Venango County, Pennsylvania: Her Pioneers and People (Volume 1), Part 27

Author: Babcock, Charles A.
Publication date: 1879
Publisher:
Number of Pages:

USA > Pennsylvania > Venango County > Venango County, Pennsylvania: Her Pioneers and People (Volume 1) > Part 27

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The policy of the present management of the Der- rick has been that which seemed best for the general welfare. of the industry. While at times this may have aroused antagonism in some of the branches of the business, time has proven the wisdom of the course pursued. To-day the oil business is more prosperous than ever before, and the Derrick re- joices with the producer, the refiner and the marketer in the magnitude of the industry which they have each had a part in promoting.

While giving its readers the fullest information on the general news of the day, it has maintained its position as "the Organ of Oil." In its files for the last thirty-two years is gathered the history of the wonderful development of the petroleum indus- try, not only in the fields of the United States but that of all foreign countries. So complete has been this work that the future historian of the oil in- dustry has no need to go beyond the pages of the Daily Derrick to combine the daily evolution of the business with accurate data. The field and market events following each other in orderly succession have been guides to prosperity or depression in the trade, for those who have read the signs aright, and these have always been given the readers of the Derrick as accurately as possible, and without preju- dice.

When oil production was confined to this State oil exports had become third in value of the United States. What must it be to-day? The importance of preserving the history of the beginnings and of the progress of this new element brought into commercial life in this county is appreciated in 1918 as never before. The part played in the world war by oil and gasoline is almost inconceivable. A high offi- cial mav be forgiven for saying in his enthu- siasm that the Allies were floated to victory on a river of oil.

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(BY EDWIN C. BELL)

"The Drake well, drilled on the east bank of Oil creek in the northern edge of Venango county, Pa., and completed on the 27th of Aug- ust, 1859, was the first projected enterprise of the kind to bring petroleum-in quantity-into general utility. This first well was developed out of an organization known as the Pennsyl- vania Rock Oil Company, instituted by George H. Bissell and J. S. Eveleth. After disposing of a large share of the issued stock to New

THIS NATIVE BOULDER MARKS THE SPOT WHERE THROUGH THE FORESIGHT. ENERGY AND PERSISTENCE OF EDWIN L. DRAKE

THE FIRST WELL WAS DRILLED FOR OIL.

ON AUGUST 27. 1859 OIL WAS FOUND AT A DEPTH OF SIXTY NINE FEET. THIS GREAT DISCOVERY INAUGURATED THE PETROLEUM INDUSTRY

ERLETED RY CANADOHTA CHAPTER DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AUGUST 27 1914

(For description see biography of Edwin L. Drake, Volume II)

England parties, the holders of the diversified shares, desiring to realize on their investment, reorganized the original company under the name of the Seneca Oil Company. Then, to carry this proposition into execution, Col. Ed- win L. Drake was selected to become the pio- neer developer of the property, and thereby the founder of the petroleum industry. It was his devisement that ended in drilling into the rock formations of the earth in search of the fountainhead of the oil from whence had come the seepages found upon the surface of the ground where he located his well. The very ground surrounding the spot upon which Col- onel Drake drilled his well in 1859 is to-day (1917) still yielding paying quantities of oil."

HISTORIC OIL CREEK

AMAZING ACTIVITY, STARTLING SURPRISE AND MUSHROOM TOWNS FEATURE THE CRADLE OF THE PETROLEUM INDUSTRY

(BY J. J. McLAURIN)

