Chapter XIX: Just Odds and Ends 429-452 (13)

The Tidioute belt, varying in narrowness from a few rods to a half-mile, was one of the most satisfactory ever discovered. When lessees fully occupied the flats Captain A. J. Thompson drilled a two-hundred-barrel well on the point, at the junction of Dingley and Dennis Runs. Quickly the summit was scaled and amid drilling wells, pumping wells, oil-tanks and engine-houses the town of Triumph was created. Triumph Hill turned out as much money to the acre as any spot in Oildom. The sand was the thickest—often ninety to one-hundred-and-ten feet—and the purest the oil-region afforded. Some of the wells pumped twenty years. Salt-water was too plentiful for comfort, but half-acre plots were grabbed at one-half royalty and five-hundred dollars bonus. Wells jammed so closely that a man could walk from Triumph to New London and Babylon on the steam-boxes connecting them. Percy Shaw—he built the Shaw House—had a “royal flush” on Dennis Run that netted two-hundred-thousand dollars. From an investment of fifteen-thousand dollars E. E. and J. M. Clapp cleared a half-million.

“Spirits” located the first well at Stoneham and Cornen Brothers’ gasser at Clarendon furnished the key that unlocked Cherry Grove. Gas was piped from the Cornen well to Warren and Jamestown. Walter Horton was the moving spirit in the Sheffield field, holding interests in the Darling and Blue Jay wells and owning forty-thousand acres of land in Forest county. McGrew Brothers, of Pittsburg, spent many thousands seeking a pool at Garland. Grandin & Kelly’s operations below Balltown exploded the theory that oil would not be found on the south side of Tionesta Creek. Cherry Grove was at its apex when, in July of 1884, with Farnsworth and Garfield boiling over, two wells on the Thomas farm, a mile south-east of Richburg, flowed six-hundred barrels apiece. They were among the largest in the Allegany district, but a three-line mention in the Bradford _Era_ was all the notice given the pair.

To the owner of a tract near “646,” who offered to sell it for fifty-thousand dollars, a Bradford operator replied: “I would take it at your figure if I thought my check would be paid, but I’ll take it at forty-five-thousand whether the check is paid or not!” The check was not accepted.

Tack Brothers drilled a dry-hole twenty-six-hundred feet in Millstone township, Elk county. Grandin & Kelly drilled four-thousand feet in Forest county and got lots of geological information, but no oil.

Get off the train at Trunkeyville—a station-house and water-tank—and climb up the hill towards Fagundas. After walking through the woods a mile an opening appears. A man is plowing. The soil looks too poor to raise grasshoppers, yet that man during the oil-excitement refused an offer of sixty-thousand dollars for this farm. His principal reason was that he feared a suitable house into which to move his family could not be obtained! On a little farther a pair of old bull-wheels, lying unused, tells that the once productive Fagundas pool has been reached. A short distance ahead on an eminence is a church. This is South Fagundas. No sound save the crowing of a chanticleer from a distant farm-yard breaks the silence. The merry voices heard in the seventies are no longer audible, the drill and pump are not at work, the dwellings, stores and hotels have disappeared. The deserted church stands alone. A few landmarks linger at Fagundas proper. There is one store and no place where the weary traveler can quench his thirst. The nearest resemblance to a drinking-place is a boy leaning over a barrel drinking rain-water while another lad holds him by the feet. Fagundas is certainly “dry.” The stranger is always taken to the Venture well. Its appearance differs little from that of hundreds of other abandoned wells. The conductor and the casing have not been removed. Robert W. Pimm, who built the rig, still lives at Fagundas. He will be remembered by many, for he is a jovial fellow and was “one of the boys.” The McQuade—the biggest in the field—the Bird and the Red Walking-beam were noted wells. If Dr. Stillson were to hunt up the office where he extracted teeth “without pain” he would find the building used as a poultry-house. Men went to Fagundas poor and departed with sufficient wealth to live in luxury the rest of their lives; others went wealthy and lost everything in a vain search for the greasy fluid. Passing through what was known as Gillespie and traversing three miles of a lonely section, covered with scrub-oak and small pine, Triumph is reached. It is not the Triumph oil-men knew twenty-five years ago, when it had four-thousand population, four good hotels, two drug-stores, four hardware-stores, a half-dozen groceries and many other places of business. No other oil-field ever held so many derricks upon the same area. The Clapp farm has a production of twelve barrels per day. Traces of the town are almost completely blotted out. The pilgrim traveling over the hill would never suspect that a rousing oil-town occupied the farm on which an industrious Swede has a crop of oats. Along Babylon hill, once dotted with derricks thickly as trees in the forest, nothing remains to indicate the spot where stood the ephemeral town.

“We are such stuff as dreams are made of.”

John Henderson, a tall, handsome man, came from the east during the oil-excitement in Warren county and located at Garfield. In a fight at a gambling-house one night George Harkness was thrown out of an upstairs-window and his neck broken. Foul play was suspected, although the evidence implicated no one, and the coroner’s jury returned a verdict of accidental death. Harkness had left a young bride in Philadelphia and was out to seek his fortune. Henderson, feeling in a degree responsible for his death, began sending anonymous letters to the bereaved wife, each containing fifty to a hundred dollars. The letters were first mailed every month from Garfield, then from Bradford, then from Chicago and for three years from Montana. In 1893 she received from the writer of these letters a request for an interview. This was granted, the acquaintance ripened into love and the pair were married! Henderson is a wealthy stockman in Montana. In 1867 an English vessel went to pieces in a terrible storm on the coast of Maine. The captain and many passengers were drowned. Among the saved were two children, the captain’s daughters. One was adopted by a merchant of Dover, N. H. He gave her a good education, she grew up a beautiful woman and it was she who married George Harkness and John Henderson.

