Century history of Butler and Butler County, Pa., and representative citizens 20th, Part 25

Author: McKee, James A., 1865- ed. and comp
Publication date: 1909
Publisher: Chicago, Richmond-Arnold Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1526

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The striking of this well caused a stam- pede from the upper fields and in a short time Thorn Creek was the scene of one of the largest excitements since the days of Millerstown. Extensive operations were carried on in this field by Mr. Phillips and others and in a few months the production. had reached 16,000 barrels a day. The

Phillips gusber attracted attention all over the country and special excursion trains were run from Pittsburg to the well.

The Semple, Boyd and Armstrong No. & on the Marshall farm was the next gush- er recorded in the county. It was drilled through the sand October 25, 1884, but ow- ing to the quantity of salt water present it made no show of oil. The owners of the well though not expecting much from this part of the field, refused an offer for their well from Mr. Phillips and proceeded to have it shot as the final act in the drama in which they expected to lose a lot of money. When the well was shot it began to flow at the rate of 400 to 500 . barrels per hour and the lack of faith on the part of the owners in not putting up tankage was punished by the loss of over 2,500 bar- rels of oil. It is said that at one time dur- ing the day the well flowed at least 500 barrels an hour or 12,000 barrels a day. It was by all odds the "Jumbo" of wells in the Pennsylvania oil field. A correct gauge of this well was never obtained, but it is said that the pipe line company al- lowed the owners' credit for 10,000 barrels of oil per day. It gradually decreased and in a short time fell to the 500-barrel level and from that point it decreased still lower to a small pumper. The well has long since been abandoned. The shooting of this well was one of the phenomenal sights of the oil country, and is described in the chapter devoted to nitro-glycerine and torpedoes.

In November, 1884, following the Arm- strong No. 2 on the Marshall farm, Phillips Brothers were drilling six new wells on the Bartley and Dodds farms. Christie brothers had eight wells and other oper- ators in the field were Boyd and Semple, Conner and Fishel, Greenlee & Company, Gibson & Company, Fisher brothers, Boyd & Company, Lappe & Company and a host of small operators were hovering around the outer edges of the pool. In December there were twenty-four wells completed, including three dry ones, on the Wallace,

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HISTORY OF BUTLER COUNTY

Marshall, Bartley, Dodds, Henderson, Brown and Webber farms, while twenty- nine new wells were commenced on these farms and on the Patterson, McCandless, McCormick, Kennedy, and adjoining lands. The Fisher Oil Company began operations on the McJunkin farm east of Butler, C. Eliason on the Leibler farm in Butler Township, and Showalter and Hartman near the old fair ground southwest of the borough of Butler.

The second well of importance struck on the Bartley farm reached the fourth sand October 11, 1884, and began to flow at the rate of forty barrels an hour. On the 13th the well was drilled deeper and made 150 barrels, and on the following day it was yielding 250 barrels an hour, or at the rate of 6,000 barrels a day. The owners of this well were Henderson W., Calvin G., and Thomas G. Christie, of Butler, who had leased twenty-eight or thirty acres adjoin- ing the great oil lease of the Phillips brothers. This was the largest strike of the district until the Armstrong No. 2 which came in about ten days later.

The famous McBride well in the Bold Ridge field was shot December 12, 1884, when a flow of 200 barrels an hour fol- lowed the torpedo. Before the close of the month the Producers' Association pur- chased the leases, wells and equipments of McBride and Campbell, Christie brothers and Phillips and Simpson.

The summer of 1884 brought in another field in Butler County when the Grand- mother well was completed for Bolard, Greenlee and Smith, one mile west of Sax- onburg. This well became a great gusher and was the foundation of Golden City. The fields about Saxonburg and Jefferson Center were developed later.

In 1885, owing to the uncertainties of the oil field, the once busy towns of Philip City and McBride City in Penn Township fell into decay, and Hooks City in Parker township began to boom. Philips City sprang up after the striking of the first

Phillips well in the Thorn Creek field in August, 1884, and flourished for over a year. The striking of the McBride well_on the Plank Road on Thorn Creek gave rise to McBride City which was named in honor of the owner of the well. Philip City has long since passed into oblivion and the building of the Bessemer Railroad up the valley of Thorn Creek rescued McBride City from a similar fate. It is now a sta- tion on the railroad.