"Naturally the rush for slices of supposed territory centered upon the forty-three farms of manifold shapes and sizes bordering Oil creek from the Drake well to the mouth of the stream, sixteen miles southward. Some were untenanted, and the occupants of others forced a slim livelihood from the reluctant soil, 'the world unknowing, by the world unknown.' None imagined the narrow ravine, from a few rods to a half mile wide, was ordained to be the busiest valley on the continent, abounding with startling vagaries of fortune and enlisting ambitious mortals from every quarter of the globe in a mad race to clutch a tidbit of the coveted acres. Everybody wanted ground on the banks of the current, nobody assuming that the paying streak might underlie the rugged cliffs and extend far inland, therefore opera- tions hugged the streams closely until crowded back and up the hills by the advancing hosts. "The Bissell, Griffin, Conley, two Stackpole, Pott, Shreve, two Fleming, Henderson and Jones farms, comprising the four miles between the Drake well and the Miller tract, hardly passed muster. Traces of oil-pits were visible on the Bissell patch, and a big dam, used for pond-freshets to float logs and oil boats, was located on Oliver Stackpole's farm. Two small refineries tinctured the Stackpole and Fletcher lands, with eighteen or twenty wells for con- genial society. His four hundred acres, on both sides of the creek, Robert Miller sold in 1863 to the Indian Rock Oil Company of New York. Still a railway station and formerly the principal shipping point for oil, wells were drilled, refineries built and the stirring 'town' of Meredith bloomed and withered within hail of Miller depot. The Lincoln well bowled out sixty barrels per diem; the Boston fifty, the Bobtail forty, the Hemlock thirty and a num- ber more from twelve to twenty-five barrels at an average depth of six hundred feet. The Barnsdall Oil Company worked the Miller and Shreve tracts, drilling extensively on Hemlock run, and George Bartlett planted the Sunshine Oil Works. The mushroom village, the refin- eries and the derricks have vanished as com- pletely as Herculaneum or Sir John Franklin. "Twenty-four wells, eight of them failures and Samuel Downer's fifty-barrel Rangoon the largest, drilled on the flats and the abrupt hill

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on the east shore, tested to a finish George Shaffer's fifty acres below Miller, divided by Oil creek into two strips, in Cherrytree and Allegheny townships. The Oil Creek railroad was opened in July, 1864, to Shaffer farm, which at once sprang into importance, in sixty days expanding from one house and barn to a sizzling settlement of three thousand souls. Sixteen hundred teams, employed mainly to haul oil, supported the medley of stables, board- ing houses, saloons and dancehalls, 'balloon frames' constructed in a few hours and liable to burn or collapse on the slightest pretext. Every other door led to a barroom, everything

acter and brain, who studied the strata and gathered valuable data, operated to the queen's taste, using heavy tools, tall derricks and cas- ing. No. 2 well equalled No. 1 in production and endurance, both lasting for years. J. B. Fink's July posey was the third. The scramble began in December, 1867, the Fee and Jack Brown wells, on the Atkinson farm, flowing four hundred barrels apiece. A lively town, eligibly located in a depression of the table- lands, was named Shamburg, as a compliment to the genial doctor. The Tallman, Goss, At- kinson and Stowell farms brought the produc- tion to three thousand barrels. Frank W. and

(For description see biography of Edwin L. Drake, Volume II)

reeked with oil, lodgings were at a premium, mud was knee-deep, meals cost a round dol- lar, and 'Person's Hotel' fed four hundred a day. Rake it over with a fine-tooth comb, turn on the X-rays, scrape and root, and to-day you could not find a particle of Shaffer the dimensions of a toothpick. When the railroad was extended the buildings were torn down and carted to the next jumping-off point.

"Three miles eastward, in Allegheny (now Oil Creck) township, the Cherry Run Petrole- um Company finished a well on Oliver Stowell's fifty acres in February of 1866, drilled through the sixth sand, eight hundred feet deep and good for one hundred barrels. The company. managed by Dr. G. Shamburg, a man of char-

W. C. Andrews, Lyman and Milton Stewart, John W. Irvin and F. L. Backus had bought John R. Tallman's one hundred acres in 1865. Their first well produced in September, 1867, and in 1868 they sold two hundred thousand barrels of oil for $800.000. A. H. Bronson paid $25,000 for the Charles Clark farm, a mile northeast. His first well paid for the property and itself in sixty days. Operations in the Shamburg pool were almost invariably profitable and handsome fortunes were real- ized. A peculiarity was the presence of green and black oils, a line on the eastern part of the Cherry Run Company's land defining them sharply. Their gravity and general properties were identical and the black color was attrib-

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uted to oxide of iron in the rock. Dr. Sham- burg died at Titusville and the town he founded is a shadow o' auld lang syne.