Balltown was the chief pet of T. J. Vandergrift, now head and front of the Woodland Oil-Company, and he harvested bushels of money from the middle-field. “Op” Vandergrift is not an apprentice in petroleum. He added to his reputation in the middle-field leading the opposition to the mystery-dodge. Napoleon or Grant was not a finer tactician. His clever plans were executed without a hitch or a Waterloo. He neither lost his temper nor wasted his powder. The man who “fights the devil with fire” is apt to run short of ammunition, but Vandergrift knew the ropes, kept his own counsel, was “cool as a cucumber” and won in an easy canter. He is obliging, social, manfully independent and a zealous worker in the Producers’ Association. It is narrated that he went to New York three years ago to close a big deal for Ohio territory he had been asked to sell. He named the price and was told a sub-boss at Oil City must pass upon the matter. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I am not going to Oil City on any such errand. I came prepared to transfer the property and, if you want it, I shall be in the city until noon to-morrow to receive the money!” The cash—three-hundred-thousand dollars—was paid at eleven o’clock. Mr. Vandergrift has interests in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West-Virginia and Kentucky. He knows a good horse, a good story, a good lease or a good fellow at sight and a wildcat-well does not frighten him off the track. His home is at Jamestown and his office at Pittsburg.

The Anchor Oil-Company’s No. 1, the first well finished near “646,” in Warren county, flowed two-thousand barrels a day on the ground until tanks could be provided. It burned when flowing a thousand barrels and for ten days could not be extinguished. One man wanted to steam it to death, another to drown it, another to squeeze its life out, another to smother it with straw, another to dig a hole and cut off the flow, another to roll a big log over it, another to blow out its brains with dynamite, another to blind it with carbolic acid, another to throw up earth-works and so on until the pestered owners wished five-hundred cranks were in the asylum at North Warren. Pipes were finally attached in such a way as to draw off the oil and the flame died out.

The first funeral at Fagundas was a novelty. A soap-peddler, stopping at the Rooling House one night, died of delirium-tremens. He was put into a rough coffin and a small party set off to inter the corpse. Somebody thought it mean to bury a fellow-creature without some signs of respect. The party returned to the hotel with the body, a large crowd assembled in the evening, flowers decorated the casket, services were conducted and at dead of night two-hundred oil-men followed the friendless stranger to his grave.

This year, at a drilling well near Tiona, the workmen of Contractor Meeley were surprised to strike oil three feet from the surface. A stream of the real stuff flowed over the top of the derrick, scattering seven men who happened to be standing on the floor. Fortunately no fire was about the structure, hence a thorough soaking with seventy-cent crude was the chief damage to the crew and the spectators. Visions of a new sand close to the grass-roots filled the minds of all beholders. At that rate every man, woman, boy, girl and baby who could burrow a yard into the earth might have a paying well. The cool-headed foreman, R. G. Thompson, decided to investigate before ordering tankage and taking down the tools. He discovered that the derrick had been set directly above a six-inch pipe-line, which the bit had punctured, thus letting the oil escape under the heavy pressure of a fifty-ton pump. Word was sent to the pump-station to shut off the flow, a new joint of pipe was put in and drilling proceeded to the third sand without further disturbance.

One bright day in the summer of 1873 an active youth, beardless and boyish in appearance, dropped into Fagundas. With little cash, but no end of energy and pluck, he soon picked up a lease. Fortune smiled upon him and he followed the surging tide to the different pastures as they came into line. He operated at Bradford, Tiona, Clarendon, in Clarion county, in Ohio and Indiana. West Virginia has been his best hold for some years, and the boys all know W. H. Staley as a live oilman, who has stayed with the procession two-dozen years.

Stories of the late E. E. Clapp’s rare humor and rare goodness of heart might be recited by the score. He never grew weary helping the poor and the unfortunate. Once a zealous Methodist minister, whose meagre salary was not half-paid, thought of leaving his mission from lack of support. Clapp heard the tale and handed the good man a sealed envelope, telling him not to open it until he reached home and gave it to his wife. It contained a check for five-hundred-dollars. Like thousands of producers, Clapp was sued by the torpedo-monopoly for alleged infringement of the Roberts patent. Meeting Col. E. A. L. Roberts at Titusville while the suit was pending, he was invited to go through the great building Roberts Brothers were completing. The delegate from President peered into the corners of the first room as though looking for something. The Colonel’s curiosity was aroused and he inquired what the visitor meant. “Oh,” came the quick rejoinder, “I’m only trying to find where the twenty-thousand-dollars I’ve paid you for torpedoes may be built in these walls!” A laugh followed and Roberts proposed to square the suit, which was done forthwith. At a country-fair E. Harvey, the Oil-City music-dealer, played and sang one of Gerald Massey’s sublime compositions with thrilling effect. Among the eager listeners was E. E. Clapp, beside whom stood a farmer’s wife. The woman shouted to Harvey: “Tech it off agin, stranger, but don’t make so much noise yerself!” Poor Harvey—dead long ago—subsided and Clapp took up the expression, which he often quoted at the expense of loquacious acquaintances. Humanity lost a friend when Edwin Emmett Clapp left the smooth roads of President to walk the golden streets of the New Jerusalem.

Up the winding river proved in not a few instances the straight path to a handsome fortune, while some found only shoals and quicksands.

THE AMEN CORNER.

Better a kink in the hair than a kink in the character.

Good creeds are all right, but good deeds are the stuff that won’t shrink in the washing.

Domestic infidelity does more harm than unbelieving infidelity and hearsay knocks heresy galley-west as a mischief-maker.

Stick to the right with iron nerve,
Nor from the path of duty swerve,
Then your reward you will deserve.

The Baptists of Franklin offered Rev. Dr. Lorimer, the eminent Chicago divine, a residence and eight-thousand dollars a year to become their pastor. How was that for a church in a town of six-thousand population?

