USA > Pennsylvania > Jefferson County > Jefferson County, Pennsylvania : her pioneers and people, 1800-1915, Volume I > Part 11
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Oil and Natural Gas
Everything in this world is evolution. Before 1860 evolution was slow, since then it has been rapid. Petroleum was known to exist in New York in 1627, in Pennsylvania in 1721, in Ohio in 1814, in Kentucky in 1820. but it was never utilized to any extent.
In 1859 E. L. Drake concluded to bore for oil near Titusville, Crawford Co., Pa., and at a depth of sixty-five feet struck a twenty- five barrel pumping well. This was the first well drilled exclusively for oil in Pennsyl- vania, if not in the world.
The first record of oil is of seepages of it. in Egypt. The Book Of Job says, "The rock poured me out rivers of oil." In the United States in the year 1814 the business of boring salt wells was quite an industry. Salt was in good demand and sold high, as late as 1830 in Brookville selling at five dollars a barrel. In one of these salt wells in western Penn- sylvania, oil, salt and natural gas were struck, and the well flowed periodically. This oil was gathered and sold for medicine as rock oil. I bought a bottle of this medicine in 1849. It was advertised as a "enre all." and especially of rheumatism.
Gunpowder was first used to torpedo oil wells.
The output of oil in these United States is
now worth in cash about one hundred and forty million dollars a year. The first oil struck in Jefferson county was found about Oct. 22, 1895. The well was located on Lathrop's land, on Callen run, in Heath town- ship. and was drilled by the Standard 1,609 feet. A flowing well of twenty-five barrels a day was struck; it now flows about eight barrels a day.
In 1866 Michael Best, Captain Steck, Jacob Sheasley, myself and others drilled a well for oil nine hundred feet deep. At this depth we struck gas and salt water, but no oil. This well is in Winslow township, on Sandy Lick. The gas was never utilized and is burning to-day.
Artificial gas was first used in the United States Nov. 13. 1813. and in 1816 the first company was chartered to make gas from coal. The evolution in the production of coal gas as a light was slow, and the gas costly.
The first practical use of natural gas in the oil regions was made by operators who piped the gas found with their wells into boilers used for operating the wells, pumping. as early as 1862. At that time no means had been discovered for regulating the pressure. which came irregularly from the wells, so that the use of the gas was regarded of little value-none for light and heat in dwellings. Later, means were found for regulating the flow in pipe lines, and when this was accom- plished it was not long until the volatile sub- stance began to be regarded as of equal value with oil.
The first well drilled exclusively for natural gas was in Westmoreland county. Pa., in 1878. The output was so enormous that the well could not be controlled, and the gas went to waste for five years. About 1880 natural gas was used in western Pennsylvania for both light and heat.
Among the first gas wells to be commer- cially used in this section was the celebrated Harvey well, near Lardin's Mills, in Clinton township, Butler county. This well tapped the sand in November. 1874. at a depth of 1,145 feet. The gas was piped a distance of seventeen miles, where it was used in a manu- facturing plant. It was not long after this until manufacturers began to search for the cheap fuel, with the result that in the carly eighties it was in general use in mills and homes.
The natural gas output in the United States is now valued at about seventy-eight million dollars a year.
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The earliest use of natural gas of which there is any record is in China, where for centuries it has been conveyed from fissures in salt mines to the surface through hollow bamboo and used for burning purposes. There are also places in Asia, near the Cas- pian sea, where it is scen to issue from the earth. The first discovery of. natural gas made in America was in the neighborhood of Fredonia, Chautauqua Co., N. Y. In 1821 a small well was bored in the village and the gas was conducted through pipes to the houses and used for illuminating purposes, and on the occasion of General La Fayette's visit there in 1824 it is said that the village was illuminated with this gas. Although this dis- covery was widely known it did not lead to any further experiments, either in that neigh- borhood or in other places, until fully twenty years after. In the early days of boring for salt in the Kanawha valley large quantities of gas were found, but it was not utilized as fuel until 1841, and then only locally.
