Century history of Butler and Butler County, Pa., and representative citizens 20th, Part 28

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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One of the best known shooters in the Petrolia district in 1877 was Dan Smith. Familiarity with danger makes people careless, and this led to the undoing of Smith, who was employed by the Roberts Torpedo Company. A teamster was em- ployed to haul the glycerine from a fac- tory in Venango County to Petrolia, where it was stored in an abandoned coal bank. Smith and the teamster had been in the habit of tossing the glycerine cans from one to the other in loading and unloading their wagon, like the teamsters in the city do brick. The driver would toss the cans to Smith, who would catch them and carry

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them into the magazine. One morning in January, 1877, the two men were seen driving to the magazine with a heavy wagon loaded with glycerine. Shortly after a terrific explosion was heard. All that could be found of the two men was buried in a cigar box. It was presumed that they had been tossing the cans and that a misstep or a slip had caused the tragedy.

After the Petrolia accident, Butler County was remarkably free from nitro- glycerine tragedies for over ten years. In 1889 Humes Brothers had a factory and magazine in Bean Hollow, about a mile and one-half south of Butler Borough. On the morning of the 10th of December, 1889, James Woods and William Medill, two experienced shooters, went to the maga- zine to get a load of nitro-glycerine for their wells. About ten o'clock a fearful explosion was heard which broke window- glass and caused the houses to tremble in Butler. Twenty minutes later an eighteen- year-old boy ran to the Court House and told the tragedy that had occurred at the nitro-glycerine magazine. The boy had been at the magazine and had left just a few minutes before the explosion occurred. Nothing could be found of either men, ex- cept a few pieces of flesh which could not be identified, and the only evidences of the existence of a magazine was a large hole in the ground along the side of which lay four dead horses. The factory building which stood across the run from the maga- zine was wrecked, but was subsequently re- built and used as a factory for five or six years.

Six years later almost to a day a similar explosion occurred at the same factory and magazine which snuffed out the lives of two Butler men. On the 4th of December, 1895, George Bester of Butler, an oil well shooter, went to the Humes magazine to get a load of nitro-glycerine. Louis Black, a boy of about twenty years of age, went with Bester as a companion. An explosion

occurred in which Bester was almost totally annihilated, Black's body mangled, the horses killed, and the nitro-glycerine factory reduced to a pile of kindling wood. The left arm of Black was found in the top of a tree three hundred feet from the scene of the explosion, and the tire off of one of the wheels of the wagon was found wrapped around the limb of a white oak as tightly as though it had been a coil of rope, one hundred yards away. The sup- position is that Bester was removing a can of glycerine from the shelf in one of the magazines when the explosion occurred. About seven hundred pounds of glycerine were stored in the magazine about fifty yards from the one that exploded, and pro- tected by a steep bluff of the hill. Had this magazine let go, the amount of dam- age done would have been immense. The force of this explosion almost caused a panic in Butler. Houses trembled on their foundations, window glass was broken all over the town, the plaster was loosened on the Mckean Street school building, caus- ing a panic among the children. The John Shaffner house on the hill south of the town was badly damaged, and his barn was moved almost a foot off its foundation. George Bester was twenty-eight years of age and had a wife and two small children. Black was a single man and lived with his parents in Butler.

On the 17th of December, 1901, the town of Butler was shaken by an explosion of nitro-glycerine which occurred at the magazine on the Bredin farm about a mile southwest of the town. Thomas L. Ed- wards, a partner of James F. Holland, and Charles D. Parker, a shooter employed by the Pennsylvania Torpedo Company, went to the magazine about four o'clock in the afternoon to prepare their loads for work on the following day. The two men were last seen as they were driving out of town with their wagons in the direction of the magazine. The people who went to the scene of the explosion found the dead

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horses lying beside a great hole in the ground where the magazine had once stood. The only thing found by which the two unfortunate men could be identified were a few bits of clothing and a few pieces of human flesh and bones. The force of the explosion shook the houses in Butler, broke window glass, and broke the glass in the store front of Cooper's tailor shop on the corner of Main and Diamond Streets. Edwards was about forty years of age and had a wife and three children. He was a native of Armstrong County, but had resided in Butler for a number of years and was among the best known shooters in the district. Parker came to Butler from Virginia, where he had been employed in the torpedo business and had resided in Butler but a short time. He left a wife and two small children.