“Pray—pray—pray for—” The good minister bent down to catch the whisper of the dying operator, whom he had asked whether he should petition the throne of grace—“pray for five-dollar oil!”

St. Joseph’s church, Oil City, is the finest in the oil-region and has the finest altar in the state. Father Carroll, for twenty years in charge of the parish, is a priest whose praises all denominations carol.

You “want to be an angel?”
Well, no need to look solemn;
If you haven’t got what you desire,
Put an ad. in the want column.

The Presbyterian church at Rouseville, torn down years ago, was built, paid for, furnished handsomely and run nine months before having a settled pastor. Not a lottery, fair, bazaar or grab-bag scheme was resorted to in order to raise the funds.

The Salvation Army once scored a sensational hit in the oil-regions. A lieutenant struck a can of nitro-glycerine with his little tambourine and every house in the settlement entertained more or less Salvation-Army soldier for a month after the blow-up.

“Like a sawyer’s work is life—
The present makes the flaw,
And the only field for strife
Is the inch before the saw.”

“What are the wages of sin?” asked the teacher of Ah Sin, the first Chinese laundryman at Bradford, who was an attentive member of a class in the Sunday-school. Promptly came the answer: “Sebenty-flive cente a dozen; no checkee, no washee!”

The first sound of a church-bell at Pithole was heard on Saturday evening, March 24, 1866, from the Methodist-Episcopal belfry. The first church-bell at Oil City was hung in a derrick by the side of the Methodist church, on the site of a grocery opposite the _Blizzard_ office. At first Sunday was not observed. Flowing-wells flowed and owners of pumping wells pumped as usual. Work went right along seven days in the week, even by people who believed the highest type of church was not an engine-house, with a derrick for its tower, a well for its Bible and a tube spouting oil for its preacher.

“If you have gentle words and looks, my friends,
To spare for me—if you have tears to shed
That I have suffered—keep them not I pray
Until I hear not, see not, being dead.”

Many people regard religion as they do small-pox; they desire to have it as light as possible and are very careful that it does not mark them. Most people when they perform an act of charity prefer to have it like the measles—on the outside where it can be seen. Oil-region folks are not built that way.

-RICHBURG, N.Y. 1879- -TARPORT AND TUNA VALLEY-
GENERAL VIEW OF BRADFORD.
ECONOMITE WELLS OPPOSITE TIDIOUTE
A GLIMPSE OF WARREN
-BABYLON-
EXCHANGE HOTEL TIDIOUTE 1863
TIDIOUTE 1876

XI.
A BEE-LINE FOR THE NORTH.

THE GREAT BRADFORD REGION LOOMS UP—MILES OF FIRST-CLASS
TERRITORY—LEADING OPERATORS—JOHN MCKEOWN’S MILLIONS—MANY LIVELY
TOWNS—OVER THE NEW-YORK BORDER—ALL ABOARD FOR RICHBURG—CROSSING INTO
CANADA—SHAW’S STRIKE—THE POLAR REGION PLAYS A STRONG HAND IN THE
GAME OF TAPPING NATURE’S LABORATORY.

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“Like youthful steers unyoked, they take their courses
north.”—_Shakespeare._

“Be sure you’re right, then go ahead.”—_Davy Crockett._

“Jes foller de no’th star an’ yu’ll come out right, shuah.”—_Joel
Chandler Harris._

“Better a year of Bradford than a cycle of Cathay.”—_L. M. Morton._

“He did it with all his heart, and prospered.”—_II Chronicles xxxi: 21._

“The Temple of Fame has, you see, many departments.”—_Walter Besant._

“Bid the devil take the hindmost.”—_Butler._

“When Greeks joined Greeks then was the tug of war.”—_Lee._

“Nature must give way to art.”—_Dean Swift._

“The wise and active conquer by daring to attempt.”—_Rowe._

“God helps them that help themselves.”—_Franklin._

“The north breathes steadily beneath the stars.”—_Shelley._

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Oil Creek and its varied branches, Pithole and its suburbs, Forest and Warren had figured creditably in oil-developments, but the Mastodon of the North was yet to come. “The goal of yesterday shall be the starting point of to-morrow” is especially true of oil-operations. At times men have supposed the limits of juicy territory had been reached, only to be startled by the unexpected opening of a larger, grander field than any that preceded it. Guessing the weather a month ahead is child’s play in comparison with guessing where oil may be found in paying quantity. Geology is liable to shoot wide of the mark, so that the drill is the one indisputable test, from which there is no appeal for an injunction or a reversal of the verdict. Years of waiting sharpened the appetite of the polar bear for the feast to be spread in McKean county and across the New-York border. Tempting tidbits prepared the hungry animal to digest the rich courses that were to follow in close succession, until the whole world was cloyed and gorged, and surfeited with petroleum. It could not hold another mouthful, and the surplus had to be stored in huge tanks ready for the demand certain to come some day and empty the vast receptacles of their last drop.

“Still linger, in our northern clime,
Some remnants of the good old time.”

The United States Land-Company, holding a quarter-million acres in McKean and adjoining counties, in 1837 sent Col. Levitt C. Little from New Hampshire to look after its interests. He located on Tuna Creek, eight miles from the southern border of New-York state. The Websters arrived in 1838, journeying by canoe from Olean. Other families settled in the valley, founding the hamlet of Littleton, which in 1858 adopted the name of Bradford and became a borough in 1872, with Peter T. Kennedy as burgess. The vast forests were divided into huge blocks, such as the Bingham, Borden, Clark & Babcock, Kingsbury and Quintuple tracts. Lumber was rafted to distant points and thousands of hardy woodmen “shantied” in rough huts each winter. They beguiled the long evenings singing coarse songs, playing cards, imbibing the vintage of Kentucky or New England from a black jug and telling stories so bald the mules drooped their ears to hide their blushes. But they were open-hearted, sternly honest, sticklers for fair-play, hard-working and admirable forerunners of the approaching civilization. To the sturdy blows of the rugged chopper and raftsman all classes are indebted for fuel, shelter and innumerable comforts. Like the rafts they steered to Pittsburg and the wild beasts they hunted, most of these brave fellows have drifted away never to return.