In 1865 a well which was sunk for petroleum at Bloomfield, N. Y., struck a flow of natural gas. An effort was made to utilize this, and it was carried in a wooden main to the city of Rochester, N. Y., a distance of twenty-four miles. in 1870, for the purpose of illuminating the city, but the experiment was a failure. In 1873 a well in Armstrong county, Pa., was so arranged that the gas could be separated from the water with which it was discharged and conveyed through pipes to mills in that vicinity, where it was extensively used for manufacturing purposes for the first time. From that date to the present day the use of natural gas, both for fuel and illuminating, has increased rapidly. The latest discovery in the natural gas business, one which was perfected six years ago, is the extraction of gasoline, two or three gallons from each one thousand cubic fect of the gas, without in any way lessening the commercial value of the volatile substance or decreasing its volume. This system is now in general use throughout the oil and gas producing regions. To-day the once despised gas well takes rank with the oil well as a source of wealth and as an important factor in the manufacturing industries, in which it is extensively used in place of coal. It has also proved a no less important factor in domestic economy. supplying a cleanly, con- venient and economical fuel.
NOTABLE OCCURRENCES
The earliest recorded tornado in the United States was in 1794. It passed north of Brook-
ville, in what is now Heath and other town- ships, and extended to Northford, Connecti- cut.
The pioneer strike in America was that of the journeyman bootmakers of Philadelphia in 1796. The men struck, or "turned out," as they phrased it, for an increase of wages. After two weeks' suspension of trade their demands were granted, and this success gained them greater strength and popularity, so that when they "turned out" in 1798, and again in 1799. for further increases, they were still successful and escaped indictment. .
On June 6, 1806, there was a total eclipse of the sun. Fowls went to roost and bees hastened to their hives. The pioneers and Indians were greatly alarmed.
In ISIt a furious tornado swept across this wilderness.
Between the hours of three and seven o'clock in the morning of December 16, 1811, two distinct shocks of earthquake startled the pioneers of northwestern Pennsylvania. The violence was such as to shake their log cabins.
In 1816. or the year without a summer. frost occurred in every month. Ice formed half an inch thick in May. Snow fell to the depth of three inches in June. Ice was formed to the thickness of a common window-glass on July 5th. Indian corn was so frozen that the greater part was cut in August and dried for fodder; and the pioneers supplied from the corn of 1815 for the seeding of the spring of 1817. It sold at from four dollars to five dollars a bushel. The sun seemed to be desti- tute of heat through the year, and all nature was clad in somber hue.
In June, about the year 1818, a terrible hailstorm swept through this region and ex- tended its ravages several miles, killing and destroying the largest pine trees, leaving them standing as dead. The width of the path of this storm was about half a mile.
The pioncer steamer to cross the Atlantic, a vessel called the "Savannah," made the voy- age in 1818. In the trip she carried seventy- five tons of coal and twenty-five cords of wood. She left Savannah, Ga., in May, 1819, and arrived at Liverpool in June, 1819. She used steam eighteen of the twenty-six days.
On October 23. 1819, was the "dark day." Between nine and ten o'clock in the morning the darkness was so great that the pioneer had to light his old lamp or blaze his pitch-pine knot.
"The first practical friction matches were made in 1827. by an English apothecary named Walker, who coated splints of card-
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board with sulphur and tipped them with a mixture of sulphate of antimony, chlorate of potash, and gum. \ box of eighty-four matches sold for one cent, a piece of glass- paper being furnished with it for obtaining ignition. In 1830 a London man named Jones devised a species of match which was a little roll of paper soaked in chlorate of potash and sugar, with a thin glass globule filled with sulphuric acid attached to one end. The globule being broken, the acid acted upon the potash and sugar, producing fire. Phosphorus matches were first introduced on a commercial scale in 1833, and after that improvements were rapid.
"The modern lucifer match combines in one instrument arrangements for creating a spark. catching it on tinder, and starting a blaze- steps requiring separate operations in primi- tive contrivances. It was in 1836 that the first United States patent for friction matches was issued. Splints for them were made by sawing or splitting blocks of wood into slivers slightly attached at the base. These were known as 'slab' or 'block' matches, and they are in use in parts of this country to-day.'
In January, 1828, there was a great flood ; and also a great one on Feb. 10, 1832.
On March 9, 1828, an earthquake shock was felt in northwestern Pennsylvania.
The pioneer steam vessels that made regu- lar trips across the Atlantic ocean were the "Sirius" and "Great Western," in the year 1830.
In 1840 the tolls received for that year on the pike were $4,100.10; costs of repairs and improvements, $3,338.17: amount paid gate- keepers, $784.33.
The winter of 1842-43 was severe and bit- terly cold, with snow three feet deep all winter. In the fall thousands and thousands of black squirrels migrated through this wil- derness.
In September, 1844, a foot of snow fell, followed by a warm rain, which caused a great flood.
Dysentery prevailed as an epidemic in the summer of 1850. It was very fatal in the county.
June 4. 1859, was the date of the big frost.
The Johnstown flood, caused by the bursting of a reservoir, occurred May 31, 1880. Three thousand lives were lost.
In 1880 the streets of New York were lighted by electricity, and other cities and towns followed in its wake. In 1882 polygamy was prohibited in Utah In 1883 was opened the Northern Pacific railroad. The year 1886
chronicles the date of the Charleston earth- quake: 1888 the date of the exclusion of the Chinese, also the first electric street car line, which was built in Richmond, Va. In 1889 the Johnstown flood occurred.
In 1890 occurred the first electrocution ; 1893 was the year of the first World's Fair to be hell in the United States. It was held at Chicago and practically brought the world to America.
In 1895 an express train ran from Chicago to Buffalo, five hundred and ten miles, in eight hours, one minute and seven seconds. The same year the Wright brothers first proved that they had conquered the air and could fly in a motor-driven aeroplane. This year also saw the establishment of the first electric suburban railway.
1897 is the date of Hawaii's annexation to the United States.
The blowing up of the Maine in Havana harbor precipitated the Cuban war in 1898, which was followed later by the war in the Philippines. In 1899 Spain ceded to the United States Porto Rico, Guam and the Philippines for twenty million dollars.
In 1901 the United States Steel Corporation was organized with a capital of one billion, one hundred million dollars, and the first wireless telegraph message was received at Siasconset, Nantucket. In 1902 Marconi sent a wireless across the ocean. Now we can telephone five thousand miles.
In 1902 there was a great strike among the anthracite coal workers.
Record of Big Floods
In 1806, the year of the big flood, Red Bank had a rise of twenty-one feet ; on September 27, 1861, twenty-two feet.
We had big floods on November 10, 1810: January, 1828; February 10, 1832; February 1. 1840; in the spring of 1847. The greatest flood was September 27, 1861. We had a big flood March 16, 1865, one in June, 1884.
Shooting Stars in 1833-A Shower of Fire "The heavens declare thy glory, O Lord."
The theory of meteorites is that they are parts of comets. The greatest fall of meteo- rites in the history of the world took place in 1833. On Wednesday, November 13, 1833. about five o'clock a. m., the heavens presented a spectacle in this wilderness such as has seldom been seen in the world. It struck
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terror to the hearts of those who saw it, and many ran away from home to their neighbors. declaring that the "day of judgment had arrived." The duration of the display was about an hour.
This shower was the result of the disappear- ance of a comet of which the meteorites were parts, and they are still falling. Though that was eighty years ago, stars still continue to shoot down the path, and astronomers say that they are the remaining pieces of the same vanished comet.
A Railroad Collision of 1837 "Fatal Railroad Accident'
"Steamboat 'Columbus,' August 12, 1837. "The most serious accident that has occurred in Eastern Virginia since my recollection happened on the Portsmouth and Roanoke Railroad, one and a half miles from Suffolk. yesterday, between nine and ten o'clock. A company, consisting of about one hundred and fifty ladies and gentlemen, from the counties of the Isle of Wight, Nansemond and Southampton, came down on the railroad on Thursday. the roth inst., with the view of visiting Portsmouth, Norfolk, Fortress Mon- rov. and returning the next day. On their return, at the time and place above mentioned, they met a locomotive and train of burden- cars, and horrible to relate, the two ran together while going at the rate of ten or twelve miles an hour."-Brookville Republi- can, August 31. 1837.