PENNSYLVANIA'S MOST PROFITABLE WELL

"Widow Sanney's fifty acres, south of the Shaffer farm, had three refineries and a full score of unremunerative wells, David Gregg's two hundred following suit with forty non- paying and three fair wells and two refineries, Victoria and Continental. The McCoy well, the first below the Drake to produce, at two hundred feet averaged fifteen barrels a day from March until July, 1860. Fire burning the rig, the hole was drilled to five hundred and fifty feet and dry. The Clinton Oil Company of New York bought two hundred acres on Oil creek and Hemlock run, a bunch of medium wells repaying the outlay. James Farrell, a teamster who saved his earnings, paid $200 for thirty acres of rough land south of Be- atty's, on the east side of Oil creek and Bull Run, the southwest corner of Allegheny (now Oil Creek) township. From him Orange Noble, in the spring of 1860, leased sixteen acres for $600 bonus and one-quarter royalty, jerking a 'spring-pole' five months to sink one hundred and thirty feet, without a speck of greasiness. Deserting it for nearly three years, the owners decided to drill the hole deeper, the 'third sand' having been found up the valley, George B. Delamater, Noble's partner in a store at Townville, and L. L. Lamb, of Pleasantville, joining in the undertaking. They contracted with Samuel S. Fertig, of Titusville, whose energy and reliability had gained the goodwill of operators, to drill about five hundred feet. Fertig went to work in April of 1863, using a boiler and engine and agreeing to take one- sixteenth of the working interest as part pay- ment. Early in May, at four hundred and fifty feet, a 'crevice' of unusual size was encoun- tered. Fearing to lose his tools, the contractor shut down for consultation. Noble was at Pittsburgh on a hunt for tubing, ordered from Philadelphia, waiting for which the well stood idle two weeks. surface water vainly trying to fill the hole. On the afternoon of May 27, 1863, everything was ready. 'Start her slow- ly,' Noble shouted from the derrick to Fertig, who stood beside the engine and turned on the steam. The rods moved up and down with steady stroke. bringing a stream of fresh water, which it was hoped a day's pumping might ex- haust. Then it would be known whether two of the owners acted wisely on May 15th in re- jecting $100.000 for one half of the well. Noble

went to an eating house near by for a lunch. He was munching a sandwich when a boy at the door hawled: 'Golly! Ain't that well spit- ting oil?' Turning around, he saw a column of oil and water rising high, enveloping the trees and the derrick in dense spray. The gas roared, the ground fairly shook, and the work- men hastened to extinguish the fire beneath the boiler. The 'Noble well,' the most profit- able ever known, had begun its dazzling career at three thousand barrels a day. Crude was $4 a barrel, rose to $6, to $10, $13. Compute the receipts at these quotations-$12,000, $18,- 000, $30,000, $39,000. Sinbad's fabled Valley of Diamonds was a ten-cent sideshow com- pared with the stubborn facts of the valley of Oil creek.