Six-hundred inhabitants dwelt peacefully at Bradford ten years after the Pithole bubble had been blown and pricked. The locomotive and track of a branch of the Erie Railroad had supplanted A. W. Newell’s rude engine, which transported small loads to and from Carrollton. An ancient coach, weather-beaten and worm-eaten, sufficed for the scanty passenger-traffic and the quiet borough bade fair to stay in the old rut indefinitely. The collection of frames labeled Tarport—a suit of tar and feathers presented to a frisky denizen begot the name—snuggled on a muddy road a mile northward. Seven miles farther, at Limestone, the “spirits” directed Job Moses to buy ten-thousand acres of land. He bored a half-dozen shallow wells in 1864, getting some oil and gas. Jonathan Watson skirmished two miles east of Limestone, finding slight tinges of greasiness. A mile south-west of Moses the Crosby well was dry. Another mile south the Olmsted well, on the Crooks farm, struck a vein of oil at nine-hundred feet and flowed twenty barrels on July fourteenth, 1875. The sand was poor and dry-holes south and west augured ill for the territory. Frederick Crocker drilled a duster early in 1875 on the Kingsbury lands, east side of Tuna Creek. He had grit and experience and leased an angular piece of ground formed by a bend of the creek for his second venture. It was part of the Watkins farm, a mile above Tarport. A half-mile south-west, on the Hinchey farm, the Foster Oil-Company had sunk a twenty-barrel well in 1872, which somehow passed unnoticed. On September twenty-sixth, 1875, from a shale and slate at nine-hundred feet, the Crocker well flowed one-hundred-and-seventy barrels. This opened the gay ball which was to transmute the Tuna Valley from its arcadian simplicity to the intense bustle of the grandest petroleum-region the world has ever known. The valley soon echoed and re-echoed the music of the tool-dresser and rig-builder and the click of the drill as well as the vigorous profanity of the imported teamster. Frederick Crocker, who drilled on Oil Creek in 1860 and devised the valve which kept the Empire well alive, had won another victory and the great Bradford field was born. He lived at Titusville fifteen years, erected the home afterwards occupied by Dr. W. B. Roberts, sold his Bradford property, operated in the Washington district and died at Idlewild on February twenty-second, 1895. Mr. Crocker possessed real genius, decision and the qualities which “from the nettle danger pluck the flower success.” Active to the close of his long and useful eighty-three years, he met death calmly and was laid to rest in the cemetery at Titusville.

Scarcely had the Crocker well tanked its initial spurt ere “the fun grew fast and furious.” Rigs multiplied like rabbits in Australia. Train-loads of lively delegates from every nook and cranny of Oildom crowded the streets, overran the hotels and taxed the commissary of the village to the utmost. Town-lots sold at New-York prices and buildings spread into the fields. At B. C. Mitchell’s Bradford House, headquarters of the oil-fraternity, operators and land-holders met and drillers “off tour” solaced their craving for “the good things of this life” playing billiards and practising at the hotel-bar. Hundreds of big contracts were closed in the second-story room where Lewis Emery, “Judge” Johnson, Dr. Book and the advance-guard of the invading hosts assembled. Main street blazed at night with the light of dram-shops and the gaieties incidental to a full-fledged frontier-town. Noisy bands appealed to lovers of varieties to patronize barnlike-theatres, strains of syren music floated from beer-gardens, dance-halls of dubious complexion were thronged and gambling-dens ran unmolested. The free-and-easy air of the community, too intent chasing oil and cash to bother about morality, captivated the ordinary stranger and gained “Bad Bradford” notoriety as a combination of Pithole and Petroleum Centre, with a dash of Sodom and Pandemonium, condensed into a single package. In February of 1879 a city-charter was granted and James Broder was elected mayor. Radical reforms were not instituted with undue haste, to jar the sensitive feelings of the incongruous masses gathered from far and near. Their accommodating nature at last adapted itself to a new state of affairs and accepted gracefully the restrictions imposed for the general welfare. Checked temporarily by the Bullion spasm in 1876-7, the influx redoubled as the lower country waned. Fires merely consumed frame-structures to hasten the advent of costly brick-blocks. Ten churches, schools, five banks, stores, hotels, three newspapers, street-cars, miles of residences and fifteen-thousand of the liveliest people on earth attested the permanency of Bradford’s boom. Narrow-gauge railroads circled the hills, traversed spider-web trestles and brought tribute to the city from the outlying districts. The area of oil-territory seemed interminable. It reached in every direction, until from sixteen-thousand mouths seventy-five thousand acres poured their liquid treasure. The daily production waltzed to one-hundred-thousand barrels! Iron-tanks were built by the thousand to store the surplus crude. Two, three or four-thousand-barrel gushers were lacking, but wells that yielded twenty-five to two-hundred littered the slopes and valleys. The field was a marvel, a phenomenon, a revelation. Bradford passed the mushroom-stage safely and was not snuffed out when developments receded and the floaters wandered south in quest of fresh excitement. To-day it is a thriving railroad and manufacturing centre, the home of ten-thousand intelligent, independent, go-ahead citizens, proud of its past, pleased with its present and confident of its future.