PENNSYLVANIA IN THE WAR OF THE REBELLION
Pennsylvania contributed two of the five commanders of the Army of the Potomac- General Mcclellan and General Meade, the latter the hero of Gettysburg, as well as four- teen army and corps commanders and forty- eight general officers.
Gettysburg stemmed the Confederate tide northward, and brushed it back. The battle occurred during the high tide of the war, and it was the greatest battle of that struggle. although the battle of Antietam the year before Gettysburg has been called the bloodiest engagement of the great conflict. However, at Gettysburg, the Union army in the three days, July 1, 2, and 3. 1863, lost in killed, wounded and missing no fewer than twenty-three thousand men, and the Confederate loss in like classes has been placed at twenty thousand. four hundred and forty-eight. Nearly a quar- ter of a million men were engaged in the
three days' fight, one of the most tremendous in history. Gettysburg, although there were other battles almost as bloody and terrific, really foretold the end of the Confederacy, and that the cause of the South was a lost one.
The Union losses in death alone amounted during the four years of the Civil war to three hundred and fifty-nine thousand, five hundred and twenty-eight. The Confederate deaths, so far as reported, are known to have been in the same period one hundred and thirty-nine thousand, eight hundred and twenty-one. Countless thousands on both sides died of the effects of wounds received in the war. Of these numbers, Pennsylvania's share is a noble one. It has been declared, and nowhere dis- puted, that the percentage of Pennsylvania troops killed in battle is higher than that of any other State.
Pennsylvania was well represented in the Union column. All told this Commonwealth furnished :
United States men. 361,939
State Emergency and Service. 90,000
Enlisted in other States. 28,000
Colored 2,500
There were twenty-eight regiments, three battalions and twenty-two companies of cavalry ; five regiments and two battalions of heavy artillery ; one battalion and twenty-nine batteries of light artillery; one company of engineers ; one company of signal service ; and two hundred and fifty-eight regiments, five battalions and twenty-five companies of infantry.
The expense of the Civil war to the Union is placed as follows: War expenses, $1,500,- 000,000 ; pensions, $3.000,000,000; losses of men killed in battle or died subsequently, 359.528. To the South: War expenses ( estimated ). $1,000,000,000 ; property and other losses ( estimated ), $500,000,000 ; losses of men killed in battle or died subsequently, 250,000.
Pennsylvania's Contribution : Military or- ganizations, 383 ; men, nearly 480,000 in round numbers; paid for raising and equipping troops ( estimated ). $25,000,000.
KNIGHTS OF THE GOLDEN CIRCLE
In the spring and summer of 1863 there was a secret organization with the above name. There were over a million members, and the armies of each side contained thousands. Jef- ferson county, Pa., contained some lodges. It was a treasonable political organization. At
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an initiation, a candidate was first required to take the following oath :
You do solemnly swear in the presence of Al- mighty God and of this lodge that you will never except when properly authorized reveal the secrets of the order of the Sons of Liberty, known as the Knights of the Golden Circle, of which you have be- come a member, whether these pertain to the signs, grips or passwords of the order, or to any of their acts; and that you will to the best of your ability promote all its objects and interest, so help you God.
Candidate bowing head in response, four questions were then asked the candidate :
Ist. Are you in favor of resisting by all proper means in your power the act called the Draft Act according to the oath you have just taken?
2d. According to the same oath are you in favor of abducting, and, if called upon for that purpose, will you help to abduct Abraham Lincoln, the so- called President of the United States, if this becomes necessary to stop this unholy war?
3d. Will you protect deserters from the army, so far as lies within your power, and will you also help those who if drafted refuse to report to the Lincoln officers?
4th. Will you help to return all runaway slaves to their lawful masters?
An emphatic YES was required to each of these questions.
Grip of Recognition: Give the first finger of the right hand and with the second touch the wrist of the one challenged; Response, The same given in return, the challenger say- ing in a careless way, "R. D.," which meant Royal Democrat. The person challenged said "H. O.," which meant hands off.
Sign: The sign of friendship was raising the cap with the right hand three times.
Badge: The badge worn was cut from an old copper cent attached to a pin, with the word "Liberty" below the hand.
These lodges flourished also in Schuylkill and Clearfield counties. A few of the mem- bers were arrested in Jefferson county and sent to Fort Mchenry. Vallandigham was expelled across the Union line.
"The general accusation brought against all that were placed upon trial was the same. It charged that the accused, 'a citizen of County, Pennsylvania, did unite, confederate and combine with -, and many other dis- loyal persons whose names are unknown, and form or unite with a society or organization called by the name of the Knights of the Golden Circle, the object of which society is to resist the execution of the draft, and prevent persons who have been drafted under the pro- visions of the State and of Congress approved
March 3, 1863, and the several supplements thereto, from entering the military service of the United States.'"
HISTORICAL MISCELLANY
LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS
At the Dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pa., November 19, 1863
"Fourscore and seven years ago, our Fathers brought forth upon this continent a new Nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether that Nation, or any Nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come here to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that Nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have con- secrated it far above our power to add or detract. The World will little note, or long remember, what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the un- finished work which they who fought here have, thus far, so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this Nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that Government of the People, by the People and for the People, shall not perish from the Earth."
TRIAL OF LINCOLN'S ASSASSINATORS
The greatest trial in America for murder was that of the eight conspirators who had planned and carried out the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Booth, the chief actor, was shot by Sergeant Boston Corbett, dying about four hours later. The co-partners of the crime, Atzerodt, Dr. Mudd, Payne, Harold, Mrs. Surratt, O'Laughlin, Arnold and Spang- ler, were all apprehended before the martyred president had been placed in his tomb.
Atzerodt, Harold, Payne and Mrs. Surratt
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were found guilty of murder, and were hanged on July 7, 1865. Arnold, O'Laughlin and Mudd were sent to the Dry Tortugas for hard labor during life, and Spangler was given six years at the same place.
Mrs. Priscilla Catherine Dodd, wife of Gen. Levi A. Dodd, was the only woman who wit- nessed the hanging of Mrs. Mary E. Surratt in Washington, D. C., July 7, 1865. General Dodd was on duty in Washington at the time of the execution, and Mrs. Dodd secretly viewed it. She also cared for Mrs. Surratt's young daughter for some time after the hang- ing. Mrs. Dodd was born in Brookville, Jef- ferson county, where she spent her youth, and there she married Dodd, who ran a hardware store.
CRIME
From 1778 to 1855, inclusive, three hundred and twenty-eight persons were hanged in Pennsylvania. Of these, five suffered the penalty of death for high treason, eight for robbery, fourteen for burglary, three for assault, one for arson, four for counterfeiting, and seven for unknown offenses. On April 22, 1794, the death penalty was abolished except for murder in the first degree. Before 1834 hangings took place in public, and since then in jail yards or corridors.
The scarred and manacled slave, the branded runaway apprentice, the "pressed seaman" wondering if his wife were yet alive, the in- dentured white boy, the wilderness wife whose husband's body lay frozen in the snow for lack of burial, the broken trader, the ruined manu- facturer whose industry his rivals "at home" had filched, the carpenter, with his greased leathern breeches, taken from his bare home and jailed for debt-let none of these be for- gotten when the Good Old Times are praised.
As a sample of justice in 1784, Joe Disbury was tried in Sunbury for thievery, etc., found guilty, and sentenced to receive thirty nine lashes, stand in the pillory one hour, have his ears cut off and nailed to the post. and be im- prisoned three months and pay a fine of thirty pounds.
OLDEN TIME PENALTIES
The subjoined record, extracted from the archives of old Paris, possesses sufficient in- terest to warrant its publication. Readers will see from it what a terrible thing the capital penalty was in former days, and at the same time learn that the gentlemen who acted as
executioners, with their assistants and tor- turers, did not labor for glory alone :
AN EXECUTIONER'S PRICE LIST
To boiling a malefactor in oil. Livres
48
To quartering him while alive .. 30
To affording a criminal passage from life to death by the .sword. .20
To breaking the body on the wheel. 10
To fixing his head upon a pole. .10
To cutting a man into four pieces 36
To hanging a culprit. .20
To enshrouding the corpse. 2
To impaling a living man. .24
To burning a sorceress alive. .28
To flaying a living man. .28
To drowning a child murderess in a sack. .24
To burying a suicide at crossroads. 20
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