Chapter XIX: Just Odds and Ends 429-452 (9)

James S. McCray, a farmer’s son, born in 1824 on the flats below Titusville, at twenty-two set out for himself with two dollars in his pocket. Working three years in a saw-mill on the Allegheny, he saved his earnings and in 1850 was able to buy a team and take up the farm decreed to enrich him beyond his wildest fancies. He married Miss Martha G. Crooks, a willing helpmeet in adversity and wise counsellor in prosperity. His first venture in oil, a share in a two-acre lease at Rouseville, he sold to drill a well on the Blood farm, elbowing his own. From this he realized seventy-thousand dollars. For his own farm he refused a million dollars in 1871. Sharpers dogged his footsteps and endeavored to rope him into all sorts of preposterous schemes. He told me one project, which was expected to control the coal-trade of the region, bled him two-hundred-and-sixty-thousand dollars! Instead of selling his oil right along, at an average figure of nearly five dollars, he stored two-hundred-thousand barrels in iron-tanks, to await higher prices. In my presence H. I. Beers, of McClintockville, bid him five-thirty-five a barrel for the lot. McCray stuck out for five-fifty. He kept the oil for years, losing thousands of barrels by leakage and evaporation, and sold the bulk of it at one to two dollars. Had he dealt with Beers he would have been six-hundred-thousand dollars richer! Mr. McCray removed to Franklin in 1872 and died some years ago. He rests in the cemetery beside his faithful wife and only daughter. The wells on his farm drooped and withered and the famous fifteen-acre field has long been a pasture. A robust character, strong-willed and kindly, sometimes queerly contradictory and often misjudged, James S. McCray could adopt the words of King Lear: “I am a man more sinned against than sinning.”

HYDE & EGBERT TRACT AND McCRAY FARM IN 1870.
JAS. S. McCRAY FARM. JAS. S. McCRAY.
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The Dalzell or Hayes farm, on which the first well—fifty barrels—was drilled in 1861, boasted the Porcupine, Rhinoceros, Ramcat, Wildcat, and a menagerie of thirty others ranging from ten barrels to three-hundred. At the north end of the farm, in the rear of the Maple-Shade and Jersey wells, the Petroleum Shaft-and-Mining-Company attempted to sink a hole seven feet by seventeen to the third sand. The shaft was dug and blasted one-hundred feet, at immense cost. The funds ran out, gas threatened to asphyxiate the workmen, the big pumps could not exhaust the water and the absurd undertaking was abandoned.

The story of the Story farm does not lack romantic ingredients. William Story owned five-hundred acres south of the G. W. McClintock farm, Oil Creek, the Dalzell and Tarr farms bounding his land on the east. He sold in 1859 to Ritchie, Hartje & Co., of Pittsburg, for thirty-thousand dollars. George H. Bissell had negotiated for the property, but Mrs. Story objected to signing the deed. Next day Bissell returned to offer the wife a sufficient inducement, but the Pittsburg agent had been there the previous evening and secured her signature to the Ritchie-Hartje deed by the promise of a silk dress! Thus a twenty-dollar gown changed the ultimate ownership of millions of dollars! The long-haired novelist, who soars into the infinite and dives into the unfathomable, may try to imagine what the addition of a new bonnet would have accomplished.

The seven Pittsburgers organized a stock company in 1860 to develop the farm. By act of Legislature this was incorporated on May first, 1861, as the Columbia Oil-Company, with a nominal capital of two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars—ten-thousand shares of twenty-five dollars each. Twenty-one-thousand barrels of oil were produced in 1861 and ninety-thousand in 1862, shares selling at two to ten dollars. Foreign demand for oil improved matters. On July eighth, 1863, the first dividend of thirty per cent. was declared, followed in August and September by two of twenty-five per cent. and in October by one of fifty per cent. Four dividends, aggregating one-hundred-and-sixty per cent., were declared the first six months of 1864. The capital was increased to two-and-a-half-millions, by calling in the old stock and giving each holder of a twenty-five-dollar share five new ones of fifty dollars apiece. Four-hundred per cent. were paid on this capital in six years. The original stockholders received their money back _forty-three_ times and had ten times their first stock to keep on drawing fat dividends! Suppose a person had bought one-hundred shares in 1862 at two dollars, in eight years he would have been paid one-hundred-and-seven-thousand dollars for his two hundred and have five-hundred fifty-dollar shares on hand! From a mere speck of the Story farm the Columbia Oil-Company in ten years produced oil that sold for ten-millions of dollars! Wonder not that men, dazzled by such returns, blind to the failures that littered the oily domain, clutched at the veriest phantoms in the mad craze for boundless wealth.

Splendidly managed throughout, the policy of the Columbia Company was to operate its lands systematically. Wells were not drilled at random over the farm, nor were leases granted to speculators. There was no effort to make a big showing of production and exhaust the territory in the shortest time possible. For twenty-five years the Story farm yielded profitably. The wells, never amazingly large, held on tenaciously. The Ladies’ well produced sixty-five-thousand barrels, the Floral sixty-thousand, the Big Tank fifty-thousand, the Story Centre forty-five-thousand, the Breedtown forty-thousand, the Cherry Run fifty-five-thousand, the Titus pair one-hundred-thousand and the Perry thirty-five-thousand. The company erected machine-shops, built houses for employés, and the village of Columbia prospered. The Columbia Cornet Band, superbly appointed, its thirty members in rich uniforms, its instruments the finest and its drum-major an acrobatic revelation, could have given Gilmore’s or Sousa’s points in ravishing music. G. S. Bancroft superintended the wells and D. H. Boulton, now of Franklin, assisted President D. B. Stewart, of Pittsburg, in conducting affairs generally. The village has vanished, the cornet band is hushed forever, the fields are the prey of weeds and underbrush and brakemen no more call out “Columby!” A few small wells, hidden amid the hills, produce a morsel of oil, but the farm, despoiled of sixteen-million dollars of greasy treasure, would not bring one-fourth the price paid William Story for it in the fall of 1859. “So passes away earthly glory” is as true to-day as when Horace evolved the classic phrase two-thousand years ago.

