Natural-gas, the cleanest, slickest, handiest fuel that ever warmed a heart or a tenement, is the right bower of crude-petroleum. It is the one and only fuel that mines, transports and feeds itself, without digging every spoonful, screening lumps, carting, freighting and shoveling into the stove or furnace. Getting it does not imperil the limbs and lives of poor miners—the most overworked and underpaid class in Pennsylvania—in the damp and darkness of death-traps hundreds of feet beneath the surface of the ground. You drill a hole to the vital spot, lay a pipe from the well to the home or factory, turn a stop-cock to let out the vapor, touch off a match and there it is—the brightest, cleanest, steadiest, hottest fire on earth. Not a speck of dust, not an atom of smoke, not a particle of cinder, not a taint of sulphur, not a bit of ashes vexes your soul or tries your temper. There is no carrying of coal, no dumping of choked grates, no waiting for kindling to catch or green wood to burn, no scolding about sulky fires, no postponement of heat because the wind blows in the wrong direction. Blue Monday is robbed of all its terrors, the labor of housekeeping is lightened and husbands no longer object to starting the fire on cold mornings. A nice blaze may be let burn all night in winter and kept on tap in summer only when needed. It is lighted or extinguished as readily as the gas-jet in the parlor. It melts iron, fuses glass, illumines mills and streets, broils steaks to perfection and does away with many a fruitful source of family-broils. It saves wear and tear of muscle and disposition, lessens the production of domestic quarrels, adds to the pleasure and satisfaction of living and carries the spring-time of existence into the autumn of old age. Set in a dainty metal frame, with background of asbestos and mantel above, its glow is cheerful as the hickory-fire in the hearth. It gives us the ingle-nook modernized and improved, the chimney-corner brought down to date. It glides through eighty-thousand miles of pipes in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana and New York and employs a hundred-million dollars to supply it to people within reach of the bounteous reservoirs the kindly earth has treasured all through the centuries. If it be not a blessing to humanity, the fault lies with the folks and not with the stuff. The man who spouts gas is a nuisance, but the well that spouts gas is something to prize, to utilize and be thankful for. Visitors to the oil-region or towns near enough to enjoy the luxury, beholding the beauty and adaptability of natural-gas, may be pardoned for breaking the tenth commandment and coveting the fuel that is Nature’s legal-tender for the comfort and convenience of mankind.

The pretty town of Fredonia, in New York state, three miles from Lake Erie and forty-five south-west of Buffalo, enjoys the distinction of first using natural-gas for illuminating purposes. It is a beautiful place, famous for fine roads, fine scenery and fine vineyards. Canodonay Creek, a small but rapid stream, passes through it to the lake. Opinions vary as to the exact date when the gas was utilized, some authorities making it 1821, others 1824 and a few 1829. The best information fixes it at 1824, when workmen, in tearing down an old mill, observed bubbles on the water that proved to be inflammable. The hint was not lost. A company bored a hole one-inch-and-a-half in diameter into the limestone-rock. The gas left its regular channel, climbed the hole, lighted a new mill and was piped to a hundred houses in the village at a cost of one-fifty a year for each. The flame was large and strong and for years Fredonia was the only town in America lighted by “nature-gas.” A gasometer was constructed, which collected eighty-eight cubic feet in twelve hours. The inhabitants didn’t keep late hours. A mile nearer Lake Erie many gas-bubbles gamboled on the stream. Efforts to convey the gas to the light-house at Dunkirk failed, as it was only half the weight of air and would not descend the difference in elevation.

A light-house at Erie was lighted by natural-gas in 1831, “the Burning Spring,” a sheet of water through which the vapor bubbled, furnishing the supply. A tower erected over the spring held the gas that accumulated during the day and wooden-pipes conveyed it at night to the light-house.