C. N. Brown, known as "Brownie," was one of the oldest and best known shooters in the Butler County field. He had been with Fred Hinman at Petrolia and for twenty years had shot wells in every field south of the Venango County line. He came to Butler in the nineties, purchased a comfortable home and decided to quit the business. In April, 1897, he went to Evans City to shoot a well on the Ramsey farm, which was to be his last job. It was in truth, for while carrying two cans into the derrick an explosion occurred which wrecked the derrick, and snuffed out "Brownie's" life as quick as a flash. He was one of the most popular men that ever rode a torpedo wagon and was known from one end of the district to the other as "Brownie, the torpedo man." He had a wife and several children, who are still residing in Butler.

DEATH OF HOLLAND.

The last fatality in the torpedo business in Butler County happened November 29, 1907, when James F. Holland of Butler was killed at Boydstown. Holland had gone to shoot a well for Squire Higgins on

the Whitmire farm, near Boydstown, and had delayed his work until about four o'clock in the evening, until after the school children had left the public school building, which was near the well that he intended shooting. The shot had been successfully lowered, and the go-devil dropped, but for some reason the torpedo did not explode. Holland had gone back to the derrick to ascertain the cause of the trouble, and was accompanied by Higgins and Irvine Whitmire. It was almost dark by this time, and the men were working with the aid of a lighted lantern. Holland had left a couple of cans partly filled with glycerine on the derrick floor, and for some unaccountable reason these exploded. Holland was hurled under the bull wheels and so badly injured that his death occur- red within an hour. Whitmire was thrown thirty feet out of the derrick and badly in- jured, but subsequently recovered. Hig- gins was stunned by the force of the explo- sion but received no serious injury. Hol- land was one of the best known shooters in the Butler County field, and was regarded as one of the most careful and reliable men in the business. He was about fifty-five years of age, and had a wife and two chil- dren.

A WOMAN KILLED.

In the history of the oil country and the handling of torpedoes, there have been but two women who lost their lives from ex- plosions of nitro-glycerine. One of these occurred at Tideoute in 1873, and the other at Butler in 1890. One morning in April, 1873, the little town at Dennis Run, half a mile from Tideoute, was shaken by an ex- plosion. The explosion occurred at a frame structure on the side of the hill oc- cupied by Andrew Dalrymple as a dwell- ing and engine house. Dalrymple was a moonlighter, and had been engaged in manufacturing torpedoes at night at his house to avoid detection by the Roberts spotters. He was probably filling a shell

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at the time the explosion occurred. It knocked the tenement house into splinters, killed Dalrymple outright, and injured Mrs. Dalrymple so badly that she died a few hours later. She was unconscious when found, and was never able to tell how the accident happened. The first per- sons to reach the place after the explosion were surprised to hear a feeble cry arising from beneath the rubbish. Two feet under the pile of splintered boards and timbers they found the Dalrymple baby, twenty months old, alive and intact with scarcely a scratch on its body. Further search re- vealed the unconscious mother and the dead father. Kind-hearted people of Tideoute took charge of the little orphan, who was later adopted by a wealthy fam- ily of the town, and grew up to be a beauti- ful young woman.

On the evening of April 30, 1890, the people of Butler heard an explosion which had the sound of nitro-glycerine. The sound of the explosion came from the south side of the creek in the vicinity of the plank road, and the people at once started for the magazine at Humes' fac- tory, expecting that another accident had occurred there. It was soon discovered, however, that Mrs. Annie Edwards, who lived alone near the toll gate, was found dead in her yard, and that the explosion had occurred at her house. It was the cus- tom at this time for oil well shooters to drive to the Thorn Creek and McCalmont fields to hide their empty cans in fence corners and various places on their way back to town, instead of driving back to the magazines, which were a considerable distance off the road. An investigation revealed the fact that Mrs. Edwards had found several of these empty nitro-glycer- ine cans and carried them to her house. How the accident happened is not known. It is presumed, however, that Mrs. Ed- wards was on the side porch of her house and had attempted to knock the top off a can with a hatchet. Fragments of the cans

and hatchet were found in the vicinity, and Mrs. Edwards' dead body was found in the yard forty feet from the porch. It was evident that her pet cat was by her side when the explosion occurred, for its dead body was found a few feet away from Mrs. Edwards. Mrs. Edwards was about eighty years of age, and was connected with one of the pioneer families of Butler. She pre- ferred to live alone, and being ignorant of the deadly nature of glycerine, was uncon- sciously the means of her own death. She lived on the property now owned by the estate of W. A. Marks on the Plank Road.