In the spring of 1885 Hooks brothers drilled a well on the Kelly farm in Parker Township and found oil in the boulder rock. The well was torpedoed and became a 100-barrel producer. In August of that year there were fourteen producing wells at Hooks City yielding 500 barrels, and a flourishing little town had sprung up in the vicinity of the first well. At the close of September, 1885, the Ott farm east of Mil- lerstown was the most active place in that field where Westerman & Company had brought in a 100-barrel producer. Owen Brady was operating the same year south- east of Millerstown, and Joseph Hartman was operating on the O'Brien farm.

One of the freaks in the Thorn Creek field was developed on the Mangel farm on May 17, 1885, when Conners and Fishel completed a well, without any show of oil. The well was then cased to shut off the salt water and rigged up for pumping and for several days a steady stream of salt water was pumped. On the 21st of May oil began to flow at intervals through the casing, and shortly after a flow of sixty barrels per hour was recorded. It became a 1,000-barrel well and was one of the larg- est struck that year.

In June, 1885, there were 147 producing wells in the Thorn Creek field, many of which were pumping from ninety to 120 barrels a day. The Armstrong No. 1 was yielding about 1,000 barrels a month, and at the close of July the production of the entire field had decreased to 2,800 barrels a day.

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The Midnight Mystery was drilled in September, 1885, by the Leideckers of But- ler in Winfield Township. The well was worked as a mystery and for twenty-one days the oil scouts could not learn whether the new well was a gusher or a dry hole. The well was completed on September 10th and a week later it yielded thirty-five bar- rels in nineteen minutes. Many tracts were leased in the new field and extraor- dinary prices paid which did not justify the operators.

In November, 1885, a well was drilled in Middlesex Township for Dr. McCandless, Charles Neely and others, which was a small producer, and in the same month the Pittsburg Producers Company completed a well on the John Balfour farm in Adams Township west of Mars, which began to flow at a depth of 1,400 feet. This well was the inception of an extensive field that was developed west of Mars in Adams and Cranberry Townships and extending al- most to Hendersonville.

During 1885 efforts were made to ex- tend the Butler County fields in Brady Township where a well was drilled on the William Mayer farm near West Liberty to a depth of 1,400 feet. No oil was obtained, but the well produced a small supply of gas. Early in 1886 Sincox and Myers, who were among the first operators in the Bald Ridge district, leased a tract of 1,000 acres in Center Township, and drilled a well on the John Byers farm. This well proved a failure and the leases were aban- doned.

The Jefferson Township field was devel- oped in May, 1886, by the Extension Oil Company, which was composed of R. B. Taylor, O. K. Waldron, Loyal S. McJun- kin, W. P. Roessing, J. A. McMarlin, and others, who drilled a well on the W. J. Welsh farm. This well produced 100 bar- rels a day for a short period and was the beginning of later developments which ex- tended over a wide area in that township.

THORN CREEK EXTENSION.

Thinking that the belt from Thorn Creek would extend nearly east and west, Thomas W. Phillips, who opened up this field, leased a large body of land embracing about 15,- 000 acres extending east to the Armstrong County line, and drilled wells to test his theory. Small wells were obtained in a number of tests, but no outlet was found for the Thorn Creek belt. Retaining this body of leases when the Thorn Creek field began to wane, Mr. Phillips returned and looked for a southwest extension of the field in August, 1886. The first well was struck on the Critchlow farm in that month which produced 120 barrels a day, and opened up the Glade Run field. This field increased in richness towards the south- west, and in 1887 Mr. Phillips struck a number of wells producing over 100 barrels per hour. His largest month's production in this field averaged about 6,000 barrels per day and his production that year from this and other fields reached 1,100,000 bar- rels, notwithstanding the fact that half of his production was shut in for the last two months of the year. The number of his wells in the Thorn Creek field and exten- sion numbered 125, while he held 7,500 acres in leases. He sold this production and leases in June, 1890, and then turned his attention to the development of the leases which he retained east of Thorn Creek. In that year he obtained paying wells in Jef- ferson Township, and in January, 1891, struck the Fisher farm well north of Jef- ferson Center, which flowed 135 barrels an hour. In July, 1892, he struck a well on the Wolf farm which started flowing at forty barrels an hour and increased to 125 when drilled deeper. The following month he drilled on the Barr farm adjoining, and got a well that produced fifty barrels an hour. In June, 1893, he struck a well on the Eichenlaub farm near Herman Sta- tion, which produced forty barrels an hour, and opened up the Herman field.

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HISTORY OF BUTLER COUNTY

GLADE RUN FIELD.