"Soon the foaming volume filled the hollow close to the well and ran into the creek. For $200 three men crawled through the blinding shower and contrived to attach a stop-cock to the pipe. By sunset a seven hundred-barrel tank was overflowing. Boatmen down the creek, notified to come at once for all they wanted at $2 a barrel, by midnight took the oil directly from the well. Next morning the stream was turned into a three thousand-barrel tank, filling it in twenty-one hours. Sixty-two thousand barrels were shipped and fifteen thou- sand tanked, exclusive of leakage and waste, in thirty days. Week after week the flow con- tinued, declining to six hundred barrels in eighteen months. The superintendent of the Noble & Delamater Oil Company, organized in 1864 with a million capital, in February of 1865 recommended pulling out the tubing and cleaning the well. Learning of this, Noble & Delamater overloaded their stock at or above par. The tubing was drawn, the well pumped fifteen barrels in two days, stopped suddenly and was abandoned as worthless, after its dizzy production of eight hundred thousand barrels had netted over $4,000,000. Is it surprising that multitudes were eager to stake their last dollar, their health, their lives and their immor- tal souls on the chance of such winnings?

"One fourth of the lordly total went to the children of James Farrell, who did not live to share the harvest, and one half to Noble & Del- amater, less the sixteenth assigned to Fertig, who bought another sixteenth from John Far- rell while drilling the well and sold both to Wil- liam H. Abbott for $27,000. Thirteen wells were drilled on the Farrell strip. The Craft had yielded one hundred thousand barrels and was doing two hundred when the seed-bag burst, drowning the well. The Mulligan and the Commercial did their share toward making the

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territory the finest in Oildom, with third sand on the flats and in the ravine of Bull run forty feet thick. Not a fragment of tanks or der- ricks is left to indicate that two score fortunes were acquired on the desolate spot, once the scene of tremendous activity, more coveted than Naboth's vineyard or Jason's Golden Fleece. On the Caldwell two hundred acres, south of the Farrell, twenty-five or thirty wells yielded largely. The Caldwell, finished in March of 1863, at the northwest corner of the tract, flowed twelve hundred barrels a day for six weeks. Evidently deriving its supply from the same pool, the Noble well cut this down to four hundred barrels. A demand for one fourth the output of the Noble, enforced by a threat to pull the tubing and destroy the two, was settled by paying $145,000 dollars for the Caldwell and an acre of ground. 'Growing small by degrees and beautifully less,' within a month of the transfer the Caldwell quit for- ever, drained dry as the bones in Ezekiel's vision.

"Noble, Delamater and Lamb journeyed to the Drake well in October, 1859, secured leases on the Stackpole and Jones farms, and drilled two dry holes, with similar ill luck on other claims in 1860-61. The firm disposed of the business in 1863, squared accounts in 1864, and Noble located at Erie. He established banks, erected imposing blocks of buildings, served three terms as mayor, put up the first grain elevator, and contributed greatly to the pros- perity of the city, living to a ripe age. George B. Delamater studied law, published a paper at Youngsville two years and went to Town- ville in 1852. Returning to Meadville in 1864, he built a massive block, started a bank, pro- moted important enterprises, engaged in pol- itics and served a term as State senator. Mis- fortune overtook him and he died poor. His son. George Wallace Delamater, a young law- yer of superior ability and address, entered the lists and was elected mayor and senator. He married, occupied a brick mansion, operated at Petrolia, practiced law and assisted in man- aging the bank. Nominated for governor in 1890, he conducted an aggressive campaign and was defeated by Robert E. Pattison. Swamped by politics, unable longer to stand the drain that had been sapping its resources, the Delamater bank suspended two weeks after the gubernatorial election. The senior Dela- mater went to Ohio to start life anew. . George W. pursued his profession in Seattle and Chi- cago and died in life's meridian near Pitts- burgh.

