Century history of Butler and Butler County, Pa., and representative citizens 20th, Part 29

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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various financial losses compelled Karns to surrender all of his property to his creditors and the man who was worth millions in 1872 and 1873 was obliged to start life anew. In 1880 Karns induced E. O. Emerson of Titusville to start a cattle ranch in Western Colorado, and for six years the former oil king superin- tended the ranch. Emerson had bought the Riddle farm at Karns City from Karns for eleven thousand dollars. He deepened one well-supposed to be dry- to the fourth sand. He struck a six hun- dred-barrel gusher and sold the property for $90,000. Karns returned from the West, practiced law for a while at Phila- delphia and then came to Pittsburg, where he published a Populist paper. When Coxy's "Army of Commonweal" marched through the "Smoky City" Karns walked at the head of the parade. Karns lived a more or less spectacular existence until his death, but never regained his fortune. He was known through the oil country as "Dunc," a name that is familiar to every one in the Butler county fields.

RICHARD JENNINGS.

Richard Jennings and his brother-in- law, Jacob L. Meldren, did much to de- velop the territory east of Petrolia. Jen- nings came from England to Armstrong County about 1850 and located at Queens- town. Meldren bought the farm at the head of Armstrong Run on which the noted Armstrong well was drilled in 1870. It opened the "Cross Belt" which ran at right angles to the main lines and upset the theories of geologists and oper- ators. This cross belt was remarkable for mammoth gushers and extended from Petrolia into Armstrong County. Richard Jennings was one of the largest operators in this district and laid the foundations for the large fortune which he left to his sons who are now carrying on the busi- ness. The sons operated in the McDonald field and are now prominent in the bank-

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ing business in the city of Pittsburg. The story is told of Richard Jennings that in the days of the Petrolia excitement he sent his foreman, Daniel Evans, to secure the Daugherty farm on the southern edge of the town. This farm was owned by two maiden sisters, and all efforts to lease it had failed. Faithful to his duty, the fore- man knocked at the door of the Daugherty residence and engaged board for a week. Before the week expired he was engaged to the elder sister and had the pleasure of securing the lease of the farm for his em- ployer. He reaped a harvest of green- backs in due course of time from the prop- erty, and his widow, who died recently, left an estate valued at more than $100,000.

Inspired by the success of Evans, an- other gay and festive operator attempted to lease a farm from a maiden lady near Millerstown. After he had exhausted every art to get the lease he hinted at matrimony. The indignant lady exploded like a bomb-shell, and seizing a broom compelled the bold visitor to beat a hasty retreat minus his hat and gloves.

TAYLOR AND SATTERFIELD.

ations in 1879, which extended to the Bradford field, and grew to such magni- tude that the Union Oil Company was formed in 1881 with $5,000,000 capital. In 1883 Forman was paid a million dollars for his holdings in this concern in Alle- gheny County, which up to that date was the largest individual sale in the region. All of its properties were eventually sold to the Forrest Oil Company, and the Union Oil Company went out of existence.

John A. Satterfield remained in the oil business after the dissolution of the Union Oil Company, and eventually turned his attention to banking in Buffalo. He was born in Mercer County, served four years in the Civil War, and in 1865 opened a grocery at Pithole with James A. Waugh as a partner. Later he engaged in the oil business, coming to Parker in 1870 and to Millerstown in 1873, where he resided for four years. His work in the Butler fields increased his reputation for honesty and enterprise, and at the time of his death he occupied a position among the leading financiers of the country.

PLUMMER'S RIDE.

In the days of the Millerstown excite-

Among the large operators of the Butler . ment there was a lively scramble for County field in 1870 were Taylor and Sat- leases, and various operators had cast longing eyes on the Divener farm, two miles south of Millerstown. The farm con- tained two hundred acres and the Bennett well, which came in for 300 barrels on the Boyle farm, made the Divener farm very desirable. The Divener couple were old and childish, and not wishing to move out of the house in which they had resided for many years, they positively declined to lease or sell. Lee and Plummer were two young men from New Castle who were looking for leases in the new field, and were on the anxious seat in regard to the Divener place. One morning Plummer overheard an operator tell his foreman to offer three hundred dollars an acre for the Divener farm. Plummer lost no time. He terfield. Their policy was to buy lands tested by one or more wells and avoid the risk of wild-catting. In this way they ac- quired productive farms in every part of the field from Parker to Millerstown, and their transactions footed up millions of dollars annually. They established banks at Petrolia and Millerstown, employed an army of drillers and pumpers, and in com- pany with Vandergrift and Forman, John Pitcairn, and Fisher Brothers, they built the Fairview pipe line from Argyle to Brady, which was the nucleus of the National transit system of oil transporta- tion. Capt. J. J. Vandergrift, George V. Forman, and John Pitcairn were asso- ciated with them in their producing oper-

