood in the front rank as representative producers. Captain Cummings is president of the Missouri Mining and Lumbering Company, which has a paid-up capital of five-hundred-thousand dollars and saws forty-million feet of lumber a year. L. L. Hunter is secretary, E. B. Grandin is treasurer and Hon. J. B. White, formerly a member of the Legislature from Warren county, is general manager. As Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic in Pennsylvania, Judge Darte succeeding him this year, Captain Cummings is favorably known to veterans over the entire state. He is a man of fine attainments, broad views and noble traits—a man who sizes up to a high ideal, who can be trusted and whose friendship “does not shrink in the wash.”

Taylor & Satterfield began operations in the lower fields in 1870, secured much of the finest territory in Butler and became one of the wealthiest firms in the oil-region. Harvesters rather than sowers, their usual policy was to buy lands tested by one or more wells and avoid the risk of wildcatting. In this way they acquired productive farms in every part of the district, which yielded thousands of barrels a day when fully developed. Their transactions footed up many millions yearly. They established banks at Petrolia and Millerstown, employed an army of drillers and pumpers and clerks and were always ready fora big purchase that promised fat returns. In company with Vandergrift & Forman, John Pitcairn and Fisher Brothers, they built the Fairview Pipe-Line from Argyle to Brady, the nucleus of the magnificent National-Transit system of oil-transportation. Captain J. J. Vandergrift, George V. Forman and John Pitcairn were associated with them in their gigantic producing-operations, which in 1879 extended to the Bradford field and grew to such magnitude that the Union Oil-Company was formed in 1881, with five-millions capital. The Union was almost uniformly successful, owning big wells and paying big dividends. In 1883 it paid Forman a million dollars for his separate holdings in Allegany county, up to that date the largest individual sale in the region. All its properties were sold to the Forest Oil-Company and the Union was dissolved, Taylor retiring and Satterfield continuing to assist in the management some months.

Hascal L. Taylor was first known in Oildom as a member of the firm of Taylor & Day, Fredonia, N. Y., whose “buckboards” had a tremendous sale in Venango, Clarion, Armstrong and Butler. He lived at Petrolia several years, having charge of the office of Taylor & Satterfield and general oversight of the Argyle Savings Bank. After his retirement from the oil-business with an ample fortune he lived at Buffalo, speculated in real-estate and purchased miles of Florida lands. He died last year, as he was arranging to erect a fifteen-story office-block in Buffalo. Mr. Taylor was of medium height and stout build, energetic, resourceful and notable in the busy world of petroleum. His only son, Emory G., clerked in the bank at Petrolia, engaged in manufacturing at Williamsport a year or two and removed to Buffalo before his father’s death. He and his sister inherited the estate.

John Satterfield, a man of heart and brain, imposing in stature, frank in speech and square in his dealings, was a Mercer boy. He served four years in a regiment organized at Greenville and opened a grocery at Pithole in 1865, with James A. Waugh as partner. Selling the remnants of the grocery in 1867, he superintended wells at Tarr Farm three years and went to Parker in 1870. His work in the Butler field increased his excellent reputation for honesty and enterprise. He married Miss Matilda Martin, of Allentown, lived four years at Millerstown, removed to Titusville and built an elegant house on Delaware avenue, Buffalo. When the Union Oil-Company’s accounts were closed, the books balanced and the assets transferred to the Forest he engaged in banking. He was vice-president of the Third National Bank of Buffalo and president of the Fidelity Trust Company, whose new bank-building is the boast of the Bison City. George V. Forman and Thomas L. McFarland joined him in the Fidelity. Mr. McFarland, formerly cashier of the bank at Petrolia and secretary of the Union Company, is exceedingly affable, capable and popular. Failing health induced Mr. Satterfield to go on a trip designed to include France, the Mediterranean Sea and the warmer countries of the east. With his brother-in-law, Dr. T. J. Martin, he reached Paris, took seriously ill and died on April sixth, 1894, in his fifty-fourth year. Besides his wife, who was on the ocean hastening to his bedside when the end came, he left one son and one daughter. Dr. Martin cremated the body, pursuant to the wish of the deceased, and brought the ashes home for interment. Charitable and unostentatious, upright and active, all men liked and trusted “Jack” Satterfield, whom old friends miss sadly and remember tenderly.

The sinless land some of his friends have enter’d long ago,

Some others stay a little while to struggle here below;

But, be the conflict short or long, life’s battle will be won

And lovingly he’ll welcome us when earthly toil is done.

Nor will our joy be less sincere—we’ll slap him on the back,

Clasp his brave hand and warmly say: “We’re glad to see you, Jack!”

W. J. YOUNG.

The Forest Oil-Company, into which the Union was merged, reckons its capital by millions, numbers its wells by thousands and is at the head of producing companies. Its operations cover five states. The company has hundreds of wells and farms in Pennsylvania, operates extensively in Ohio, is developing large interests in Kansas and seems certain to place Kentucky and Tennessee high up in the petroleum-galaxy. From its inception as a Limited Company the management has been progressive and efficient. To meet the increasing demands of new sections the original company was closed out and the present one incorporated, with Captain Vandergrift as president and W. J. Young as vice-president and general manager. Mr. Young, who was also elected treasurer in 1890, was peculiarly fitted for his responsible duties by long experience and executive ability. Born and educated in Pittsburg, he entered the employ of a leather-merchant in 1856, spent six years in the establishment and in 1862 went to Oil City to take charge of the forwarding and storage business of John and William Hanna. The Hannas owned the steamboat Allegheny Belle No. 4 and Hanna’s wharf, the site of the National-Transit machine-shops in the Third Ward. Captain John Hanna dying, John Burgess & Co. bought the firm’s storage interests and admitted Young as a partner. Burgess & Co. sold to Fisher Brothers, who used the wharf and yard for shipping and appointed Mr. Young their financial agent. How capably he filled the place every operator on Oil Creek can attest. He and John J. Fisher, under the name of Young & Co., bought and shipped crude-oil in bulk-barges. His relations with the Fishers ceased in 1872 with his appointment as book-keeper of the Oil-City Savings Bank. Elected cashier of the Oil-City Trust Company in 1874, he was afterwards vice-president and president, holding the latter office until 1891. John Pitcairn retiring from the firm of Vandergrift, Pitcairn & Co., he purchased an interest in the business. The firm of Vandergrift, Young & Co. was organized and sold its property to the Forest Oil-Company, of which Mr. Young was one of the incorporators and chairman. The business of the Forest necessitated his removal to Pittsburg in 1889. He is president of the Washington Oil-Company and the Taylorstown Natural-Gas Company and has his offices in the Vandergrift building, on Fourth avenue. During his twenty-seven years’ residence in Oil City he was active in promoting the welfare of the community. In 1866 he married Miss Morrow, sister-in-law and adopted daughter of Captain Vandergrift. Two daughters, one the wife of Lieutenant P. E. Pierce, West Point, N. Y., and the other a young lady residing with her parents, blessed the happy union. The hospitable home at Oil City was a delightful center of moral and social influence. Mr. Young represented the First Ward nine years in Common and Select Councils and was school-director six years. He furthered every good cause and was a helpful, honored citizen. Now at the meridian of life, his judgment matured and his acute perceptions quickened, young in heart and earnest in spirit, a wider sphere enlarges his opportunities. Of W. J. Young, true and tried, faithful and competent, a loyal friend and prudent counsellor, it can never be said: “Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.”

Fairview, charmingly located two miles south-west of Petrolia, was on one side of the greased streak. James M. Lambing’s gas-well a mile west lighted and heated the town, but vapor-fuel and pretty scenery could not offset the lack of oil and the dog-in-the-manger policy of greedy land-holders. Portly Major Adams—under the sod for years—built a spacious hotel, which William Lecky, Isaac Reineman, William Fleming and kindred spirits patronized. A mile-and-a-half east of Fairview and as far south of Petrolia, on a branch of Bear Creek, the Cooper well originated Karns City in June of 1872. S. D. Karns laid down eight-thousand dollars for the supposed dry-hole on the McClymonds farm, drilled forty feet and struck a hundred-barreler. Cooper Brothers finished the second well—it flowed two-hundred barrels for months—on the Saturday preceding “the thirty-day shut-down.” Tabor & Thompson and Captain Grace had moguls on the Riddle and Story farms. Big-hearted, open-handed “Tommy” Thompson—a whiter man ne’er drew breath—operated profitably in Butler and McKean and was active in the movements that made 1872-3 memorable to oil-producers. The biggest well in the bunch was A. J. Salisbury’s five-hundred-barrel spouter on the J. B. Campbell farm, in January of 1873. Salisbury conducted the favorite Empire House, which perished in the noon-day blaze that extinguished two-thirds of Karns City in December of 1874. One day he bought a wagon-load of potatoes from a verdant native, who dumped the tubers into the cellar and was given a check for the purchase. He gazed at the check long and earnestly, finally breaking out: “Vot for you gives me dose paper?” Salisbury explained that it was payment for the murphies. “Mein Gott!” ejaculated the ruralist, “you dinks me von tarn fool to take dot papers for mein potatoes?” The proprietor strove to enlighten the farmer, telling him to step across the street to the bank and get his money. “I see nein monish there,” replied the innocent, looking at John Shirley’s hardware-store, part of which a bank occupied. Discussing finance with the rustic would be useless, so “Jack” sent the hotel-clerk for the cash and counted it out in crisp documents bearing the serpentine autograph of General Spinner.

Vandergrift & Forman paid ninety-thousand dollars for the McCafferty farm, a mile south-west of Karns City. Mr. Forman closed the deal, going to the house with a lawyer and a New-York draft. The honest granger, not familiar with bank-drafts, would not receive anything except actual greenbacks. The parties journeyed to the county-seat to convert the draft into legal-tenders, which the seller of the property carried home. William McCafferty was a thrifty tiller of the soil and cultivated his farm thoroughly. He bought a home at Greenville, near John Benninghoff’s, put his money in Government bonds and died in 1880. Half the farm was fine territory and repaid its cost several times. One-twentieth of the price in 1873 would be good value to-day for the broad acres. For John Blaney’s farm, adjoining the McCafferty, Melville, Payne & Fleming put up fifteen-thousand dollars, bored a well and sold out to Vandergrift & Forman at fifty-thousand. The Rob Roy well, on the McClymonds farm, produced forty-thousand barrels of fourth-sand oil, while a dry hole was sunk thirty yards away. Colonel Woodward, Mattison & McDonald, Tack & Moorhead and John Markham owned wells good for thirty to eight-hundred barrels. A cloud of dry-holes encompassed the May Marshall, on the Wallace farm. Haysville, on the Thomas Hays farm, had a brief run, a harvest of small strikes and dusters nipping it off prematurely. The epitaph of the Philadelphia baby would about fit:

“Died when young and full of promise,

Our own little darling Thomas;

We can’t have things here to please us—

He has gone to dwell with Jesus.”

Branching off a mile south of Karns City, on January thirty-first, 1873, the first well—one-hundred and fifty barrels—was finished on the Moore & Hepler farm of three-hundred acres. Another in February strengthened “the belt theory,” belief in which induced C. D. Angell, John L. McKinney, Phillips Brothers and O. K. Warren to form a company and test the tract. Their faith was recompensed “an hundred fold” by an array of dandy wells and the unfolding of Angelica. OperatorsOperators were feeling their way steadfastly. Two miles south-east of Angelica, on the Simon Barnhart farm, Messimer & Backus’s wild-cat—also a February plant—pumped eight barrels a day. Shreve & Kingsley’s, on the Stewart farm, a mile north-east, found good sand and flowed one-hundred-and-forty barrels, in April, 1873. The fickle tide turned in that direction and Millerstown, a dingy, pokey hamlet on a side-elevation in Donegal township, a half-mile south-east of the Shreve-spouter, was on everybody’s lips. Some persons and some communities have greatness thrust upon them and Millerstown was of this brood. The natives awakened one April morning to find their settlement invaded by the irrepressible oilmen.

For sixty years the quiet hamlet of Barnhart’s Mills—a colony of Barnharts settled in Donegal when the nineteenth century was in its teens—stuck contentedly in the old rut, “the world unknowing, by the world unknown.” It consisted chiefly of log-houses, looking sufficiently antiquated to have been imported in William Penn’s good ship Welcome. A church, a school, a blacksmith-shop, a grocery, a general store and a tavern had existed from time immemorial. A grist-mill ground wheat and the name of Barnhart’s Mills was adopted by the post-office authorities. It yielded to Millerstown and finally to Chicora. The two-hundred villagers went to bed at dark and breakfasted by candle-light in winter. A birth, a marriage or a funeral aroused profound interest. At last news of oil “from Parker down” was heard occasionally. Petrolia arose and the Millerites shivered with apprehension. Was the petroleum-wave to submerge their peaceful homes? The Shreve well answered the query affirmatively and the invasion was not delayed. Crowds came, properties changed hands, old houses were razed and by July the ancient borough was disguised as a modern oil-town. Dr. Book built a grand hotel, Taylor & Satterfield established a bank, the United and Relief Pipe-Lines opened offices, the best firms were represented and “on to Millerstown” was the shibboleth of the hour. McFarland & Co.’s seventy-barrel well on the Thorn farm, a mile north-east of town, the third in the district, fed the oily flame. Dr. James, on R. Barnhart’s lands, finished the fourth, an eighty-barreler, in June, a half-mile west of the Shreve & Kingsley, which Clark & Timblin bought for twenty-thousand dollars. Wyatt, Fertig & Hammond’s mammoth flowed one-thousand barrels a day! Col. Wyatt was a real Virginian, chivalric, educated and high-strung. Hon. John Fertig was a pioneer on Oil Creek and had operated at Foxburg with John W. Hammond. The Wyatt spouted for months.

McKeown & Morissey drilled rib-ticklers on the Nolan farm. Warden & Frew, F. Prentice, Taylor & Satterfield, Captain Grace, John Preston, Cook & Goldsboro, Samuel P. Boyer, C. D. Angell and multitudes more scored big hits. McKinney Brothers & Galey secured the Hemphill and Frederick farms, on which they drilled scores of splendid wells. James M. Lambing had a chunk near the Wyatt, with Col. Brady next door. Lee & Plumer, fresh from their triumphs in Clarion, leased the Diviner farm, two miles south-west of Millerstown, for two-hundred dollars an acre bonus and one-eighth royalty. Their first well flowed fifteen-hundred barrels and they sold to Taylor & Satterfield for ninety-thousand dollars after its production paid the bonus and the drilling. Henry Greene drilled on the Johnson farm, two miles straight south of the village, and P. M. Shannon’s, on the Boyle, was the lion of the eastern belt. A dry strip divided the field into two productive lines. P. H. Burchfield opened the Gillespie farm and Joseph Overy touched the Mead, four miles south of Millerstown, for a two-hundred-barreler that installed St. Joe. Dr. Hunter, of Pittsburg, monkeyed a well on the Gillespie for many weeks, inaugurating the odious “mystery” racket. Millerstown was a peach of the most approved pattern, holding its own bravely until Bradford overwhelmed the southern region. A narrow-gauge railroad connected it with Parker in 1876. Fire in 1875 swept away the central portion of the town and blotted out seven lives. Oil has receded, the operators have departed and the town is once more a placid country village.

The Barnhart and Hemphill farms yielded McKinney Brothers a lavish return, the wells averaging fifty to three-hundred barrels month after month. The two brothers, John L. and J. C., were not amateurs in oil-matters. Sons of a well-to-do lumberman and farmer in Warren county, they learned business-methods in boyhood and were fitted by habit and education to manage important enterprises. Their connection with petroleum dated back to the sixties, in the oldest districts. The knowledge stored up on Oil Creek and around Franklin and at Pleasantville was of immense benefit in the lower fields. Organizing the firm of McKinney Brothers in 1890, to operate at Parker, they kept pace with the trend of developments southward. Millerstown impressed them favorably and they paid seventy-thousand dollars for the Barnhart and two Hemphill farms, two-hundred-and-seventy acres in the heart of the richest territory. John Galey purchased an interest in the properties, which the partners developed judiciously. J. C. McKinney and Galey resided at Millerstown to oversee the numerous details of their extensive operations. In 1877, H. L. Taylor, John Satterfield, John Pitcairn and the brothers formed the partnership known as John L. McKinney & Co. It was controlled and managed by the McKinneys, until the sale of its interests to the Standard Oil-Company. John L. and J. C. McKinney sold their Ohio lands and wells in 1889 and their Pennsylvania oil-properties in 1890, since which period they have been associated with the Standard in one of its great producing branches, the South Penn Oil-Company. Noah S. Clark is president of the South Penn, with headquarters at Oil City and Pittsburg. This company has thousands of wells in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. The wise policy that has made the Standard the world’s foremost corporation has nowhere been manifested more effectively than in the formation of such companies as the Forest and the South Penn. Letting sellers of production share in the ownership and management of properties united in one grand system secures the advantages of concerted action, unlimited capital, identity of interest and combined experience. Thus men of the highest skill join hands for the good of all, using the latest appliances, buying at wholesale for cash, producing oil at the smallest cost and giving the public the fruits of systematic coÖperation. In this free country “the poor man’s back-yard opens into all out-doors” and many producers, like John McKeown, Captain Jones “The.” Barnsdall and Michael Murphy have been conspicuously successful going it alone. Sometimes a growl is heard about monopoly, centralization and the octave of similar phrases, just as folks grumble at the weather, the heat and cold and think they could run the universe much better than its Creator does it.