This field may be said to have been opened in 1886, as a southwest extension of the Thorn Creek field when the 125-barrel well on the Critchlow farm was completed by Mr. Phillips. The Phillips interests were bought in 1890 by the Southern Oil Company, and the district became a verit- able oil center for several years. Wells. were drilled on the Critchlow, Spithaler, Hyde, Markel, Widow Croft, and other farms, some of which produced over 100 barrels per hour, and many of them 350 barrels a day.

REIBOLD FIELD.

The Reibold field came into prominence in September, 1887, when the Beam well No. 6 was drilled into the sand. About the middle of the afternoon of September 14, the well yielded ten barrels an hour when the drill was twenty-four feet in the sand, six barrels of which came from the one hundred-foot. At three o'clock a flow of 120 barrels was recorded, and five minutes later the force of the flow was so strong that it lifted the tools in the hole until the temper-screw struck the walking-beam. When completed the well flowed 140 bar- rels an hour. This well was about 600 feet west of No. 5, drilled by the same company. which was producing eighty-five barrels an hour when No. 6 was commenced. Other producing wells in this district at that time were Peiffer No. 2, Coast and Company No. 2, Root and Johnson No. 4 and 5, and the Phillips wells, and the total production of the field was about 9,000 barrels a day.

The development on the Henry Lonitz farm one and one-half miles west of Sax- onburg in October, 1887, was one of the surprises of the oil field. Bolard, Smith and Greenlee completed a well September 1, which produced sixty barrels per day. Golden and McBride's well yielded 200 barrels in October, and then Bolard, Smith and Greenlee's No. 2 came in with a gusher

producing 2,500 barrels a day, at a depth of 1,767 feet.

The extension of the development up Glade Run began in 1887, and the first wells were obtained on the Nancy Adams farm that year. These wells were obtained in the Hundred-Foot, and were the first demonstrations of how to handle water wells in connection with oil.

The "Mystery" well on the H. D. Thompson farm in Center Township was drilled in June, 1887, and attracted much attention for some time. The well was drilled by Albert and Morrison, and a show of oil was obtained, but the hopes of its promoters that a new field would be developed were never realized.

THE HUNDRED-FOOT DISTRICT.

What is known as the "Hundred-Foot" field in Connoquenessing Township was opened in the spring of 1889, when John A: Steele drilled the first well on the Irvine Anderson farm on Connoquenessing Creek. This well proved to be a good producer. Acting on the theory that the field extend- ed in the direction of Little Connoquenes- sing Creek, Steele employed Leslie P. Haz- lett, Esq., to take up a tract of land in the vicinity of Graham schoolhouse near the White Oak Springs Church. Hazlett leased a block 800 acres, one of the con- siderations being that the first well should be drilled within half a mile of the school- house. This well was drilled on the W. M. Humphrey farm by Mr. Steele, and came in for about 500 barrels a day in the Hun- dred-Foot sand. This well opened up one of the most prolific Hundred-Foot fields in the county. Operators flocked to the field, and in a short time hundreds of wells were drilled on the Humphrey, John Brandon, Thomas Graham, Hiram Graham, Knauff, Amberson and L. P. Hazlett farms, many of which produced from 500 to 900 barrels a day. One of the most valuable farms in the district was the Peter Rader, which produced over 1,000,000 barrels of oil. The

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Humphrey farm produced approximately the same amount, and the farms next in importance were the Brandon and Haz- lett. The field extended from the Ander- son farm along Big Creek to the mouth of Little Connoquenessing, and up the Little Connoquenessing to the Graham school- house. The field was at its height during the summer of 1890, and the following win- ter, but the wells declined rapidly, and in the course of four or five years the terri- tory was practically abandoned. Opera- tions have been carried on on a small scale, and some small wells obtained in the search for an extension of the field, but no large wells have been struck in the dis- trict within recent years.

BROWNSDALE AND COOPERSTOWN.

The principal developments in Butler County in 1892 were confined to Jefferson, Cranberry, Lancaster and Penn Town- ships. The Brownsdale field in Penn Township was opened that year. A 750- barrel well was struck in January, 1893, on the Johnson farm and this was fol- lowed by wells on the Anderson, Blair, Marsh, Critchlow, Warner, Heckert, S. Thompson, and William Thompson farms.

The Sutton well on the Hemphill farm near Zelienople, completed in November, 1891, was an index to the extension of that pool. It yielded twenty-five barrels a day at the start, and the Kneiss well on the Cunningham farm, which came in soon after, produced four hundred barrels.