Numberless hairbreadth escapes have been reported in the handling of nitro- glycerine, many of which sound almost like fairy tales. Once in a while a shooter goes through the experience of having an explosion and living to tell about it. One of these was John McCleary, who was known from Bradford to McDonald as one of the best men in the business. While fill- ing a shell at a well in Washington County in 1881, the well flowed and threw down the shell. The glycerine promptly ex- ploded and wrecked the derrick. When

McCleary saw the trouble coming he took to his heels and ran. The first explosion knocked him down and covered him with mud. He rose to his feet just as four cans on the derrick floor cut loose and the force . of the second explosion carried McCleary fifty feet farther and filled his back full of hemlock splinters. He fell stunned and bleeding, but was not seriously injured. He lived to shoot many more wells and finally met his fate like the general run of oil well shooters, while placing a torpedo in a well in one of the southern fields. Mc- Cleary was known as "Jack" and oper- ated extensively in the Butler County fields from Parker to Thorn Creek.

The placing of a torpedo in a well that is likely to make a flow of oil or salt water is a dangerous piece of business. Charlie Ford, who was a well known shooter of Butler in the latter part of the eighties,

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had an experience of this kind while shoot- ing a well for the Krug Brothers east of Butler. Ford was filling the shell when the well suddenly began to flow. There were several men in the derrick at the time who immediately ran for their lives. Ford had his nerve with him, however, and un- hooking the bail of the torpedo shell, he waited until the flow raised it out of the hole, and then grasping it in his hands, carried it to the corner of the derrick and set it down in a safe place. He was almost overcome by the gas and could not resume his work for some time, but when the well ceased flowing he replaced the torpedo and made a successful shot. Ford's nerve was doubtless the means of saving several lives as well as his own, and he, too, like Jack McCleary, ultimately met his fate while handling this dangerous stuff.

One of the most remarkable escapes that happened in the oil region is credited to James F. Holland, whose death is men- tioned above. Holland on one occasion took a load of nitro-glycerine from his magazine near Butler into the edge of Armstrong County, where he was to shoot a well. It was in the winter time and the roads were covered with snow and ice. The well was located in a deep ravine and was reached by means of a road that de- scended along the side of the hill. In mak- ing the descent of this hill Holland's wagon suddenly skidded sidewise and went over the bank, spilling the glycerine cans along the side of the hill for several rods. Nothing daunted by this adventure, Hol- land righted his wagon and proceeded to gather up the cans of nitro-glycerine and carry them back to the road. In this oper- ation he slipped once and fell, and the two cans he was carrying rolled for some dis- tance. He finally succeeded in getting his wagon reloaded, and shooting the well without any further mishap.

On another occasion Holland was driv- ing down the McCalmont hill at McCal- mont station at night, with a heavy load of

nitro-glycerine on his wagon, when his team became unmanageable. The horses dashed down the hill and across the rail- road tracks at McCalmont station just as the passenger train, which was overdue, for Butler, whistled for the crossing. The hind wheels of the wagon had barely crossed the tracks when the train dashed by, and Holland breathed a sigh of relief. Had the train struck the wagon the results would have been terrible, as the coaches were heavily loaded with people traveling to the county seat.

MISCELLANEOUS INCIDENTS AND SKETCHES.

The following incidents of the Butler County oil field and brief sketches of a few of the men who were prominently identified with the operations from Parker to Millerstown forty years ago will be found interesting to many of the readers of this volume. Most of the incidents were published in the newspapers at the time, and all of them are familiar history in the oil country. The names of Freder- ick Prentice, Captain Vandergrift, George V. Foreman, "Dunc" Karns, Lambing Brothers, Satterfield and Taylor, C. D. Angell, George W. Delamater, John Pit- cairn, Thomas W. Phillips, Isaac Phillips, John McKeown, and many others are in- delibly linked with the early history of oil in Butler County. Among those who came into the field later were the McKin- neys, James Guffey, John Gailey, M. L. Lockwood, Dr. J. B. Showalter, Hon. Thomas W. Hays, George H. Graham, A. L. Campbell, and others who were natives of the county. Andrew Carnegie, the great steel baron, was once associated with the early history of oil in Butler County, being a stockholder in the Colum- bia Oil Company, and at the same time superintendent of the Allegheny Valley Railroad.