Dr. Charles Oesterlin, a young German physician, sixty years ago unpacked his pill-boxes and hung out his little sign at Findlay, in Northwestern Ohio. He was an expert geologist and mineralogist, but the flat Black Swamp afforded poor opportunities to study the rocks underlying the limestone. The young physician detected the odor of sulphuretted hydrogen in the town and along the banks of the Blanchard River. It puzzled him to guess the source of the odor. He spoke to the farmers, who smelled the stuff, knew nothing and cared less about its origin or properties. The Doctor searched for a sulphur-spring. In October of 1836 the solution came. A farmer was digging a well three miles from town. A spring was tapped and the water “boiled,” as the diggers expressed it. Debating what to do, they were called to supper, returned after dark and lighted a torch to examine the well. Holding the torch over the well an explosion startled them and a flame ascended that lasted for days. Nobody was seriously hurt, but all thought the devil had a finger in the pie. Dr. Oesterlin connected the incident with the odor and it confirmed his theory of a gas that would burn and might serve as fuel. At a stone-quarry he made a cone of mud over a fissure, covered it with a bucket and applied a light. When the Doctor picked himself up in an adjoining corn-field the bucket was still sailing north towards Toledo. Daniel Foster, another Findlay farmer, dug a well in 1838. Gas issued from the hole before water was seen. Foster had a practical mind. He inverted a copper-kettle over the hole, rigged a wooden pump-stock beneath the kettle, plastered around it with clay, joined more pump-stocks together, stuck an old gun-barrel in the end of the last one, lighted the gas in his kitchen and by means of the flame boiled water, roasted coffee and illumined the apartment. Then Dr. Oesterlin declared Findlay was right over a vast caldron of gas. People laughed at him, adhered to tallow-dips and positively refused to swallow such a dose. Petroleum-developments in Pennsylvania fortified his faith and he sought to interest the public in a company to “bore a hole twenty inches across.” Sinners in Noah’s day were less impervious. Business-men scoffed and declined to subscribe for stock. He tried again in 1864 and 1867 with the same result. A company was organized to manufacture coal-gas. He talked of the absurdity of making gas at Findlay as equal to setting up a manufactory of air or water. It was no use. At last the triumph of natural-gas in Pennsylvania was manifested too strongly for the obtuse Findlayites to ignore it. In 1884 the Doctor managed to enlist four-thousand dollars of capital and start a well in a grove a mile east of town, where the odor was pungent and gas flowing through a tile-pipe he planted in the ground burned for weeks. He watched the progress of the work with feverish anxiety. The hopes of fifty long years were to be grandly realized or dashed forever. Sleepless nights succeeded restless days as the veteran’s heart-beats kept time with the rhythmic churning of the drill. At five, six and seven-hundred feet morsels of gas quickened the expectations of success. At eleven-hundred feet, in the Trenton limestone, on November tenth, 1884, gas burst forth with terrific force. The well was drilled sixteen-hundred feet and encountered salt-water. It was plugged below the gas-vein, the gas was lighted, an immense flame shot up and for months a quarter-million feet a day burned in the open air. Findlay grew from five-thousand to fifteen-thousand population and manufacturing flourished. Dr. Oesterlin, slight of frame, infirm with age, his thin locks and beard white as snow, had waited fifty years for his vindication. It came when he had reached four-score, full, complete and overwhelming. He bore his honors meekly, lived to round out eighty-two and nowhere is it recorded that he even once yielded to the temptation of remarking: “I told you so!”

Gas was used as fuel at pumping-wells on Oil Creek in 1862. It was first collected in “gas-barrels,” one pipe leading from the well to the receptacle and another from the barrel to the boiler. Many fires originated from the flame, when the pressure of gas was small, running back to the barrel and exploding it. A pumper at Rouseville, seated on a gas-barrel at such a moment, went skyward and may be ascending yet, as he never returned for his week’s wages. D. G. Stillwell, better known as “Buffalo Joe,” drilled a gasser in 1867 at Oil City, on the site of the Greenfield Lumber-Company’s office. He piped the gas to several houses, but the danger from constant changes of pressure led to its abandonment. This is the first authentic record of the use of “the essence of Sheol” for cooking food and heating dwellings. In 1883 the Oil-City Fuel-Supply Company laid a six-inch gas-line to wells at McPherson’s Corners, Pinegrove township, eight miles distant. The gas was produced from the second and third sands, at a depth of nine to ten-hundred feet and a pressure not exceeding two-hundred pounds to the square inch. In 1885 the late Samuel Speechly started a well on his farm near McPherson’s, intending to drill three-thousand feet in search of the Bradford sand. Oil-bearing strata dip twenty feet to the mile southward and Speechly believed the northern rocks existed far beneath the ordinary third-sand in Venango county. On April thirteenth, at nineteen-hundred feet, the drill penetrated what has since been called the “Speechly sand,” the most extraordinary and valuable fuel-sand as yet discovered. In this sand at three feet pressurepressure of gas became entirely too great to keep jerking the tools. The gas company leased the well and turned it into the line without being able to gauge it on account of the high volume. Speechly commenced a second well and the company, having previously laid a new ten-inch line to Oil City, constructed branches to Franklin and Titusville. The second well proved to be the largest to the present time, excepting the Big Moses in West Virginia. For a time it could not be controlled. The roar of the escaping gas could be heard for miles. Eventually it was tubed and the pressure was six-hundred pounds. Many wells in other fields have had greater pressure, but the large volume of the Speechly well made it a wonder. One day all the other wells connected with the main-line were discontinued from the line temporarily and the Jumbo turned in. The flow was sufficient to supply Oil City, Titusville and Franklin with all the gas required. Hundreds of wells have been drilled to the Speechly sand and the field now reaches from the southern part of Rockland township, Venango county, to Tionesta township, Forest county. It is about thirty miles long, with an average width of three miles, while the sand ranges in thickness from fifty to one-hundred feet. The pressure gradually diminishes. It requires constant drilling to keep up the supply, the Oil-City Company alone having about four-hundred wells.