Henshaw and Company drilled a well on the Muddy Creek field in November, 1891, which yielded forty barrels a day, and was then the largest well that had been struck in that field.

In January, 1892, the production of the Harmony and Zelienople fields amounted to 5,000 barrels a day, with twenty-one strings of tools running and eight new rigs building. The principal operations at that time were on the O'Donnel, five miles southwest of Zelienople, on the Knauff and

Cunningham farms on what is known as the Island, on the Horne farm, on the Fan- ker farm. In what is specifically known as the Harmony field, Golden and Com- pany had drilled their No. 3 on the Shiever farm, and struck a 400-barrel producer, while their No. 2 on the same farm was showing up at the rate of 250 barrels a day. The Eicholtz farm was the scene of operations by the Evans City Oil Company and the Kennedy Company.

Another pool was opened in 1893 south of Evans City on the R. J. Conelly farm in Adams Township. In September of that year a well that had been drilled on this farm in 1890 and abandoned, was cleaned out for Burk and Company and started pumping. Gibson and Gahagan drilled a well on the Robert Anderson farm through the hundred foot to a lower sand, but without success. A dry hole was drilled on the Wagner farm in the Browns- dale field in the same year, while a number of wells drilled by T. W. Phillips & Com- pany in the McCalmont district proved to be fair producers. In the Washington Township field new wells were drilled on

the Alexander Bell, R. O. Shira, Geo. Meals and Samuel Shira farms. An ex- tension of the Petersville district was also worked that year by the Forest Oil Com- pany, and the same concern was engaged in operations at Mars Station. A well drilled on the Reiber farm, and the Reiber and Bradner well on the Knauff lands northwest of the Thompson farm, were fair producers.

In 1893 operations were revived in the old Greece City district by the Grocer's Oil Co., Stewart & Co., and Matthew Bow- ers, who found fair producers on the San- derson and Clymer farms east of the old town of Greece City. An attempt to find a northern outlet for the hundred foot was made by Charles Hazlett, who drilled a well on the Jacob Shiever farm near Whitestown without success. P. C. Fred- erick struck a fair producer the same year

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HISTORY OF BUTLER COUNTY

in the vicinity of Hendersonville in Cran- berry Township, and wells were found on the Byers farm, and on the Pontius farm east of Chicora. The Tebay well near North Washington and two miles in ad- vance of developments, was completed in December, 1893, and proved a paying one. Other successful ventures of the same year was Purviance & Company's well on the Shorts farm in Connoquenessing Town- ship. The Phillips Company's wells on the Eichenlaub and Oertell farms at Herman Station, and the well on the William Pol- hemus farm in Center Township.

The Brownsdale field in the Hundred- Foot district proved to be one of the best producing territories of the last decade of the century, and took its name from the hamlet of Brownsdale. Its developments to the southeast and the successful out- come of the Reiber and Bradner ventures in Middlesex Township in 1893-4 brought the territory into wide prominence, and was the means of developing the Coopers- town field, which occupied the attention of producers until 1898. The Cooperstown field was the direct result of a long and. continuous effort under very discouraging conditions made by Reiber and Bradner, and which ended in the striking of a pay- ing well on the Knauff farm. In Septem- ber, 1894, this firm was offered the sum of $250,000 for their holdings, which they re- fused. Scores of operators flocked into the territory, and the quiet village of Cooperstown took on the activity of a booming oil town of the early seventies. Operations spread into Adams Township, and on the east into Clinton Township, and the most sanguine anticipations of the operators were more than realized. The deepest producer in the county was drilled in this district on the Campbell heirs' farm in Middlesex Township by McJunkin and Brandon in January, 1894, to a depth of 2,005 feet. The drill penetrated the fourth sand at this depth and the well started to produce 120 barrels per day.

The same month a well was drilled on the widow Brown farm in the Brownsdale district to a depth of 2,750 feet, but proved a dry hole. At 2,675 feet in this well the Speechley sand of the Venango group was struck with a show of oil and gas, and the red sand was also found for the first time in this field.

SPEECHLEY FIELD.

The Cooperstown field was the last of the large developments in the county up to the close of the century, and it was predicted that the end of the oil industry, so far as Butler County was concerned, was almost in sight. In 1900 the fourth sand districts of Concord and Washington Townships furnished a genuine surprise when a well was struck in Campbell Hol- low in the Speechley sand. This was the beginning of the Speechley field which in the course of four or five years produced over 3,000,000 barrels of oil. A rush was made for the district by operators, and large prices were paid for lands through- out the entire district.