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A large share of the credit of opening the Butler County field is due to James Lambing, who drilled the "Ursus Major" well in 1871, on the B. B. Campbell farm near Martinsburg. Heavy tools were used in this well for the first time in the oil country, and the driller was Charley Cramer. The tool-dresser was A. M. Lambing, who is now a well-known priest of the Roman Catholic Church in the Pitts- burg Diocese. The Lambing brothers came from Armstrong County, and at one time were the heaviest operators in the Butler field.

A prominent figure in the early days was John McKeown, who was known all over the oil country as one of the largest operators and one of the wealthiest men in the oil business. Mckeown started in the Parker's Landing field without a penny of money, and the only resources he had was a supply of Irish pluck and an indomitable courage. He drilled the first well on the Widow Nolan farm at Millerstown, and subsequently operated at Modoc, Petrolia and Martinsburg. He joined the exodus to Bradford where he was the partner of Hon. Thomas W. Hays. From Bradford he went to McDonald and was one of the largest operators in that field. He died at the age of fifty-three, leaving a fortune estimated from three to ten million dollars. Mckeown started as a poor boy and worked his way to the front rank of producers and financiers of the country. Although a millionaire he disliked the ostentation and display of wealth and had a fancy for disguising himself when transacting business where he was not known. On one occasion he dressed as a laboring man and went to consult Dr. Agnew, a Philadelphia spe- cialist, in regard to his health. He ex- plained to the physician that he was a poor man and unable to pay a large fee. The physician performed the services asked, and charged a fee of ten dollars, which the patient was to pay when he had

earned the money. The next day Mc- Keown returned dressed in a business suit, introduced himself and gave the astonished doctor a check for $100. On another occasion he went to Baltimore to purchase some real estate which was be- ing sold at a forced sale to satisfy cred- itors. Mckeown deposited a million dol- lars in the Baltimore bank, disguised himself as a farmer, and attended the sale. The mortgagor expected to buy the real estate at a nominal sum, much less than its real value, and when the stranger began bidding the other buyers, who were on the ground, intimated to the farmer that he had a good deal of nerve and inquired if he had the money to put up for his bid. The farmer replied that he usually had the cash to pay for what he purchased. The block was finally knocked down to the stranger for $600,000, and he astonished the creditors by calling up a local bank and producing the cash inside of a half hour.

William Smith, who drilled the first well for Colonel Drake at Titusville in 1859, was born in Butler County in 1812. He learned the blacksmiths' trade at Free- port, worked for a while at Pittsburg, and in the forties moved to Tarentum where he was employed making tools for Sam- uel M. Kier, and drilling salt water wells. When Colonel Drake took the contract to drill his well he found it difficult to get a practical borer to sink it. He went to

Tarentum and engaged a man to drill the well, but the driller failed to make his appearance. He made the second trip to Tarentum and was referred by F. N. Humes, who was cleaning out salt wells, to William Smith, who was a blacksmith and maker of drilling tools. Smith accepted the offer to manufacture tools and drill the well and took with him his two sons, James and William. One of the sons sub- sequently purchased a farm in Winfield Township, Butler County, upon which he resided until his death.

One of the operators in the Millerstown-

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petrolia field in the seventies was George W. Delamater of Meadville. His father was Hon. George B. Delamater, was a prominent banker and oil operator of Meadville, who represented that district in the State Senate in 1869. The son, George W., operated at Petrolia, entered politics, was elected mayor of Meadville and State senator, and in 1890 was the machine candidate for governor on the Republican ticket against Robert E. Pat- tison. Delamater was opposed by such men in his own party as Lewis Emery Jr., Joseph W. Lee and a host of independent oil producers and the campaign of that year was one of the most bitter in the political history of the county. Delamater was defeated for governor and Butler County for the first time in many years gave the Democratic candidate for State office a majority. Delamater was ruined financially by this campaign, and subse- quently went to the northwest and started life anew as a lawyer at Seattle. About 1906 he gave up his practice in Seattle and returned to Pittsburg, where his death occurred under sad circumstances.