“Man wants but little, nor that little long;
How soon must he resign his very dust,
Which frugal nature lent him for an hour!”

On the east side of Oil Creek, opposite the southern half of the Story farm, James Tarr owned and occupied a triangular tract of two-hundred acres. He was a strong-limbed, loud-voiced, stout-hearted son of toil, farming in summer and hauling lumber in winter to support his family. Although uneducated, he had plenty of “horse sense” and native wit. His quaint speech coined words and terms that are entrenched firmly in the nomenclature of Oildom. Funny stories have been told at his expense. One of these, relating to his daughter, whom he had taken to a seminary, has appeared in hundreds of newspapers. According to the revised version, the principal of the school expressing a fear that the girl had not “capacity,” the fond father, profoundly ignorant of what was meant, drew a roll of greenbacks from his pocket and exclaimed: “Damn it, that’s nothing! Buy her one and here’s the stuff to pay for it!” The fact that it is pure fiction may detract somewhat from the piquancy of this incident. Tarr realized his own deficiencies from lack of schooling and spared no pains, when the golden stream flowed his way, to educate the children dwelling in the old home on the south end of the farm. His daughters were bright, good-looking, intelligent girls. Scratching the barren hills for a meager corn-crop, hunting rabbits on Sundays, rafting in the spring and fall and teaming while snow lasted barely sufficed to keep the gaunt wolf of hunger from the door of many a hardy Oil-Creek settler. To their credit be it said, most of the land-owners whom petroleum enriched took care of their money. Rough diamonds, uncut and unpolished, they possessed intrinsic worth. James Tarr was of the number who did not lose their heads and squander their substance. The richest of them all, he bought a delightful home near Meadville, provided every comfort and convenience, spent his closing years enjoyably and died in 1871. “Put yourself in his place” and, candidly, would you have done better?

For himself, George B. Delamater and L. L. Lamb, in the summer of 1860 Orange Noble leased seven acres of the Tarr farm, at the bend in Oil Creek. Dry holes the partners “kicked down” on the Stackpole and Jones farms dampening their ardor, they let the Tarr lease lie dormant some months. Contracting with a Townville neighbor—N. S. Woodford—to juggle the “spring-pole,” he cracked the first sand in June, 1861. The Crescent well—so called because the faith of the owners was increasing—tipped the beam at five-hundred barrels. The first well on the Tarr farm, it flowed an average of three-hundred barrels a day for thirteen months, quitting without notice. Cleaning it out, drilling it deeper and pumping it for weeks were of no avail. Not a drop of oil could be extracted and the Crescent was abandoned. Crude was so low during most of its existence—ten to twenty-five cents—that the well, although it produced one-hundred-and-twenty-thousand barrels, did not pay the owners a dollar of profit! Drilling, royalty and tankage absorbed every nickel. Like the victories of Pyrrhus, the more such strikes a fellow achieved the sooner he would be undone!

On the evening of August first, 1861, as James Tarr sat eating his supper of fried pork and johnny-cake, Heman Janes, of Erie, entered the room. “Tarr,” he said, “I’ll give you sixty-thousand dollars in spot cash for your farm!” Tarr almost fell off his chair. A year before one-thousand dollars would have been big money for the whole plantation. “I mean it,” continued the visitor; “if you take me up I’ll close the deal right here!” Tarr “took him up” and the deal, which included a transfer of several leases, was closed quickly. Janes planked down the sixty-thousand and Tarr, within an hour, had stepped from poverty to affluence. This was the first large _cash_ transaction in oil-lands on the creek and people promptly pronounced Janes a fool of the thirty-third degree. An Irishman, on trial for stealing a sheep, asked by the judge whether he was guilty or not guilty, replied: “How can I tell till I hear the ividence?” Don’t endorse the Janes verdict “till you hear the ividence.”

A short distance below the Crescent well William Phillips, who had leased a narrow strip the entire length of the farm, was also urging a “spring-pole” actively. Born in Westmoreland county in 1824, he passed his boyhood on a farm and earned his first money mining coal. Saving his hard-won wages, he bought the keel-boat Orphan Boy and started freighting on the Ohio and Allegheny rivers. The business proving remunerative, he drilled salt-wells at Bull Creek and Wildcat Hollow. On his last trip from Warren to Pittsburg, in September of 1859, he noticed a scum of oil in front of Thomas Downing’s farm, where South Oil City now stands. The story of the Drake well was in everybody’s mouth and it occurred to Phillips that he could increase his growing fortune by drilling on the Downing land. At Pittsburg he consulted Charles Lockhart, William Frew, Captain Kipp and John Vanausdall and with them formed the partnership of Phillips, Frew & Co. Returning at once, he leased from Downing, erected a pole-derrick and proceeded to bore a well on the water’s edge. With no machine-shops, tools or appliances nearer than Pittsburg, a hundred-and-thirty miles off, difficulties of all kinds retarded the work nine months. Finally the job was completed and the Albion well, pumping forty barrels a day, raised a commotion.

The Albion brought Phillips to the front as an oil-operator. James Tarr readily leased him part of his farm and he began Phillips No. 1 well in the spring of 1861. The Crescent’s unexpected success spurred him to greater efforts. Hurrying an engine and boiler from Pittsburg, he started his second well on the flat hugging the stream twenty rods north of the Crescent. Steam-power rushed the tools at a boom-de-ay gait. The first sand, from which meanwhile No. 1 was rivaling the Crescent’s yield, had not a pinch of oil. The solid-silver lining of the petroleum-cloud assumed a plated look, but Phillips heeded it not. An expert driller, he hustled the tools and on October nineteenth, at four-hundred-and-eighty feet, pierced the shell above the third sand. At dusk he shut down for the night. The weather was clear and the moon shone brightly. Suddenly a vivid flame illumined the sky. Reuben Painter’s well on the Blood farm, a mile southward, had caught fire and blazed furiously. The rare spectacle of a burning well attracted everybody for miles. Phillips and Janes were among those who hastened to the fire, returning about midnight. An hour later they were summoned from bed by a man yelling at the Ella-Yaw pitch: “The Phillips is bu’sted and runnin’ down the creek!” People ran to the spot on the double-quick, past the Crescent and down the bank. Gas was settling densely upon the flats and into the creek oil was pouring lavishly. Dreading a fire, lights were extinguished on the adjoining tracts and needful precautions taken. For three or four days the flow raged unhindered, then a lull occurred and tubing was inserted. After the seed-bag swelled, a stop-cock was placed on the tubing and thenceforth it was easy to regulate the flow. When oil was wanted the stop-cock was opened and wooden troughs conveyed the stuff to boats drawn up the creek by horses, the chief mode of transportation for years. The oil was forty-four gravity and four-thousand barrels a day gushed out! In June of 1862, when Phillips and Major Frew, with their wives and a party of friends, inspected the well, a careful gauge showed it was doing thirty-six-hundred-and-sixty barrels! The Phillips well held the champion-belt twenty-seven years. It produced until 1871, getting down to ten or twelve barrels and ceasing altogether the night James Tarr expired, having yielded nearly _one-million_ barrels! Cargoes of the oil were sold to boatmen at five cents a barrel, thousands of barrels were wasted, tens of thousands were stored in underground tanks and much was sold at three to thirteen dollars.

N. S. Woodford, Noble & Delamater’s contractor, had the foresight to lease the ground between the Crescent and the Phillips No. 2. His three-thousand barreler, finished in December, 1861, drew its grist from the Phillips crevice and interfered with the mammoth gusher. When the two became pumpers neither would give out oil unless both were worked. If one was stopped the other pumped water. Ultimately the Phillips crowd paid Woodford a half-million for his well and lease, a wad for which a man would ford even the atrocious Tarr-farm mud and complacently whistle “Ta-ra-ra.” He retired to his pleasant home, with six-hundred-thousand dollars to show for eighteen months’ operations on Oil Creek, and never bothered any more about oil. The Woodford well repaid its enormous cost. Lockhart and Frew bought out their partners at a high price and put the Phillips-Woodford interests into a stock-company capitalized at two-million dollars. The Phillips well—one result of a keen-eyed boatman’s observing an oily scum on the Allegheny River—enriched all concerned. Had Phillips failed to see the speck of grease that September day, who can tell how different oil-region history might have been? Happily for a good many persons, the Orphan Boy was not one of the “Ships that Pass in the Night.” What a field Oil Creek presents for the fervid fancy of a Dumas, a Dickens, a Wilkie Collins or a Charles Reade!

Comrades in business and good-fellowship, William Phillips and John Vanausdall removed to South Oil-City, lived neighbors and died twenty years ago. They resembled each other in appearance and temper, in charitable impulse and kindness to the poor. Phillips drilled dozens of wells—none of them dry—aided Oil-City enterprises and was a member of the shipping firm of Munhall & Co. until its dissolution in 1876. He was the first man to ship oil by steamer, the Venango taking the first load to Pittsburg, and the first to run crude in bulk down the creek. One son, John C. Phillips, and a married daughter live at Oil City and two sons at Freeport.

Heman Janes, of Erie, the first purchaser of the Tarr farm, from 1850 to 1861 shipped large quantities of lumber to the eastern market. Passing through Canada in 1858, he heard oil was obtained from gum-beds in Lambton county, south of Lake Huron, and visited the place. John Williams was dipping five barrels a day from a hole ten feet square and twenty feet deep. The best gum-beds spread over two-hundred acres of timbered land, which Mr. Janes bought at nine dollars an acre, the owner selling because “the stinking oil smelled five miles off.” Leasing four-hundred acres more, in 1860 he sold a half-interest in both tracts for fifteen-thousand dollars and retired from lumbering to devote his attention to oil. Large wells on his Canadian lands enabled him to sell the second half of the property in 1865 for fifty-five-thousand dollars. In February, 1861, he secured a thirty-day option on the J. Buchanan farm, the site of Rouseville, and tendered the price at the stipulated time, but the transaction fell through. In March of that year he went to West Virginia and leased one-thousand acres on the Kanawha River, including the famous “Burning Spring.” U. E. Everett & Co. agreed to pay fifty-thousand dollars for one-half interest in the property, at Parkersburg, on April twelfth. All parties met, a certified check was laid on the table and Attorney J. B. Blair started to draw the papers. At that moment a boy ran past, shouting: “Fort Sumpter’s fired on!” The gentlemen hurried out to learn the particulars. “The cat came back,” but Everett didn’t. A message told him to “hold off,” and he is holding off still. Janes stayed as long as a Northerner dared and was thankful to sell the batch of leases for seventy-five-hundred dollars. In 1862 he sued the owners of the Phillips well for his royalty _in barrels_. They refused to furnish the barrels, which were scarce and expensive, and the well was shut down for months pending the litigation. The suit was for one-hundred-and-twelve-thousand dollars, up to that time the largest amount ever involved in a case before the Venango court. Edwin M. Stanton, soon to be known as the illustrious War-Secretary, was one of the attorneys engaged by the plaintiff, for a fee of twenty-five-thousand dollars. A compromise was arranged for half the oil. The first oil sold after this agreement was at three dollars a barrel, taken from the first twelve-hundred-barrel tank ever seen in the region. A wooden tank of that size excited more curiosity in those days than a hundred iron-ones of forty-thousand barrels in this year of grace. Janes sold back half the farm to Tarr for forty-thousand dollars and two-thirds of the remaining half to Clark & Sumner for twenty-thousand, leaving him one-sixth clear of cost, the same month he bought the tract. He first suggested casing wells to exclude the water, built the first bulk-boat decked over—six-hundred barrels—to transport oil and was identified with the first practicable pipe-line. Paying seventy-five-thousand dollars for the Blackmar farm, at Pithole, he drilled three dry holes and then got rid of the land at a snug advance. Since 1878 Mr. Janes has been interested in the Bradford field and living at Erie. A man of forceful character and executive ability, hearty, vigorous and companionable, he deserves the large measure of success that rewarded him as an important factor in petroleum-affairs. In the words of the good Scottish mother to her son: “May your lot be wi’ the rich in this warld and wi’ the puir in the warld to come.”

The amazing output of the Phillips and Woodford wells stimulated the demand for territory to the boiling point. Men were infinitely less eager to “read their title clear to mansions in the skies” than to secure a title to a fragment of the Tarr farm. Rigs huddled on the bank and in the water, for nobody thought oil existed back in the hilly sections. Sixty yards below the Phillips spouter J. F. Crane sank a well that responded as pleasantly as “the swinging of the crane.” Densmore Brothers, at the lower end of the farm, drilled a seven-hundred-barreler late in 1861. A zoological freak introduced the animal-fad, which named the Elephant, Young Elephant, Tigress, Tiger, Lioness, Scared Cat, Anaconda and Weasel wells. Reckless speculation held the fort unchecked. The third sand was sixty feet thick, the territory was durable and three-hundred walking-beams exhibited “the poetry of motion” to the music of three-four-five-six-eight-ten-dollar oil. Mr. Janes built a commodious hotel and a town of two-thousand population flourished. James Tarr sold his entire interest in 1865, for gold equivalent to two-millions in currency, and removed to Crawford county. Another million would hardly cover his royalties. Three-million dollars ahead of the game in four years, he could afford to smile at the jibes of small-souled retailers of witless ridicule. If “money talks,” three-millions ought to be pretty eloquent. The churches, stores, houses, offices, wells and tanks have “gone glimmering.” Tarr-Farm station appears no more on railroad time-tables. Modern maps do not reveal it. Few know and fewer care who owns the place once the apple of the oilman’s eye, now a shadowy relic not worth carting off in a wheelbarrow!

Producers have enjoyed quite a reputation for “resolving,” and the first meeting ever held to regulate the price of crude was at Tarr farm in 1861. The moving spirits were Mr. Janes, General James Wadsworth and Josiah Oakes, the latter a New-York capitalist. The idea was to raise five-hundred-thousand dollars and buy up the territory for ten miles along Oil Creek. Wadsworth and Oakes raised over three-hundred-thousand dollars for this purpose, when the panic arising from the war ended the scheme. A contract was also made with Erie parties to lay a four-inch wooden pipe-line from Tarr farm to Oil City. On the advice of Col. Clark, of Clark & Sumner, and Sir John Hope, the eminent London banker, it was decided to abandon the project and apply for a charter for a pipe-line. This was done in the winter of 1861-2, Hon. Morrow B. Lowry, who represented the district in the State Senate, favoring the application. Hon. M. C. Beebe, the local member of the Legislature, opposed it resolutely, because, to quote his own words: “There are four-thousand teams hauling oil and my constituents won’t stand this interference.” The measure failing to carry, Clark & Hope built the Standard refinery at Pittsburg.

Resistance to the South-Improvement-Company welded the producers solidly in 1872. The refiners organized to force a larger margin between crude and refined. To offset this and govern the production and sale of crude, the producers established a “union,” “agencies” and “councils.” In October of 1872 every well in the region was shut down for thirty days. The “spirit of seventy-six” was abroad and individual losses were borne cheerfully for the general good. This was the heroic period, which demonstrated the manly fiber of the great body of oil-operators. E. E. Clapp, of President, and Captain William Harson, of Oil City, were the chief officers of these remarkable organizations. Suspensions of drilling in 1873-4-5 supplemented the memorable “thirty-day shut-down.” At length the “union,” the “councils” and the “agencies” wilted and dissolved. The area of productive territory widened and strong companies became a necessity to develop it. The big fish swallowed the little ones, hence the _personal_ feature so pronounced in earlier years has been almost eliminated. Many of the operators are members of the Producers’ Association, in which Congressman Phillips, Lewis Emery, David Kirk and T. J. Vandergrift are prime factors. Its president, Hon. J. W. Lee, practiced law at Franklin, served twice as State-Senator and located at Pittsburg last year. He is a cogent speaker, not averse to legal tilts and not backward flying his colors in the face of the enemy.

South of the Story and Tarr farms, on both sides of Oil Creek, were John Blood’s four-hundred-and-forty acres. The owner lived in an unpainted, weatherbeaten frame house. On five acres of the flats the Ocean Petroleum-Company had twelve flowing wells in 1861. The Maple-Tree Company’s burning well spouted twenty-five-hundred barrels for several months, declined to three-hundred in a year and was destroyed by fire in October of 1862. The flames devastated twenty acres, consuming ten wells and a hundred tanks of oil, the loss aggregating a million dollars. A sheet of fire, terribly grand and up to that date the most extensive and destructive in Oildom, wrapped the flats and the stream. Blood Well No. 1, flowing a thousand barrels, Blood No. 2, flowing six hundred, and five other gushers never yielded after the conflagration, prior to which the farm was producing more oil than the balance of the region. Brewer & Watson, Ballard & Trax, Edward Filkins, Henry Collins, Reuben Painter, James Burrows and J. H. Duncan were pioneer operators on the tract. Blood sold in 1863 for five-hundred-and-sixty-thousand dollars and removed to New York. Buying a brownstone residence on Fifth avenue, he splurged around Gotham two or three years, quit the city for the country and died long since. The Blood farm was notably prolific, but its glory has departed. Stripped bare of derricks, houses, wells and tanks, naught is left save the rugged hills and sandy banks. “It is no matter, the cat will mew, the dog will have his day.”

Neighbors of John Blood, a raw-boned native and his wife, enjoyed an experience not yet forgotten in New York. Selling their farm for big money, the couple concluded to see Manhattanville and set off in high glee, arrayed in homespun-clothes of most agonizing country-fashion. Wags on the farm advised them to go to the Astor House and insist upon having the finest room in the caravansary. Arriving in New York, they were driven to the hotel, each carrying a bundle done up in a colored handkerchief. Their rustic appearance attracted great attention, which was increased when the man marched to the office-counter and demanded “the best in the shebang, b’gosh.” The astounded clerk tried to get the unwelcome guest to go elsewhere, assuring him he must have made a mistake. The rural delegate did not propose to be bluffed by coaxing or threats. At length the representative of petroleum wanted to know “how much it would cost to buy the gol-darned ranche.” In despair the clerk summoned the proprietor, who soon took in the situation. To humor the stranger he replied that one-hundred-thousand dollars would buy the place. The chap produced a pile of bills and tendered him the money on the spot! Explanations followed, a parlor and bedroom were assigned the pair and for days they were the lions of the metropolis. Hundreds of citizens and ladies called to see the innocents who had come on their “first tower” as green and unsophisticated as did Josiah Allen’s Wife twenty years later.

Ambrose Rynd, an Irish woolen-factor, bought five-hundred acres from the Holland Land-Company in 1800 and built a log-cabin at the mouth of Cherrytree Run. He attained the Nestorian age of ninety-nine. His grandson, John Rynd, born in the log-cabin in 1815, owned three-hundred acres of the tract when the petroleum-wave swept Oil Creek. The Blood farm was north and the Smith east. Cherrytree and Wykle Runs rippled through the western half of the property, which Oil Creek divided nicely. Developments in 1861 were on the eastern half. Starting at five-hundred barrels, the Rynd well flowed until 1863. The Crawford “saw” the Rynd and “went it one better,” lasting until June of 1864. Six fair wells were drilled on Rynd Island, a dot at the upper part of the farm. The Rynd-Farm Oil-Company of New York purchased the tract in 1864. John Rynd moved to Fayette county and died in the seventies. Hume & Crawford, Porter & Milroy, B. F. Wren, the Ozark, Favorite, Frost, Northern and a score of companies operated vigorously. The third sand thickened and improved with the elevation of the hills. Five refineries handled a thousand barrels of crude per week. A snug village bloomed on the west side, the broad flat affording an eligible site. The late John Wallace and Theodore Ladd were prominent in the later stage of operations. Cyrus D. Rynd returned in 1881 to take charge of the farm and served as postmaster six years. Rynd, once plump and juicy, now lean and desiccated, resembles an orange which a boy has sucked and thrown away the rind.

Two museum-curio wells on the Rynd farm illustrated practically Chaplain McCabe’s “Drinking From the Same Canteen.” A dozen strokes of the pump every hour caused the Agitator to flow ten or fifteen minutes. The pious Sunday well, its companion, loafed six days in the week while the other worked, flowing on the Sabbath when the Agitator pump rested from its labors. This sort of affinity, which cost William Phillips and Noble & Delamater a mint of money, was evinced most forcibly on the McClintock farm, west side of Oil Creek, south of Rynd. William McClintock, original owner of the two-hundred acres, dying in 1859, the widow remained on the farm with her grandson, John W. Steele, whom the couple had adopted at a tender age, upon the decease of his mother. Nearly half the farm was bottom-land, fronting the creek, on the bank of which the first wells were sunk in 1861. The Vanslyke flowed twelve-hundred barrels a day, declined slowly and in its third year pumped fourteen-thousand. The Lloyd, Eastman, Little Giant, Morrison, Hayes & Merrick, Christy, Ocean, Painter, Sterrett, Chase and sixty more each put up fifty to four-hundred barrels daily. Directly between the Vanslyke and Christy, a few rods from either, New-York parties finished the Hammond well in May, 1864. Starting to flow three-hundred barrels a day, the Hammond killed the Lloyd and Christy and reduced the Vanslyke to a ten-barrel pumper. Its triumph was short-lived. Early in June the New Yorkers, elated over its performance, bought the royalty of the well and one-third acre of ground for two-hundred thousand dollars. The end of June the tubing was drawn from the Excelsior well, on the John McClintock farm, five-hundred yards east, flooding the Hammond and all the wells in the vicinity. The damage was attributed to Vandergrift & Titus’s new well a short distance down the flat, nobody imagining it came from a hole a quarter-mile off. Retubing the Excelsior quickly restored one-half the Hammond’s yield, which increased as the Excelsior’s lessened. An adjustment followed, but the final pulling of the tubing from the Excelsior drowned the affected wells permanently. Geologists and scientists reveled in the ethics suggested by such interference, which casing wells has obviated. The Widow-McClintock farm produced hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil and changed hands repeatedly. For years it was owned by a man who as a boy blacked Steele’s boots. In 1892 John Waites renovated a number of the old wells. Pumping some and plugging others, to shut out water, surprised and rewarded him with a yield that is bringing him a tidy fortune. The action of the stream has washed away the ground on which the Vanslyke, the Sterrett and several of the largest wells were located. “Out, out, brief candle!”

Mrs. McClintock, like thousands of women since, attempted one day in March of 1863 to hurry up the kitchen-fire with kerosene. The result was her fatal burning, death in an hour and the first funeral to the account of the treacherous oil-can. The poor woman wore coarse clothing, worked hard and secreted her wealth about the house. Her will, written soon after McClintock’s exit, bequeathed everything to the adopted heir, John W. Steele, twenty years old when his grandmother met her tragic fate. At eighteen he had married Miss M. Moffett, daughter of a farmer in Sugarcreek township. He hauled oil in 1861 with hired plugs until he could buy a span of stout horses. Oil-Creek teamsters, proficient in lurid profanity, coveted his varied stock of pointed expletives. The blonde driver, of average height and slender build, pleasing in appearance and address, by no means the unlicked cub and ignorant boor he has been represented, neither smoke nor drank nor gambled, but “he could say ‘damn’!” Climbing a hill with a load of oil, the end-board dropped out and five barrels of crude wabbled over the steep bank. It was exasperating and the spectators expected a special outburst. Steele “winked the other eye” and remarked placidly: “Boys, it’s no use trying to do justice to this occasion.” The shy youth, living frugally and not the type people would associate with unprecedented antics, was to figure in song and story and be advertised more widely than the sea-serpent or Barnum’s woolly-horse. Millions who never heard of John Smith, Dr. Mary Walker or Baby McKee have heard and read and talked about the one-and-only “Coal-Oil Johnnie.”

The future candidate for minstrel-gags and newspaper-space was hauling oil when a neighbor ran to tell him of Mrs. McClintock’s death. He hastened home. A search of the premises disclosed two-hundred-thousand dollars the old lady had hoarded. Wm. Blackstone, appointed his guardian, restricted the minor to a reasonable allowance. The young man’s conduct was irreproachable until he attained his majority. His income was enormous. Mr. Blackstone paid him three-hundred-thousand dollars in a lump and he resolved to “see some of the world.” He saw it, not through smoked glass either. His escapades supplied no end of material for gossip. Many tales concerning him were exaggerations and many pure inventions. Demure, slow-going Philadelphia he colored a flaming vermilion. He gave away carriages after a single drive, kept open-house in a big hotel and squandered thousands of dollars a day. Seth Slocum was “showing him the sights” and he fell an easy victim to blacklegs and swindlers. He ordered champagne by the dozen baskets and treated theatrical companies to the costliest wine-suppers. Gay ballet girls at Fox’s old play-house told spicy stories of these midnight frolics. To a negro-comedian, who sang a song that pleased him, he handed a thousand-dollar pin. He would walk the streets with bank-bills stuck in the buttonholes of his coat for Young America to grab. He courted club-men and spent cash like the Count of Monte Cristo. John Morrissey sat a night with him at cards in his Saratoga gambling-house, cleaning him out of many thousands. Leeches bled him and sharpers fleeced him mercilessly. He was a spendthrift, but he didn’t light cigars with hundred-dollar bills, buy a Philadelphia hotel to give a chum nor destroy money “for fun.” Usually somebody benefited by his extravagances.

Occasionally his prodigality assumed a sensible phase. Twenty-eight-hundred dollars, one day’s receipts from his wells and royalty, went toward the erection of the soldiers’ monument—a magnificent shaft of white marble—in the Franklin park. Except Dan Rice’s five-thousand memorial at Girard, Erie county, this was the first monument in the Union to the fallen heroes of the civil war. Ten, twenty or fifty dollars frequently gladdened the poor who asked for relief. He lavished fine clothes and diamonds on a minstrel-troupe, touring the country and entertaining crowds in the oil-regions. John W. Gaylord, an artist in burnt-cork and member of the troupe, has furnished these details:

“Yes. ‘Coal-Oil Johnnie’ was my particular friend in his palmiest days. I was his room-mate when he cut the shines that celebrated him as the most eccentric millionaire on earth. I was with the Skiff & Gaylord minstrels. Johnnie saw us perform in Philadelphia, got stuck on the business and bought one-third interest in the show. His first move was to get five-thousand dollars’ worth of woodcuts at his own expense. They were all the way from a one-sheet to a twenty-four-sheet in size and the largest amount any concern had ever owned. The cartoon, which attracted so much attention, of ‘Bring That Skiff Over Here,’ was in the lot. We went on the road, did a monstrous business everywhere, turned people away and were prosperous.

“Reaching Utica, N. Y., Johnnie treated to a supper for the company, which cost one-thousand dollars. He then conceived the idea of traveling by his own train and purchased an engine, a sleeper and a baggage-car. Dates for two weeks were cancelled and we went junketing, Johnnie footing the bills. At Erie we had a five-hundred-dollar supper; and so it went. It was here that Johnnie bought his first hack. After a short ride he presented it to the driver. Our dates being cancelled, Johnnie insisted upon indemnifying us for the loss of time. He paid all salaries, estimated the probable business receipts upon the basis of packed houses and paid that also to our treasurer.

“In Chicago he gave another exhibition of his eccentric traits. He leased the Academy of Music for the season and we did a big business. Finally he proposed a benefit for Skiff & Gaylord and sent over to rent the Crosby Opera-House, then the finest in the country. The manager sent back the insolent reply: ‘We won’t rent our house for an infernal nigger-show.’ Johnnie got warm in the collar. He went down to their office in Root & Cady’s music-store.

“‘What will you take for your house and sell it outright?’ he asked Mr. Root.

“‘I don’t want to sell.’

“‘I’ll give you a liberal price. Money is no object.’

“Then Johnnie pulled out a roll from his valise, counted out two-hundred-thousand dollars and asked Root if that was an object. Mr. Root was thunderstruck. ‘If you are that kind of a man you can have the house for the benefit free of charge.’ The benefit was the biggest success ever known in minstrelsy. The receipts were forty-five-hundred dollars and more were turned away than could be given admission. Next day Johnnie hunted up one of the finest carriage-horses in the city and presented it to Mr. Root for the courtesy extended.

“Oh, Johnnie was a prince with his money. I have seen him spend as high as one hundred-thousand dollars in one day. That was the time he hired the Continental Hotel in Philadelphia and wanted to buy the Girard House. He went to the Continental and politely said to the clerk: ‘Will you please tell the proprietor that J. W. Steele wishes to see him?’ ‘No, sir,’ said the clerk; ‘the landlord is busy.’ Johnnie suggested he could make it pay the clerk to accommodate the whim. The clerk became disdainful and Johnnie tossed a bell-boy a twenty-dollar gold-piece with the request. The result was an interview with the landlord. Johnnie claimed he had been ill-treated and requested the summary dismissal of the clerk. The proprietor refused and Johnnie offered to buy the hotel. The man said he could not sell, because he was not the entire owner. A bargain was made to lease it one day for eight-thousand dollars. The cash was paid over and Johnnie installed as landlord. He made me bell-boy, while Slocum officiated as clerk. The doors were thrown open and every guest in the house had his fill of wine and edibles free of cost. A huge placard was posted in front of the hotel: ‘Open house to-day; everything free; all are welcome!’ It was a merry lark. The whole city seemed to catch on and the house was full. When Johnnie thought he had had fun enough he turned the hostelry over to the landlord, who reinstated the odious clerk. Here was a howdedo. Johnnie was frantic with rage. He went over to the Girard and tried to buy it. He arranged with the proprietor to ‘buck’ the Continental by making the prices so low that everybody would come there. The Continental did mighty little business so long as the arrangement lasted.

“The day of the hotel-transaction we were up on Arch street. A rain setting in, Johnnie approached a hack in front of a fashionable store and tried to engage it to carry us up to the Girard. The driver said it was impossible, as he had a party in the store. Johnnie tossed him a five-hundred-dollar bill and the hackman said he would risk it. When we arrived at the hotel Johnnie said: ‘See here, Cabby, you’re a likely fellow. How would you like to own that rig?’ The driver thought he was joking, but Johnnie handed him two-thousand dollars. A half-hour later the delighted driver returned with the statement that the purchase had been effected. Johnnie gave him a thousand more to buy a stable and that man to-day is the wealthiest hack-owner in Philadelphia.”

Steele reached the end of his string and the farm was sold in 1866. When he was flying the highest Captain J. J. Vandergrift and T. H. Williams kindly urged him to save some of his money. He thanked them for the friendly advice, said he had made a living by hauling oil and could do so again if necessary, but he couldn’t rest until he had spent that fortune. He spent a million and got the “rest.” Returning to Oildom “dead broke,” he secured the position of baggage-master at Rouseville station. He attended to his duties punctually, was a model of domestic virtue and a most popular, obliging official. Happily his wife had saved something and the reunited couple got along swimmingly. Next he opened a meat-market at Franklin, built up a nice business, sold the shop and moved to Ashland, Nebraska. He farmed, laid up money and entered the service of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad some years ago as baggage-master. His manly son, whom he educated splendidly, is telegraph-operator at Ashland station. The father, “steady as a clock,” is industrious, reliable and deservedly esteemed. Recently a fresh crop of stories regarding him has been circulated, but he minds his own affairs and is not one whit puffed up that the latest rival of Pears and Babbitt has just brought out a brand of “Coal-Oil Johnnie Soap.”

John McClintock’s farm of two-hundred acres, east of Steele and south of Rynd, Chase & Alden leased in September of 1859, for one-half the oil. B. R. Alden was a naval officer, disabled from wounds received in California, and an oil-seeker at Cuba, New York. A hundred wells rendered the farm extremely productive. The Anderson, sunk in 1861 near the southeast corner, on Cherry Run, flowed constantly three years, waning gradually from two-hundred barrels to twenty. Efforts to stop the flow in 1862, when oil dropped to ten or fifteen cents, merely imbued it with fresh vigor. Anderson thought the oil-business had gone to the bow-wows and deemed himself lucky to get seven-thousand dollars in the fall for the well. It earned one-hundred-thousand dollars subsequently and then sold for sixty-thousand. The Excelsior produced fifty-thousand barrels before the interference with the Hammond destroyed both. The Wheeler, Wright & Hall, Alice Lee, Jew, Deming, Haines and Taft wells were choice specimens. William and Robert Orr’s Auburn Oil-Works and the Pennechuck Refinery chucked six-hundred barrels a week into the stills. The McClintocks have migrated from Venango. Some are in heaven, some in Crawford county and some in the west. If Joseph Cooke’s conundrum—“Does Death End All?”—be negatived, there ought to be a grand reunion when they meet in the New Jerusalem and talk over their experiences on Oil Creek.

SAMUEL Q. BROWN
FOSTER W. MITCHELL
JOHN L. MITCHELL

Eight miles east of Titusville, at Enterprise, John L. and Foster W. Mitchell, sons of a pioneer settler of Allegheny township, were lumbering and merchandising in 1859. They had worked on the farm and learned blacksmithing from their father. The report of Col. Drake’s well stirred the little hamlet. John L. Mitchell mounted a horse and rode at a John-Gilpin gallop to lease Archibald Buchanan’s big farm, on both sides of Oil Creek and Cherry Run. The old man agreed to his terms, a lease was executed, the rosy-cheeked mistress and all the pupils in the log school-house who could write witnessed the signatures and Mitchell rode back with the document in his pocket. He also leased John Buchanan’s two hundred acres, south of Archibald Buchanan’s three-hundred on the same terms—one-fourth the oil for ninety years. Forming a partnership with Henry R. Rouse and Samuel Q. Brown, he “kicked down” the first well in 1860 to the first sand. It pumped ten barrels a day and was bought by A. Potter, who sank it and another to the third sand in 1861. A three-hundred-barreler for months, No. 1 changed hands four times, was bought in 1865 by Gould & Stowell and produced oil—it pumped for fifteen years—that sold for two-hundred-and-ninety-thousand dollars! This veteran was the third or fourth producing well in the region. The Curtis, usually considered “the first flowing-well,” in July of 1860 spouted freely at two-hundred feet. It was not tubed and surface-water soon mastered the flow of oil. The Brawley—sixty-thousand barrels in eight months—Goble & Flower, Shaft and Sherman were moguls of 1861-2. Beech & Gillett, Alfred Willoughby, Taylor & Rockwell, Shreve & Glass, Allen Wright, Wesley Chambers—his infectious laugh could be heard five squares—and a host of companies operated in 1861-2-3. Franklin S. Tarbell, E. M. Hukell, E. C. Bradley, Harmon Camp, George Long and J. T. Jones arrived later. The territory was singularly profitable. Mitchell & Brown erected a refinery, divided the tracts into hundreds of acre-plots for leases and laid out the town of Buchanan Farm. Allen Wright, president of a local oil-company, in February of 1861 printed his letter-heads “Rouseville” and the name was adopted unanimously.

Rouseville grew swiftly and for a time was headquarters of the oil industry. Churches and schools arose, good people feeling that man lives not by oil alone any more than by bread. Dwellings extended up Cherry Run and the slopes of Mt. Pisgah. Wells and tanks covered the flats and there were few drones in the busy hive. If Satan found mischief for the idle only, he would have starved in Rouseville. Stores and shops multiplied. James White fitted up an opera-house and C. L. Stowell opened a bank. Henry Patchen conducted the first hotel. N. W. Read enacted the role of “Petroleum V. Nasby, wich iz postmaster.” The receipts in 1869 exceeded twenty-five-thousand dollars. Miss Nettie Dickinson, afterwards in full charge of the money-order department at Pittsburg and partner with Miss Annie Burke in a flourishing Oil-City bookstore, ran the office in an efficient style Postmaster-General Wilson would have applauded. Yet moss-backed croakers in pants, left over from the Pliocene period, think the gentle sex has no business with business! The town reached high-water mark early in the seventies, the population grazing nine-thousand. Production declined, new fields attracted live operators and in 1880 the inhabitants numbered seven-hundred, twice the present figure. Rouseville will go down in history as an oil-town noted for progressiveness, intelligence, crooked streets and girls “pretty as a picture.”

You could always count on a lively rustle—
The boys knew how to get up and hustle,
And of course the girls had plenty of bustle.

The Buchanan-Farm Oil-Company purchased Mitchell & Brown’s interest and the Buchanan Royalty Oil-Company acquired the one-fourth held by the land-owners. Both realized heavily, the Royalty Company paying its stock-holders—Arnold Plumer, William Haldeman and Dr. C. E. Cooper were principals—about a million dollars. The senior Buchanan, after receiving two or three-hundred-thousand dollars—fifty times the sum he would ever have gained farming—often denounced “th’ pirates that robbed an old man, buyin’ th’ farm he could ’ave sold two year later fur two millyun!” The old man has been out of pirate range twenty-five years and the Buchanan families are scattered. Most of the old-time operators have handed in their final account. Poor Fred Rockwell has mouldered into dust. Wright, Camp, Taylor, Beech, Long, Shreve, Haldeman, Hostetter, Cooper, Col. Gibson and Frank Irwin are “grav’d in the hollow ground.” Death claimed “Hi” Whiting in Florida and last March stilled the cheery voice of Wesley Chambers. The earnest, pleading tones of the Rev. R. M. Brown will be heard no more this side the walls of jasper and the gates of pearl. Scores moved to different parts of the country. John L. Mitchell married Miss Hattie A. Raymond and settled at Franklyn. He organized the Exchange Bank in 1871 and was its president until ill-health obliged him to resign. Foster W. Mitchell also located at the county-seat and built the Exchange Hotel. He operated extensively on Oil Creek and in the northern districts, developed the Shaw Farm and established a bank at Rouseville, subsequently transferring it to Oil City. He was active in politics and in the producers’ organizations, treasurer of the Centennial Commission and an influential force in the Oil-Exchange. David H. Mitchell likewise gained a fortune in oil, founded a bank and died at Titusville. Samuel Q. Brown, their relative and associate in various undertakings, was a merchant and banker at Pleasantville. Retiring from these pursuits, he removed to Philadelphia and then to New York to oversee the financial work of the Tidewater Pipe-Line. He procured the charter for the first pipe-line and acquired a fortune by his business-talent and wise management.

“Let Hercules himself do what he may,
The cat will mew, the dog will have his day.”

Born in New York in 1824, Henry R. Rouse studied law, taught school in Warren county and engaged in lumbering and storekeeping at Enterprise. He served in the legislatures of 1859-60, acquitting himself manfully. Promptly catching the inspiration of the hour, he shared with William Barnsdall and Boone Meade the honor of putting down the third oil-well in Pennsylvania. With John L. Mitchell and Samuel Q. Brown he leased the Buchanan farm and invested in oil-lands generally. Fabulous wealth began to reward his efforts. Had he lived “he would have been a giant or a bankrupt in petroleum.” Operations on the John Buchanan farm were pushed actively. Near the upper line of the farm, on the east side of Oil Creek, at the foot of the hill, Merrick & Co. drilled a well in 1861, eight rods from the Wadsworth. On April seventeenth, at the depth of three-hundred feet, gas, water and oil rushed up, fairly lifting the tools out of the hole. The evening was damp and the atmosphere surcharged with gas. People ran with shovels to dig trenches and throw up a bank to hold the oil, no tanks having been provided. Mr. Rouse and George H. Dimick, his clerk and cashier, with six others, had eaten supper and were sitting in Anthony’s Hotel discussing the fall of Fort Sumter. A laborer at the Merrick well bounded into the room to say that a vein of oil had been struck and barrels were wanted. All ran to the well but Dimick, who went to send barrels. Finishing this errand, he hastened towards the well. A frightful explosion hurled him to the earth. Smouldering coals under the Wadsworth boiler had ignited the gas. In an instant the two wells, tanks and an acre of ground saturated with oil were in flames, enveloping ninety or a hundred persons. Men digging the ditch or dipping the oil wilted like leaves in a gale. Horrible shrieks rent the air. Dense volumes of black smoke ascended. Tongues of flame leaped hundreds of feet. One poor fellow, charred to the bone, died screaming with agony over his supposed arrival in hell. Victims perished scarcely a step from safety. Rouse stood near the derrick at the fatal moment. Blinded by the first flash, he stumbled forward and fell into the marshy soil. Throwing valuable papers and a wallet of money beyond the circuit of fire, he struggled to his feet, groped a dozen paces and fell again. Two men dashed into the sea of flame and dragged him forth, his flesh baked and his clothing a handful of shreds. He was carried to a shanty and gasped through five hours of excruciating torture. His wonderful self-possession never deserted him, no word or act betraying his fearful suffering. Although obliged to sip water from a spoon at every breath, he dictated a concise will, devising the bulk of his estate in trust to improve the roads and benefit the poor of Warren county. Relatives and intimate friends, his clerk and hired boy, the men who bore him from the broiling furnace and honest debtors were remembered. This dire calamity blotted out nineteen lives and disfigured thirteen men and boys permanently. The blazing oil was smothered with dirt the third day. Tubing was put in the well, which flowed ten-thousand barrels in a week and then ceased. Nothing is left to mark the scene of the sad tragedy. The Merrick, Wadsworth, Haldeman, Clark & Banks, Trundy, Comet and Imperial wells, the tanks and the dwellings have been obliterated. Dr. S. S. Christy—he was Oil City’s first druggist—Allen Wright, N. F. Jones, W. B. Williams and William H. Kinter, five of the six witnesses to Rouse’s remarkable will, are in eternity, Z. Martin alone remaining.