The next pool of importance opened in the county was the Spotty McBride well in Butler Township in 1905. McBride ob- tained a block of 215 acres and drilled a well on the Dr. O. K. Waldron farm which turned out to be a 2,500-barrel gusher. The field proved to be' limited and the wells of short duration. Efforts to find a northeastern outlet were awarded in 1907-8 by wells on the Frazier, McCand- less, and White farms near Alameda Park in Butler Township. These wells are over two miles northeast of the McBride gusher.

The Fennelton field was opened in 1906, by the Cowden brothers, of Butler, who have produced a number of good wells. Nothing phenomenal has been struck in the district, but a number of paying wells have been brought in by the various oper- ators in this field.

The Petersville pool belongs to the freak class and cannot be accounted for by any

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law of oil formation. This field was opened in 1906 and continues to produce some paying wells, though the territory was drilled over in 1889-90 at the time of the Little Creek excitement.

The Muddy Creek field had its inception in January, 1908, when the Prospect Gas Company drilled a well on the Wallace farm northwest of Prospect for gas, and was rewarded with a paying oil well. Land was taken up rapidly, and large bonuses paid for leases, but the field has not yet produced any very large wells.

The Hoffman well on the Dodds farm south of Thorn Creek in Penn Township came in for 250 barrels a day in May, 1908, and was the inception of a drilling boom in that locality. The Hoffman well was considered a rank wildcat, and the lucky strike was the means of booming prices for land in that district. Several good wells have been obtained, but none of them have equalled the production of the first one. The South Penn Oil Com- pany, The Phillips Gas & Oil Company, Culbertson & McKee, and McCollough & Bernard have brought in good wells in the district.

Center Township in the vicinity of Oneida Station was the scene of opera- tions in the winter of 1907-8 on the O'Brien and Hewings farm, but nothing has been developed to indicate a very ex- tensive field.

THE PIPE LINES.

In the early days of the oil excitement at Titusville and Oil City, the problem of storing the production and transport- ing it to the markets was a serious one to the producer. Most of the production was barreled at the well and shipped to Pitts- burg on flat-boats or carried elsewhere by the railroad, and thousands of men and teams were given employment hauling the barreled oil from the wells to the shipping point on the Allegheny River and on the railroad. When the development reached

Parkers Landing and the northeast corner of Butler County in 1868, the wagon and the flat-boat were the only means of trans- portation and only two small pipe lines were in operation in the upper district at Pithole and the Shaffer farm. The story of the early pipe line companies, their struggles for existence, the consolidation of the small lines for the protection of their interests, out of which grew up the most gigantic trust in the world, is familiar history. As Butler County was the field of the early beginning of the in- dependent pipe line companies, so it became the battle-ground in later years of the most determined and successful oppo- sition that the Standard Oil Company have ever met.

According to the Oil Well Driller, the first suggestion of a pipe line as a means of carrying oil was made by Gen. S. D. Kearns in 1860. He proposed to lay a line from Burning Spring in West Virginia to Parkersburg, a distance of thirty-six miles, and carry oil by gravity. This line was never built, and it was several years be- fore the first pipe line was in operation in Pennsylvania.

The first attempt to start the pipe line business in Pennsylvania was in 1862, when the state legislature attempted to pass a bill authorizing the construction of a pipe line from Oil City to Kittanning on the Allegheny River. This line would have cut the edge of Butler County. Strangely enough this bill met with such opposition from the oil country teamsters that its promoters abandoned all attempts to pass it at that term of the legislature. It was argued against the bill that there were four thousand or five thousand team- sters employed in the oil country hauling oil and that the building of a pipe line would ruin their business and impoverish their families, and besides, would throw many laborers out of employment.

The credit of building the first pipe line in the state belongs to Samuel VanSyckle,

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who built a line in 1865 from Pithole to the Miller farm near Titusville. This line was four miles long, and carried eight barrels of oil per day. The construction of the line envolved VanSyckle in debt and in 1866 the venture was considered a failure.

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Century history of Butler and Butler County, Pa., and representative citizens 20th, Part 25

Author: McKee, James A., 1865- ed. and comp Publication date: 1909 Publisher: Chicago, Richmond-Arnold Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 1526

Author: McKee, James A., 1865- ed. and comp
Publication date: 1909
Publisher: Chicago, Richmond-Arnold Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1526