To trace operations minutely would be an endless task. Crocker sold a half-interest in his well and drilled on an adjacent farm. Gillespie, Buchanan & Kelly came from Fagundas in 1874 and sank the two Fagundas wells—twenty and twenty-five barrels—a half-mile west of Crocker, in the fall and winter. Butts No. 1, a short distance north, actually flowed sixty barrels in November of 1874. Jackson & Walker’s No. 1, on the Kennedy farm, north edge of town, on July seventeenth, 1875, flowed twenty barrels at eleven-hundred feet. The dark, pebbly sand, the best tapped in McKean up to that date, encouraged the belief of better strata down the Tuna. On December first, two months after Crocker’s strike, the yield of the Bradford district was two-hundred-and-ten barrels. The Crocker was doing fifty, the Olmsted twenty-five, the Butts fifteen, the Jackson & Walker twenty and all others from one to six apiece. The oil, dark-colored and forty-five gravity, was loaded on Erie cars direct from the wells, most of which were beside the tracks. The Union Company finished the first pipe-line and pumped oil to Olean the last week of November. Prentice, Barbour & Co. were laying a line through the district and 1875 closed with everything ripe for the millenium these glimmerings foreshadowed.

Lewis Emery, richly dowered with Oil-Creek experience and the get-up-and-get quality that forges to the front, was an early arrival at Bradford. He secured the Quintuple tract of five-thousand acres and drilled a test well on the Tibbets farm, three miles south of town. Its success confirmed his judgment of the territory and began the wonderful Quintuple development. The Quintuple rained staying wells on the lucky, plucky graduate from Pioneer, quickly placing him in the millionaire-class. He built blocks and refineries, opened an immense hardware-store, constructed pipe-lines, established a daily-paper, served two terms in the Senate and opposed the Standard “tooth and toe-nail.” Thoroughly earnest, he champions a cause with unflinching tenacity. He owns a big ranche in Dakota, big lumber-tracts and saw-mills in Kentucky, a big oil-production and a big share in the United-States Pipe-Line. He has traveled over Europe, inspected the Russian oil-fields and gathered in his private museum the rarest collection of curiosities and objects of interests in the state. Senator Emery is a staunch friend, a fighter who “doesn’t know when he is whipped,” liberal, progressive, fluent in conversation and firm in his convictions.

“A prince can mak’ a belted knight,
A marquis, duke and a’ that;
But an honest man’s aboon his might—
Guid faith, he maunna fa’ that.”

Hon. David Kirk sticks faithfully to Emery in his hard-sledding to array petroleumites against the Standard. He manages the McCalmont Oil-Company, which operated briskly in the Forest pools, at Bradford and Richburg. Mr. Kirk is a rattling speaker, positive in his sentiments and frank in expressing his views. He extols Pennsylvania petroleum, backs the outside pipe-lines and is an influential leader of the Producers’ Association.

Dr. W. P. Book, who started at Plumer, ran big hotels at Parker and Millerstown and punched a hole in the Butler field occasionally, leased nine-hundred acres below Bradford in the summer of 1875. He bored two-hundred wells, sold the whole bundle to Captain J. T. Jones and went to Washington Territory with eight-hundred-thousand dollars to engage in lumbering and banking. Captain Jones landed on Oil Creek after the war, in which he was a brave soldier, and drilled thirteen dry-holes at Rouseville! Repulses of this stripe would wear out most men, but the Captain had enlisted for the campaign and proposed to stand by his guns to the last. His fourteenth attempt—a hundred-barreler on the Shaw farm—recouped former losses and inaugurated thirty years of remarkable prosperity. Fortune smiled upon him in the Clarion field. Pipe-lines, oil-wells, dealings in the exchanges, whatever he touched turned into gold. Not handicapped by timid partners, he paddled his own canoe and became the largest individual operator in the northern region. Acquiring tracts that proved to be the heart of the Sistersville field, he is credited with rejecting an offer last year of five-million dollars for his West-Virginia and Pennsylvania properties! From thirteen wells, good only for post-holes if they could be dug up and retailed by the foot, to five-millions in cash was a pretty stretch onward and upward. He preferred staying in the harness to the obscurity of a mere coupon-clipper. He lives at Buffalo, controls his business, enjoys his money, remembers his legions of old friends and does not put on airs because of marching very near the head of the oleaginous procession.

-THEO BARNSDALL-
-LEWIS EMERY-
DAVID KIRK CAPT. J. T. JONES
]

Theodore Barnsdall has never lagged behind since he entered the arena in 1860. He operated on Oil Creek and has been a factor in every important district. Marcus Hulings, reasoning that a paying belt intersected it diagonally, secured the Clark & Babcock tract of six-thousand acres on Foster Brook, north-east of Bradford. Hundreds of fine wells verified his theory and added a half-million to his bank-account. Sitting beside me on a train one day in 1878, Mr. Hulings refused three-hundred-thousand dollars, offered by Marcus Brownson, for his interest in the property. He projected the narrow-gauge railroad from Bradford to Olean and a bevy of oil-towns—Gillmor, Derrick City, Red Rock and Bell’s Camp—budded and bloomed along the route. Frederic Prentice built pipe-lines and tanks, leased a half-township, started thirty wells in a week on the Melvin farm and organized the Producers’ Consolidated Land-and-Petroleum-Company, big in name, in quality and in capital. The American Oil-Company’s big operations wafted the late W. A. Pullman a million and the presidency of the Seaboard Bank in New York, filled Joseph Seep’s stocking and saddled a hundred-thousand dollars on James Amm. The Hazlewood Oil-Company, guided by Bateman Goe’s prudent hand, drilled five-hundred wells and counted its gains in columns of six figures. Robert Leckey, a first-class man from head to foot, was a royal winner. Frederick Boden—true-blue, clear-grit, sixteen ounces to the pound—forsook Corry to extract a stream of wealth from the Borden lands, six miles east of Tarport. Prompt, square and manly, he merited the good luck that rewarded him in Pennsylvania and followed him to Ohio, where for four years he has been operating extensively. Boden’s wells boosted the territory east and north. From its junction with the Tuna at Tarport—Kendall is the post-office—to its source off in the hills, Kendall Creek steamed and smoked. Tarport expanded to the proportions of a borough. Two narrow-gauge roads linked Bradford and Eldred, Sawyer City, Rew City, Coleville, Rixford and Duke Centre—oil-towns in all the term implies—keeping the rails from rusting. Other narrow-gauges diverged to Warren, Mt. Jewett and Smethport. The Erie extended its branch south and the Rochester & Pittsburg crossed the Kinzua gorge over the highest railway viaduct—three-hundred feet—in this nation of tall projects and tall achievements.