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mounted a fast horse and rode at a gallop to the Divener house and offered the old couple $200 an acre for their land, one- eighth of the oil, and permission to stay in the house. The aged pair consulted a moment, and accepted the offer. The ink was not dry on the lease when the foreman rode up, but Plummer met him at the gate, and informed him that it was "too late." The first well drilled by Lee and Plummer on this farm paid for the entire expense of the lease in thirty days, and they subse- quently sold their holdings to Satterfield and Taylor for $90,000. With a fine sense of appreciation the first well was labeled "Plummer's Ride to Divener," and in the estimation of the Millerstown hustlers, it discounted "Sheridan's Ride to Winches- ter." Lee and Plummer were among the few operators in the field who could quit when they had a good thing. Dividing their money after the sale of their lease, they said good-bye to the oil field and went back to New Castle, where they engaged successfully in business that did not have so many elements of chance.

THE PRODUCERS' PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION.

The unsatisfactory condition of the oil business in 1874 led to the organization of producers' protective associations, and the inauguration of a shut-down in the entire oil field. Operations were suspended all along the line and for a couple of months scarcely any oil was produced. The pur- poses of the movement might have been carried out but for the violation of their agreements on the part of some of the operators who had pumping wells. Some of these operated their wells at night and shut them down in day time and when this became known it practically broke up the association. Some of the operators who carried out their agreement were financial losers by the operation on account of their wells being flooded with water and prac- tically ruined.

organize the independent producers, and what was known as the Petroleum Producers' Association was organized throughout the entire oil field. The pur- pose of this organization was to buy, sell and transport crude petroleum, and for a number of years it had a wide influence in the oil country. The association built pipe lines, erected tankage and went into the business of buying and selling petroleum on a large scale. It built a seaboard pipe line and for a number of years was an active competitor of the Standard Oil Company. Branches of the association were organized at Petrolia, Karns City, Millerstown, and Troutman in Butler County. Among the active members of the Petrolia Association were George H. Gra- ham and Hon. Thomas W. Hays, and the promoters of the Karns City Association were Alexander McDowell, A. J. Salis- bury, A. W. Gordon and E. V. Rigney. Each of the associations had from eighty to one hundred members, all of whom were extensive operators in the Butler County field.

BEATING THE RAILROAD COMPANY.

The independent producers and pipe line operators in the seventies often had trouble in obtaining cars to ship their oil. Discrimination was indulged in by the Pennsylvania' Railroad Company, of which Andrew Carnegie was then superintendent of the Allegheny Valley division. The Armstrong and Butler County producers who were shipping oil from Brady's Bend had made complaint to the railroad com- pany about their treatment in the matter of distributing cars for shipping oil and their request had been treated with indif- ference, and in some cases ignored. The oil operators of that day were men of re- sources. They quietly gauged their tanks and when they were full, run the oil onto the ground. They then presented the bill for the oil at the current market price to

In 1878 another movement was made to . the railroad company. The railroad com-

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pany saw the point made by the operators, settled the bills and thereafter furnished cars when asked for.

The last shut-down in the oil county oc- curred in 1886 at the time the Thorn Creek field was at its height, and the Phillips and Armstrong gushers had been spouting oil at the rate of several thousand barrels.per day. The price of crude petroleum went down to $.621/2, and in the hope that a sus- pension of operations and limiting the pro- duction would stimulate prices, the move- ment was inaugurated. The price of crude petroleum dropped to $.52 in 1891 and since that time it has gradually increased to $1.78, which has been the price paid by all the pipe line companies for the last two years.

PARKER CITY.