THE MONTCALM LETTER.

No latter day work on petroleum, no book, sketch or magazine article of any pretensions has failed to reproduce part of a letter purporting to have been sent out in 1750 by Joncair, the commander of the French fort at Duquesne, now Pittsburg, to General Montcalm, com- mander of the French possessions of Canada. It has been quoted as throwing light on the religious character of the In- dians and offered as evidence of their affinity with the fire worshipers of the East. J. J. McLauren, author of "Sketches in Crude Oil," who was familiar with the early history of Frank- lin, and the upper oil country, has de- clared this story to be a "fake." Butler County's interest in the story is due to the fact that a Butler County boy was one

of the authors of the "fake." Franklin has been dubbed the nursery of great men, and the one that gave birth to the Mont- calm "fake" letter first saw the light of day in Butler County. According to Mc- Lauren a young lawyer opened an office in Franklin about seventy-five years ago and soon took a leading rank among the members of his profession. The same year a talented young minister was called to the pastorate of the Presbyterian Church of Franklin. The two young men became fast friends, and cultivated their literary tastes by writing for the village paper. Among others they prepared a series of fictitious articles based upon the early settlement of Northwestern Pennsyl- vania which were designed to whet the appetite for historic and legendary lore. In one of these sketches the alleged letter to Montcalm was included. The average readers supposed the minute descriptions and bold narratives to be rock-ribbed facts, and at length the French com- mander's letter began to be reprinted as actual history. One of the two writers, who coined this interesting fake, was Hon. James Thompson, the eminent jurist, who learned the printing trade in Butler, practiced law in Venango County, served three terms in the State legislature, one in Congress, was district judge for six years, and sat on the Supreme bench for fifteen years, serving as Chief Justice the last five years of his term. Judge Thomp- son's literary co-worker was the Rev. Cyrus Dickson, D. D., who resigned his first charge in Franklin in 1848, and re- moved to the east, where he gained dis- tinction in the pulpit and as a forceful writer. The Montcalm letter is referred to in the opening of the chapter on oil and gas.

"DUNG" KARNS.

One of the picturesque figures in the Armstrong-Butler oil district was Stephen Duncan Karns. With his two uncles,

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Karns operated the first West Virginia well at the mouth of Burning Spring Run in 1860. He gained experience in drilling wells with his father, who operated the salt wells at Tarentum. The firing on Fort Sumter put an end to the opera- tions on the Kanawha River in West Vir- ginia, and young Karns enlisted in the United States service for three years and did not get back to Pennsylvania until the close of the war in 1865. In 1866 he leased one acre of land at Parker's Landing from Fullerton Parker and drilled a well. This well produced a barrel of oil a day at the start, and in the course of a few months increased its production to twelve barrels, incidentally made its owner twenty thou- sand dollars. Karns next leased a. farm from the Miles Oil Company of New York that had an abandoned well on it. He drilled this well to the sand and got a twenty-five-barrel producer. This well settled the question of oil south of Parker. His next venture was the leasing of the Farren farm on Bear Creek and the Stone House farm of three hundred acres in Butler County. In 1872 he had an income from his wells amounting to $5,000 a day. He bought the Cooper well on the Mc- Clymonds farm, a mile south of Petrolia, which the owners had abandoned, drilled it deeper, and in two days had a hundred- barrel flowing well. The town of Karns City sprung up like a mushroom in the night and was named in his honor. Karns promoted the Parker and Karns City Rail- road, built pipe lines, controlled the Ex- change Bank, the Parker bridge and for a year or more was the largest producer in the oil region. He built a fifty thousand dollar mansion on the Allegheny River at Glen Cairn, kept a string of race horses, and played the part of a royal host. He went to Europe and was at Paris during the siege. Returning from Europe he built the Fredericksburg and Orange Rail- road in Virginia. The drop in the price of crude oil to forty cents in 1874 and

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Century history of Butler and Butler County, Pa., and representative citizens 20th, Part 28

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