Twenty-nine years ago a stout-hearted, strong-limbed, wiry youth, fresh from the Emerald Isle, asked a man at Petroleum Centre for a job. Given a pick and shovel, he graded a tank-bottom deftly and swiftly. He dug, pulled tubing, drove team and earned money doing all sorts of chores. Reared in poverty, he knew the value of a dollar and saved his pennies. To him Oildom, with its “oil-princes”—George K. Anderson, Jonathan Watson, Dr. M. C. Egbert, David Yanney, Sam Woods, Joel Sherman and the Phillips Brothers were in their glory—was a golden dream. He learned to “run engine,” dress tools, twist the temper-screw and handle drilling and pumping-wells expertly. Although neither a prohibitionist nor a prude, he never permitted mountain-dew, giddy divinities in petticoats or the prevailing follies to get the better of him in his inordinate desire for riches. Drop by drop for three years his frugal store increased and he migrated to Parker early in the seventies. Such was the young man who “struck his gait” in the northern end of Armstrong county, who was to outshine the men he may have envied on Oil Creek, to scoop the biggest prize in the petroleum-lottery and weave a halo of glittering romance around the name of John McKeown.

Working an interest in an oil-well, he hit a paying streak and joined the pioneers who had sinister designs on Butler county, proverbial for “buckwheat-batter” and “soap-mines.” At Lawrenceburg, a suburb of Parker, he boarded with a comely widow, the mother of two bouncing kids and owner of a little cash. He married the landlady and five boys blessed the union of loyal hearts. His wife’s money aided him to develop the Widow Nolan farm, east of the coal-bank near Millerstown. Regardless of Weller’s advice to “beware of vidders,” he wedded one and from another obtained the lease of a farm on which his first well produced one-hundred-and-fifty barrels a day for a year, a fortune in itself. This was the beginning of McKeown’s giant strides. In partnership with William Morrisey, a stalwart fellow-countryman—dead for years—he drilled at Greece City, Modoc and on the Cross-Belt. He held interests with Parker & Thompson and James Goldsboro, played a lone hand at Martinsburg, invested in the Karns Pipe-Line and avoided speculation. He agreed with Thomas Hayes, of Fairview, in 1876, to operate in the Bradford field. Hayes went ahead to grab a few tracts at Rixford, McKeown remaining to dispose of his Butler properties. He sold every well and every inch of land at top figures. No slave ever worked harder or longer hours than he had done to gain a firm footing. No task was too difficult, no fatigue too severe, no undertaking too hazardous to be met and overcome. Avarice steeled his heart and hardened his muscles. Wrapped in a rubber-coat and wearing the slouch-hat everybody recognized, he would ride his powerful bay-horse knee-deep in mud or snow at all hours of the night. It was his ambition to be the leading oil-operator of the world. While putting money into Baltimore blocks, bank-stocks and western ranches, he always retained enough to gobble a slice of seductive oil-territory. Plunging into the northern field “horse, foot and dragoons,” he bought out Hayes, who returned to Fairview with a snug nest-egg, and captured a huge chunk of the Bingham lands. Robert Simpson, agent of the Bingham estate, fancied the bold, resolute son of Erin and let him pick what he wished from the fifty-thousand acres under his care. McKeown selected many juicy tracts, on which he drilled up a large production, sold portions at excessive prices and cleared at least a million dollars in two or three years! As Bradford declined he turned his gaze towards the Washington district, bought a thousand acres of land and at the height of the excitement had ten-thousand barrels of oil a day! His object had been attained and John McKeown was the largest oil-producer in the universe.

Down in Washington, as in Butler and McKean, he attended personally to his wells, hired the workmen, negotiated for all materials and managed the smallest details. He removed his family to the county-seat and lived in a plain, matter-of-fact way. It had been his intention to erect a forty-thousand-dollar house and reside at Jamestown, N. Y. Ground was purchased and the foundation laid. The local papers spoke of the acquisition he would be to the town, one suggesting to haul him into politics and municipal improvements, and McKeown resented the notoriety by pulling up stakes and locating at Washington. It often amused me to hear him denounce the papers for calling him rich. He was more at home in a derrick than in a drawing-room. The din of the tools boring for petroleum was sweeter to his ears than “Lohengrin” or “The Blue Danube.” Watching oil streaming from his wells delighted his eye more than a Corot or a Meissonier in a gilt frame. For claw-hammer coats, tooth-pick shoes and vulgar show he had no earthly use. Democratic in his habits and speech, he heard the poor man as patiently as the banker or the schemer with a “soft snap.” Clothes counted for nothing in his judgment of people. He enjoyed the hunt for riches more than the possession. In no sense a liberal man, sometimes he thawed out to friends who got on the sunny side of his frosty nature and wrote checks for church or charity. Hard work was his diversion, his chief happiness. His wells and lands and income grew to dimensions it would have strained the nerves and brains of a half-dozen men to supervise. He had mortgaged his robust constitution by constant exposure and the foreclosure could not always be postponed. Repeated warnings were unheeded and the strong man broke down just when he most needed the vitality his lavish drafts exhausted. Eminent physicians hurried from Pittsburg and Philadelphia to his relief, but the paper had gone to protest and on Sunday forenoon, February eighth, 1891, at the age of fifty-three, John McKeown passed into eternity. Father Hendrich administered the last rites to the dying man. He sank into a comatose state and his death was painless. The remains were interred in the Catholic cemetery at Lawrenceville, in presence of a great multitude that assembled to witness the curtain fall on the most eventful life in the oil-regions.

One touching little tale about McKeown, which might adorn the pages of a Sunday-school library, has drifted out of Bradford. Landing on the platform of the dilapidated Erie-Railroad station, upon his first visit to the metropolis of mud and oil, John McKeown, wearing his greasiest suit, asked a group of boys to direct him to the Parker House. “I’ll tell you for a quarter,” said one. “I’ll show you where it is for ten cents,” chimed in another. “Say, I’ll do it for five cents,” remarked a third. “Mister,” said bright-eyed Jimmie Duffy, “I will show you the place for nothing.” So the stranger went with Jimmie. He took the lad to a clothing-store, arrayed him sumptuously in the best hand-me-downs that Bradford could afford and sent the boy away with a five-dollar gold-piece. Jimmie bought a shoeblack-outfit and began to “shine ’em up” at ten cents a clip. His good work, cheerfulness and ready wit brought him many a quarter. Soon he hired a number of assistants, built a “parlor,” controlled every stand in town and at nineteen went west with seven-thousand dollars in his pockets. Jimmie Duffie’s luck set all the Bradford urchins to lying in wait for strangers in greasy garments lined with gold-pieces.

Estimates of McKeown’s wealth ranged from three-millions to ten. A guess midway would probably be near the mark. When asked by Dun or Bradstreet how he should be rated, his invariable answer was: “I pay cash for all I get.” O. D. Bleakley, of Franklin, was appointed guardian of the sons and Hon. J. W. Lee is Mrs. McKeown’s legal adviser. The oldest boy has married, has received his share of the estate and is spending it freely. A younger son was drowned in a pond at the school to which his mother sent the bright lad. Once McKeown, desiring to have Dr. Agnew’s candid opinion at the lowest cost, put on his poorest garb and secured a rigid examination upon his promise to pay the great Philadelphia practitioner ten dollars “as soon as he could earn the money.” He thanked the doctor, returned in a business-suit, told of the ruse he had adopted and cemented the acquaintance with a check for one-hundred dollars. In Baltimore he posed as a hayseed at a forced sale of property the mortgagors calculated to bid in at a fraction of its value. He deposited a million dollars in a city-bank and appeared at the sale in the old suit and slouched hat he had packed in his satchel for the occasion. Stylish bidders at first ignored the seedy fellow whose winks to the auctioneer elevated the price ten-thousand dollars a wink. One of them hinted to the stranger that he might be bidding beyond his limit. “I guess not,” replied John, “I pay cash for what I get.” The property was knocked down to him for about six-hundred-thousand dollars. He requested the attorney to telephone to the bank whether his check would be honored. “Good for a million!” was the response. Now his triumphs and his spoils have shrunk to the little measure of the grave!

“Through the weary night on his couch he lay
With the life-tide ebbing fast away.
When the tide goes out from the sea-girt lands
It bears strange freight from the gleaming sands:
The white-winged ships, which long may wait
For the foaming wave and the wind that’s late;
The treasures cast on a rock-bound shore
From stranded ships that shall sail no more,
And hopes that follow the shining seas—
Oh! the ocean wide shall win all these.
But saddest of all that drift to the sea
Is the human soul to eternity,
Floating away from a silent shore,
Like a fated ship, to return no more.”

The Bradford Oil-Company—J. T. Jones, Wesley Chambers, L. G. Peck and L. F. Freeman were the principal stockholders—owned a good share of the land on which Greater Bradford was built and ten-thousand acres in the northern field. The company drilled three-hundred wells in McKean and Allegany, realized fifty-thousand dollars from city-lots and its stock rose to two-thousand dollars a share. In 1881 Captain Jones bought out his copartners. The Enterprise Transit-Company, managed by John Brown, achieved reputation and currency. The McCalmont Oil-Company—organized during the Bullion phantom by David Kirk, I. E. Dean, Tack Brothers and F. A. Dilworth—humped itself in the middle and northern fields, sometimes paying three-hundred-thousand dollars a year in dividends. Kirk & Dilworth founded Great Belt City, in Butler county, cutting up a farm and selling hundreds of lots. “Farmer” Dean, manager of the company, operated in the lower fields, lived two years at Richburg, toured the country to preach the gospel according to the Greenbackers and won laurels on the rostrum. Frank Tack—frank and trustworthy—was vice-president of the New-York Oil-Exchange and his brother is dead. The Emery Oil-Company, the Quintuple, Mitchell & Jones, Whitney & Wheeler, Melvin and Fuller, George H. Vanvleck, George V. Forman, John L. McKinney & Co., Isaac Willets and Peter T. Kennedy were shining lights in the McKean-Allegany firmament. Kennedy owned the saw-mill when Bradford was a lumber camp and his estate—he died at fifty—inventoried eleven-hundred-thousand dollars. Hundreds of small operators left Bradford happy as men should be with as much money as their wives could spend; other hundreds dumped their well-earnings into the insatiable maw of speculation.

The Bradford field was young when Col. John J. Carter, of Titusville, paid sixty-thousand dollars for the Whipple farm, on Kendall Creek. Friends shook their heads over the purchase, up to that time the largest by a private individual in the district, but the farm produced fifteen-hundred-thousand barrels of oil and demonstrated the wisdom of the deed. Other properties were developed by this indefatigable worker, until his production was among the largest in the northern region and he could have sold at a price to number him with the millionaires. Unanimously chosen president of the Bradford, Bordell & Kinzua Railroad-Company, he completed the line in ninety days from the issue of the charter and in eighteen months returned the stockholders eighty per cent. in dividends. President Carter’s ability in handling the property saved it to its owners, while every other narrow-gauge in the system fell into the clutches of receivers or sold as junk to meet court-charges for costly litigation.

All “Old-Timers” remember the “Gentlemen’s Furnishing-House of John J. Carter,” the finest establishment of the kind west of New York. Young Carter, with a splendid military record, located at Titusville in the summer of 1865, immediately after being mustered out of the service, and engaged in mercantile pursuits ten years. Like other progressive men, he took interests in the wild-cat ventures that made Pithole, Shamburg, Petroleum Centre and Pleasantville famous. From large holdings in Venango, Clarion and Forest he reaped a rich harvest. One tract of four-thousand acres in Forest, purchased in 1886 and two-thirds of it yet undrilled, he expects to hand down to his children as a proof of their father’s business-foresight. He scanned the petroleum-horizon around Pittsburg carefully and retained his investments in the middle and upper fields. Taylorstown and McDonald, with their rivers of oil, burst forth with the fury of a flood and disappeared. Sistersville, in West Virginia, had given the trade a taste of its hidden treasures from a few scattered wells. Much salt-water, little oil and deep drilling discouraged operators. How to produce oil at a profit, with such quantities of water to be pumped out, was the problem. Col. Carter visited the scene, comprehended the situation, devised his plans and bought huge blocks of the choicest territory before the oil-trade thought Sistersville worth noticing. This bold stroke added to the value of every well and lease in West Virginia, inspired the faltering with courage and rewarded him magnificently. Advancing prices rendered the princely yield of his scores of wells immensely profitable. Purchases based on fifty-cent oil—the trade had small faith in the outcome—he sold on the basis of dollar-fifty oil. Col. Carter is in the prime of vigorous manhood, ready to explore new fields and surmount new obstacles. He occupies a beautiful home, has a superb library, is a thorough scholar and a convincing speaker. His recent argument before the Ohio Legislature, in opposition to the proposed iniquitous tax on crude-petroleum, was a masterpiece of effective, pungent, unanswerable logic. None who admire a brave, manly, generous character will say that his success is undeserved.

Five townships six miles square—Independence, Willing, Alma, Bolivar and Genesee, with Andover, Wellsville, Scio, Wirt and Clarksville north—form the southern border of Allegany county, New York. The first well bored for oil in the county—the Honeyoe—was the Wellsville & Alma Oil Company’s duster in Independence township, drilled eighteen-hundred feet in September, 1877. Gas at five-hundred feet caught fire and burned the rig, and signs of oil were found at one-thousand feet. The second was O. P. Taylor’s Pikeville well, Alma township, finished in November, 1878. Taylor, the father of the Allegany field, decided to try north of Alma, and in July of 1879 completed the Triangle No. 1, in Scio township, the first in Allegany to produce oil. It originated the Wellsville excitement and first diverted public attention from Bradford. Triangle No. 2, drilled early in 1880, pumped twelve barrels a day. S. S. Longabaugh, of Duke Centre, sank a dry-hole, the second well in Scio, three miles north-east of Triangle No. 1. Operations followed rapidly. Richburg No. 1, Wirt township, in which Taylor enlisted three associates, responded at a sixty barrel gait in May of 1881 to a huge charge of glycerine. Samuel Boyle, who had struck the first big well at Sawyer City, completed the second well at Richburg in June, manipulated it as a “mystery” and torpedoed it on July thirteenth. It flowed three-hundred barrels of blue-black oil, forty-two gravity, from fifty feet of porous sand and slate. Taylor’s exertions and perseverance showed indomitable will, bravery and pluck. He was a Virginian by birth, a Confederate soldier and a cigar-manufacturer at Wellsville. It is related that while drilling his first Triangle well the tools needed repairs and he had not money to send them to Bradford. His Wellsville acquaintances seemed amazingly “short” when he attempted a loan. His wife had sold her watch to procure food and she gave him the cash. The tools were fixed, the well was completed and it started Taylor on the road to the fortune he and his helpmeet richly earned. The pioneer died in the fall of 1883. The record of his adventures, trials and tribulations in opening a new oil-district would fill a volume. He was prepared for the message: “Child of Earth, thy labors and sorrows are done.”

Eighteen lively months sufficed to define the Allegany field, which was confined to seven-thousand acres. Twenty-nine-hundred wells were bored and the maximum yield of the district was nineteen-thousand barrels. Richburg and Bolivar, both old villages, quadrupled their size in three months. Narrow-gauge railroads soon connected the new field with Olean, Friendship and Bradford. The territory was shallow in comparison with parts of McKean, where eighteen-hundred feet was not an uncommon depth for wells. Timber and water were abundant, good roads presented a pleasing contrast to the unfathomable mud of Clarion and Butler and the country was decidedly attractive. Efforts to find an outlet to the belt failed in every instance. The climax had been reached and a gradual decline set in. Allegany was the northern limit of remunerative developments in the United States, which the next turn of the wheel once more diverted southward. The McCalmont Oil-Company and Phillips Brothers were leaders in the Richburg field. The country had been settled by Seventh-day Baptists, whose “Sunday was on Saturday.” Not to offend these devout people by discriminating in favor of Sunday, operators “whipped the devil around the stump” by drilling and pumping their wells seven days a week!

The Chipmunk pool, a dozen miles north of Bradford, was trotted out in 1895. For a season its shallow wells promised a glut of real oil, the daily production rising to twenty-six-hundred barrels. The area of creamy territory was quickly defined. Captain E. H. Barnum, long an enterprising Bradford operator, drilled a test-well near Arkwright, Chautauqua County, N.Y., in 1897. He put twenty-five-hundred feet of six-inch and three-hundred feet of eight-inch casing in the hole, which proved barren of oil or gas and was abandoned when three-thousand feet deep. The Watsonville pool, south-west of Bradford, lively drilling brought to the nine-thousand-barrel notch for a time this season.