JOHN L. McKINNEY.

Hon. John L. McKinney’s talent for business displayed itself in youth. “The boy’s the father to the man” and at sixteen he assumed charge of his father’s accounts, superintending the sale of lumber and farm-products three years. At nineteen, in the fall of 1861, he drilled his first well, a dry-hole south of Franklin. Two leases on Oil Creek fared better and in the spring he purchased one-third of a drilling well and lease on the John McClintock farm, near Rouseville. The well was spring-poled three-hundred feet, horse-power put it to four-hundred and an engine to five-hundred, at which depth it flowed six-hundred barrels, lasting two years, lessening slowly and producing enough oil to enrich the owners. Young McKinney worked his turn, “kicking the pole” all summer and visiting his home in Warren county when steam was substituted for human and equine muscle. During his absence the sand was prodded, the golden stream responded and his partner sold out for a round sum, taking no note of his share! He heard of the strike and found the purchasers in full possession upon his return. His contract had not been recorded, one day remained to file it with the register and he saved his claim by a few hours! He bought interests on Cherry Run that profited him two-hundred thousand dollars, in 1864 leased large tracts in Greene county and in 1865 removed to Philadelphia. He operated on Benninghoff Run in 1866, the crash of 1867 swept away his gains and he began again “at the top of the ground.” With his younger brother, J. C. McKinney, he drilled at Pleasantville in 1868 and the next year located at Parker’s Landing, operating constantly and managing an agency for the sale of Gibbs & Sterrett machinery. Success crowded upon him in 1871 and in 1873 McKinney Brothers & Galey were the leaders in the Millerstown field. Mrs. McKinney, a beautiful and accomplished woman, died in 1894. Mr. McKinney built an elegant home at Titusville and he has been an influential citizen of “the Queen City of Oildom” for twenty years. He is president of the Commercial Bank and a heavy stockholder in local industries. He has resisted pressing demands for his services in public office, preferring the private station, yet participating actively in politics. John L. McKinney is earnest and manly everywhere, steadfast in his friendships, true to his professions, liberal and honorable always.

J. C. McKinney engaged with an engineer-corps of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company in 1861, at the age of seventeen, to survey lines southward from Garland, on the Philadelphia & Erie Road. The survey ending at Franklin in 1863, he left the corps and started a lumber-yard at Oil City. His father was a lumberman at Pittsfield, Warren county, and the youth of nineteen knew every branch of the business thoroughly. He opened a yard at Franklin in 1864, resided there a number of years and in 1868 married Miss Agnes E. Moore. His first well, drilled at Foster in 1865, produced moderately. In company with C. D. Angell, he drilled on Scrubgrass Island—Mr. Angell changed the name to Belle Island for his daughter Belle—in 1866 and at Pleasantville in 1868 with his brother, John L. Operating for heavy-oil at Franklin in 1869-70, he sold his wells to Egbert, Mackey & Tafft and settled at Parker’s Landing in 1870. The firm’s operations in Butler county requiring his personal attention, he built a house and resided at Millerstown several years. There he worked zealously, purchasing blocks of land and drilling a legion of prolific wells. Upon the subsidence of the Butler field he removed to Titusville, buying and remodeling the Windsor mansion, which he made one of the finest residences in the oil-region. He assists in managing the South Penn Oil-Company, to which McKinney Brothers disposed of their interests in Ohio and Pennsylvania. In the flush of healthful vigor, wealthy and respected, he enjoys “the good the gods provide.” He keeps fast horses, handles the ribbons skillfully, can guide a big enterprise or an untamed bicycle deftly, is companionable and utterly devoid of affectation. To the McKinneys, men of positive character and strict integrity, the Roman eulogy applies: “A pair of noble brothers.”

“Plumer’s Ride to Diviner” discounted Sheridan’s Ride to Winchester in the estimation of Millerstown hustlers. Various operators longed and prayed for the Diviner farm of two-hundred acres, two miles south of Millerstown, which “Ed” Bennett’s three-hundred barrel well on the Boyle farm rendered very desirable. The old, childless couple owning it declined to lease or sell, not wishing to move out of the old house. Lee & Plumer were on the anxious seat with the rest of the fraternity. Plumer overheard a big operator tell his foreman one morning to offer three-hundred dollars an acre for the farm. “Fred” lost not a moment. Ordering his two-twenty horse to be saddled instantly, he galloped to the Diviner domicile in hot haste and said: “I’ll give you two-hundred dollars an acre and one-eighth the oil for your land and let you stay in the house!” The aged pair consulted a moment, accepted the offer and signed an agreement to transfer the property in three days. The ink was not dry when the foreman rode up, but “Fred” met him in the yard with a smile that expressed the gospel-hymn: “Too late, too late, ye cannot enter in!” The first well repaid the whole outlay in thirty days, when Taylor & Satterfield paid ninety-thousand dollars for Lee & Plumer’s holdings, a snug sum to rake in from a two-mile horseback-ride. With a fine sense of appreciation the well was labeled “Plumer’s Ride to Diviner,” a board nailed to the walking-beam bearing the protracted title in artistic capitals.

The Millerstown fire ended seven human lives, four of them at Dr. Book’s Central Hotel. A. G. Oliver, of Kane City, was roasted in the room occupied by me the previous night. Norah Canty, a waitress, descended the stairs, returned for her trunk and was burned to a cinder. Nellie McCarthy jumped from a high window to the street, fracturing both legs and sustaining injuries that crippled her permanently. In loss of life the fire ranked next to the dreadful tragedy of the burning-well at Rouseville.

P. M. Shannon, first burgess of Millerstown, had a fashion of saluting intimate friends with the query: “Where are we now?” Possibly this was the origin of the popular phrase, “Where are we at?” A zealous officer arrested a drunken loafer one afternoon. The fellow struggled to get free and the officer halted a wagon to haul the obstreperous drunk to the lock-up. The prisoner was laid on his back in the wagon and his captor tried to hold him down.

A crowd gathered and the burgess got aboard to assist the peeler. He was holding the feet of the law-breaker, with his back to the end-board, at the instant the wheels struck a plank-crossing. The shock keeled Shannon backwards over the end-board into the deep, vicious mud! The spectators thought of shedding tears at the sad plight of their chief magistrate, who sank at full length nearly out of sight. As he raised his head a ragged urchin bawled out: “Where are we now?”now?” The laugh that ensued was a risible earthquake and thenceforth the expression had unlimited circulation in the lower districts.

The Millerstown field produced ten-thousand barrels a day at its prime and the temptation to enlarge the productive area even St. Anthony, had he been an oil-operator, would have found it hard to resist. A half-mile west, at the Brick Church, J. A. Irons punched a hole and started a hardware-store that hatched out Irons City. St. Joe, where two-hundred lots were sold in thirty days and a beer-jerker’s tent was the first business-stand, was the outcome of good wells on the Now, Meade, Boyd, Neff and Graham farms, four miles south. Three miles farther dry-holes blasted the budding hopes of Jeffersonville. Three miles south-west of Millerstown, on an elevated site, Buena Vista bade fair to knock the persimmons. The territory exhausted too speedily for comfort, other points lured the floaters, hotels and stores stood empty and a fire sent three-fourths of the neat little town up in smoke. Two miles west the Hope Oil-Company’s Troutman well, reported on March twenty-second, 1873, “the biggest strike since ’sixty-five,” flowed twelve-hundred barrels. The tools hung in the hole seven months, by which time the well had produced ninety-six-thousand barrels. The gusher was on the Troutman farm, a patch of rocks and stunted trees tenanted by a Frenchman. I. E. Dean, Lecky & Reineman, Captain Grace, Captain Boyer, the Reno Oil-Company and others jostled neck and neck in the race to drain the Ralston, Harper, Starr, Jenkins and Troutman lands. The result was a series of spouters that aggregated nine-thousand barrels a day. Phillips Brothers paid eighty-thousand dollars for the Starr farm and trebled their money in a year. William K. Vandergrift’s Blackhawk was a five-hundred barreler and dozens more swelled the production and the excitement. The day before Husselton & Thompson’s seven-hundred barreler, on the Gruber farm, struck the sand the boiler exploded. Two men were standing on a tank discussing politics. They saw a ton of iron heading directly towards them, concluded to postpone the argument and leaped from the tank as the flying mass tore off half the roof. The Ralston farm evoluted the embryo town of Batesville, named for the late Joseph Bates, of Oil City, and Modoc planted its wigwams on the Starr and Sutton.

Modoc stood at the top of the class for mud. The man who found a gold-dollar in a can of tomatoes and denounced the grocer for selling adulterated goods would have had no reason to grumble at the mud around Modoc. It was pure, unmixed and unstinted. The voyager who, in the spring or fall of 1873, accomplished the trip from Troutman to the frontier wells without exhausting his stock of profanity earned a free-pass to the happy hunting-grounds. Twenty balloon-structures were erected by May first and a red-headed dispenser of stimulants answered to the title of “Captain Jack.” Modoc was not a Tammany offshoot, but the government had an Indian war on hand and red-skinned epithets prevailed. The town soon boasted three stores, four hotels, liveries and five-hundred people. By and by the spouters wilted badly, degenerating into pumpers. On a cold, rainy night in the autumn of 1874 fire started in Max Elasser’s clothing-store and one-half the town was absent at dawn next morning. Biting wind and drenching showers added to the sadness of the dismal scene. Women and children, weeping and homeless, crouched in the fields until daylight and shelter arrived. That was the last chapter in the history of Modoc. The American Hotel and a few houses escaped the flames, but the destroyed buildings were not replaced. It would puzzle a tourist now to find an atom of Modoc or the wells that vegetated about the Troutman whale.

Two miles south of Modoc the McClelland farm made a bold effort to outshine the Troutman. Phillips Brothers owned the biggest wells, luscious fellows that salt-water killed off prematurely. They paid forty-five-thousand dollars for the Stahl & Benedict No. 1 well. The farmer leased the tract to George Nesbit and John Preston. Nesbit placed timbers for a rig on the ground and entrenched a force of men behind a fence. Preston’s troops scaled the fence, dislodged the enemy, carried the timbers off the premises, built a rig and drilled a well. Such disputes were liable to occur from the ignorance or knavery of the natives, some of whom leased the same land to several parties. In one of these struggles for possession Obadiah Haymaker was shot dead at Murraysville, near Pittsburg. Milton Weston, a Chicago millionaire, who hired and armed the attacking party, was sent to the penitentiary for manslaughter. Haymaker was pleasant, sociable and worthy of a better fate.

David Morrison leased ten acres of the Jamison farm, three miles below Modoc and seven south of Petrolia, at one-fiftieth royalty. The property was situated on Connoquinessing Creek, a tributary of Beaver River, in the bosom of a rugged country. On August twenty-fourth, 1872, the tools pricked the sand, gas burst forth and oil flowed furiously. The gas sought the boiler-fire and the entire concern was speedily in a blaze. Unlike many others in the oil-region, the Morrison well suffered no injury from the fire. It flowed three-hundred barrels a day for a month and in October was sold to Taylor & Satterfield for thirty-eight-thousand dollars. They cleaned out the hole, which mud had clogged, restoring the yield to two-hundred barrels. S. D. Karns completed the Dogleg well, the second in the field, on Christmas day, and the third early in January, the two wells flowing seven-hundred barrels. John Preston’s No. 1, a half-mile northward, flowed two-hundred barrels on January twelfth. Preston was a strong-limbed, black-haired, courageous operator, who cut his eye-teeth in the upper fields. He augmented his pile at Parker, Millerstown and Greece City, landing at last in Washington county. He was not averse to a hand at cards or a gamble in production. His word was never broken and he vied with John McKeown and John Galey in untiring energy. A truer, livelier, braver lot of men than the Butler oil-operators never stepped on God’s green carpet. A mean tyrant might as well try to climb into heaven on a greased pole as to keep them at the bottom of the heap.

The first new building on the Jamison farm, a frame drug-store, was erected on September tenth. Eight-hundred people inhabited Greece City by the end of December. Drinking dens drove a thriving trade and three hotels could not stow away the crowds. J. H. Collins fed five-hundred a day. Theodore Huselton established a bank and Rev. Mr. Thorne a newspaper. A post-office was opened at New-Year. Two pipe-lines conveyed oil to Butler and Brady, two telegraph-offices rushed messages, a church blossomed in the spring and a branch of the West Penn Railroad was proposed. Greece City combined the muddiness and activity of Shaffer and Funkville with the ambition of Reno. Fifty wells were drilling in February and the surrounding farms were not permitted to “linger longer, Lucy,” than was necessary to haul machinery and set the walking-beam sawing the atmosphere. Joseph Post—a jolly Rousevillean, who weighed two-hundred pounds, operated at Bradford and retired to a farm in Ohio—tested the Whitmire farm, two miles south. An extensive water-well was the best the farm had to offer and Boydstown, built in expectation of the oil that never came, scampered off. The third sand was only twelve to fifteen feet thick and the wells declined with unprecedented suddenness. The bottom seemed to drop out of the territory in a twinkling. The town wilted like a paper-collar in the dog-days. Houses were torn down or deserted and rigs carted to Millerstown. In December fire licked up three-fourths of what removals had spared, summarily ending Greece City at the fragile age of thirteen months. “The isles of Greece, were burning Sappho loved and sung,” may have been pretty slick, but the oil of Greece City would have burned out Sappho in one round.

“The meanest man I ever saw,” a Butler judge remarked to a company of friends at Collins’s Hotel, “has never appeared in my court as a defendant and it is lucky for him. As a matter of course he was a newspaper man—a rascal of a reporter for the Greece City Review, printed right in this town, and there he stands! One day he was playing seven-up with a young lady and guess what he did? He told her that whenever she had the jack of trumps it was a sure sign her lover was thinking of her. Then he watched her and whenever she blushed and looked pleased he would lead a high card and catch her jack. A man who would do that would steal a hot stove or write a libellous joke about me.” The judge was a rare joker and the young man whom he apostrophised for fun didn’t know a jack from a load of hay.

Parker, Martinsburg, Argyle, Petrolia, the “Cross Belt,” Karns City, Angelica, Millerstown, St. Joe, Buena Vista, Modoc and Greece City had passed in review. The “belt” extended fifteen miles and the Butler field acknowledged no rival. The great Bradford district was about to distance all competitors and leave the southern region hopelessly behind, yet operators did not desist from their efforts to discover an outlet below Greece City and St. Joe. Two miles west of the county-seat Phillips Brothers stumbled upon the Baldridge pool, which produced largely. The old town of Butler, settled at the beginning of the century and not remarkable for enterprise until the oilmen shoved it forward, was dry territory. Eastward pools of minor note were revealed. William K. Vandergrift, whose three-hundred-barrel well on the Pontius farm ushered in Buena Vista’s short-lived reign, drilled at Saxonburg. Along the West-Penn Railroad fair wells encouraged the quest. David Kirk entered Great Belt City in the race and the country was punctured like a bicycle-tire tripping over a road strewn with tacks pointing skyward and loaded for mischief. South of St. Joe gas blew off and Spang & Chalfant laid a line from above Freeport to pipe the stuff into their rolling-mills at Pittsburg. The search proceeded without big surprises, Bradford monopolizing public interest and Butler jogging on quietly at the rear. But the old field had plenty of ginger and was merely recovering some of the breath expended in producing forty-million barrels of crude. “I smell a rat,” felicitously observed Sir Boyle Roche, “and see him floating in the air.” The free play of the drill could hardly fail to ferret out something with the smell of petroleum in the soap-mine county, beyond the cut-off at Greece City and Baldridge. Bradford was sliding down the mountain it had ascended and Butler furnished the answer to the conundrum of where to look for the next fertile spot.

Col. S. P. Armstrong, who experienced a siege of hard luck in the upper latitudes, in 1884 leased a portion of the Marshall farm, on Thorn Creek, six miles south-west of the town of Butler. Operators had been skirmishing around the southern rim of the basin, looking for an annex to the Baldridge pool. Andrew Shidemantle was drilling near the mouth of the creek, on the north bank of which Johnson & Co.’s well, finished in May, found plenty of sand and salt-water and a taste of oil. More than once Armstrong was pressed for funds to pay the workmen drilling the well he began on the little stream and he sold an interest to Boyd & Semple. A vein of oil was met on June twenty-seventh, gas ignited the rig and for a week the well burned fiercely. The flames were subdued finally, the well pumped and flowed one-hundred-and-fifty barrels a day and No. 2 was started fifty rods north-east. Meanwhile Phillips Brothers set the tools dancing on the Bartlett farm, adjoining the Marshall on the north. They hit the sand on August twenty-ninth and the well flowed five-hundred barrels next day. Drilling ten feet deeper jagged a veritable reservoir of petroleum, the well flowing forty-two-hundred barrels on September fifteenth! At last Phillips & Vanausdall’s spouter on Oil Creek had been eclipsed. The trade was “shaken clear out of its boots.” Glowing promises of a healthy advance in prices were frost-bitten. Scouts had been hovering around and their reckoning was utterly at fault. Brokers knew not which way to turn. Crude staggered into the ditch and speculators on the wrong side of the market went down like the Louisiana Tigers at Gettysburg. The bull-element thought the geyser “a scratch,” quite sure not to be duplicated, and all hands awaited impatiently the completion of Hezekiah Christie’s venture on a twenty-five acre plot hugging the Phillips lease. The one redeeming feature of the situation was that nobody had the temerity to remark, “I told you so!”

A telegraph office was rigged up near the Phillips well in an abandoned carriage, one-third mile from the Christie. About it the sharp-eyed scouts thronged night and day. On October eleventh the Christie was known to be nearing the critical point. Excitement was at fever-heat among the group of anxious watchers. In the afternoon some knowing-one reported that the tools were twenty-seven feet in the sand, with no show of oil. The scouts went to condole with Christie, who was sitting in the boiler-house, over his supposed dry-hole. One elderly scout, whose rotundity made him “the observed of all observers,” was especially warm in his expressions of sympathy. “That’s all right, Ben,” said Christie, “but before night you’ll be making for the telegraph-office to sell your oil at a gait that will make a euchre-game on your coat-tails an easy matter.” When the scout had gone he walked into the derrick and asked his driller how far he was in the sand. “Only twenty-two feet and we are sure to strike oil before three o’clock. Those scouts don’t know what they’re talking about.” Christie went back to the boiler-house and waited. It was an interesting scene. About the old buggy were the self-confident scouts, many of whom had already wired their principals that the well was dry. The intervals between the strokes of the drill appeared to be hours. At length the well began to gas. Then came a low, rumbling sound and those about the carriage saw a cloud-burst of oil envelop the derrick. The Christie well was in and the biggest gusher the oil-country had ever known! The first day it did over five-thousand barrels, seven-thousand for several days after torpedoing, and for a month poured out a sea of oil. Christie refused one-hundred-thousand dollars for his monster, which cast the Cherry Grove gushers completely into the shade. Phillips No. 3, four-hundred barrels, Conners No. 1, thirty-seven-hundred, and Phillips No. 2, twenty-five hundred, were added to the string on October eighteenth, nineteenth and twenty-first. Crude tumbled, the bears pranced wildly and everybody wondered if Thorn Creek had further surprises up its sleeve. Bret Harte’s “heathen Chinee” with five aces was less of an enigma.

All this time Colonel Armstrong, who borrowed money to build his first derrick and buy his first boiler, was pegging away at his second well. The sand was bored through into the slate beneath and the contractor pronounced the well a failure. The scouts agreed with him unanimously and declared the contractor a level-headed gentleman. The owner, who looked for something nicer than salt-water and forty-five feet of ungreased sand, did not lose every vestige of hope. He decided to try the persuasive powers of a torpedo. At noon on October twenty-seventh sixty quarts of nitro-glycerine were lowered into the hole. The usual low rumbling responded, but the expected flow did not follow immediately. One of the scouts laughingly offered Armstrong a cigar for the well, which the whole party declared “no good.” They broke for the telegraph-office in the buggy to wire that the well was a duster. Prices stiffened and the bulls breathed more freely.

The scouts changed their minds and their messages very speedily. The rumbling increased until its roar resembled a small Niagara. A sheet of salt-water shot out of the hole over the derrick, followed by a shower of slate, stones and dirt. A moment later, with a preliminary cough to clear its passage, the oil came with a mighty rush. A giant stream spurted sixty feet above the tall derrick, dug drains in the ground and saturated everything within a radius of five-hundred feet! The Jumbo of oil-wells had been struck. Thousands of barrels of oil were wasted before the cap could be adjusted on the casing. Tanks had been provided and a half-dozen pipes were needed to carry the enormous mass of fluid. It was an inspiring sight to stand on top of the tank and watch the tossing, heaving, foaming deluge. The first twenty-four hours Armstrong No. 2 flowed eight-thousand-eight-hundred barrels! It dropped to six-thousand by November first, to six-hundred by December first and next morning stopped altogetheraltogether, having produced eighty-nine-thousand barrels in thirty-seven days! Armstrong then divided his lease into five-acre patches, sold them at fifteen-hundred dollars bonus and half the oil and quit Thorn Creek in the spring a half-million ahead.

Fisher Brothers were the largest operators in the field. From the Marshall farm of three-hundred acres—worth ten dollars an acre for farming—they took four-hundred-thousand dollars’ worth of oil. Their biggest well flowed forty-two-hundred barrels on November fifteenth, when the total output of the field was sixteen-thousand, its highest notch. Miller & Yeagle’s spouter put forty-five-hundred into the tank, sending out a stream that filled a five-inch pipe. Thomas B. Simpson, of Oil City, joined with Thomas W. Phillips in leasing the Kennedy farm and drilling a three-thousand-barrel well. They sold to the Associated Producers in December for eighty-thousand dollars and Simpson, a sensible man every day in the year, presented his wife with a Christmas check for his half of the money. McBride and Campbell, two young drillers who had gone to Thorn Creek in search of work, went a mile in advance of developments and bored a well that did five-thousand barrels a day. They sold out to the Associated Producers for ninety-thousand and six months later their big well was classed among the small pumpers. Campbell saved what he had made, but success did not sit well on McBride’s shoulders. After lighting his cigars awhile with five-dollar bills he touched bottom and went back to the drill. Hell’s Half Acre, a crumb of land owned by the Bredin heirs, emptied sixty-thousand barrels into the tanks of the Associated Producers. The little truck-farm of John Mangel put ninety-thousand into its owner’s pocket, although a losing venture to the operators, producing barely a hundred-thousand barrels. For the half-acre on which the red school-house was built, ten rods from the first Phillips well, the directors were offered fifty-thousand dollars. This would have endowed every school in the township, but legal obstacles prevented the sale and the district was the loser. By May the production declined to seven-thousand barrels and to one-thousand by the end of 1885. The sudden rise of the field made a score of fortunes and its sudden collapse ruined as many more. Thorn Creek, like reform measures in the Legislature, had a brilliant opening and an inglorious close.

The Thorn-Creek white-sanders encouraged wildcatting to an extraordinary degree. In hope of extending the pool or disclosing a fresh one, “men drilled who never drilled before, and those who always drilled but drilled the more.” Johnson & Co., Campbell & McBride, Fisher Brothers and Shidemantle’s dusters on the southern end of the gusher-farms condemned the territory in that direction. Painter Brothers developed a small pool at Riebold Station. Craig & Cappeau, who struck the initial spouter at Kane, and the Fisher Oil-Company failed to open up a field in Middlesex township. Some oil was found at Zelienople and gas at numerous points in raking over Butler county. The country south-west of Butler, into West Virginia and Ohio, was overrun by oil-prospectors, intent upon tying up lands and seeing that no lurking puddle of petroleum should escape. Test wells crossed the lines into Allegheny and Beaver counties and Shoustown, Shannopin, Mt. Nebo, Coraopolis, Undercliff and Economy figured in the newspapers as oil-centers of more or less consequence. Members of the old guard, fortified with a stack of blues at their elbow to meet any contingency, shared in these proceedings. Brundred & Marston drilled on Pine Creek, at the lower end of Armstrong county, in the seventies, a Pittsburg company repeating the dose in 1886. At New Bethlehem they bored two-thousand feet, finding seven-hundred feet of red-rock. This rock varies from one to three-hundred feet on Oil Creek and geologists assert is six-thousand feet thick at Harrisburg, diminishing as it approaches the Alleghenies. The late W. J. Brundred, agent at Oil City of the Empire Line until its absorption by the Pennsylvania Railroad, was a skilled oil-operator, practical in his ideas and prompt in his methods. His son, B. F. Brundred, is president of the Imperial Refining Company and a prosperous resident of Oil City. Joseph H. Marston died in California, whither he had gone hoping to improve his health, in 1880. He was an artist at Franklin in the opening years of developments and removed to Oil City. He owned the Petroleum House and was exceptionally genial, enterprising and popular.

Pittsburg assumed the airs of a petroleum-metropolis. Natural-gas in the suburbs and east of the city changed its sooty blackness to a delicate clearness that enabled people to see the sky. Oilmen made it their headquarters and built houses at East Liberty and Allegheny. To-day more representative producers can be seen in Pittsburg than in Oil City, Titusville or Bradford. Within a hundred yards of the National-Transit offices one can find Captain Vandergrift, T. J. Vandergrift, J. M. Guffey, John Galey, Frank Queen, W. J. Young, P. M. Shannon, Frederick Hayes, Dr. M C. Egbert, A. J. Gartland, Edward Jennings, Captain Grace, S. D. Karns, William Fleming, C. D. Greenlee, John N. Lambing, John Galloway, John J. Fisher, Henry Fisher, Frederick Fisher, J. A. Buchanan, J. N. Pew, Michael Murphy, James Patterson and other veterans in the business. These are some of the men who had the grit to open new fields, to risk their cash in pioneer-experiments, to cheapen transportation and to make kerosene “the poor man’s light.” They are not youngsters any more, but their hearts have not grown old, their heads have not swelled and the microbe of selfishness has not soured their kindly impulses. They are of the royal stamp that would rather tramp the cross-ties with honor than ride in a sixteen-wheeled Pullman dishonestly.

Gas east and oil west was the rule at Pittsburg. Wildwood was the chief sensation in 1889-90. This was the pet of W. E. Griffith, whose first well on the Whitesell farm, twelve miles above Pittsburg, tapped the sand in March of 1890, and flowed three-hundred barrels a day. This prime send-off inaugurated Wildwood in good style. The Bear-Creek Refining-Company drilled on the C. J. Gibson farm, Pine Creek, in 1888, finding considerable gas. Later Barney Forst and Max Klein found third sand and no oil in a well two-thirds of a mile west, on the Moon farm. John M. Patterson went two miles south-east and drilled the Cockscomb well, twin-link to a duster. J. M. Guffey & Co. hit sand and a taste of oil near Perrysville, between which and the Cockscomb venture Gibson & Giles had encouraging indications. Anon Griffith’s spouter touched the jugular and opened a prolific pool. His No. 2 produced a quarter-million barrels. Guffey & Co.’s No. 4, Rolsehouse farm, and Bamsdall’s No. 2, Kress farm, started at three-thousand apiece the first twenty-four hours. About three-hundred acres of rich territory were punctured, some of the wells piercing the fifth sand at two-thousand feet. By the end of 1890 the district had yielded thirteen-hundred-thousand barrels, placing it close to the top of the white-sand column. Wildwood is situated in Allegheny county, on the Pittsburg & Western Railroad, and W. E. Griffith is justly deemed the father of the nobby district. He is a practical man, admirably posted regarding sands and oils and in every respect worthy of the success that has crowned his efforts to hold up his end of the string.

Thirty-three wells at Wildwood realized Greenlee & Forst not far from a quarter-million dollars. Five in “the hundred-foot” field west of Butler repaid their cost and brought them fifty-thousand dollars from the South-Penn Oil-Company. The two lucky operators next leased and purchased eight-hundred acres at Oakdale, Noblestown and McDonald, in Allegheny and Washington counties, fifteen to twenty miles west of Pittsburg. The Crofton third-sand pool was opened in February of 1888, the Groveton & Young hundred-foot in the winter of 1889-90 and the Chartiers third-sand field in the spring of 1890. South-west of these, on the J. J. McCurdy farm, five miles north-east of Oakdale, Patterson & Jones drilled into the fifth sand on October seventeenth, 1890. The well flowed nine-hundred barrels a day for four months, six months later averaged two-hundred and by the end of 1891 had yielded a hundred-and-fifty thousand. Others on the same and adjacent tracts started at fifty to twenty-five-hundred barrels, Patterson & Jones alone deriving four-thousand barrels a day from thirteen wells. In the summer of 1890 the Royal Gas-Company drilled two wells on the McDonald estate, two miles west of McDonald Station and ten south-west of McCurdy, finding a show of oil in the so-called “Gordon sand.” On the farm of Edward McDonald, west side of the borough, the company struck oil and gas in the same rock the latter part of September. The well stood idle two months, was bored through the fifth sand in November, torpedoed on December twentieth and filled three tanks of oil in ten days. The tools were run down to clean it out, stuck fast and the pioneer venture of the McDonald region ended its career simultaneously with the ending of 1890. Thorn Creek had been a wonder and Wildwood a dandy, yet both combined were to be dwarfed and all records smashed by the greatest white-sand pool and the biggest gushers in America.

Geologists solemnly averred in 1883 that “the general boundaries of the oil-region of Pennsylvania are now well established,” “we can have no reasonable expectation that any new and extensive field will be found” and “there are not any grounds for anticipating the discovery of new fields which will add enough to the declining products of the old to enable the output to keep pace with the consumption.” Notwithstanding these learned opinions, Thorn Creek had the effrontery to “be found” in 1884, Wildwood in 1890 and the monarch of the tribe in 1891. The men who want people to discard Genesis for their interpretation of the rocks were as wide of the mark as the dudish Nimrod who couldn’t hit a barn-door at thirty yards. He paralyzed his friends by announcing: “Wal, I hit the bullseye to-day the vehwy fiwst shot!” Congratulations were pouring in when he added: “Yaas, and the bweastly fawmeh made me pay twenty-five dollahs fawh the bull I didn’t see when I fiwed, doncherknow!” A raw recruit instructed the architect of his uniform to sew in an iron-plate “to protect the most vital part.” The facetious tailor, instead of fixing the plate in the breast of the coat, planted it in the seat of the young fellow’s breeches. The enemy worsting his side in a skirmish, the retreating youth tried to climb over a stone-wall. A soldier rushed to transfix him with his bayonet, which landed on the iron-plate with the force of a battering-ram. The shock hurled the climber safely into the field, tilted his assailant backward and broke off the point of the cold steel! The happy hero picked himself up and exclaimed fervently: “That tailor knew a devilish sight better’n me what’s my most vital part!” Operators who paid no heed to scientific disquisitions, but went on opening new fields each season, believed the drill was the one infallible test of petroleum’s most vital part.

In May of 1891 the Royal Gas-Company finished two wells on the Robb and Sauters tracts, south of town, across the railroad-track. The Robb proved a twenty-barreler and the Sauters flowed one-hundred-and-sixty barrels a day from the fifth sand. They attracted the notice of the oilmen, who had not taken much stock in the existence of paying territory at McDonald. Three miles north-east the Matthews well, also a May-flower, produced thirty barrels a day from the Gordon rock. On July first it was drilled into the fifth sand, increasing the output to eight-hundred barrels a day for two months. Further probing the first week in September increased it to eleven-thousand barrels! Scouts gauged it at seven-hundred barrels an hour for three hours after the agitation ceased! It yielded four-hundred-thousand barrels of oil in four months and was properly styled Matthews the Great. The owners were James M. Guffey, John Galey, Edward Jennings and Michael Murphy. They built acres of tanks and kept ten or a dozen sets of tools constantly at work. Mr. Guffey, a prime mover in every field from Richburg to West Virginia, was largely interested in the Oakdale Oil-Company’s eighteen-hundred acres. With Galey, Jennings and Murphy he owned the Sturgeon, Bell and Herron farms, the first six wells on which yielded twenty-eight-thousand barrels a day! The mastodon oil-field of the world had been ushered in by men whose sagacious boldness and good judgment Bradford, Warren, Venango, Clarion and Butler had witnessed repeatedly.

C. D. Greenlee and Barney Forst, who joined forces west of Butler and at Wildwood, in August of 1891 leased James Mevey’s two-hundred-and-fifty acres, a short distance north-east of McDonald. Greenlee and John W. Weeks, a surveyor who had mapped out the district and predicted it would be the “richest field in Pennsylvania,” selected a gentle slope beside a light growth of timber for the first well on the Mevey farm. The rig was hurried up and the tools were hurried down. On Saturday, September twenty-sixth, the fifth sand was cracked and oil gushed at the rate of one-hundred-and-forty barrels an hour. The well was stirred a trifle on Monday, September twenty-eighth, with startling effect. It put fifteen-thousand-six-hundred barrels of oil into the tanks in twenty-four hours! The Armstrong and the Matthews had to surrender their laurels, for Greenlee & Forst owned the largest oil-well ever struck on this continent. On Sunday, October fourth, after slight agitation by the tools, the mammoth poured out seven-hundred-and-fifty-barrels an hour for four hours, a record that may, perhaps, stand until Gabriel’s horn proclaims the wind-up of oil-geysers and all terrestrial things. The well has yielded several-hundred-thousand barrels and is still pumping fifty. Greenlee & Forst’s production for a time exceeded twenty-thousand barrels a day and they could have taken two or three-million dollars for their properties. The partners did not pile on the agony because of their good-luck. They kept their office at Pittsburg and Greenlee continued to live at Butler. He is a typical manager in the field, bubbling over with push and vim. Forst had a clothing-store at Millerstown in its busy days, waltzed around the bull-ring in the Bradford oil-exchange and returned southward to scoop the capital prize in the petroleum-lottery.

Scurrying for territory in the Jumbo-field set in with the vigor of a thousand football-rushes. McDonald tourists, eager to view the wondrous spouters and hungry for any morsel of land that could be picked up, packed the Panhandle trains. Rigs were reared on town-lots, in gardens and yards. Gaslights glared, streams of oil flowed and the liveliest scenes of Oil Creek were revived and emphasized. By November first two-hundred wells were drilling and sixty rigs building. Fifty-four October strikes swelled the daily production at the close of the month to eighty-thousand barrels! What Bradford had taken years to accomplish McDonald achieved in ninety days! Greenlee & Forst had thirty wells drilling and three-hundred-thousand barrels of iron-tankage. Guffey, Galey & Jennings were on deck with fifteen or twenty. The Fisher Oil-Company, owning one-fourth the Oakdale’s big tract and the McMichael farm, had sixteen wells reaching for the jugular, from which the Sturgeon and Baldwin spouters were drawing ten-thousand barrels a day. William Guckert—he started at Foster and was active at Edenburg, Parker, Millerstown, Bradford and Thorn Creek—and John A. Steele had two producing largely and eight going down on the Mevey farm. J. G. Haymaker, a pioneer from Allegany county, N. Y., to Allegheny county, Pa., and Thomas Leggett owned one gusher, nine drilling wells and five-hundred acres of leases. Haymaker began at Pithole, drilled in Venango and Clarion, was prominent in Butler and in 1878 optioned blocks of land on Meek’s Creek that developed good territory and the thriving town of Haymaker, the forerunner of the Allegheny field. He boosted Saxonburg and Legionville and his brother, Obadiah Haymaker, opened the Murraysville gas-field and was shot dead defending his property against an attack by Weston’s minions. Veterans from every quarter flocked in and new faces were to be counted by hundreds at Oakdale, Noblestown and McDonald. The National-Transit Company laid a host of lines to keep the tanks from overflowing and Mellon Brothers operated an independent pipe-line. Handling such an avalanche of oil was not child’s play and it would have been utterly impossible in the era of wagons and flat-boats on Oil Creek.

McDonald territory, if unparalleled in richness, in some respects tallied with portions of Oil Creek and the fourth-sand division of Butler. Occasionally a dry-hole varied the monotony of the reports and ruffled the plumage of disappointed seekers for gushers. Even the Mevey farm trotted out dusters forty rods from Greenlee & Forst’s record-breaker. The “belt” was not continuous from McCurdy and dry-holes shortened it southward and narrowed it westward, but a field so prolific required little room to build up an overwhelming production. An engine may exert the force of a thousand horses and the yield of the Greenlee & Forst or the Matthews in sixty days exceeded that of a hundred average wells in a twelvemonth. The remotest likelihood of running against such a snap was terribly fascinating to operators who had battled in the older sections. They were not the men to let the chance slip and stay away from McDonald. Hence the field was defined quickly and the line of march resumed towards the southward, into Washington county and West-Virginia.

Wrinkles, gray-hairs and sometimes oil-wells come to him who has patience to wait. Just as 1884 was expiring, the discovery of oil in a well on the Gantz lot, a few rods from the Chartiers-Railroad depot, electrified the ancient borough of Washington, midway between Pittsburg and Wheeling. The whole town gathered to see the grease spout above the derrick. Hundreds of oilmen hurried to pick up leases and jerk the tools. For six weeks a veil of mystery shrouded the well, which was then announced to be of small account. Eight others had been started, but the territory was deep, the rock was often hard, and the excited populace had to wait six months for the answer to the drill.

Traveling over Washington county in 1880, Frederick Crocker noticed its strong geological resemblance to the upper oil-fields, which he knew intimately. The locality was directly on a line from the northern districts to points south that had produced oil. He organized the Niagara Oil-Company and sent agents to secure leases. Remembering the collapse of Washington companies in 1860-1, when wells on Dunkard Creek attracted folks to Greene county, farmers held back their lands until public-meetings and a house-to-house canvass satisfied them the Niagara meant business. Blocks were leased in the northern tier of townships and in 1882 a test well was drilled on the McGuigan farm. An immense flow of gas was encountered at twenty-two-hundred feet and not a drop of oil. Not disheartened, the company went west three miles and sank a well on the Buchanan farm, forty-two-hundred feet. Possibly the hole contained oil, but it was plugged and the drillers proceeded to bore thirty-six-hundred feet on the Rush farm, four miles south. Jumping eleven miles north-east, they obtained gas, salt-water and feeble spurts of oil from a well on the Scott farm. About this stage of the proceedings the People’s Light and Heat Company was organized to supply Washington with natural-gas. From three wells plenty of gas for the purpose was derived. A rival company drilled a well on the Gantz lot, adjacent to the town, which at twenty-one-hundred feet struck the vein of oil that threw the county-seat into spasms on the last day of 1884.

The fever broke out afresh in July of 1885, by a report that the Thayer well, on the Farley farm, a mile south-west in advance of developments, had “come in.” This well, located in an oatfield in a deep ravine, was worked as a mystery. Armed guards constantly kept watch and scouts reclining on the hill-top contented themselves with an unsatisfactory peep through a field-glass. One night a shock of oats approached within sixty feet of the derrick. The guard fired and the propelling power immediately took to its heels and ran. Another night, while a crowd of disinterested parties jangled with the guards, scouts gained entrance to the derrick from the rear, but discovered no oil. Previous to this a scout had paid a midnight visit to the well, eluded the guards, boldly climbed to the top of the derrick and with chalk marked the crown-pulley. With the aid of their glasses the vigilant watchers on the hill-top counted the revolutions and calculated the length of cable needed to reach the bottom of the well. A bolder move was to crawl under the floor of the derrick. This was successfully accomplished by several daring fellows, one of whom was caught in the act. He weighed two-hundred-and-forty pounds and his frantic struggles for a comfortable resting-place led to his discovery. A handful of cigars and a long pull at his pocket flask purchased his freedom. The well was a failure. R. H. Thayer drilled four more good ones, one a gusher that netted him three-thousand dollars a day for months. Other operators crowded in and were rewarded with dusters of the most approved type.

The despondency following the failure of Thayer’s No. 1 was dispelled on August twenty-second. The People’s Light and Heat Company’s well, on the Gordon farm, pierced a new sand two-hundred-and-sixty feet below the Gantz formation, and oil commenced to scale the derrick. Again the petroleum-fever raged. An owner of the well, at church on Sunday morning, suddenly awakened from his slumbers and horrified pastor and congregation by yelling: “By George! There she spouts!” The day previous he had seen the well flow and religious thoughts had been temporarily replaced by dreams of a fortune. This well’s best day’s record was one-hundred-and-sixty barrels. Test wells for the new Gordon sand were sunk in all directions and the Washington field had made a substantial beginning. The effect on the inhabitants was marked. The price of wool no longer formed the staple of conversation, the new industry entirely superseding it. Real-estate values shot skyward and the borough population strode from five-thousand to seventy-five-hundred. The sturdy Scotch-Presbyterians would not tolerate dance-houses, gambling-hells and dens of vice in a town that for twenty years had not permitted the sale of liquor. Time works wonders. Washington county, which fomented the Whisky Insurrection, was transformed into a prohibition stronghold. The festive citizen intent upon a lark had to journey to Pittsburg or Wheeling for his jag.

Col. E. H. Dyer, whom the Gantz well allured to the new district, leased the Calvin Smith farm, three miles north-east, and started the drill. He had twenty years’ experience and very little cash. His funds giving out, he offered the well and lease for five-hundred dollars. Willets & Young agreed to finish the well for two-thirds interest. They pounded the rock, drilled through the fifth sand and hit “the fifty-foot” nearer China. In January of 1886 the well-Dyer No. 1—flowed four-hundred barrels a day. Expecting gas or a dry-hole, from the absence of oil in the customary sand, the owners had not erected tanks and the stream wasted for several days. Dyer sold his remaining one-third to Joseph W. Craig, a well-known operator in the Oil-City and Pittsburg oil-exchanges, for seventy-five-thousand dollars. He organized the Mascot Oil-Company, located the McGahey in another section of the field and pocketed two-hundred-thousand dollars for his year’s work in Washington county. The Smith proved to be the creamiest farm in the field, returning Willets, Young and Craig six-hundred-thousand dollars. Calvin Smith was a hired man in 1876, working by the month on the farm he bought in 1883, paying a small amount and arranging to string out the balance in fifteen annual instalments. His one-eighth royalty fattened his bank-account in eighteen months to six figures, an achievement creditable to the scion of the multitudinousmultitudinous Smith-family.

From the sinking of the Dyer well drilling went on recklessly. Everybody felt confident of a great future for Washington territory. Isaac Willets, brother of an owner of the Smith tract, paid sixty-thousand dollars for the adjoining farm—the Munce—and spent two-hundred-thousand in wells that cleared him a plump half-million. John McKeown the same day bought the farm of the Munce heirs, directly north of their uncle’s, and drilled wells that yielded him five-thousand dollars a day. He removed to Washington and died there. His widow erected a sixty-thousand-dollar monument over his grave, something that would never have happened if John, plain, hard-headed and unpretentious, could have expressed his sentiments. Thayer No. 2, on the Clark farm, adjoining the Gordon, startled the fraternity in May of 1886 by flowing two-thousand barrels a day from the Gordon sand. It was the biggest spouter in the heap. Lightning struck the tank and burned the gusher, the blazing oil shooting flames a hundred feet towards the blue canopy. At night the brilliant light illumined the country for miles, travelers pronouncing it equal to Mt. Vesuvius in active eruption. The burning oil ran to Gordon No. 1, on lower ground, setting it off also. In a week the Thayer blaze was doused and the stream of crude turned into the tanks of No. 1. Next night a tool-dresser, carrying a lantern on his way to “midnight tower,” set fire to the gas which hung around the tanks. The flames once more shot above the tree-tops, the tool-dresser saved his life only by rolling into the creek, but the derrick was saved and no damage resulted to the well.

Captain J. J. Vandergrift leased the Barre farm, south of the Smith, and drilled a series of gushers that added materially to his great wealth. Disposing of the Barre, he developed the Taylorstown pool and reaped a fortune. T. J. Vandergrift leased the McManis farm, six miles south of Washington, and located the first Taylorstown well. Taylorstown is still on duty and W. J. Young manages the company that acquired the Vandergrift interests. South of the Barre farm James Stewart, vendor of a cure-all salve, owned a shanty and three acres of land worth four-hundred dollars. He leased to Joseph M. Craig for one-fourth royalty. The one well drilled on the lot spouted two-thousand barrels a day for weeks. It is now pumping fairly. This was salve for Stewart and liniment for Craig, whose Washington winnings exceed a half-million. “Mammy” Miller, an aged colored woman, lived on a small lot next to Stewart and leased it at one-fourth royalty to a couple of local merchants. They drilled a thousand-barrel well and “Mammy” became the most courted negress in Pennsylvania. The Union Oil-Company took four-hundred-thousand dollars from the Davis farm. Patrick Galligan, the contractor of the Smith well, leased the Taylor farm and grew rich. Pew & Emerson, who have made millions by natural-gas operations, leased the Manifold farm, west of the Smith. The first well paid them twenty-thousand dollars a month and subsequent strikes manifolded this a number of times. Pew & Emerson have risen by their energy and shrewdness and can occupy a front pew in the congregation of petroleumites.

Samuel Fergus, once county-treasurer and a man of broad mould, struck a geyser in the Fergus annex to the main pool. He drilled on his twenty-four acres solely to accommodate Robert Greene, pumper for Davis Brothers. Greene had much faith and no money, but he advised Fergus to exercise the tools at a particular spot. Fergus might have kept the whole hog and not merely a pork-chop. He sold three-eighths and carried one-eighth for Greene, who refused twenty-thousand dollars for it the day the well began flowing two-thousand barrels. “Bob” Greene, like Artemas Ward’s kangaroo, was “a amoosin’ cuss!” Called to Bradford shortly after the gusher was struck, he met an old acquaintance at the station. His friend invited Bob into the smoker to enjoy a good cigar. He declined and in language more expressive than elegant said: “I’ve been a ridin’ in smokers all my life. Now I’m goin’ to turn a new leaf. I’m goin’ to take a gentleman’s car to Pittsburg and from there to Bradford I’m goin’ to have a Pullman, if it takes a hull day’s production.” Bob took his first ride in a Pullman accordingly. The first venture induced Fergus to punch his patch full of holes and do a turn at wildcatting. His stalwart luck fired the hearts of many young farmers to imitate him, in some instances successfully. Washington has not yet gone out of the oil-business. The Cecil pool kept the trade guessing this year, but its gushers lacked endurance and the field no longer terrorizes the weakest lambkin in the speculative fold.

Greene county experienced its first baptism of petroleum in 1861-2-3, when many wells were drilled on Dunkard Creek. The general result was unsatisfactory. The idea of boring two-thousand feet for oil had not been conceived and the shallow holes did not reach the principal strata. Of fourth sand, fifth sand, Gordon rock, fifty-foot rock, Trenton rock, Berea grit, corn-meal rock, Big-Injun sand and others of the deep-down brand operators on Dunkard Creek never dreamed. Some oil was detected and more blocks of land were tied up in 1864-5. The credulous natives actually believed their county would soon be shedding oil from every hill and hollow, garden and pasture-field. The holders of the tracts—lessees for speculation only—drilled a trifle, sold interests to any suckers wanting to bite and the promised developments fizzled. E. M. Hukill, who started in 1868 at Rouseville, leased twenty-thousand acres in 1885 and located a well on D. L. Donley’s farm, one-third mile south-east of the modest hamlet of Mt. Morris. Morris Run empties into Dunkard Creek near the village. The tools were swung on March second, 1886. Fishing-jobs, hard rock and varied hindrances impeded the work. On October twenty-first oil spouted, two flows occurred next day and a tank was constructed. Saltwater bothered it and the well—twenty-two-hundred feet—was not worth the pains taken for months to work it as a mystery. Hukill drilled a couple of dusters and the Gregg well at Willowtree was also a dry-hole at twenty-three hundred feet. Craig & Cappeau and James M. Guffey & Co. swept over the south-western section in an expensive search for crude. From the northern limit of McKean to the southern border of Greene county Pennsylvania had been ransacked. The Keystone players—Venango, Warren, Forest, Elk, McKean, Clarion, Armstrong, Butler, Allegheny, Beaver and Washington—put up a stiff game and the region across the Ohio was to have its innings.

In the summer of 1881 Butler capitalists drilled a well on the Smith farm, near Baldridge, seven miles south of the county-seat. It had a nice white sand and a smell of oil. S. Simcox, J. J. Myers and Porter Phipps leased the land on which Renfrew now stands and put down a hole on the Hamill tract. The well showed only a freshet of salt-water until thirty feet in the third sand, when it flowed crude at a hundred-barrel gait. This strike, in March of 1882, boomed the territory below Butler and ushered in Baldridge and Renfrew. Milton Stewart and Lyman Stewart were interested with Simcox, Myers and Phipps in the property and helped organize the Bullion Salt-Water Company.

The Cecil pool, in Washington county, furnishes its oil from the fifty-foot sand. One well, finished in April of 1895, on a village lot, flowed thirty-three hundred barrels in twenty-four hours. The biggest strike at Legionville, Beaver county, was Haymaker’s seven-hundred barreler. The Shoustown or Shannopin field, also in Beaver, sixteen miles from Pittsburg, is owned principally by James Amm & Co. Coraopolis is a thriving oil town, fifteen miles west of the Smoky City. For miles along the Ohio derricks are quite plentiful. Greene county has been decidedly brisk in this year of grace and cheap petroleum. And so the tide rolls on and “thus wags the world away.”

The southern trail, with its magnificent Butler output, its Allegheny geysers, its sixteen-thousand barrels a day in Washington and its wonderful strikes in Greene, was big enough to fill the bill and lap over all the edges.

HITS AND MISSES.

A Bradford minister, when the Academy of Music burned down, shot wide of the mark in attributing the fire to “the act of God.” Sensible Christians resented the imputation that God would destroy a dozen houses and stores to wipe out a variety-theater, or that He had anything to do with building up a trade in arson and figuring as an incendiary.

“Mariar, what book was you readin’ so late last night?” asked a stiff Presbyterian father at Franklin. “It was a novel by Dumas the elder.” “‘Elder!’ I don’t believe it. What church was he elder on, Ish’d like to know, and writ novels? Go and read Dr. Eaton’s Presbytery uv Erie.”

Hymn-singing is not always appropriate, or a St. Petersburg leader would not have started “When I Can Read My Title Clear” to the minstrel-melody of “Wait for the Wagon and We’ll All Take a Ride!” At an immersion in the river below Tidioute, as each convert, male or female, emerged dripping from the water, the people interjected the revivalist chorus:

Mr. Gray, of Boston, once discovered a “non-explosive illuminating gasoline.” To show how safe the new compound was, he invited a number of friends to his rooms, whither he had taken a barrel of the fluid, which he proceeded to stir with a red-hot poker. As they all went through the roof he endeavored to explain to his nearest companion that the particular fluid in the barrel had too much benzine in it, but the gentleman said he had engagements higher up and could not wait for the explanation. Mr. Gray continued his ascent until he met Mr. Jones, who informed him that there was no necessity to go higher, as everybody was coming down; so Mr. Gray started back to be with the party. Mr. Gray’s widow offered the secret for the manufacture of the non-explosive fluid at a reduced rate, to raise money to buy a silver-handled coffin with a gilt plate for her departed husband.

Grant Thomas, train-dispatcher at Oil City of the Allegheny-Valley Railroad, is one of the jolliest jokers alive. When a conductor years ago a young lady of his acquaintance said to him: “I think that Smith girl is just too hateful; she’s called her nasty pug after me!” “Oh,” replied the genial ticket-puncher, in a tone meant to pour oil on the troubled waters, “that’s nothing; half the cats in Oil City are called after me!” The girl saw the point, laughed heartily and the angel of peace hovered over the scene.