Samuel Speechly died on Sunday night, January ninth, 1893, aged sixty-one, at his home in the gas-district bearing his name. His life was notably eventful, adventurous and fortunate. Born in England in 1832, at fourteen he began to learn locomotive-building and marine-engineering at Newcastle-on-Tyne. At twenty Robert Stephenson & Co. sent him to China to join a steamer engaged in the opium-trade. In 1855 he entered the service of the Chinese government to suppress piracy on the coast, and in 1857 started at Hong Kong the first engineering-business in the vast empire ruled by the pig-tailed Brother of the Sun. He visited America in 1872 and lived in Philadelphia. Wanting plenty of room, he went to Northwestern Pennsylvania, resided a year in Cranberry township, concluded to stay and settled on what subsequently became the famous Speechly farm. The well he drilled in 1885 had neither oil nor gas in the usual formations. Veteran operators advised him to abandon it, but Speechly entertained a notion of his own and the world knows the sequel. He was married in China in 1864 to Miss Margaret Galbraith, who survives him, with two daughters, Emily, born in China, and Adelaide, born in America. His widow and children occupy the old home on the farm.

Bishop Potter, stopping at Narrowsburg in 1854, noticed jets of gas exuding from the bank of the Delaware river at Dingman’s Ferry, forty miles above Easton, and published an article on the subject. A company in 1860 bored three wells, but the result was not encouraging, as politicians are the most gaseous bodies Northampton county has produced for thirty years. A gas-well at Erie attracted considerable attention in 1860 and was followed by a number more, which from a shallow depth yielded fuel to run several factories. East Liverpool, Ohio, put the product to practical use early in the seventies as a substitute for coal. The first well, drilled in 1860, caught fire and destroyed the rig. Geologists say natural-gas is the disembodied spirits of plants that grew in the sunshine of ages long before the foundations of the buried coal-measures were laid, so long ago shut up and forsaken by the light-hearted sun that it is a wonder they hadn’t forgotten their former affinity. But they hadn’t. They rushed out to the devouring kiss of their old flame at the first tap of the drill on their prison-house, like a foolish girl at the return of a fickle lover. They found Old Sol flirting with their younger sister, playing sweet to a lot of new vegetation. Before they had time to form a sewing-circle and resolve that all the male sex are horrid, they took fire with indignation at his fickleness and the tool-dresser’s forge and burst with a tremendous explosion. The fire was quenched and gas poured out of the pioneer-well fifteen years. Street-lamps were left burning all day, which was cheaper than to bother putting them out, and East Liverpool prospered as a hive of the pottery-industry. The celebrated well at East Sandy, Venango county, which gave birth to Gas City in 1869, burned a year with a roar audible three miles. Becoming partially exhausted, the fire was put out and the product was used for fuel at numerous wells. The famous Newton well, on the A. H. Nelson farm, was struck in May of 1872 and piped in August to Titusville, five miles south west. Its half-million cubic-feet per day supplied three-hundred firms and families with light and fuel. Henry Hinckley and A. R. Williams organized the company, one of the very first in Pennsylvania to utilize natural-gas on an extensive scale. The same year gas from the Lambing well was piped to Fairview and Petrolia. The Waugh well at Millerstown and the Berlin at Thompson’s Corners, Butler county, were the next big gassers. The great Delamater No. 2, near St. Joe, finished in 1874, for months was the biggest gas-well in the world. Its output was conveyed to the rolling-mills at Sharpsburg. The first gas-well in Butler county is credited to John Criswell, of Newcastle, who drilled for salt-water in 1840 near Centreville, struck a vein of the vapor at seven-hundred feet and fired it to heat his evaporating-pans.

At Leechburg and Apollo natural-gas has been used in puddling-furnaces since 1872. It will supply the huge mills at Vandergrift, the model town that is to be the county-seat of Vandergrift county, which the next Legislature will set off from Armstrong, Westmoreland and contiguous districts. It was the fuel of the cutlery-works at Beaver Falls from 1876 until the wells ceased producing in 1884. In 1875 Spang & Chalfant piped it from Butler to their mills in the suburbs of Pittsburg. Though Pittsburgers knew of its value in the oil-region for twenty years, they regarded it as a freak and not calculated to affect their interests favorably. Iron manufactured by its means was of superior quality, owing to the absence of sulphur and the intensity of the heat. In 1877 the Haymaker well opened the Murraysville gas-field, but that immense storehouse of potential energy lay dormant until Pew & Emerson piped the product to Pittsburg. In June of 1884 George Westinghouse, inventor of the air-brake and of various electric-appliances, struck a gas-well near his residence in Pittsburg. From that date the development was enormous. Wells producing from two to twenty-million cubic-feet a day were in order. The Philadelphia Company—Westinghouse was its president—alone tied up forty-thousand acres of gas-territory, drilled hundreds of wells and laid thousands of miles of pipes. Hon. James M. Guffey headed big corporations that supplied Wheeling, a portion of Pittsburg and dozens of smaller towns. The coal displacement in Pittsburg equaled thirty-thousand tons daily. Twenty and twenty-four-inch mains intersected the city. Iron, brass, steel and metal-working establishments consumed it. Glass-factories turned out by its aid plate-glass such as mankind had never seen before. The flaming breath of the new demon transformed the appearance and revolutionized the iron-manufacture of the Birmingham of America. The Smoky City was a misnomer. Soot and dirt and smoke and cinders disappeared. People washed their faces, men wore “biled shirts” and girls dressed in white. The touch of a fairy-wand could not have made a more resplendent change. Think of green grass, emerald hues, clear sunlight and clean walls in Pittsburg! At first timid folks feared to introduce it, because the pressure could not be regulated. All this has been remedied. The roaring, hissing monster that almost bursts the gauge at the well is tamed and subjugated to the meekness of a dove by valves and gasometers, which can reduce the pressure to a single ounce. Queer, isn’t it, that Pittsburg should be metamorphosed by natural-gas—the fires of hell as it were—into a city of delightful homes, an industrial paradise?

Gas-wells of high pressure were found in Ohio by thousands, as though striving to vie with the oil-wells which, beginning at Mecca in 1860 and ending at Lima, stocked up twenty-million barrels of crude. Over three-hundred companies were chartered in a year to supply every town from Cincinnati to Ashtabula. Natural-gas raged and blistered and for a term was the genuine “Ohio idea.” For thirty years wells at New Cumberland, West Virginia, have furnished fuel to burn brick. The same state has the biggest gassers in existence and lines to important cities are projected. If “the mountain won’t come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain.” Indiana has gas and oil in four counties, with Gas City as headquarters and lots of fuel for houses and factories in Indianapolis and the chief cities. The Hoosiers have carried out the principle of Edward Eggleston’s Mrs. Means: “When you’re a-gittin’ git plenty, I say.” Illinois had a morsel of oil and gas in wells at Litchfield. Kentucky and Tennessee are blessed with “a genteel competence” and Kansas has not escaped. Michigan has gas-wells at Port Huron and St. Paul once boasted a company capitalized at a half-million. Buffalo inhaled its first whiff of natural-gas, piped from wells in McKean county, on December first, 1886. Youngstown was initiated next day, from wells in Venango. A Mormon company bored wells at Salt Lake, but polygamy was not supplanted by any odor more unsavory. In Canada gas is abundant and Robert Ferguson, now a well-to-do farmer near Port Sarnia, first turned it into an engine-cylinder as a joke on the engineer at the pump-station in Enniskillen township. Steam was low, the engineer was absent, Ferguson cut the pipe leading from the boiler, connected it with one from a gas-well near-by, opened the throttle and, to his astonishment, found the pressure greater than steam. Natural-gas, a gift worthy of the immortal gods, worthy of the admiration of Vulcan, worthy of the praise of poets and historians, the agent of progress and saver of labor, is not a trifle to be brushed off like a fly or dismissed with a contemptuous sneer.

Pittsburg iron-works and rolling-mills received natural-gas at about two-thirds the cost of coal. The coal needed to produce a ton of metal cost three dollars, the gas that did the same service cost one-ninety. Besides this important saving, the expense of handling the fuel, hauling away cinders and waiting for furnaces to heat or cool was avoided. Gas-heat was uniform, stronger, more satisfactory, could be regulated to any temperature, turned on at full head or shut off instantly. Thus Pittsburg possessed advantages that boomed its manufactories immensely and obliged many competitors less favored to retire. In this way the anomaly of freezing out men by the use of greater, cheaper heat was presented.

On March seventeenth, 1886, at Pittsburg, Milton Fisher, of Columbus, was the first person to be incinerated in a natural-gas crematory. In fifty minutes the body was reduced to a handful of white powder. The friends of the deceased pronounced the operation a success, but Fisher was not in shape to express his opinion.

A singular accident occurred near Hickory, Washington county, on the night of December fourth, 1886. Alfred Crocker, an employÉ of the Chartiers Gas-Company, had been at the tanks on the McKnight farm and was going toward the well. The connecting-pipe between the well and tank burst with terrible force, striking Crocker on the left leg, blowing the foot and ankle completely off and injuring him about the body. The explosion hurled the large gas-tank a hundred feet. The young man died next morning.

The steam tow-boat Iron City once grounded near the head of Herr’s Island, above Pittsburg. The stern swung around and caught on a pipe conveying natural-gas across the Allegheny river. In trying to back the vessel off the pipe broke, the escaping gas filled the hold and caught fire from the furnace. An explosion split the boat from stem to stern, blew off the deck and blew the crew into the river. The boat burned to the water’s edge.

Near Halsey, in the Kane field, James Bowser was standing on a gas-tank, while a workman was endeavoring to dislodge an obstruction in the pipe leading from the well. The removal of the obstruction caused the pent-up gas to rush into the tank with such force that the receptacle exploded, hurling Bowser high in the air. He alighted directly in front of the heavy volume of gas escaping through the broken pipe. Before he could be rescued he was denuded of all clothing, except one boot. His clothing was torn off by the force of the gas and his injuries were serious.

Workmen laying pipe to connect with the main at Grapeville were badly flustered one frosty morning. By mistake the gas was turned on, rushing from the open end with great force. It ploughed up the earth and pebbles and ignited, the flinty stones producing a spark that set the whole thing in a blaze. Gas-wells yield liberally at Grapeville, supplying the glass-works at Jeannette and houses at Johnstown, the farthest point east to which the vapor-fuel has been piped.

J. S. Booker, an Ohio man, claimed to spot gas. His particular virtue lay in the muscles at the back of the neck, which rise up and irritate him in the presence of natural-gas. This is ahead of rheumatism as a rain-indicator. Booker’s own story is that an attack of asthma left him in a sensitive state, so that when he passes over a vein of gas the electricity runs through his legs, up his spine and knots the muscles of the neck. The story deserves credit for its rare simplicity. With the whole realm of fiction at his command, Booker chose only a few simple details and was content to pass current as a sort of human witch-hazel.

At Economy, where a hundred stand-pipes for natural-gas illuminate the streets, bugs and fruit-vermin were slaughtered wholesale. In the mornings there would be a fine carpet of bugs around every post. Chickens and turkeys would have a feast and a foot-race from the roosts to see which would get to the already-cooked breakfast first. The trees came out in bloom earlier and healthier than formerly, because the vermin were destroyed and the frosts kept from settling by the gas-lights, which burn constantly. As a promoter of vegetation natural-gas beats General Pleasanton’s blue-glass out of sight.

Samuel Randall, the Democratic statesman, visited the gas-wells at Murraysville with Hon. J. M. Guffey. From a safe distance the visitor threw a Roman candle at a huge column of vapor, which blazed quicker than a church-scandal, to Mr. Randall’s great delight. President and Mrs. Cleveland were afforded a similar treat by Mr. Guffey. The chivalrous host chartered a train and had a big well fired for the distinguished visitors. The lady of the White House was in ecstacies and the President evidently thought the novel exhibition knocked duck-shooting silly. Could a mind-reader have X-rayed his thinking-department it would likely have assumed this form: “Mr. Guffey, you have a tremendous body of gas here, but I have Congress on my hands!”

Eli Perkins lectured at St. Petersburg one night and next day rode with me through part of the district. He wanted points regarding natural-gas and smilingly jotted down a lot of Munchausenisms current in the oil-region. A week later he sent me a marked copy of the New-York Sun, with columns of delicious romance concerning gas-wells. Eli was no slouch at drawing the long-bow, but he fairly surpassed himself, Jules Verne and Rider Haggard on this occasion. His vivid stories of tools hurled by gas a thousand feet, of derricks lifted up bodily, of men tossed to the clouds and picturesque adventures generally were marvels of smooth, easy, fascinating exaggeration. Perhaps “if you see it in the Sun it’s so,” but not when Eli Perkins is the chronicler and natural-gas the subject.

“The Fredonia Gas-Light and Water-Works Company,” which obtained a special charter in 1856, was undoubtedly the first natural-gas company in the world. Its object was, “by boring down through the slate-rock and sinking wells to a sufficient depth to penetrate the manufactories of nature, and thus collect from her laboratories the natural-gas and purify it, to furnish the citizens with good cheap light.” The tiny stream of gas first utilized at the mill yielded its mite forty years. When Lafayette remained a night at Fredonia in 1824, on his triumphal visit to the United States, “the village-inn was lighted with gas that came from the ground.” The illustrious Frenchman saw nothing in his travels that interested and delighted him more than this novel illumination.

Col. J. A. Barrett, for many years a citizen of Illinois and law-partner of Abraham Lincoln, in 1886 removed to a tract of five-thousand acres on Tug Fork, near the quiet hamlet of Warfield. Gas issued from the soil and tradition says George Washington fired the subtle vapor at Burning Spring while surveying in West Virginia before the Revolution. Captain A. Allen, who pioneered the oil-business on Little Kanawha, leased the tract from Col. Barrett and struck a vast reservoir of gas at two-thousand feet.

John G. Saxe once lectured at Pithole and was so pleased with the people and place that he donated twenty-five dollars to the charity-fund and wrote columns of descriptive matter to a Boston newspaper. “If I were not Alexander I would be Diogenes,” said the Macedonian conqueror. Similarly Henry Ward Beecher remarked, when he visited Oil City to lecture, “If I were not pastor of Plymouth church I would be pastor of an Oil-City church.” The train conveying Dom Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, through the oil-regions stopped at Foxburg to afford the imperial guest an opportunity to see an oil-well torpedoed. He watched the filling of the shell with manifest interest, dropped the weight after the torpedo had been lowered and clapped his hands when a column of oil rose in the air. An irreverent spectator whispered: “This beats playing pedro.”

Daniel Fisher, ex-mayor of Oil City and chief of the fire-department, donned a new suit one day when oil-tanks abounded in the Third Ward. Hearing a cry of distress, he mounted a tank and saw a man lying on the bottom, in a foot of thick oil. He dropped through the hatchway, pulled up the victim of gas and with great difficulty dragged him up the small ladder into the fresh air. Of course, the new clothes were spoiled beyond hope of redemption. The man revived, said his name was Green, that he earned a living by cleaning out tank-bottoms and was thus employed when overcome by gas. Next day Fisher met Green, who thanked him again for saving his life, borrowed ten dollars and never repaid the loan or offered to set up a new suit of clothes.

“Brudders an’ sistern,” ejaculated a colored preacher, “ef we knowed how much de good Lawd knows about us it wud skeer us mos’ to deff.” A Franklin preacher once seemed to forget that the Lord was posted concerning earthly affairs, as he prayed thirty-six minutes at the exercises on Memorial Day. The sun beat down upon the bare heads of the assembled multitude, but the divine prayed right along from Plymouth Rock to the close of the war. Col. J. S. Myers, the veteran lawyer, presided. Great drops of perspiration rolled down his face, but he was like the henpecked husband who couldn’t get away and had to grin and bear it. He summed up the situation in a sentence: “I think ministers ought to take it for granted that the Almighty knows enough American history to get along nicely without having it prayed at Him by the hour!”

Fire and water have scourged the oil-regions sorely. A flood in March of 1865 submerged Oil City, floated off hundreds of oil-tanks and small buildings and did damage estimated at four-millions of dollars. Fire in May of 1866 wiped out half the town, the loss footing up a million dollars. The most appalling disaster occurred on Sunday, June fifth, 1892. Heavy rains raised Oil Creek to such a height that mill-dams at Spartansburg and Riceville gave way, precipitating a vast mass of water upon Titusville during Saturday night. With a roar like thunder it struck the town. Sleepers were awakened by the resistless tide and drowned. Refineries and tanks of oil caught fire and covered acres of the watery waste with flames. Helpless men, women and children tottered and tumbled and disappeared, the death-roll exceeding fifty. The two elements seemed to strive which could work the greater destruction. Above Oil City a huge tank of benzine was undermined and upset on Friday morning. The combustible stuff floated on the creek, which had risen four feet over the floors of houses on the flats. The boiler-fire at a well near the Lake-Shore tunnel ignited the cloud of benzine. An explosion followed such as mortal eyes and ears have seldom seen and heard. The report shook the city to its foundations. A solid sheet of flame rose hundreds of feet and enveloped the flats in its fatal embrace. Houses charred and blazed at its deadly touch and fifty persons perished horribly. The sickening scene reminded me of the Johnstown carnage in 1889, with its miles of flooded ruins and dreadful blaze at the railroad-bridge. Whole families were blotted out. Edwin Mills, his wife and their five children died together. Heroic rescues and marvelous escapes were frequent. John Halladay Gordon saved forty people in his boat, rowing it amid the angry flames and swirling waters at imminent risk. The recital of brave deeds and thrilling experiences would fill a volume. That memorable Sunday was the saddest day Oil City and Titusville ever witnessed. The awful grandeur of the spectacle at both places has had no parallel.

Sweeping into the yards of a refinery at the upper end of Titusville, the water tore open a tank containing five-thousand gallons of gasoline. Farther down an oil-tank and a gasoline-tank were rent in twain. Water covered the streets and shut people in their houses. The gas-works and the electric-plant were submerged and the city was in darkness. At midnight a curious mist lay thick and dense and white for a few feet above the water. It was the gasoline vapor, a cartridge a half-mile long, a quarter-mile wide and two yards thick, with a coating of oil beneath, waiting to be fired. One arm of the mist reached into the open furnaces of the Crescent Works and touched the live coals on the grate. There was a flash as if the heavens had been split asunder. Then the explosion came and death and havoc reigned. And the horror was repeated at Oil City, until people wondered if the Day of Judgment could be more terrifying. The infinite pity and sadness of it all!

The burning of the Acme Refinery at Titusville, on June eleventh, 1886, entailed a loss of six-hundred-thousand dollars. It caught from a tank lightning had struck. By great efforts the railroad-bridge and the Octave Refinery were saved. The fire raged three days and nights, and the departments from Warren, Corry and OilOil City were called to render assistance. Hardly a town in the oil-regions has been unharmed by fire or flood, while many have been ravaged by both.

The fire that desolated St. Petersburg started in Fred Hepp’s beer-saloon. Hepp had a sign representing a man attempting to lift a schooner of lager as big as himself and remarking, “Oxcuse me ov you bleese.” The fire “oxcused” him from further exertion. Two destructive conflagrations almost eliminated Parker from the face of the earth. Karns City experienced three fiery visitations. In 1874 sixty-four buildings in the heart of town went up in smoke. Sixteen followed in September, 1876, the post-office and two largest stores figuring in the list. On March fifth, 1877, Mrs. F. E. Bateman, three children and a guest perished in the Bateman House. Bateman, one son and one guest were caught in the flames and burned fatally, dying in a few hours. Burning coals adhering to a chunk of a bursting boiler, on Cherry Run, near the Reed well, plunged into a tank of oil and started a frightful blaze. Acres of the valley, covered with derricks and tanks, flamed with the fury of a veritable hell. Men fled to the hills and no life was lost. A train of blazing tank-cars on the Allegheny-Valley Railroad, below Foster station, interrupted travel for many hours. The passenger-train from Pittsburg stopped and the passengers walked up the track to see the huge blaze. Thomas Bennett, the engineer, went a short distance ahead, when an iron-tank exploded with fearful violence, one piece striking Bennett in the breast and killing him instantly. David Ker was conductor of the train poor Bennett did not live to guide to its destination.

Thomas Martindale, who leads the retail-grocery trade, brought with him to Philadelphia twenty years ago the vim and energy that gained him fame and fortune in the oil-region. He clerked for years in a Boston dry-goods store, quit Massachusetts for Pennsylvania and landed at Oil City in 1869. He took the first job that offered—grubbing out a road to his wells for John S. Rich—used eyes and brain and soon knew how to “run engine.” Buying an interest in a grocery, his “Checkered Store” became noted for excellent wares and low prices. The “Blue Store,” larger and better, followed and was in turn succeeded by the “Mammoth.” Martindale sold to Steffee & Co., moved to Philadelphia and opened the first California store. It was a revelation to the citizens to get fruits and wines straight from the Pacific coast and they patronized him liberally. Partners were taken in, whom the head of the firm imbued with something of his own energy and magnetism. Active in politics and trade, wide-awake and public-spirited, many Philadelphians contend that the next mayor of the Quaker City shall spell his name Thomas Martindale. He is a trenchant writer and has published “Sport Royal,” an admirable work descriptive of hunting adventures in which he participated. The live merchant who caught the inspiration of five-dollar oil is sixteen ounces to the pound every time and every place.

“Never quarrel with a preacher or an editor,” said Henry Clay, “for the one can slap you from the pulpit and the other hit you in his paper without your getting a chance to strike back.” Col. William Phillips, president of the Allegheny-Valley Railroad, violated the Kentucky statesman’s wise maxim by making war on the Oil-City Derrick. He was building the Low-Grade division, from Red Bank to Emporium, and the main-line suffered. The track was neglected, decayed ties and broken rails were common and accidents occurred too frequently for comfort. The winter and spring of 1873 were fruitful of disaster. At Rockland an oil-train ran over the steep bank into the river, upsetting the passenger-coach at the rear. The oil caught fire, several passengers were burned to death and others were terribly injured. The railroad officials, acting under orders from headquarters, refused to give information to the crowd of frantic people who besieged the office at Oil City to learn the fate of friends on the train. To the last moment they denied that anything serious had happened, although passengers able to walk to Rockland Station telegraphed brief particulars. At last a train bearing some of the injured reached Oil City. Next morning the Derrick gave full details and criticised the management of the road severely for the bad condition of the track and the stupid attempt to withhold information. The heading of the article—“Hell Afloat”—enraged Col. Phillips. He and Superintendent J. J. Lawrence prepared a circular to the conductors, instructing them “to take up pass of C. E. Bishop or J. J. McLaurin whenever presented, collect full fare, prohibit newsboys from selling the Oil-City Derrick on the trains, not allow the paper to be carried except in the mails or as express-matter, and to report to the General Superintendent.” Conductor Wench, a pleasant, genial fellow, on my next trip from Parker looked perplexed as he greeted me. He hesitated, walked past, returned in a few moments and asked to see my pass. The document was produced, he drew a letter from his pocket and showed it to me. It was the order signed by Phillips and Lawrence. “That’s clear enough, here’s your fare,” was my rejoinder. It was agreed at the office to say nothing for a day or two. Doubtless Phillips and Lawrence thought the paper had been scared and would send a flag of truce. A big wreck afforded the opportunity to open hostilities. For months the war raged. The paper had a regular heading—“Another Accident on the Valley of the Shadow Road”—which was printed every morning. Accidents multiplied and travel sought other lines. Phillips threatened to remove the shops from South Oil City, his partners wished Bishop to let up, he refused and they bought his interest. Peace was proclaimed, the road was put into decent order and the Pennsylvania Railroad eventually secured it. The fight had no end of comical features. It worried Col. Phillips exceedingly and spread the reputation of the Derrick over the continent. The cruel war is over and Col. Phillips and Col. Lawrence journeyed to the tomb long years ago.

“Jim” Collins—he ought to be manager—is about the only one of the early conductors on the Allegheny-Valley Railroad still in the traces. His record of twenty-seven years shows capable, faithful attention to duty and care for the comfort and safety of passengers that has gained him the highest popularity. Superintendent “Tom” King, now vice-president of the Baltimore & Ohio, is among the foremost railroad-officials of the United States. His brother was crushed to death by the cars. Wench, the Taylors, Reynolds and Bonar have been off the road many years. Long trains of crude are also missing, some towns along the route have disappeared and the crowds of operators who formerly thronged the line between Parker and Oil City have vanished from the scene. David Kerr, whom Collins succeeded, went to Arkansas. John McGinnes, one of the bravest engineers who ever pulled a throttle, headed the railroad-strikers in 1877 and died six years ago. “Jim” Bonnar is in Chicago, Grant Thomas is train-dispatcher and “Dick” Reynolds superintends a Baltimore road. The Allegheny-Valley, extended to Oil-City in the winter of 1867-8, is different from what it was when the superintendent walked over the entire track every day and the president applied formally to the directors for authority to purchase a new lock for his desk.

The first railroad to enter Oil City was the Atlantic & Great Western, now of the Erie system, in 1866. Its first train crossed the mouth of Oil Creek on a track laid upon the ice. “Billy” Stevens and John Babcock were early conductors. Stevens went to Maine and Babcock died several years ago at Meadville, soon after completing a term as mayor of the city. The Farmers’ Railroad was finished in 1867, the Allegheny Valley in 1868 and the Lake-Shore in 1870. A short railroad up Sage Run conveyed coal from the Cranberry mines. On August fourth, 1882, the engineer—Frank Wright—lost control of a train on the down grade, one of the steepest in the state. He reversed the engine to the last notch and jumped, sustaining injuries that caused his death in four days. For two miles the track was torn up and coal-cars were smashed to splinters by running into a train of freight-cars at McAlevy’s Mills. Six men were killed outright and five died from their injuries next day.

The popular auditor of the New York Central, W. F. McCullough, was an Oil-City boy. His brother, James McCullough, is traveling-auditor of the New York, New Haven & Hartford; another brother, E. M. McCullough, is traveling bill-agent for the U. S. Steamship-Railway Company. They are sons of the late Dr. T. C. McCullough, who died at Oil City in 1896.

Hon. Thomas Struthers, of Warren, who died in 1892 at the age of eighty-nine, donated the town a public-library building that cost ninety-thousand dollars. He aided in constructing the Pennsylvania Railroad, built sections of the Philadelphia & Erie and Oil-Creek Railroads and the first railroad in California. He was the first manager of the Oil-Creek road. Frank Thomson, the capable president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, was also superintendent of the Oil-Creek. C. J. Hepburn, now residing in Harrisburg and permanently disabled as the result of an accident, held the same position for years. He was a thorough railroader, esteemed alike by the employÉs and the public for his efficient performance of duty. The old-time Oil-Creek conductors were lock-switch, steel-track and rock-ballast clear through. Gleason, postmaster at Corry a term or two, runs the Mansion House at Titusville. “Bill” Miller is on the Pacific coast. Mack Dobbins died at St. Louis and “By” Taylor has made his last trip. Barber lives at Buffalo. “Mike” Silk, who yanked oil-trains from Cherry Run, is a wealthy citizen of Warren. Selden Stone and “Pap” Richards are still on deck, the last of a coterie of as white railroad-men as ever punched pasteboard “in the presence of the passenjare.”

A. G. POST