OTHER MAMMOTHS ON THE LIST

"James Foster owned sixty acres opposite the Farrell and Caldwell tracts and sold the upper half, extending over the hill to Pioneer run, to the Irwin Petroleum Company of Phil- adelphia, whose Irwin well pumped two hun- dred and twenty barrels a day. The Porter, finished in May of 1864, flowed all summer, gradually declining from two hundred barrels to seventy and winding up at twenty. Other wells and a refinery paid nicely and Pioneer sprouted into a lively town, attracting the usual throngs. Operations encroached upon the higher lands, exploding the notion that rich territory was limited to flats along the streams. Wells yielding from fifteen to three hundred barrels lined the ravine thickly. Clark & Mc- Gowan ran a feed store, the 'Howard Hotel' and 'Morgan House' dished up wholesale meals, shipping offices and warehouses abound- ed, tanks and derricks mixed in the mass and boats loaded with crude for refineries down the creek or the Allegheny river. The town and rigs and craft have faded, a forlorn tank alone staying 'to point a moral or adorn a tale.' John Rhodes, the last resident, who lived in a shanty beside the track, was killed by a train in February, 1892. He hauled oil in the old days to Erie and Titusville, became a producer, dropped his bundle, cultivated a garden and felt independent. Matthew Taylor, a Cleve- land saloonist, took a $400 flyer at Pioneer on his first trip and returned home in two weeks with $29,000, which subsequent deals quad- rupled. A Titusville laborer, 'wan year from Oireland,' stuck $50 into an out-of-way Pio- neer lot, sold it in a month for $5,000, bought a snug farm and sent across the water for his colleen. The driver of a contractor's team bar- tered his wages for an interest in a drilling well, cleaned up $30,000 by the transaction, and flitted westward to grow up with the coun- try. Pleased with the work of a clerk, Captain Funk deeded him an interest in the last well he ever drilled, which the lucky young fellow sold for $100,000.

"Joel W. Sherman, of Cleveland, leased the lower end of the Foster farm and yanked the 'spring-pole' in the winter of 1861-2. His wife's money and his own played out before the second sand was penetrated. It was im- possible to drill deeper 'by hand-power.' A horse or an engine must be had to work the tools. 'Pete,' a white, angular equine, was procured for one-sixteenth interest in the well. Another sixteenth was traded to William

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Avery and J. E. Steele for a small engine and boiler. Lack of means to buy coal caused a week's delay. For another sixteenth a pur- chaser grudgingly surrendered $80 and a shot- gun. The last dollar had been expended when, on March 16, 1862, the tools punctured the third sand. A 'crevice' was hit, the tools were drawn out, and in five minutes everything swam in oil, the well spouting two thousand barrels a day of pure green petroleum! It 'whooped it up' bravely, averaging nine hun- dred barrels daily for two years and ceasing to spout in February of 1864. Pumping restored it to seventy-five barrels, which dwindled to six or eight in 1867, when fire consumed the rig and the veteran was deserted. The prod- uct sold at prices ranging from fifty cents to $13 a barrel, aggregating $1,700,000. This meant $100,000 for the man who traded 'Pete,' $100,000 for the man who invested $80 and a rusty gun, $100,000 for the pair who furnished the engine, and $1,000,000, deduct- ing the royalty, for the man who had neither cash nor credit for a load of coal. Not one of the other fifty or sixty wells on the Foster farm, some of them Sherman's, was particular- ly noteworthy. The broad flat, the sluggish stream and the bluffs across the creek remain as of yore, but the wells, the shanties, the tanks, the machinery and the workmen have disap- peared. Sherman struck a spouter in Ken- tucky, operated at Bradford two or three years, sojourned at Warren and returned to Cleve- land to die. A duster six rods from the Sher- man, and dozens of light pumpers in the midst of gushers, demonstrated the uncertainty of the district.

THIRD SAND AND FIRST GUSHERS

"Late in the fall of 1859, 'when th' frost wuz on th' punkin' an' th' bloom wuz on th' rye,' David McElhenny sold the upper and lower McElhenny 180 acres at the southeast corner of Cherrytree township to Capt. A. B. Funk, for $1,500 and one fourth of the oil. Joining the Foster farm on the north, Oil creek bounded the upper tract on the east and south and Pioneer run gurgled through the western side. McElhenny's faith in petroleum was of the mustard-seed order and he grasped Hussey & McBride's $20,000 for the royalty. Captain Funk-he obtained the title from running steamboats on the Youghiogheny river-in February of 1860 commenced the first well on the lower McElhenny farm. All spring and summer the 'spring-pole' bobbed serenely, punching the hole two hundred and sixty feet,