When the advance guard of the oil army reached Parker's Landing in 1869 there was nothing there but a few houses, and a ferry across the river. In a comparatively short space of time there was a full-blown city under a city charter, large business blocks, banking houses, opera houses, daily newspapers, an oil exchange, and Ben Hogan's Floating Palace on the river bank. Part of the resident portion of the city extended into Butler County. Ben Hogan's place was too tough for the town, which was noted for its toughness, and one night the guy ropes that held the palace to the shore were cut with an axe and Hogan, his collection of vile women, gamblers, and blacklegs floated down stream never to return to Parker.

The oil exchange at Parker attracted a large number of speculators in oil, and it was really one of the show places of oil- dom. Someone has said that it is as dan- gerous to speculate in kerosene as it is to start a fire with it. This proved true with the oil exchanges, of which there were sev- eral in Butler County. Many fortunes were lost in the Parker Exchange and a few made. George Darr was the agent

and Thomas B. Simpson was the largest operator. Daniel Goettel is credited with engineering the largest bull movement in the history of oil at this exchange. The patrons of the exchange were representa- tive young men from all over the United States, many of whom have since become prominent in the affairs of the State and Nation, and the names of some are famil- iar to every household in the county today. Christ Ball and Henry Loomis were two brokers who cleared up $60,000 in one year, which was a snug fortune in the seventies. A young German farmer of New York State staked all his money on the market one day and made $22,000. He retired to New York State, bought a farm, and the oil country and the oil exchange knew him no more.

With the exodus to Bradford trade slackened, and the Parker exchange met the same fate as the boom city. The build- ing was sold for ground rent, and the $5,000 library was removed to Oil City. The expensive paintings and furniture sold for a pittance and the Wall Street of Parker has long since only existed in memory.

THE DEVIL'S HALF ACRE.

What is known as the Devil's Half Acre was a small lease in Penn Township owned by Judge James Bredin of Butler, for which there was a lively scramble by the operators. When the Thorn Creek field was opened up in 1884 it was discovered that about a half acre of land lying on the old Pittsburg Turnpike had no apparent owner, and on account of this lack of own- ership it was called the "Devil's Half Acre." The oil developments made the half acre valuable property and the oper- ators began to look around for the owner. It was then discovered that the piece of ground had originally belonged to a tract owned by Judge Bredin, and that when he had sold the tract five years previous, a strip of ground amounting to about half

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an acre had been conveyed as a right of way to another tract of land that lay back from the public road. In the subsequent years both pieces of land had been con- veyed to other parties, the half acre was never used for the purpose for which it was intended and the circumstances sur- rounding the first sale had been forgotten. Bredin received a handsome bonus for the lease of the half acre, and the operators were rewarded by a paying well.

Another instance of land becoming val- uable that had been considered worthless occurred in the Hundred-foot District in Connoquenessing Township in 1889. About 1880 the heirs of Daniel Graham sold a tract of land on Little Connoquenessing Creek and when the deed was executed the new purchaser discarded about fifteen acres of the tract lying on the creek bot- tom as being utterly worthless. The ground was covered with rocks, brush and rattlesnakes, and was not considered fit for pasture land. The property was as- sessed as vacant land and the Graham heirs kept it without much thought that it would ever prove valuable. The striking of the gusher on the Humphrey farm and the subsequent development on the Bran- don and other farms brought the fifteen- acre tract into prominence and a large bonus was paid for the lease of the ground and several large wells were drilled on it. The heirs of the Graham estate subse- quently realized a neat fortune out of the land that had been discarded as worthless.

"THE WICKEDEST MAN IN THE WORLD."

A sketch of the oil country from 1860 to 1890 would be considered incomplete with- out mention of Ben Hogan, who flourished during the palmy days of Oil Creek, Par- ker and Petrolia. Nearly all of the mush- room oil towns were infested with a crowd of sports, gamblers, and plug-uglies who stole, gambled, carroused and did their best to break all the commandments at once. Hapless wretches were driven to

desperation and fitted for the infernal re- gions, while lust and liquor goaded men to frenzy, resulting sometimes in homicide or suicide. The chief of the sinners in catering to this class of people was Ben Hogan, who had a reputation as wide as the oil fields and called himself "the wick- edest man in the world." Hogan had been a prize fighter on land and a pirate on the seas, a bounty jumper and a blockade run- ner during the Civil War, and for one of his crimes had been sentenced to death. He was pardoned by President Abraham Lincoln, and in the summer of 1865 he came to Oil Creek and ran a variety show at Pithole. His companion and mistress was "French Kate," who was said to be a Confederate spy during the days of the Civil War, and a leader of the demi-monde of Washington City. The character of the place that the pair ran at Pithole was so malodorous that the authorities drove them out of the county, and they were next heard of at Parker in 1872, where Hogan built what was known as the "Floating Palace." This palace was built on boats and anchored on the Allegheny River bank, and was consequently out of the jurisdiction of the local authorities. He ran a dance hall, sold whiskey, and made himself so generally obnoxious that he was forced to leave, and in the winter of 1873, he came to Petrolia, where he opened an opera house and conducted a gilded palace of sin known as "Hogan's Castle." Ho- gan put on airs, dressed in a loud style and would have been elected burgess of the town but it is said that the election board counted him out. The "castle" became so notorious that a newspaper took up the cudgel against Hogan and forced him to leave Petrolia. From Petrolia he went west and there engaged in some swindle, after which, in 1875, he returned to the oil region and followed his old occupation at Elk City, Bullion, Tarport and Bradford. His residence was of short duration in all of these places, but he met with financial

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success and was about to depart for Paris when he met in New York City the con- verted drunkard, Charles Sawyer. Hogan was deeply impressed with Sawyer's preaching and became converted. He signed the pledge, quit drinking and from that time until his death he devoted all of his time to evangelistic work and in trying to offset as far as possible his former mis- deeds.

After Hogan's conversion he married "French Kate," who also professed re- ligion at the time, but it didn't have any very lasting effect with her as she eloped with a tough a couple of years later. Evangelist Moody met Hogan and advised him to go into the Evangelistic work. Ho- gan traversed the oil country, visiting all the towns where he had formerly conduct- ed his dens of vice, and conducted evange- listic meetings at which he told of his con- version and his desire to lead a better life. He visited Butler in 1893 and held several large meetings in the old opera house. When Hogan came to the oil country in 1865 it is said that he could not read nor write, and that all the education he ever had was given him by "French Kate." He made good his promises to Evangelist Moody and so far as is known he led a consistent Christian life for many years previous to his death.

THE AGRARIAN TROUBLE AT RENFREW.

of the adjoining tracts. The six-acre strip immediately became the subject of conten- tion, three parties claiming the land. David A. Renfrew claimed it by right of purchase, Charles C. Sullivan of Butler claimed a part of it, having secured a pat- ent from the state, and the third claimants were the heirs of William Purviance, who had surveyed and owned the original tract. The Purviance heirs were repre- sented by Miss Elizabeth Purviance, J. F. Purviance, Miss S. S. Purviance, H. C. Purviance, W. A. Purviance and B. F. Purviance. The Purviance family had taken possession of the tract and were liv- ing in a building that had been erected on the premises. The other claimants to the title entered a suit of ejectment and the Purviances were ordered to vacate, which they refused to do. Simcox and Myers demanded possession of the lease, which was refused them, and they called on Ren- frew to assist in dispossessing the tenants of the property. One morning a posse composed of David A. Renfrew, John Ren- frew, Edward Alshouse, Porter Phipps, J. J. Myers, Hugh Strawick, A. A. Dickey, F. Stroup, Simeon Phipps, James Ross, John Renfrew, Grant Anderson, Samuel Ross and Charles Heeter, went to the lease to dispossess the tenants who were then holding possession. The Purviances had prepared for trouble, barricaded the doors of the house, and offered a strong resist- ance to the posse. The posse battered down the doors of the building, overpow- ered the inmates, and by force of numbers carried them off the premises. Among the

A lease fight that attracted general at- tention all over the country and obtained almost national notoriety by publication in the newspapers occurred at Renfrew in the Bald Ridge district in 1883. David A. - inmates of the house were Miss Elizabeth Renfrew had leased a tract of land in Penn and Miss S. S. Purviance, who were roughly handled in the process of eviction. Criminal suits followed in which the men engaged by Renfrew in evicting the ten- ants were indicted for riot and assault and battery, and cross-suits were instituted against various members of the Purviance family. The litigation was also carried on in the civil courts in the form of ejectment Township south of the Connoquenessing Creek and west of the Meridian road to the Bald Ridge Oil Company. The oil com- pany subsequently sold the lease to „Sim- cox and Myers. The surveyors employed to run the lines of the lease discovered a strip of land containing about six acres which was not described in the titles to any

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suits, but the Purviance family lost their claim to the six acres, which proved to be one of the most valuable oil leases in that part of the Bald Ridge district.

The proceedings at the time the evic- tion was made developed into a riot and was the most exciting agrarian trouble since the Maxwell affair in 1815 mentioned in another chapter.

WILSON'S IRON DERRICK.

The idea of substituting iron for wood in building oil derricks has been attempted several times, but was never successfully carried out until the latter part of the nineties, when Amos C. Wilson, of Butler, secured a patent for building derricks from sections of pipe. The legs of the der- rick were fitted into metal sockets and so arranged that the pieces could be easily put together and taken apart and the braces and girders were made of the same material. Wilson erected one of his der- ricks on a lot near the Walter's Mill in Butler and drilled a well with it, and sev- eral other tests were made of the derrick in the Pennsylvania oil fields, but they never became popular, and Wilson finally abandoned his plan of placing his inven- tion on the market.

FORTUNES THAT WERE MISSED.

No story of missed fortunes in the oil country is more interesting than that of the Lambing brothers, who were among the heavy operators that followed the in- land developments from Parker's Land- ing in the early part of the seventies. They drilled the famous Campbell gas well and in 1872 owned leases on 16,000 acres of land in Concord, Fairview and Parker Townships, and had drilled the Ralston Mill well in Concord Township. When the Ralston well was completed it filled up with water and there were no indications of oil. The well stood in that condition for about twenty months when the casing was purchased by Kittanning parties. In

the meantime there had been a decline in the price of crude oil, the Lambing broth- ers had became financially embarrassed along with many other producers and had given up their leases. When the workmen undertook to pull the casing out of the Ralston well they discovered after they had pulled up about half of it that two or three sections were split. This suggested that the water had not been cased off, and that probably the well was good for some oil if it were properly cased. The new owner skirmished around and got new pieces of casing to replace the split sec- tions and re-cased the well. The water was then bailed out and to the surprise of everybody concerned, the well made 120 barrels a day. Had the Lambing brothers discovered the split casing when the well was drilled, their holdings would have been worth a million dollars to them.

THE LAWYER PUMPER.

One of the notable characters that came to the Millerstown field in 1873 was M. Augustus Perry. Perry was a New Eng- lander by birth, and in the early days of the Oil Creek excitement had come to Titusville with $1,100,000.00. Along with other capitalists from the east he engaged in producing and speculating and event- ually lost his entire fortune, and at the time mentioned he was pumping on the Shreve well for $2.50 a day. Perry was a man of education, a lawyer by profession, and had exceedingly fine literary tastes. He still had faith in his lucky star and was looking forward to the day when he would regain his lost fortune.

R. B. TAYLOR AND DAN WULLER.

An instance of how fortunes are some- times made in the oil fields occurred in the Hundred-foot District in Connoquenessing Township in 1889. R. B. Taylor of Butler, who was a well known contractor and builder, had secured a lease on the Daniel. Cable farm on Little Connoquenessing

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Creek. When he attempted to organize a company to drill on the lease he met with many discouragements from old operators who had no faith in the location of the lease. Taylor finally drilled the well him- self, with the exception of a one-eighth interest that was carried by another party, and struck a gusher that flowed over 500 barrels a day. After the well had pro- duced enough of oil to pay the expenses of the lease and the drilling, Taylor sold out for $90,000.

Another instance occurred in the Coop- erstown field in 1893. Daniel Wuller of Butler was a well known druggist and at that time was operating some in the local oil fields. One night he had been out with some good fellows and the next morning he awoke with a queer feeling in his head and a faint recollection of the proceedings of the evening before. When he balanced his cash he found that he had paid $250 for a lease in the Cooperstown field and that the fellows who sold him the lease were spending his money and enjoying a hearty laugh over the manner in which they had done up the druggist. The lease was considered "no good," and when Wuller attempted to form a company to drill it he was laughed at. He decided to turn the tables on the practical jokers and proceeded to drill a well himself. The first well came in good and others followed, and in the course of a few months Wuller sold out at a clean profit of $50,000.

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Century history of Butler and Butler County, Pa., and representative citizens 20th, Part 29

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