Chapter XIX: Just Odds and Ends 429-452 (10)

Warren’s greatest benefactor, the interest of the half-million dollars Rouse bequeathed to the county has improved roads, constructed bridges and provided a poor-house at Youngsville. Rouse was distinguished for noble traits, warm impulses, strong attachments, energy and decision of character. He dispensed his bounty lavishly. It was a favorite habit to pick up needy children, furnish them with clothes and shoes and send them home with baskets of provisions. He did not forget his days of trial and poverty. His religious views were peculiar. While reverencing the Creator, he despised narrow creeds, deprecated popular notions of worship and had no dread of the hereafter. To a preacher, in the little group that watched his fading life, who desired an hour before the end to administer consolation, he replied: “My account is made up. If I am a debtor, it would be cowardly to ask for credit now. I do not care to discuss the matter.” He directed that his funeral be without display, that no sermon be preached and that he be laid beside his mother at Westfield, New York. Thus lived and died Henry R. Rouse, of small stature and light frame, but dowered with rare talents and heroic soul. Perhaps at the Judgment Day, when deeds outweigh words, many a strict Pharisee may wish he could change places with the man whose memory the poor devoutly bless. As W. A. Croffut has written of James Baker in “The Mine at Calumet”:

“‘Perfess’? He didn’t perfess. He hed
One simple way all through—
He merely practiced an’ he sed
That that wud hev to do.
‘Under conviction’? The idee!
He never done a thing
To be convicted fer. Why, he
Wuz straighter than a string.”

Seventy-five wells were drilled on Hamilton McClintock’s four-hundred acres in 1860-1. Here was Cary’s “oil-spring” and expectations of big wells soared high. The best yielded from one-hundred to three-hundred barrels a day. Low prices and the war led to the abandonment of the smaller brood. A company bought the farm in 1864. McClintockville, a promising village on the flat, boasted two refineries, stores, a hotel and the customary accessories, of which the bridge over Oil Creek is the sole reminder. Near the upper boundary of the farm the Reno Railroad crossed the valley on a giddy center-trestle and timber abutments, not a splinter of which remains. General Burnside, the distinguished commander, superintended the construction of this mountain-line, designed to connect Reno and Pithole and never completed. Occasionally the dignified general would be hailed by a soldier who had served under him. It was amusing to behold a greasy pumper, driller or teamster step up, clap Burnside on the shoulder, grasp his hand and exclaim: “Hello, General! Deuced glad to see you! I was with you at Fredericksburg! Come and have a drink!”

The Clapp farm of five-hundred acres had a fair allotment of long-lived wells. George H. Bissell and Arnold Plumer bought the lower half, in the closing days of 1859, from Ralph Clapp. The Cornplanter Oil Company purchased the upper half. The Hemlock, Cuba, Cornwall—a thousand-barreler—and Cornplanter, on the latter section, were notably productive. The Williams, Stanton, McKee, Elizabeth and Star whooped it up on the Bissell-Plumer division. Much of the oil in 1862-3 was from the second sand. Four refineries flourished and the tract coined money for its owners. A mile east was the prolific Shaw farm, which put two-hundred-thousand dollars into Foster W. Mitchell’s purse. Graff & Hasson’s one-thousand acres, part of the land granted Cornplanter in 1796, had a multitude of medium wells that produced year after year. In 1818 the Indian chief, who loved fire-water dearly, sold his reservation to William Connely, of Franklin, and William Kinnear, of Centre county, for twenty-one-hundred-and-twenty-one dollars. Matthias Stockberger bought Connely’s half in 1824 and, with Kinnear and Reuben Noyes, erected the Oil-Creek furnace, a foundry, mill, warehouses and steamboat-landing at the east side of the mouth of the stream. William and Frederick Crary acquired the business in 1825 and ran it ten years. William and Samuel Bell bought it in 1835 and shut down the furnace in 1849. The Bell heirs sold it to Graff, Hasson & Co. in 1856 for seven-thousand dollars. James Hasson located on the property with his family and farmed five years. Graff & Hasson sold three-hundred acres in 1864 to the United Petroleum Farms Association for seven-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars. James Halyday settled on the east side in 1803. His son James, the first white baby in the neighborhood, was born in 1809. The Bannon family came in the forties, Thomas Moran built the Moran House—it still lingers—in 1845 and died in 1857. Dr. John Nevins arrived in 1850 and in the fall of 1852 John P. Hopewell started a general store. Hiram Gordon opened the “Red Lion Inn,” Samuel Thomas shod horses and three or four families occupied small habitations. And this was the place, when 1860 dawned, that was to become the petroleum-metropolis and be known wherever men have heard a word of “English as she is spoke.”

Cornplanter was the handle of the humble settlement, towards which a stampede began with the first glimmer of spring. To trace the uprising of dwellings, stores, wharves and boarding-houses would be as difficult as perpetual motion. People huddled in shanties and lived on barges moored to the bank. Derricks peered up behind the houses, thronged the marshy flats, congregated on the slopes, climbed the precipitous bluffs and established a foothold on every ledge of rock. Pumping-wells and flowing-wells scented the atmosphere with gas and the smell of crude. Smoke from hundreds of engine-houses, black, sooty and defiling, discolored the grass and foliage. Mud was everywhere, deep, unlimited, universal—yellow mud from the newer territory—dark, repulsive, oily mud around the wells—sticky, tricky, spattering mud on the streets and in the yards. J. B. Reynolds, of Clarion county, and Calvin and William J. McComb, of Pittsburg, opened the first store under the new order of things in March of 1860. T. H. and William M. Williams joined the firm. They withdrew to open the Pittsburg store next door. Robson’s hardware-store was farther up the main street, on the east side, which ended abruptly at Cottage Hill. William P. Baillee—he lives in Detroit—and William Janes built the first refinery, on the same street, in 1861, a year of unexampled activity. The plant, which attracted people from all parts of the country—Mr. Baillee called it a “pocket-still”—was enlarged into a refinery of five stills, with an output of two-hundred barrels of refined oil every twenty-four hours. Fire destroyed it and the firm built another on the flats near by. On the west side, at the foot of a steep cliff, Dr. S. S. Christy opened a drug-store. Houses, shops, offices, hotels and saloons hung against the side of the hill or sat loosely on heaps of earth by the creek and river. One evening a half-dozen congenial spirits met in Williams & Brother’s store. J. B. Reynolds, afterwards a banker, who died several years since, thought Cornplanter ought to be discarded and a new name given the growing town. He suggested one which was heartily approved. Liquid refreshments were ordered and the infant was appropriately baptized OIL CITY.

Peter Graff was laid to rest years ago. The venerable James Hasson sleeps in the Franklin cemetery. His son, Captain William Hasson, is an honored resident of the city that owes much to his enterprise and liberality. Capable, broad-minded and trustworthy, he has been earnest in promoting the best interests of the community, the region and the state. A recent benefaction was his splendid gift of a public park—forty acres—on Cottage Hill. He was the first burgess and served with conspicuous ability in the council and the legislature. Alike as a producer, banker, citizen, municipal officer and lawgiver, Captain Hasson has shown himself “every inch a manly man.”

When you talk of any better town than Oil City, of any better section than the oil-regions, of any better people than the oilmen, of any better state than Pennsylvania, “every potato winks its eye, every cabbage shakes its head, every beet grows red in the face, every onion gets stronger, every sheaf of grain is shocked, every stalk of rye strokes its beard, every hill of corn pricks up its ears, every foot of ground kicks” and every tree barks in indignant dissent.

Such was the narrow ravine, nowhere sixty rods in width, that figured so grandly as the Valley of Petroleum.

A SPLASH ON OIL CREEK.

The dark mud of Oil Creek! Unbeautiful mud,
That couldn’t and wouldn’t be nipped in the bud!
Quite irreclaimable,
Wholly untamable;
There it was, not a doubt of it,
People couldn’t keep out of it;
On all sides they found it,
So deep none dare sound it—
No way to get ’round it.
To their necks babies crept in it,
To their chins big men stept in it;
Ladies—bless the sweet martyrs!
Plung’d far over their garters;
Girls had no exemption,
Boys sank past redemption;
To their manes horses stall’d in it,
To their ear-tips mules sprawl’d in it!
It couldn’t be chain’d off,
It wouldn’t be drain’d off;
It couldn’t be tied up,
It wouldn’t be dried up;
It couldn’t be shut down,
It wouldn’t be cut down.
Riders gladly abroad would have shipp’d it,
Walkers gladly at home would have skipp’d it.
Frost bak’d it,
Heat cak’d it;
To batter wheels churned it,
To splashes rains turned it,
Bad teamsters gol-durned it!
Each snow-flake and dew-drop, each shower and flood
Just seem’d to infuse it with lots of fresh blood,
Increasing production,
Increasing the ruction,
Increasing the suction!
Ev’ry flat had its fill of it,
Ev’ry slope was a hill of it,
Ev’ry brook was a rill of it;
Ev’ry yard had three feet of it,
Ev’ry road was a sheet of it;
Ev’ry farm had a field of it,
Ev’ry town had a yield of it.
No use to glare at it,
No use to swear at it;
No use to get mad about it,
No use to feel sad about it;
No use to sit up all night scheming
Some intricate form of blaspheming;
No use in upbraiding—
You _had_ to go wading,
Till wearied humanity,
Run out of profanity,
Found rest in insanity;
Or winged its bright way—unless dropp’d with a thud—
To the land of gold pavements and no Oil-Creek mud!

WELLS ON BENNINGHOFF RUN, VENANGO COUNTY, PA., IN 1866.
[From a photograph taken one hour before they were destroyed by
lightning.]
]

VIII.
PICKING RIPE CHERRIES.

JUICY STREAKS BORDERING OIL CREEK—FAMOUS BENNINGHOFF ROBBERY—CLOSE CALL
FOR A FORTUNE—CITY SET UPON A HILL—ALEMAGOOSELUM TO THE FRONT—CHERRY
RUN’S WHIRLIGIG—ROMANCE OF THE REED WELL—SMITH AND MCFATE
FARMS—PLEASANTVILLE, SHAMBURG AND RED HOT—EXPERIENCES NOT UNWORTHY
OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS.

----------

“Who can view the ripened rose, nor seek to wear it?”—_Byron._

“Black’s not so black, nor white so very white.”—_Canning._

“Wild and eerie is the story, but it is true as Truth.”—_Hall Caine._

“No two successes ever were alike.”—_Hawthorne._

“There is nothing so great as the collection of the minute.”—_Vitus
Auctor._

“The toad beneath the harrow knows
Exactly where each tooth-point goes.”—_Kipling._

“The crop is always greater on the lands of another.”—_Ovid._

“It didn’t rain, the water simply fell out of the clouds.”—_Cy Warman._

“There are days when every stream is Pachlus and every man is
Crœsus.”—_Richard Le Gallienne._

“We shall not fail, if we stand firm.”—_Abraham Lincoln._

----------

Rich pickings, luscious as the clustering grapes beyond the fox’s reach, were not limited to the wonderful Valley of Petroleum. Live operators quickly learned that big wells could be found away from the low banks of Oil Creek. Anon they climbed the hills, ascended the ravines and invaded the near townships. Very naturally the tributary streams were favored at first, until experience inspired courage and altitude failed to be a serious obstacle. In this way many juicy streaks were encountered, broadening men’s ideas and the area of profitable developments to a marvelous degree. Alaska nuggets are fly-specks compared with the golden spoil garnered from oil-wells on scores of farms in Allegheny, Cherrytree and Cornplanter. Tales of the petroleum-seesaw’s ups and downs, without any “mixture rank of midnight weeds” that savor of “something rotten in Denmark,” need no Klondyker’s imagination, measureless as the ice-floes of the Yukon, to awaken interest and be worthy of attention.

By the side of the romance, the pathos, the tragedy and the startling incidents of the oil-regions thirty years ago the gold-excitements of California and Australia and the diamond-fever of South Africa are tame and vapid. Prior to the oil-development settlers in the back-townships lived very sparingly. Children grew up simple-minded and untutored. The sale of a pig or a calf or a turkey was an event looked forward to for months. Petroleum made not a few of these rustics wealthy. Families that had never seen ten dollars suddenly owned hundreds-of-thousands. Lawless, reckless, wicked communities sprang up. The close of the war flooded the region with paper-currency and bold adventurers. Leadville or Cheyenne at its zenith was a camp-meeting compared with Pithole, Petroleum Centre or Babylon. Men and women of every degree of decency and degradation huddled as closely as the pig-tailed Celestials in Chinatown. Millions of dollars were lost in bogus stock-companies. American history records no other such era of riotous extravagance. The millionaire and the beggar of to-day might change places to-morrow. Blind chance and consummate rascality were equally potent. Of these centers of sin and speculation, strange transformations and wild excesses, scarcely a trace remains. Where hosts of fortune-seekers and devotees of pleasure strove and struggled nothing is to be seen save the bare landscape, a growth of underbrush or a grassy field. Sodom was not blotted out more completely than Pithole, the type of many oil-towns that have been utterly exterminated.

North and west of the lower McElhenny farm, at the bend in Oil Creek, lay John Benninghoff’s two big blocks of land, through which Benninghoff Run flowed southward. Pioneer Run crossed the north-east corner of the property, the greater part of which was on the hills. Five acres on Oil Creek and the slopes on Pioneer Run were first developed. Leases for a cash-bonus and liberal royalty were gobbled greedily. Up Benninghoff Run and back of the hills operations spread. For one piece of ground the owner declined tempting offers, because he would not permit his potato-patch to be trodden down! Some wells pumped and some flowed from twenty-five to three-hundred barrels a day seven days in the week. William Jenkins, the Huidekoper Oil-Company, the DeKalb Oil-Company and Edward Harkins had regular bonanzas. The Lady Herman, which Robert Herman had the politeness to name for his wife, was a genuine beauty. The first well ever cased and the first pump-station—it hoisted oil to Shaffer—were on the hillside at the mouth of Benninghoff Run. The platoon of wells in the illustration of that locality, as they appeared in 1866, includes these and a hint of the barn beside the homestead. The busy scene—pictured now for the first time—was photographed within an hour of its obliteration. The artist had not finished packing his outfit when lightning struck one of the derricks and a disastrous fire swept the hill as bare as Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard! Wealth deluged the thrifty land-holder, oil converting his broad acres into a veritable Golconda. He awoke one morning to find himself rich. He was awakened one night to find himself famous, the newspapers devoting whole pages—under “scare-heads”—to the unpretending farmer in the southern end of Cherry tree. “And thereby hangs a tale.”

Suspicious of banks, Benninghoff stored his money at home. Purchasing a cheap safe, he placed it in a corner of the sitting-room and stocked it with a half-million dollars in gold and greenbacks! Cautious friends warned him to be careful, lest thieves might “break through and steal.” James Saeger, of Saegertown, a handsome, popular young fellow, who sometimes played cards, heard of the treasure in the flimsy receptacle. “Jim” belonged to a respectable family and had been a merchant at Meadville. Napoleon melted silver statues of the apostles to put the precious metal in circulation and Saeger concluded to give Benninghoff’s pile an airing. He spoke to George Miller of the ease with which the safe could be cracked and engaged two Baltimore burglars, McDonald and Elliott, to manage the job. Jacob Shoppert, of Saegertown, and Henry Geiger, who worked for Benninghoff and slept in the house, were enlisted. The deed, planned with extreme care not to miss fire, was fixed for a night when Joseph Benninghoff, the son, was to attend a dance.

On Thursday evening, January sixteenth, 1868, Saeger, Shoppert, McDonald and Elliott left Saegertown in a two-horse sleigh for Petroleum Centre, twenty-nine miles distant. At midnight they knocked at Benninghoff’s door. Geiger answered the rap and was quickly gagged, said to be as arranged previously. John Benninghoff, his wife and daughter were bound and the experts proceeded to open the safe. The frail structure was soon ransacked. The marauders bundled up their booty, sampled Mrs. Benninghoff’s pies, drank a gallon of milk and departed at their leisure, leaving the inmates of the house securely tied. Joseph returned in an hour or two and relieved the prisoners from their unpleasant predicament. An examination of the safe showed that two-hundred-and-sixty-five-thousand dollars had been taken! The bulk of this was in gold. A package of two-hundred-thousand dollars, in large bills, done up in a brown paper, the looters passed unnoticed! The alarm was given, the wires flashed the news everywhere and the press teemed with sensational reports. By noon on Friday the oil-regions had been set agog and people all over the United States were talking of “the Great Benninghoff Robbery.”

Saegar and his pals drove back and stopped at Louis Warlde’s hotel to divide the spoils. McDonald, Elliott and Saeger took the lion’s share, Geiger and Shoppert received smaller sums and Warlde accepted thirteen-hundred dollars for his silence. The Baltimore toughs lingered in the neighborhood a week and then sought the wintry climate of Canada, Saeger staying around home. Intense excitement prevailed. Hundreds of detectives, eager to gain reputation and the reward of ten-thousand dollars, spun theories and looked wise. Ex-Chief-of-Police Hague, of Pittsburg, was especially alert. For three months the search was vain. George Miller, whom McDonald wished to put out of the road “to keep his mouth shut,” in a quarrel with Saeger over a game of cards, blurted out: “I know about the Benninghoff robbery!” Saeger pacified Miller with a thousand dollars, which the latter scattered quickly. Jacob Shoppert was his boon companion and the pair spent money at a rate that caused officers to shadow them. Shoppert visited a town on the edge of Ohio and was arrested. Calling for a pen and paper, he wrote to Louis Warlde, the Saegertown hotel-keeper, reproaching him for not sending money. The jailer handed the detectives the letter, on the strength of which Warlde, who had started a brewery in Ohio, and Miller were arrested. The three were convicted and sentenced to a short term in the penitentiary. Geiger’s complicity in the plot could not be proved beyond a doubt and he was acquitted. Officer Hague captured McDonald and Elliott in Toronto, but Canadian lawyers picked flaws in the papers and they could not be extradited. Escaping to Europe, they were heard of no more. Saeger, who had not been suspected until after his departure, went west and was lost sight of for many a day.

Three years later a noted cattle king of the Texas-Colorado trail entered a saloon in Denver to treat a party of friends. The bar-tender, Gus. Peiflee, formerly of Meadville, recognized the customer as “Jim.” Saeger. He telegraphed east and Chief-of-Police Rouse, of Titusville, posted off to Denver with Joseph Benninghoff. They secured extradition-papers and arrested Saeger, who coolly remarked: “You’ll be a devilish sight older before you see me in Pennsylvania.” Their lawyers informed them that a hundred of Saeger’s cowboys were in the city—reckless, lawless fellows, certain to kill whoever attempted to take him away. Rouse and Benninghoff dropped the matter and returned alone. Saeger is living in Texas, prosperous and respected. He is just in his dealings, a bountiful giver, and not long ago sent five-thousand dollars to the widow of George Miller. Perhaps he may yet turn up in Washington as Congressman or United-States Senator. This is the story of a robbery that attracted more attention than the first woman in bloomers.

John Benninghoff was born in Lehigh county, where his ancestors were among the first German immigrants, on Christmas Day, 1801. His father, Frederick Benninghoff, settled near New Berlin, Union county, in John’s boyhood. There the son married Elizabeth Heise in 1825 and in 1828 located on a farm near Oldtown, Clearfield county. Thence he removed to Venango county, living close to Cherry tree village four years. In 1836 he bought a piece of land on the south border of Cherrytree township, near what was to become Petroleum Centre. He added to his purchase as his means permitted, until he owned about three-hundred acres, with solid buildings and modern improvements. He was in easy circumstances prior to the oil-developments that enriched him. Contrary to the general opinion, the robbery did not impoverish him, as one-half the money was untouched. His twelve children—eight boys and four girls—grew up and eight are still living. Selling his farms in Venango, he removed to Greenville, Mercer county, in the spring of 1868 and died in March, 1882. At his death he had sixty-one grandchildren and fifteen great-grandchildren. He left his family a large estate. The Benninghoff farms, so far as oil is concerned, are utterly deserted.

West and north of Benninghoff were the farms of John and R. Stevenson. On the former, extending south to Oil Creek, Reuben Painter, a live operator, drilled a well in 1863. The contractor reporting it dry, Painter moved the machinery and surrendered the lease. He and his brothers operated profitably in Butler and McKean counties, Reuben dying at Olean in 1892. In November of 1864 the Ocean Oil-Company of Philadelphia bought John Stevenson’s lands. The Ocean well began flowing at a six-hundred-barrel pace on September first, 1865, with the Arctic a good second. Fifty others varied from fifty to two-hundred barrels. Thomas McCool built a refinery and the farm paid the company about two-thousand per cent! The principal wells on both Stevenson tracts clustered far above the flats, the derricks and buildings resembling “a city set on a hill.” Major Mills, justly proud of his King of the Hills, an elegant producer, delighted to visit it with his wife and two young daughters, one of them now Mrs. John D. Archbold, of New York. Painter’s supposed dry-hole, drilled seventeen feet deeper, gushed furiously, proving to be the best well in the collection! Said the Ocean manager, as he watched the oily stream ascend “higher ’n a steeple”: “A million dollars wouldn’t touch one side of this property!” Sinking a four-inch hole seventeen feet farther would have given Reuben Painter this splendid return two years earlier! He missed a million dollars by only seventeen feet! A Gettysburg soldier, from whose nose a rifle-ball shaved a piece of cuticle the size of a pin-head, wittily observed: “That shot came mighty near missing me!” Inverting this remark, Painter had cause to exclaim: “That million came mighty near hitting me!”

“A miss is as good as a mile.”

Various companies bored three-hundred wells on Cherrytree Run and its tiny branches without jarring the trade particularly. Prolific strikes on the Niagara tract, in the rear of the Benninghoff lands, added to the wealth of Phillips Brothers. Kane City, two miles north of Rynd, raised Cain in mild style, “wearing like leather.” Farther back D. W. Kenney’s wells, lively as the Kilkenny cats, stirred a current that wafted in Alemagooselum City. Its unique name, the biggest feature of the “City,” was worked out by Kenney, a fun-loving genius, known far and wide as “Mayor of Alemagooselum.” He and his wells and town have long been “out of sight.” Kane City casts an attenuated shadow.

Rev. William Elliott, who united in one package the fervor of Paul and the snap of Ebenezer Elliott, “the Corn-Law Rhymer,” lived and preached at Rynd. He organized a Sunday-school in Kenney’s parish, which a devout settler undertook to superintend. At the close of the regular service on the opening day, Mr. Elliott asked the pious ruralist to “say a few words.” The good man, wishing to clinch the lesson—about Mary Magdalene—in the minds of the youngsters, implored them to follow the example of “Miss Magdolin.” The older brood tittered at this Hibernianism, the laugh swelled into a cloudburst. Mr. Elliott nearly swallowed his pocket-handkerchief trying to shut in his smiles and a new query was born, which had a long run. It was fired at every visitor to the settlement. Small boys hurled it at the defenceless superintendent, who resigned his job and broke up the school the next Sunday. Possibly Br’er Elliott, when ushered into Heaven, would not be one whit surprised to hear some white-winged cherub from Alemagooselum sing out: “Say, do you know Miss Mag Dolin?”

The scanty herbage on the tail of the parson’s horse gave rise to endless surmises. The animal stranded in a mud-hole and keeled over on his side. Four sturdy fellows tried to fish him out. In his misguided zeal one of the rescuers, tugging at the caudal appendage, pulled so hard that half the hair peeled off, leaving the denuded nag a fitting mate for Tam O’Shanter’s tailless Meg.

A Kane-City youngster prayed every morning and night that a well her father was drilling would be a good one. It was a hopeless failure, finished the day before Christmas. The result disturbed the child exceedingly. That night, as the loving mother was preparing her for bed, the little girl observed: “I dess it’s no use prayin’ till after Kismas, ’cos God’s so busy helpin’ Santa Claus He hasn’t time for nobody else!”

VAMPIRE AND WADE WELLS-CHERRY RUN
OLD REED WELL
W. REED
ROUSEVILLE 1868
MT. PISCAH, NEAR ROUSEVILLE
]

Cherry Run, once the ripest cherry in the orchard, had a satisfactory run. A spice of romance flavored its actual realities. Not two miles up the stream William Reed, in 1863, drilled a dry-hole six-hundred feet deep. Two miles farther, in the vicinity of Plumer, a test well was sunk seven-hundred feet, with no better result. Wells near the mouth of the ravine produced very lightly. Fifty-thousand dollars would have been an extreme price for all the land from Rouseville to Plumer, the tasteful village Henry McCalmont named in honor of Arnold Plumer. In May of 1864 Taylor & Rockwell opened a fresh vein on the run. At two-hundred feet their well threw oil above the derrick and flowed sixty barrels a day regularly. Operators reversed their opinion of the territory. To the surprise of his acquaintances, who deemed him demented, Reed started another well four rods below his failure of the previous year. It was on the right bank of the run, on a five-acre patch bought from John Rynd in 1861 by Thomas Duff, who sold two acres to Robert Criswell. Reed was not over-stocked with cash and Criswell joined forces with him to sink the second well. I. N. Frazer took one-third interest. At the proper depth the outlook was gloomy. The sand appeared good, but days of pumping failed to bring oil. On July eighteenth, 1864, the well commenced flowing three-hundred barrels a day, holding out at this rate for months. Criswell realized thirty-thousand dollars from his share of the oil and then sold his one-fourth interest in the land and well for two-hundred-and-eighty-thousand to the Mingo Oil-Company. He operated in the Butler field, lived at Monterey, removed to Ohio and died near Cincinnati. One son, David S., a well-known producer, resides at Oil City; another, Robert W., is on the editorial staff of a New-York daily. Frazer sold for one-hundred-thousand dollars and next loomed up as “the discoverer of Pithole.” Reed sold to Bishop & Bissell for two-hundred-thousand dollars, after pocketing seventy-five-thousand from oil. Coming to Venango county with Frederic Prentice in 1859, he drilled wells by contract, sometimes “a solid Muldoon” and sometimes “a broken Reed.” He returned east—his birthplace—with the proceeds of the world-famed well bearing his name. An idea haunted him that Captain Kidd’s treasure was buried at a certain part of the Atlantic coast. He boarded at a house on the shore and hunted land and sea for the hidden deposit. He would dig in the sand, sail out some distance and peer into the water. One day he went off in his skiff, a storm arose, the boat drifted away and that was the last ever seen of William Reed. He was a liberal supporter of the United-Presbyterian church and his nearest relatives live in the vicinity of Pittsburg.

The Reed well put Cherry Run at the head of the procession. Within sixty days it enriched Reed, Criswell and Frazer nearly seven-hundred-thousand dollars. The new owners drilled three more on the same acre, getting back every cent of their purchase-money and fifty per cent. extra for good measure. In other words, the five-acre collection of rocks and stumps, with eleven producing wells and one duster, harvested two-million dollars! The Mountain well mounted high, the Phillips & Egbert was a fillip and the Wadsworth & Wynkoop rolled out oil in wads worth a wine-coop of gold-eagles. The fever to lease or buy a spot to plant a derrick burned fiercely. The race to gorge the ravine with rigs and drilling appliances would shut out Edgar Saltus in his “Pace that Kills.” Soon three-hundred wells lined the flats and lofty banks guarding the purling streamlet. Clanking tools, wheezy engines and creaking pumps assailed the ears. Smoke from a myriad soft-coal fires attacked the eyes. An endless cavalcade of wagons churned the soil into vicious batter. The activities of the Foster, McElhenny, Farrell, Davison and Tarr farms were condensed into one surging, foaming caldron, quickening the pulse-beats and sending the brain see-sawing.

Across the run the Curtin Oil-Company farmed out forty acres. The Baker well, an October biscuit, flowed one-hundred barrels a day all the winter of 1864-5 and pumped six years. Water, bane of flannel-suits and uncased oil-wells, deluged it and its neighbors. Hugh Cropsey, a New-York lawyer and last owner of the well nearest the Baker, “ran engine,” saved a trifle, pulled up stakes in 1869 and tried his luck at Pleasantville. Returning to Cherry Run, he resuscitated a well on the hill and was suffocated by gas in a tank containing a few inches of fresh crude. His heirs sold me the old well, which pumped nine months without varying ten gallons in any week and repaid twice its cost. Unchangeable as the laws of the Medes and Persians, its production was the steadiest in the chronicles of grease. One Saturday evening N. P. Stone, superintendent of the St. Nicholas Oil-Company, bought it from me at the original price. His men took charge of it at noon on Tuesday. At five o’clock the well quit forever, “too dead to skin!” Cleaning out, drilling deeper, casing, torpedoing and weeks of pumping could not persuade it to shed another drop of oil or water. This close shave was a small by-play in a realistic drama teeming with incidents far stranger than “The Strange Adventures of Miss Brown.” B. H. Hulseman, president of the St. Nicholas Oil-Company, was a wealthy leather-merchant in Philadelphia. He spent much of his time on Cherry Run, lost heavily in speculations, entered the oil-exchange and died at Oil City. Kind-hearted, sincere and unpretending, his good remembrance is a legacy to cherish lovingly.

“Nothing in his life
Became him like the leaving it; he died
As one who had been studied in his death,
To throw away the dearest thing he owned,
As ’twere a careless trifle.”

Two-hundred yards above the Baker a half-dozen wells crowded upon a half-acre. True to its title, the Vampire sucked the life-blood from its pal and produced bounteously. The Munson, owned by the first sacrifice to nitro-glycerine, sustained the credit of its environment. The Wade was the star-performer of the group. James Wade, an Ohio teamster, earned money hauling oil. Concluding to wade in, he secured a bantam lease and engaged Thomas Donnelly to drill a well. It surpassed the Reed, flowing four-hundred barrels a day at the start. Frank Allen, agent of a gilt-edged New-York company, rode from Oil City to see a well described to him as “livelier than chasing a greased pig at a county-fair.” His exalted conceptions of petroleum befitted the representative of a company capitalized at three-millions, in which August Belmont, Russell Sage and William B. Astor were said to be stockholders. The fuming, gassing stream of oil suited him to a t. “I’ll give you three-hundred-thousand dollars for it,” he said to Wade, whom the offer well-nigh paralyzed. The two men went into the grocery close by, Wade signed a transfer of the well and Allen handed him a New-York draft. The happiest being in the pack, Wade packed his carpet-bag, hitched his horses to the wagon, bade the boys good-bye and drove to Oil City to get the paper cashed. He wore greasy clothes and did not wear the air of a millionaire. “Is Mr. Bennett in?” he asked a clerk at the bank. “Naw; what do you want?” was the reply. “I want a draft cashed.” “Oh, you do, eh? I guess I can cash it!” The clerk’s haughty demeanor fell below zero upon beholding the draft. He invited Wade to be seated. Mr. Bennett, the urbane cashier, returned in a few moments. The bank hadn’t half the currency to meet the demand on the instant. Wade left directions to forward the money to his home in Ohio, where he and his faithful steeds landed two days later. He bought fine farms for his brothers and himself, invested two-hundred-thousand dollars in government-bonds and wisely enjoyed, amid the peaceful scenes of agricultural life, the fruits of his first and last oil-venture. Few have been as sensible, for the petroleum-coast is encrusted with financial wrecks—vast fortunes amassed only to be lost on the perilous sea of speculation. The world has heard of the _prizes_ in the lottery of oil, while the _blanks_—tenfold more numerous—are glossed over by the glamour of the Sherman, Empire, Noble, Phillips, Reed and other wells, “familiar as household words.”

Thomas Johnson, of Oil City, held one-eighth of the Curtin interest and Patrick Johnson had a bevy of patrician wells at the summit of the tallest hill in the valley. The curtain has been rung down, the lights are out, the players have dispersed and none can hint of “Too Much Johnson.” The farm of sixty acres adjacent to the Curtin and the Criswell nook Hamilton McClintock traded to Daniel Smith in 1858 for a yoke of oxen. Smith sold it in 1860 for five-hundred dollars and sank the cash in a dry-hole on Oil Creek. P. P. Cornen and Henry I. Beers bought the farm in 1863 for twenty-five-hundred dollars, clearing two-millions from the investment. Cornen served as State-Senator in Connecticut and died in 1893. His sons operate in Warren county and down the Allegheny. Mr. Beers, who settled at McClintockville, for thirty years has been prominent in business and politics. He was a California argonaut, spent three years in San Francisco, built the first house in that city after the first great fire and revisited the East to marry “the girl he left behind him” in 1849. The Yankee well, erratic as George Francis Train, was the first glory of the Smith tract. The Reed caused a rush for one-acre leases at four-thousand-dollars bonus and half the oil. Picking up gold-dollars at every step would have been less lucrative. The wells were stayers and Daniel Smith was not “a Daniel come to judgment” in his estimate of the farm he implored J. W. Sherman to buy for two-hundred-and-fifty dollars.

Cornen & Beers first leased a half-dozen plots six rods square at one-half royalty. Two New-Englanders and Cyrus A. Cornen, son of Peter P. Cornen and nephew of Mr. Beers, drilled the first well, the queer Yankee. Some gas and no oil looked promising for a dry-hole, but the owners put in small tubing and pumped a plump day. They decided to draw the tubing, seed-bag higher and try it once more for luck. The tubing had been raised only a foot when the well flowed “like Mount Vesuvius spilling lava.” The flow lasted five minutes, stopped twenty, flowed five more, stopped twenty and kept up this program regularly twenty-one months. Sixty barrels a day was the average yield month after month, until one day the Yankee concluded to retire from active duty. Much of its product sold at ten to thirteen dollars a barrel, enriching all concerned. The Yankee boomed the crush for leases and was altogether a tempting plum. The Auburn, the second well on the Smith farm, was a good second to the Yankee, the Gromiger and Cattaraugus traveled in the one-hundred-and-fifty-barrel class, while the Watkins toed the two-hundred mark, with the Aazin and Fry chasing it closely.

S. S. Watkins, who died at St. Paul in the fall of 1896, was given a lot for a grocery, with the privilege of sinking one well for half the oil. He opened the store and sold the oil-right to Wade Brothers for twenty-five-hundred dollars. The Wades sold one-eighth of the working-interest to the Pittsburg Petroleum-Company, used the proceeds to drill the hole and stuck the tools in the third sand. The lookout for a paying strike was exceedingly poor, but James Wade held on and tubed the well above the tools. It flowed three-hundred barrels a day and Wade sold his seven-eighths to Frank Allen, who offered the Pittsburg Petroleum-Company seventy-five-thousand dollars for its eighth. When the Wade declined to fifty barrels the company pulled the tubing, moved the derrick three feet and drilled another, with no better result. Thereupon the Wade was abandoned, after having netted the Great-Republic Oil-Company a quarter-million dead loss. In 1864 Cornen & Beers organized the Cherry-Valley Oil-Company, sold twelve or fifteen leases and put down all the other wells themselves. The partnership dissolved in 1876, Mr. Beers maintaining the farm and Mr. Cornen dying at his Connecticut home in 1893. The Smith rated among the best properties in the region and it still rewards its fortunate owner with a moderate production, although merely a shadow of its former greatness.

Blacklegs, thieves and murderers ran little risk of punishment in the early days of oil-developments, unless they became unusually obstreperous and were brought to a period with a shot-gun. Scoundrels lay in wait for victims at every turn and stories of their misdeeds could be told by the hundred. The McFate farm was one of the first on Cherry Run to be sold at a fancy price. S. J. McFate, one of the brothers owning the property, two weeks after the sale in 1862, walked down to Oil City to draw several-thousand dollars from the bank. He displayed the money freely and left for home late at night. The road was dark and lonely and next morning, in a clump of bushes a mile above Oil City, his lifeless body was discovered. A ghastly wound in the head and the absence of the money explained the tragedy and the motive. No clue to the murderer was ever found, although squads of detectives “worked on the case” and queer fictions regarding the mysterious assassin were printed in many newspapers.

Queerly enough, the farms above the Smith were failures. Hundreds of wells clear up to Plumer never paid the expense of recording the leases. The territory was a roast for scores of stock-companies. Below Plumer a mile Bruns & Ludovici, of New York, built the Humboldt Refinery in 1862. Money was lavished on palatial quarters for the managers, enclosed grounds, cut-stone walls, a pipe-line to Tarr Farm and the largest refining capacity in America. Inconvenient location and improved methods of competitors forced the Humboldt to retire. Part of the machinery was removed, the structures crumbled and some of the dressed stone forms the foundations of the National Transit Building at Oil City. Plumer, which had a grist-mill, store, blacksmith-shop and tavern in 1840 and four-thousand population in 1866, is quiet as its briar-grown graveyard. The Brevoort Oil-Company, Murray & Fawcett and John P. Zane raked in shekels on Moody Run, which emptied into Cherry Run a half-mile south-west of the Reed well. Zane, whole-souled, resolute and manly, operated in the northern district and died at Bradford in 1894. A “forty-niner,” he supported John W. Geary for Mayor of San Francisco, built street-railways and worked gold-mines in California. He wrote on finance and petroleum, hated selfishness and stood firmly on the platform laid down in the beatitudes by the Man of Galilee.

“The good die first,
And they whose hearts are dry as summer-dust
Burn to the socket.”

In the winter of 1859-60 Robert Phipps, of Clinton township, sold a horse to D. Knapp, who owned a farm, “between Plumer and the mouth of Oil Creek,” that extended across Cherry Run some distance above the Smith patch. Phipps followed up the horse-sale by paying Knapp twenty-five dollars and one-eighth the oil for one acre of his land. He took A. Lowry for a partner, and sent his son, Porter Phipps, and John Haas, a German blacksmith, to “kick down” a well. Haas constructed a set of light tools—the augur stem was one-inch iron—lumber for a shanty and the rig was drawn from Hood’s Mill on Pithole Creek and a forty-foot hemlock served as a spring-pole. Drilling began in April of 1860 at the first well on the bank of Cherry Run. Young Phipps would carry the bit or the reamer daily on his shoulder to be dressed at a blacksmith-shop on Hamilton McClintock’s farm. The work had continued three months, when one day the tools struck a crevice at a hundred feet, a gurgling sound greeted the ears of the expectant drillers and they awaited the flow. Sulphur-water, not oil, was the outcome and the well was abandoned. Robert Phipps “exchanged mortality for life” at a ripe old age. His parents settled in Venango county a century ago and the Phipps family has always been noted for intelligence and progressiveness. Porter Phipps, known everywhere as ’Squire, was reared on the farm, had his initial tussle with oil-wells in 1860 and operated at Bullion and in Butler county. He is Vice-president of the Monroe Oil-Company and makes Pittsburg his headquarters.

Two miles east of Miller-Farm station, on the eighty-acre tract of Oliver Stowell, the Cherry-Run Petroleum-Company finished a well in February of 1866. It was eight-hundred feet deep, drilled through the sixth sand and pumped one-hundred barrels a day. The company operated systematically, using heavy tools, tall derricks and large casing. It was managed by Dr. G. Shamburg, a man of character and ability, who studied the strata carefully and gathered much valuable data. The second well equalled No. 1 in productiveness and longevity, both lasting for years. J. B. Fink’s, a July posy of two-hundred barrels, was the third. The grand rush began in December, 1867, the Fee and Jack-Brown wells, on the Atkinson farm, flowing four-hundred barrels apiece. A lively town, eligibly located in a depression of the table-lands, was properly named Shamburg, as a compliment to the genial doctor. The Tallman, Goss, Atkinson and Stowell farms whooped up the production to three-thousand barrels. Frank W. and W. C. Andrews, Lyman and Milton Stewart, John W. Irvin and F. L. Backus had bought John R. Tallman’s one-hundred acres in 1865. Their first well began producing in September, 1867, and in 1868 they sold two-hundred-thousand barrels of oil for nearly eight-hundred-thousand dollars! A. H. Bronson—bright, alert, keen in business and popular in society—paid twenty-five-thousand for the Charles Clark farm, a mile north-east. His first well—three-hundred barrels—paid for the property and itself in sixty days. Operations in the Shamburg pool were almost invariably profitable and handsome fortunes were realized. A peculiarity was the presence of green and black oils, a line on the eastern part of the Cherry-Run Company’s land defining them sharply. Their gravity and general properties were identical and the black color was attributed to oxide of iron in the rock. Dr. Shamburg died at Titusville and the town he founded is taking a perpetual vacation.

Carl Wageforth, a genius well known in early days as one of the owners of the Story farm, started a “town” in the woods two miles above Shamburg. The “town” collapsed, Wageforth clung to his store a season and next turned up in Texas as the founder of a German colony. He secured a claim in the Lone-Star State about thrice the size of Rhode Island, settled it with thrifty immigrants from the “Faderland” and bagged a bushel of ducats. He made and lost fortunes in oil and could no more be kept from breaking out occasionally than measles or small-pox.

East of Petroleum Centre three miles, on the bank of a pellucid stream, John E. McLaughlin drilled a well in 1868 that flowed fourteen-hundred barrels. The sand was coarse, the oil dark and the magnitude of the strike a surprise equal to the answer of the dying sinner who, asked by the minister if he wasn’t afraid to meet an angry God, unexpectedly replied: “Not a bit; it’s the other chap I’m afraid of!” Excepting the half-dozen mastodons on Oil Creek, the McLaughlin was the biggest well in the business up to that date. Wide-awake operators struck a bee-line for leases. A town was floated in two weeks, a Pithole grocer erecting the first building and labeling the place “Cash-Up” as a gentle hint to patrons not to let their accounts get musty with age. The name fitted the town, which a twelvemonth sufficed to sponge off the slate. Small wells and dry-holes ruled the roost, even those nudging “the big ’un” missing the pay-streak. The McLaughlin—a decided freak—declined gradually and pumped seven years, having the reservoir all to itself. Located ten rods away in any direction, it would have been a duster and Cash-Up would not have existed! A hundred surrounding it did not cash-up the outlay for drilling.

Attracted by the quality of the soil and the beauty of the location—six-hundred feet above the level of Oil Creek and abundantly watered—in 1820 Abraham Lovell forsook his New York farm to settle in Allegheny township, six miles east by south of Titusville. Aaron Benedict and Austin Merrick came in 1821. John Brown, the first merchant, opened a store in 1833. A pottery, tannery, ashery, store and shops formed the nucleus of a village, organized in 1850 as the borough of Pleasantville. Three wells on the outskirts of town, bored in 1865-6, produced a trifling amount of oil. Late in the fall of 1867 Abram James, an ardent spiritualist, was driving from Pithole to Titusville with three friends. A mile south of Pleasantville his “spirit-guide” assumed control of Mr. James and humped him over the fence into a field on the William Porter farm. Powerless to resist, the subject was hurried to the northern end of the field, contorted violently, jerked through a species of “couchee-couchee dance” and pitched to the ground! He marked the spot with his finger, thrust a penny into the dirt and fell back pale and rigid. Restored to consciousness, he told his astonished companions it had been revealed to him that streams of oil lay beneath and extended several miles in a certain direction. Putting no faith in “spirits” not amenable to flasks, they listened incredulously and resumed their journey. James negotiated a lease, borrowed money—the “spirit-guide” neglected to furnish cash—and planted a derrick where he had planted the penny. On February twelfth, 1868, at eight-hundred-and-fifty feet, the Harmonial Well No. 1 pumped one-hundred-and-thirty barrels!

The usual hurly-burly followed. People who voted the James adventure a fish-story writhed and twisted to drill near the spirited Harmonial. New strikes increased the hubbub and established the sure quality of the territory. Scores of wells were sunk on the Porter, Brown, Tyrell, Beebe, Dunham and other farms for miles. Prices of supplies advanced and machine-shops in the oil-regions ran night and day to meet orders. Land sold at five-hundred to five-thousand dollars an acre, often changing hands three or four times a day. Interests in wells going down found willing purchasers. Strangers crowded Pleasantville, which trebled its population and buildings during the year. It was a second edition of Pithole, mildly subdued and divested of frothy sensationalism. If gigantic gushers did not dazzle, dry-holes did not discourage. If nobody cleared a million dollars at a clip, nobody cleared out to avoid creditors. Nobody had to loaf and trust to Providence for daily bread. Providence wasn’t running a bakery for the benefit of idlers and work was plentiful at Pleasantville. The production reached three-thousand barrels in the summer of 1868, dropping to fifteen-hundred in 1870. Three banks prospered and imposing brick-blocks succeeded unsubstantial frames. Fresh pastures invited the floating mass to Clarion, Armstrong and Butler. Small wells were abandoned, machinery was shipped southward and the pretty village moved backward gracefully. Pleasantville had “marched up the hill and then marched down again.”

Abram James, a man of fine intellect, nervous temperament and lofty principle, lived at Pleasantville a year. He located a dozen paying wells in other sections, under the influence of his “spirit-guide.” The Harmonial was his greatest hit, bringing him wealth and distinction. His worst break—a dry-hole on the Clarion river eighteen-hundred feet deep—cost him six-thousand dollars in 1874. None questioned his absolute sincerity, although many rejected his theories of the supernatural. Whether he is still in the flesh or has become a spirit has not been manifested to his old friends in Oildom.

Samuel Stewart, an old resident and prosperous land-owner, is a leading citizen of Cherrytree township. He operated successfully in his own neighborhood and around Pleasantville. His acquaintance with men and affairs is not surpassed in Venango county. He is half-brother of Mrs. William R. Crawford, Franklin. Lyman and Milton Stewart, of Titusville, have not stayed in the rear. They drilled hundreds of wells in Pennsylvania and invested liberally in California territory. Good men and true are the Stewarts from beginning to end.

Red-Hot, in the palmy era of the Shamburg excitement a place of much sultriness, is cold enough to chill any stray visitor who knew the mushroom at its warmest stage. Windsor Brothers, of Oil City—they built the Windsor Block—drilled a well in 1869 that flowed three-hundred-and-fifty barrels. Others followed rapidly, people flocked to the newest centre of attraction and a typical oil-town strutted to the front. The territory lacked the staying quality, the Butler region was about to dawn and 1871 saw Red-Hot reduced to three houses, a half-dozen light wells and a muddy road. Lightning-rod pedlars, book-agents and medical fakirs no longer disturb its calm serenity. Not a scrap of the tropical town has been visible for two decades.

Tip-Top filled a short engagement. Operations around Shamburg and Pleasantville directed attention to the Captain Lyle and neighboring farms, midway between these points. “Ned” Pitcher’s well, drilled in 1866 on the Snedaker farm, east of Lyle, had started at eighty barrels and pumped twenty for two years. Pithole was booming and nobody thought of Ned’s pitcher until 1868. Many of the wells produced fairly, but the territory soon depreciated and the elevated town—aptly named by a poet with an eye to the eternal fitness of things—lost its hold and glided down to nothingness. The hundred-eyed Argus could not find a sliver that would prick a thumb or tip a top.

Picking cherries was sometimes a mixed operation in the land of grease.

OILY OOZINGS.

Kerosene is often the last scene.

The ladies—God bless them!—are nothing if not consistent—at times. It used to be a fad with Bradford wives to keep a stuffed owl in the parlor for ornament and a stuffed club in the hall for the night-owl’s benefit.

The Oil-Creek girls are the dandy girls,
For their kiss is most intense;
They’ve got a grip like a rotary-pump
That will lift you over the fence.

The steel of a rimmer was lost in a drilling well on Cherry Run. After fishing for it for a longtime the well-owner, becoming discouraged, offered a man one-thousand dollars to take it out. He broomed the end of a tough block, ran it down the well attached to the tools and in ten minutes had the steel out.

The woman who eagerly seized the oil-can
And to pour kerosene in the cook-stove began,
So that people for miles to quench the fire ran,
While she soar’d aloft like a flash in the pan,
Didn’t know it was loaded.

At a drilling well near Rouseville the tools were lowered on Monday morning and, after running a full screw, were drawn minus the bit, with the stem-box greatly enlarged. After fishing several days for it the drillers were greatly surprised to find the lost bit standing in the slack-tub. The tools had been lowered in the darkness with no bit on.

An Oil-City tramp on the pavement drear
Saw something that seem’d to shine;
He pick’d it up and gave a big cheer—
’Twas a nickel bright, the price of a beer—
And shouted “The world is mine!”