with no suspicion of oil in the first and second sands. The Captain's son, A. P. Funk, bought a small locomotive boiler and an engine and resumed work during the winter. Early in May, 1861, at four hundred feet, a 'pebble rock'-the 'third sand'-tested the temper of the center-bit. Hope took a fresh hold, but languished as the tools bored thirty, forty, fifty feet into the 'pebble' and not a drop of oil ap- peared. Then something happened. Flecks of foam bubbled to the top of the conductor, jets of water rushed out, oil and water succeeded, and a huge pillar of pure oil soared above the derrick. The Fountain well had tapped a fountain in the rock destined thenceforth to furnish mankind with Pennsylvania petroleum. The first well put down to 'the third sand,' and really the first on Oil creek that flowed from any sand, it revealed oil possibilities before unknown and unsuspected, tallying three hun- .. dred barrels a day for fifteen months, when paraffine clogged the pores and pipes effectu- ally. Captain Funk, who died in 1864, leased John Fertig five acres to 'kick down' a well in the spring of 1860, with two partners to help the plucky youth who had accumulated $30 by teaching school. Not a sign of oil could be detected at two hundred feet, and the trio de- parted from the field. The teacher earned more money by drilling on the Allegheny river, four miles above Oil City. The Fountain well revolutionized the business by 'flowing' from a lower rock. Fertig hastened to sink the neglected well to the bounteous stratum. The second three-hundred barrel geyser from the third sand, it rivalled Funk's and arrived in time to aid in celebrating the glorious Fourth. The strike enriched Fertig, who formed a partnership with the late John W. Hammond, operating successfully in different sections. carrying on a refinery and opening a bank at Foxburg.

KEEPING UP WITH THE PROCESSION

"Frederick Crocker drilled a notable well on the McElhenny, near the Foster line, jig- ging the 'spring pole' in 1861 and piercing the sand at one hundred and fifty feet. He pumped the well incessantly two months, get- ting clear water for his pains. Neighbors jeered and asked if he proposed to empty the interior of the planet into the creek. One morning the water wore a tinge of green. The color deepened, the gas let go and a stream of oil shot upwards. The well spurted for weeks at a one thousand-barrel clip and was sold for $65,000. Shutting in the flow to prevent waste

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wrought serious injury. The well disliked the treatment, the gas sought a vent elsewhere, pumping coaxed back the yield temporarily to fifty barrels, and in the fall it yielded up the ghost. Mr. Crocker kept in line and had a part in the well that ushered in the mammoth Bradford field.

"Bennett & Hatch spent the summer of 1861 drilling on a lease adjoining the Foun- tain, striking the third sand at the same depth. On Sept. 18th the well burst forth with three thousand three hundred barrels per day. This addition to the supply with big additions from other wells, knocked prices to 20 cents, to 15, to 10. All the coopers in Oildom could not make barrels as fast as the Empire well could fill them. Bradley & Son, of Cleveland, bought a month's output for $500, loading one hundred thousand barrels in boats under their contract. The despairing owners, suffering from 'an em- barrassment of riches,' tried to cork it up, but the well would not be choked off. Twenty- two hundred barrels was the daily average in November and one thousand two hundred in March, playing April fool by stopping without notice, seven months from its inception. Clean- ing out and pumping restored it to six hundred barrels, which dropped two-thirds, and it breathed its last in 1863. Edward Bennett, genial, generous and auburn-haired, long sur- vived his partner, operated in Butler county and Kansas, and counted his friends by whole battalions.

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Venango County, Pennsylvania: Her Pioneers and People (Volume 1), Part 27

Author: Babcock, Charles A. Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Number of Pages:

Author: Babcock, Charles A.
Publication date: 1879
Publisher:
Number of Pages: