F 
 157 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 OLD TIMES 
 OILDOM 
 
 
Class _ 
 Book_.Ol 
 
 -U 
 
GEORGE W. BROWN. 
 
Old Times in Oildom 
 
 By 
 Geo. W. Brown 
 
 Being a Series of Chapters in which are 
 
 Related the Writer's Many Personal 
 
 Experiences, During Fifty 
 
 Years of Life in the 
 
 Oil Regions. 
 
 FOR SALE BY GEO. W. BROWN, 
 YOUNGSVILLE, PA. 
 
 1909: 
 
 Derrick Publishing Compant, 
 
 Oil City, Pa. 
 

 DiQ ai'909 
 
Preface. 
 
 I wish to say to my readers that I have but two rea- 
 sons for writing this Httle book. The first reason is that 
 eleven articles were written to the Oil City Derrick, some 
 years ago, in the way of correspondence. Then I was 
 requested by the business manager of The Derrick Pub- 
 lishing Company, J. N. Perrine, to write more about 
 "Old Times in Oildom." He explained that they would 
 gladly publish it in book form. 
 
 My second reason is that I wish to enlighten the 
 present generation regarding the many points of differ- 
 ence between the present time and fifty or seventy-five 
 years ago. 
 
 It seems to me to be the duty of those who saw these 
 great changes to hand them down to present and future 
 generations — to those who can never know these things 
 first hand. You will by reading this book learn that it is 
 not a book of fiction, with a single thread running 
 through all of it. Dozens and dozens of different little 
 stories will be found in these brief touches on the history 
 of the progress of our great country and state, and doz- 
 ens of names of worthy but almost forgotten people will 
 be found here. 
 
 The reader should thoroughly understand that the 
 first eleven chapters of this book were written in 1896- 
 1897. The additional chapters were written in 1909. 
 
 G. W. BROWN- 
 Youngsville, Pa., July, 1909. 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HAULING OIL ON SLEDS. 
 
 Coleman & Batchelor have just com- 
 menced a 'five years' lumber job at the 
 "old Pennsylvania house," four miles be- 
 low Irvineton. One peculiarity about this 
 business is the fact that the saw mill is 
 on the west side of the Allegheny river, 
 and the shingle mill is on the east side 
 of the river. A tramway is being built 
 three miles back into the lumber woods, 
 where all kinds of timber is found, that 
 flourishes in this climate. They cut all, 
 both hard and soft. Tlie loaded tram 
 cars are drawn by a steam locomotive, 
 and run directly on to a ferry boat, 
 which — by the aid of an inch wire — 
 sails across to the saw mill, Tvhere the 
 logs are tumbled into the river, being 
 hitched to and drawn into the mill. This 
 firm has leased the old Pennsylvania 
 house, and a plot of land to pile their 
 lumber on to dry. Speaking of this old 
 house, reminds me of the early days of 
 oil transportation. Before a railroad along 
 the Allegheny was even talked of, the 
 oil was transported from Tidioute to 
 Irvineton in barrels. In the spring, sum- 
 mer and fall, large flat boats towed by 
 two, three, and four horses, in single file, 
 were used to transnort the oleaginous 
 treasure from the wells at Tidioute to 
 the P. & E. railroad at Irvineton. This 
 was greasy work for the men, and kill- 
 ing work on the horses. In the fall and 
 spring, when the shore ice was thick 
 and sharp, the poor animals were pushed 
 through the breaking ice, that would 
 about half bear their weight, cutting 
 their legs so severely that the generally 
 clear waters of the Allegheny ran red 
 with their blood. Many a noble horse 
 laid down his life in this savage work. 
 It was no uncommon sight to see the 
 bloated carcasses of horses lodged along 
 the shore. When a faithful equine would 
 give up his life, the owner found it an 
 easier way to dispose of the carcass by 
 floating it off in the river than to bury 
 it decently on shore. But when the ice 
 got so solid, in the winter, that it could 
 not be broken by the horses' hoofs, the 
 mode of transportation was on bob-sleds, 
 drawn by horses that were not killed in 
 the ice. As the oil wells about Tidioute 
 on Dennis run in particular, were con- 
 siderably on the gusher order, it re- 
 quired a vast number of teams to trans- 
 port it. One trip was a good day's work 
 for a team. The loads ranged from six 
 to twelve barrels each. The reader can 
 easily imagine the great necessity for 
 hotels and stabling under these circum- 
 stances. The roads were completely lined 
 
 with teams. It was almost an impos- 
 sibility for the hosts of teamsters {o 
 find board and lodging for themselves 
 and horses. This was the situation of 
 things when "Jim" Conroe, an old farmer 
 domiciled on the east bank of the Alle- 
 gheny, took it into his head to show his 
 philanthropy by building a four-story 
 liotel on the narrow strip of land be- 
 tween the wooded hill slope and the 
 river. He put on all the masons and 
 woodworkers that could find room to 
 work and soon the the magnificent Penn- 
 sylvania house reared its tall roof sky- 
 ward, standing on an immense cut stone 
 foundation, and ornamented by huge 
 wooden pillars in front. People were 
 wont to say: "How will Jim ever get 
 his money back?" Well, Jim did get his 
 money back in about one year. His big 
 hotel filled up every night, as if by 
 magic, and some nights more were turned 
 away than taken in, and Jim soon found 
 himself rolling in wealth. But an end 
 comes to all things. Soon the cunning 
 oil producer began to lay pipe lines. 
 Then a railroad, now the W. N. T. & P., 
 then the Warren & Franklin road, with 
 its iron tank cars (brought into use by 
 the lamented Adna Neyhart), great iron 
 tanks that held the oil until convenient 
 to move it to refineries, lightened the 
 weight of the crude on the ground where 
 it was produced; pump stations sent the 
 oil through many arteries all over the 
 land, and James Conroe found his great 
 hotel unoccupied by guests. He lived in 
 this hotel with his family until it nearly 
 rotted down over his head. Then this 
 lumber company came and rented the 
 property, rejuvenated the old hotel, and 
 now three families live under its hos- 
 pitable roof, and "keep boarders." Con- 
 roe, the builder, has moved out, and now 
 contentedly spends his waning years on 
 the fine old farm above Dunn's eddy, 
 known as the "Dave Crull farm." Such 
 are a few of the changes in the great oil 
 business. Oil cost something those days. 
 The fortunate owner of a gusher was 
 obliged to Day $2 each for his barrels, 
 and $1 for hauling, a smart sum for 
 storage at the railroad depot, and high 
 freights to the railroad corporations, 
 which had not learned to respect this 
 new oil business. 
 
 If the eye of any of those old teamsters 
 happens to fall on this, they will recol- 
 lect the late James Patterson, who 
 checked their loads of oil at Irvineton. 
 Many a belated teamster came after Mr. 
 Patterson had "shut up shop" for the 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 night. The most urgent entreaties of I fellows — many of whom wished to go 
 
 these teamsters, asking Mr. P. to check 
 their loads, were invariably answered by 
 the words, "I cawn't do it," and the poor 
 
 elsewhere for the night- 
 linger until morning. 
 
 -were obliged to 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 STAGING BEFORE RAILROADS WERE A BLESSING TO 
 
 OIL CITY. 
 
 When the Atlantic & Great Western 
 railway extended its Oil City brancli (or 
 Franklin branch as it was called at that 
 time) to Franklin, your correspondent, 
 who, at that time, was helping to supply 
 Smith & Allison, the only lumber yard 
 owners in Oil City, with boards and 
 shingles, was making almost weekly 
 trips to the "Hub of Oildom." On one of 
 these trips he took his wife along to let 
 her see the beauties of oildom, as the 
 beauties shone forth at that time. 
 
 Well, one very cold winter's morning 
 we took the P. & E. accommodation to 
 Corry. Here we "changed cars" for Mead- 
 ville. A rather pleasant ride on the old 
 Atlantic & Great Western soon landed 
 us in the great covered depot in Mead- 
 ville. After a flrst-class dinner at the 
 McHenry house, tliat great structure so 
 well known to old-time oil men, where 
 for $1 the hungry traveler could be 
 feasted as sumptuously as at any of the 
 great notels of New York. Alas for all 
 vanishing things. How the greatness of 
 the McHenry house has fallen, once the 
 white aproned colored waiter flourished, 
 now rats, and, I was on the point of 
 saying, owls find a home. We took pas- 
 sage on the "Franklin branch" for that 
 "Nursery of Great Men" — Franklin. No 
 "Exchange hotel" at that time (in fact 
 no Mitchell lived there to build one). 
 We. wife and I, put up at the United 
 States hotel, Franklin's pride in the ho- 
 tel line. After partaking of a very pala- 
 table supper, we were consigned to the 
 only vacant room in the house; but after 
 being piloted in devious ways among 
 cots by the dozen, placed in the parlor 
 and halls and in every nook and corner 
 by the accommodating porter, we found 
 that we were in a room without lock or 
 fastener of any kind. I did not feel 
 safe, but my wife, the courageous wo- 
 man that she always was, said: "Let the 
 door go without fastening; no one will 
 hurt us." With slight misgivings, I fell 
 asleep that night to be awakened about 
 3 o'clock in the morning by a man 
 crawling around on the floor of our sleep- 
 ing apartment. (Don't get alarmed, 
 reader, nothing is going to happen.) I 
 
 raised on my elbow and also raised my 
 voice in a courageous tone, and de- 
 manded of the intruder his business in 
 our room. The incoherent muttering of 
 tlie supposed culprit soon convinced us 
 that the poor fellow was a victim to old 
 King Alcohol, and that he was on the 
 verge of the "jim jams." He had just 
 sense enough left to get out of that room 
 as gracefully as a man is expected to 
 when rtot able to walk upright. He was 
 no criminal, simply in a dazed condition. 
 Several other men have been in tlie same 
 condition from tlie same cause. The next 
 morning we took passage on the stage 
 for Oil City. Five dollars was the modest 
 cliarge for two of us. This would have 
 been less burdensome if not for the fact 
 that the male passengers were obliged 
 to jump out many times and help ex- 
 tricate the wheels of the stage from the 
 deep, frozen "chuck laoles." In fact, we 
 not only helped lift the wheels out of 
 those lioles, but many times we walked 
 along for quite a distance with our 
 shoulders to tlie vehicle in sometimes, 
 vain endeavor to keep the stage wheels 
 clear of those deep holes. After a short 
 sojourn at the "Gibson house," wliich 
 would not compare favorably with the 
 pride of Oil City, the Arlington, in size 
 and accommodation, but in good cheer 
 its full equal, myself and wife con- 
 cluded we would reach railway accom- 
 modations by a different route than the 
 one we came. The route chosen was up 
 Oil Creek "by stage" to the Shaffer farm, 
 where the "Oil Creek railroad" tlien had 
 its terminus. Profiting by my experience 
 while getting from Franklin to Oil City, 
 I very gallantly paid $5 for my wife's 
 "stage fare" to the Shaffer farm, and 
 "hoofed if on terra flrma myself. Your 
 readers may think this is a sort of a 
 "buckwheat" arrangement to save $5. 
 Nothing of the kind. This arrangement 
 had a twofold advantage. In fact, a 
 triplefold advantage. First, it was much 
 easier for a man to walk from Oil City 
 to Shaffer farm than to try to hang on to a 
 "stage" and ride; second, my "better half" 
 was much safer with her faithful hus- 
 band walking by the side of tlie jostling. 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 tipping, rattling "stage," ready with his | 
 strong arms, to arrest the movement of 
 the stage when it would be standing on 
 two wheels, ready to fall on its side; 
 and, third, there was only room in the 
 crowded thing called a "stage" for the 
 female travelers. The ladies were af- 
 flicted with a harum-scarum boy for a 
 driver, who would lash his horses into 
 the numerous crossings of Oil Creek, 
 without any regard to whether the ice 
 was thick enough to hold them up or 
 just thin enough to let them go through 
 with a smash and a crasn. Such driving 
 I never witnessed before or since. It was 
 really a relief to all concerned when the 
 carriage, stage, wagon or whatever it 
 might be called, broke down with a crash 
 when two miles below Shaffer farm. 1 
 never saw a more willing set of travelers 
 than those ladies. They never knew 
 what a comfort it was to have a genuine 
 
 breakdown before. When the cars were 
 sig -ted, a happier set of ladies were not 
 met with on Oil Creek tnan those who 
 were just released from the perils of Oil 
 Creek stage travel. All got to the train 
 on time except one "smart" young man 
 and his best girl. The young man had 
 more confidence in his time piece than in 
 others carried by experienced travelers 
 and insisted on all taking a slower gait. 
 All got on the train "just in time" ex- 
 cept this "smarty," who had the fun of 
 seeing the train move off, not to return 
 for him and his girl until the next day. 
 In this age of progress, let the pas- 
 senger of those days answer whether 
 there is an improvement when he now 
 lies down in a luxurious berth of a' 
 Pullman sleeper and glides along the 
 crooked, winding Oil Creek, without a 
 jar. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 OIL CREEK POND "FRESH. 
 
 The young people don't know and the 
 older ones have nearly forgotten, when 
 walking over the smooth, hard brick 
 pavements of Oil City, what a change 
 science and hard knocks have brought 
 about. Let tlie reader look backward a 
 few years — what do we see? We see a 
 sea of thick mud in all the streets of 
 Oil City, the depth of which could only 
 be guessed at. The writer at one time 
 stood on the corner near the First M. E. 
 church (which was burned years ago) 
 and saw, with his own eyes, three un- 
 fortunate horses floundering flat in the 
 very deep mud, with as many gangs of 
 men trying to tow the poor brutes to one 
 side of the street, where the mud was 
 not quite as deep as in the middle of this 
 muddy canal. Now, mind, these horses 
 were all down at the same time, in three 
 different directions, all in plain sight of 
 the corner spoken of above. One of the 
 horses was owned and driven by the only 
 Tom Hecker, who is known to every man, 
 woman and child in Oil City, and who, 
 from almost time immemorial, has raised 
 chickens and took toll at the north end 
 of the Suspension bridge. Tom can tell 
 you about mud and Oil City pond fresh- 
 ets. 
 
 Fearing that the unsophisticated read- 
 er may not know what a pond freshet is 
 I will say that the mode of getting the 
 oil from the big wells along Oil Creek 
 to the Allegheny river was by towing 
 boats and barges up Oil Creek to the 
 wells along the banks on either side with 
 
 horses, then running the oil from the 
 wooden tanks into these boats, in bulk. 
 Tube works were not heard of those 
 days in this section, and the pipes that 
 conveyed the oil from the tank to the 
 boat were generally made of boards, 
 planks or anything that happened to be 
 lying around loose. When all the own- 
 ers of boats were ready, and they were 
 legion, the chutes on all dams above 
 Titusville would be cut. Then came the 
 rushing waters, the ropes that held the 
 loaded boats to the shores would be cut 
 and the mad race for the Allegheny 
 would be on. No old pencil of mine can 
 describe the scene. Little and big bulk 
 boats would fight their way down the 
 rushing waters, endways, sideways and 
 in all shapes, these boats would heave 
 in sight of the shanty town of Oil City. 
 The old bridge across the mouth of the 
 creek would be black with people wlio 
 flocked from the rough board shanties, 
 called houses, to see one of the sights of 
 the world, such a sight as was never 
 seen before and never will be seen again. 
 I witnessed one of these runs which end- 
 ed very disastrously. The first boat to 
 reach the bridge was one carrying 400 
 barrels of oil, in bulk. The boat and oil 
 was owned by an old Oil Citizen named 
 Turner. He didn't turn that boat and 
 cargo into money. The forward end of 
 the boat struck a rock a few rods above 
 the bridge, swung around and sailed up 
 against the middle pier of the old 
 bridge, the middle of the boat striking 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 the pier. Turner's boat came around the 
 pier in two pieces, and his oil painted 
 the river green from shore to shore. But 
 if the show had ended here a vast 
 amount of money would have been 
 saved. The first boat that cleared the 
 old creek bridge safely stuck on the river 
 bar, out in front of the mouth of the 
 creek. The river was low, and the creek 
 high, consequently the hundreds of boats 
 piled up against each other until the 
 creek was a great drift pile from the 
 bar in the river, to quite a distance above 
 the Lake Shore tunnel. As the oil was 
 slashing around loose in all these boats 
 it was as amusing to the observer as it 
 was dangerous to the boatmen to see the 
 oil, when the boat would smash into the 
 Jam, go surging from the rear to the 
 front of the boat, there to pour into the 
 waters of the Allegheny. As may be 
 imagined, this general smashup was a 
 great loss to the owners of the boats and 
 oil. Tens of thousands of barrels of oil 
 covered the surface of the river from 
 shore to shore. This vast amount of oil, 
 as it floated Pittsburgward, made the 
 Allegheny one great river of green. 
 
 Old Oil City settlers will bear me out 
 in saying that the young dudes and 
 dudesses of the far-famed Hub missed 
 
 one of the greatest sights that falls to 
 the lot of mortals to behold by being 
 boin too late to see an Oil Creek oil pond 
 freshet. And now here is where the ir- 
 repressible Tom Hecker comes in again. 
 When Tom saw that so much beautiful 
 green grease had got away from the 
 owners he improvised a small dam near 
 the old Moran house, gathered a lot of 
 barrels on short notice and, as oil was 
 about $10 a barrel at that time, he 
 cleared about $900 on this afternoon's 
 work. 
 
 One word about the price of real es- 
 tate in those muddy times. The Hon. 
 William Hasson offered to sell to me one- 
 quarter of an acre of land wliere the 
 postoffice now stands for $200. I could 
 have borrowed the money and paid for 
 it, but my dim vision could see nothing 
 in it. My neighbors. J. C. and D. Mead, 
 took the venture and paid the $200, built 
 the very unsubstantial "Mead hotel," 
 which cost them the sum of $500. They 
 sold out in a year for $5,000. While they 
 weie building their hotel the Mead 
 brothers urged me to take the quarter- 
 acre lot adjoining their hotel lot at $200, 
 but my business capacity was not equal 
 to the occasion, and I never became an 
 Oil City lot owner. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PITHOLE HOTEL AND LIVERY CHARGES. 
 
 A few words about teaming. The word 
 teaming meant something when Oil City 
 was a shanty town. The soft alluvial soil 
 on the Hasson flats was good material to 
 form mortar beds of, when nothing 
 could be moved without that faiihful 
 servant of man — the horse — and as busi- 
 ness boomed to such an extent that 
 thousands of horses were needed to keep 
 things moving, the flats soon became. In 
 a rainy time, one mammoth mudhole. 
 
 Now, to illustrate things, and to give 
 the modern reader a slight idea of the 
 cost of doing business at the time of 
 which I write I will give an account of 
 my first oil venture. I was taken in as a 
 partner of J. C. & D. Mead, to operate 
 an acre lease on Cherry run. about a 
 half mile above Rouseville. I owned a 
 quarter interest and was unanimously 
 elected sucerintendent. Well, to make a 
 long story short, the first well was fin- 
 ished at a cost of about $9,000. The 
 reader may think that there was mis- 
 management on the Dart of the superin- 
 tendent in running up such a bill as that 
 in putlng down one well in "shallow ter- 
 ritory." After an explanation, the reader 
 
 will think different. The teaming was 
 the great factor in the big expense ac- 
 count. In the first place, a boiler was 
 drawn onto the ground bj^ four span of 
 horses, at $18 a span. Then after trying 
 to drill a few weeks, the fact leaked out 
 that there were not enough flues inside 
 the boiler, and the old sawlog-shaped 
 thing was hustled aside and a new $2,000 
 boiler put in its place. This last venture 
 was satisfactory. That high-priced boil- 
 er was equal to the task of making the 
 steam to keep the unweildy old second- 
 hand engine in motion. But now let us 
 look again at the cost of this $9,000 job. 
 Here is where the text "teaming" comes 
 in again. This big boiler would not boil 
 without heat, and to make heat wood or 
 coal was required, .and as wood was 
 about $5 a cord delivered, we used coal. 
 Cranberry coal. From the mines to our 
 oil well was one great river of very stiff 
 mud. This coal was hauled on wagons, 
 to which was hitched three span of 
 horses, and we paid the very modest 
 little price of $1.25 per bushel. The 
 owners of the coal were not unreason- 
 able in charging what seems, in these 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 days of railroads, a bis steal. The sell- I 
 ers of this coal were fair dealers. They 
 could not set tlie coal out of the crude { 
 Cranberry mines and haul it tlirough 
 this deep mud as fast as tlie green oper- 
 ators would take it at $1.25 per bushel. 
 Well, the reader can see, without glasses, 
 tliat this kind of work kept up for sev- 
 eral weeks, with the little light weight 
 tools of those days, could very easily 
 reach the $9,000 mark. Scientific opera- 
 tors of to-day will wonder whether this 
 company of Mead & Brown came off win- 
 ners or losers. The answer is neither. 
 Oil was $3.5 per barrel and the well 
 panned out about 25 barrels a day, and 
 kept up this production until the com- 
 pany sold out and were neitlier winners 
 nor losers, from a financial point of 
 view. But in an educational standpoint, 
 the company were the gainers. Tliey 
 came off with a few hundred dollars' 
 worth of experience. 
 
 Anotlier leaf froin mv own experience 
 will help along with this article with 
 "teaming" for the text. 
 
 Mead & Co. (which means ourself and 
 Nelson Mead, now of Corydon, Pa.) 
 leased a building lot on a back street at 
 Pithole City and built a store house, of 
 the rough order, on said lot. We were 
 obliged to fatboat our lumber and ma- 
 terial down tlie Allegheny from Irvine- 
 ton to McCray"s Landing, a noted com- 
 mercial point at that time. From tlie 
 landing to Pithole City, four miles, was 
 found a typical oil country mudhole. 
 We (Mead »<t Co. paid $20 per thousand 
 to have our lumber hauled and delivered 
 on our speculative building lot. The 
 store room went ud witli a rush, at a 
 cost of $800. When completed, we were 
 offered $1,800 for the building. We 
 wanted $2,000 for it. Our customer 
 wanted us to give him three days to 
 
 think about it. We gave the time. At 
 tlie end of three days he had dropped 
 $800 and offered us $1,000. After a hur- 
 ried consultation. Mead & Co. concluded 
 tliat at tliis rate of dropping off, it would 
 not take a very long time to get below 
 cost. So we closed the bargain, con- 
 tent with $200 profit on our ven- 
 ture. Our customer gave us $650 cash 
 down and a bank note due in 30 day* 
 for $350. At the end of 30 days when 
 Mead & Co. called at the then waning oil 
 metropolis, our customer wanted to give 
 us the property for the $350 note. As we 
 were not anxious to buv Pithole City 
 property on tlie declining valuation, we 
 refused tlie generous offer, and called 
 on tlie bank and drew our $35 0. Mead & 
 Co. were not a grasping corporation and 
 their kind liearts could not be brought 
 to the point of taking a $1,000 property 
 for $350. 
 
 To show the reader that horseback 
 riding was a luxury tliose days, to be 
 paid for, as well as teaming, I will say 
 I hired a little bit of horseflesh, with a 
 saddle on, one day. during my business 
 career in Pithole, for the purpose of rid- 
 ing four miles, to McCray's Landing, and 
 return. When the trip was finished, the 
 liveryman, who was not stopping at Pit- 
 hole for his health, charged me $5. I 
 told the dealer in horses that I did not 
 intend to buy the horse, but only to 
 pay for the use of it, about two hours. 
 A glance at the man's face showed that 
 he meant business and I handed over the 
 fiver without further protest. When I 
 took into consideration tlie fact that I 
 had, that very morning, paid 75 cents to 
 a hotel man for sleeping in a haymow In 
 the barn, witliout even a blanket, I came 
 I to the conclusion that the liveryman was 
 I quite reasonable in his charges, and was 
 1 only keeping abreast of ihe times. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 GEN. BURNSIDE'S RAILROAD. 
 
 The young citizens, and part of the old. 
 Of Oil City, while enjoying the blessings 
 of four railroads, may not know the dif- 
 ficulty under wnich outside capitalists 
 labored in bringing the present state of 
 affairs about. I well remember that 
 when the Atlantic & Great Western built 
 a branch of their road from Meadville 
 to Reno, the management found them- 
 selves "up a stump" when reaching the 
 sacred precincts of the "Hub." The "city 
 fathers" would not let a noisy and 
 smoky railroad come into the "golden 
 streets" of Oil City. The muddy streets 
 
 and the creek and river were good enough 
 for them. Besides, there was "no room 
 on the narrow flats for railroad tracks." 
 The city of Reno was not quite large 
 enough for a great railroad terminus, so 
 a railroad was built from Reno to 
 Plumer. The city of Plumer was the 
 terminus. Oil City, with Its short- 
 sighted and high-toned council was left 
 out in the cold. I had the pleasure of 
 riding from Franklin to Plumer several 
 times on this picturesque and expensive 
 road. I am not exactly sure as to the 
 distance from Reno to Plumer. but I 
 
10 
 
 OLD TIMES IN 01 LOOM. 
 
 think it was about 16 miles. This is 
 not as the crows fly, but as the sur- 
 veyors laid out the road. The route ran 
 toward Dempseytown for several miles, 
 when the top of the mountain was 
 reached. Here a station was built, and a 
 prospective town laid out in lots (Oil 
 City speculators did not tumble over 
 each other to buy lots); then down grade 
 for a few more miles brought the road 
 over dangerous looking trestles plump 
 into McClintockville, then up through 
 Rouseville and on up Cherry run to 
 Plumer, the terminus of the only rail- 
 road in this great oil region. 
 
 Coming down the mountain side from 
 the direction of Dempseytown to McClin- 
 tockville, a passenger could get a peep 
 at a part of Oil City. The part that 
 could be seen seemed to almost hide its 
 head in shame at the thought that Reno, 
 Dempseytown, McClintockville, Rouse- 
 ville, Cherry Run, the Humboldt refinery 
 and Plumer could have a railroad, but 
 the greasy, busy hub of oildom could not 
 have one. The city council and every- 
 body else were obliged to get out of the 
 city on a raft, flat boat, wagon, horse- 
 back, or afoot, while Plumerites could 
 take a seat for New York or any city, on 
 a soft cushion in a railroad passenger 
 coach. Of course the haughty citizen of 
 Plumer was obliged to "change cars" at 
 Reno, from the standard gauge to the 
 (then) six-foot gauge of the Atlantic & 
 Great Western. But what oi that? Could 
 they not glide down Cherry Run and up 
 through several townships over the 
 mountain to Reno, with the serene satis- 
 faction of knowing that poor little Oil 
 City had no ra.iroad connection with the 
 outer world? Well, the reader may say, 
 "Who was so short-sighted as to build a 
 road with such grades, when Oil City, 
 with its commanding location, was sure 
 to become quite a railroad center in no 
 great length of time, regardless of near- 
 sighted rulers?" I cannot answer that 
 question — I can say that a man of great 
 renown was president of the Plumer 
 road. 
 
 The only time that I ever had the 
 pleasure of seeing General Burnside was 
 when he was seated on a pile of ties, on 
 a flat car, or gondola, making strenuous 
 efforts to get over the road, of which he 
 was president. Two of these flat cars, 
 partly loaded with ties, were hitched to 
 a fine, new locomotive. Three times the 
 start was made from Reno, and three 
 times these two cars were backed down 
 to the junction at Reno, for a new start, 
 after having labored up the mountain 
 side a mile or two. Tlie fourth time the 
 summit was gained, up among the Ve- 
 
 nango county farms, and the great gen- 
 eral soon found himself and directors 
 flying down over the dangerous looking 
 gullies to ti.e raging Oil Creek. I never 
 heard the general's report after this pa- 
 tient ride, but very likely it was not 
 very encouraging to the stockholders of 
 his oil country railroad. 
 
 Speaking of Plumer railroads reminds 
 me of tlie old Pithole railroad. This was 
 a six-foot gauge, and it came to the very 
 doors of Plumer. Little can be said of 
 this road, only that it was built from 
 the mouth of Pithole creek to the mush- 
 room town of a few months' duration, 
 Pithole City. When the city moved out 
 the railroad moved out also. Plumer 
 was tapped on both sides by new rail- 
 roads, but they did not stick. Just im- 
 agine passenger trains running four 
 trips a day from Pithole City to the 
 moutii of Pithole creek. It is not likely that 
 one passenger a day would pass over the 
 road at the present time. The superin- 
 tendent of the road, Blair, for many 
 years superintendent of the Shenango 
 road, kindly gave me a free pass over 
 this four-mile road, but it ceased opera- 
 tions before I had an opportunity to use 
 it, and the pass died on my hands. Be- 
 fore closing this No. 5 chapter, I wish 
 to give tlie business youth of to-day a 
 hint in regard to the cost of doing busi- 
 ness in those days. I bought a quarter 
 interest in one acre of oil land at Pit- 
 hole, on which some men were trying to 
 put down a well with a spring pole. In 
 other words, they were trying to "kick 
 it down." I did not know the exact loca- 
 tion of my purchase, so I hied me away 
 to Franklin to get a view of the docket. 
 I found the clerk in the register and re- 
 corder's office and made known my busi- 
 ness to him . I wished to copy the lease. 
 The clerk was driven with business. He 
 was flying around in a great hurry. He 
 said, "Can you give me the day of the 
 month and the year when this lease was 
 recorded?" I told him I could give the 
 year, but I had not the month and day. 
 He saiu, "I can't find it with that di- 
 rection, but if you will give me $50 I 
 will try to find it." As I had no $50 bill 
 in my vest pocket at tliat certain time 
 and as I had more time to fool away 
 than the clerk seemed to have, I asked 
 for a loan of his index for a short time. 
 He rather reluctantly handed me the de- 
 sired book and within the next 50 min- 
 utes I had a copy of the Pithole lease 
 and felt somewhat as If I had done $50 
 worth of business in just 50 minutes. 
 Court house tips those days were worth 
 looking after. 
 
OLD TIMES IN 01 LOOM. 
 
 II 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 JAMES S. McCRAY. 
 
 This article will treat upon Petroleum 
 Centre when it was a second Pithole City. 
 Your readers, who have not been an eye 
 witness to the lively scenes that I am 
 about to relate, have heard "more or less 
 of ancient Petroleum Centre. The way- 
 farer, in passing the quiet little hamlet 
 now on a swift running W. N. Y. & P. 
 train, don't see the surging, bustling, 
 mixed-up masses of humanity that once 
 thronged the streets. Your oldest read- 
 ers will, perhaps, remember that about 
 the time Pithole City made such a sud- 
 den fizzle, Petroleum Centre dawned on 
 the oil country scene like a meteor. The 
 Maple Shade well and Coquette well, 
 flowing their thousands of barrels per 
 day of high priced oil, set the whole oil 
 country wild, and soon the town of half 
 a hundred had a population that ran in- 
 to thousands, and what kind of a popula- 
 tion was It? Well, that is a hard ques- 
 tion to answer. It was composed of all 
 classes, from the murderer to the minster 
 of the gospel. The thugs, gamblers and 
 soiled doves were in the majority — a 
 great majority. About 200 of the latter 
 came down from fast waning Pithole 
 City and took up their abode in Petrol- 
 eum Centre's dance houses, of which 
 there were about a half dozen, free and 
 easies and other "houses." The male 
 population was but little better than the 
 female and Petroleum Centre was a 
 "daisy" town. Murder was among the 
 crimes committed here and the lesser 
 felonies can never be enumerated. Still, 
 many good Christian people found them- 
 selves surrounded by this wicked popu- 
 lation. Three churches went up like 
 magic. Methodist Episcopal, Presby- 
 terian and Catholic churches; also 
 a very creditable school building. 
 I will speak in particular of the 
 Presbyterian church as I took the 
 contract of building it. The late 
 James S. McCray, who, when alive, 
 was known to every oil operator 
 from Allegany, N. Y., to Lima, O., was 
 chairman of the building committee. 
 "Jim," as all called him, had a little in- 
 come of $5 a minute, night and day, Sun- 
 days and all, from his hillside farm, cir- 
 culated a subscription paper to raise 
 $6,500, the cost of the church. Dr. Eg- 
 bert headed the list with $1,000 and 
 "Jim" followed with a like amount and 
 two others, whose names have gone from 
 my memory, came down with four fig- 
 ures, and in less than a day the whole 
 amount was raised. McCray collected the 
 money as he went along, and took it 
 
 home with him the same night, put it 
 under the pillow of his brother-in-law 
 for safe keeping, but one or more of 
 Petroleum Centre's crooks slipped a lit- 
 tle chloroform in through tlie window 
 and slipped the great wad of greenbacks 
 out, and in the morning nothing but a 
 strong smell of chloroform and a very 
 sick brother-in-law was found in the 
 room. 
 
 The thieves had a gay time among the 
 dance houses on this church money, and 
 "Jim" paid for the church from his own 
 pocket with as good grace as could be 
 expected. His time, at the period I speak 
 of, was so much taken up in looking 
 after his big Income that he let the mat- 
 ter drop, after just a little ineffectual 
 scolding. 
 
 I mention just an incident or two that 
 will show up the oddities of this some- 
 time millionaire. ( This is the amount 
 that he could have placed his farm in a 
 stock company for at one time.) During 
 the period of two months, while my car- 
 penters were building the cliurch, Jim 
 frequently invited me to accompany him 
 to his home, nearly a mile from town, 
 on the mountain slope. I often accepted 
 his hospitality. (He was a second cousin 
 of mine and a very cheerful relative.) 
 On a very dark night on one of these 
 trips, a« we wended our way up through 
 the woods, we were a little alarmed by 
 hearing a pistol shot a few rods ahead 
 of us. We heard several voices through 
 the darkness and soon found that sev- 
 eral men were approaching us. We nat- 
 urally thought that as there was but 
 two of us and four of them that we 
 would get the worst of it, if that pistol 
 shot meant war on us. We were some- 
 what relieved in mind when we met the 
 four men, and they passed along without 
 paying the least attention to the man 
 of money. We never knew who the men 
 were or what caused the pistol ^hot. 
 When we were fairly away from the 
 men and by the sound of their voices 
 were convinced that they were at a safe 
 distance Mr. McCray gave vent to his 
 feelings in the following words: "I wish 
 there had never been a drop of oil found 
 on Oil Creek. I can't sleep nights. My 
 dog makes a fearful fuss nearly every 
 night, as if some prowlers were about. 
 And I can't come up through these 
 Ijrush without expecting a club over my 
 head, handled by some of these wretches 
 who would murder me for my money." 
 After we had safely reached his fireside 
 I mentioned his big income from his 400- 
 
12 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 barrels wells, and oil at $3.00 per barrel. 
 .Tim took his pencil and figured a while, 
 then he said: "My income is $5.00 a min- 
 ute; if I had figured on this before we 
 left town I would have hired a livery 
 rig to bring us up." The next morning 
 I was out of bed at quite an early hour. 
 About sunrise — before breakfast — cast- 
 ing my eyes in the direction of one of 
 McCray's many meadows, I saw a wagon 
 load of hay coming toward the barn and 
 Jim was walking along behind the load 
 with a pitchfork on his shoulder. He had 
 glanced out of his sleeping room, at day- 
 break, and saw clouds gathering; then he 
 hustled his hired man to the field with a 
 wagon and horses to save a load of hay 
 that was liable to get spoiled if rain 
 came. He pitched the load on the wagon 
 himself. At another time I found him 
 in one of his fields, in his shirt sleeves, 
 digging green sprouts away from the 
 oak stumps. He was covered with per- 
 spiration, and almost breathlessly, he 
 told me that he had been "making fence 
 and digging sprouts for two weeks, and 
 was not quite done with the job yet." At 
 this time he said: "I have 100,000 bar- 
 rels of oil, and I am offered $4.50 per 
 barrel. I have it in tanks, and I will hold 
 it until it sweats through the iron be- 
 fore I take less than $5.00 a barrel for 
 it.' He afterward sold it for $1.12 a bar- 
 rel, when much of it had been wasted by 
 leakage and evaporation. There was only 
 one James S. McCray. Of all the Oil 
 Creek and other farm owners who were 
 suddenly made rich by the oil business 
 none were better known, and none more 
 upright and horyest in their dealings with 
 all. His word Was as good as his bond. 
 
 And now. "one on myself" will not be 
 out of place. When getting the lumber 
 on the ground for this church I found 
 much difllculty. No railroad passed 
 through Petroleum Centre at that time. 
 The framing timber of the church had 
 to be rafted and fioated to Oil City, then 
 towed with horses up Oil Creek to Pe- 
 troleum Centre. The lumber was billed 
 to Pioneer, a mile above Petroleum Cen- 
 tre. Then came the rub, to get this lum- 
 ber down the creek through mud to the 
 hubs of the wagon. A construction train 
 was at work building a side-track on the 
 Boyd farm, across the creek opposite Pe- 
 troleum Centre. I slipped a $20 bill into 
 the hand of the conductor of the con- 
 struction train and bribed him to hitch 
 three lumber cars to the rear of his 
 gravel train and pull them down that 
 mile. As there was no side-track at 
 Boyd farm I got men enough to unload 
 my lumber as quick as the railroad em- 
 ployes unloaded the gravel cars. Thus, 
 the conductor got his $20 and did not 
 lose one minute of time. Twenty dol- 
 lars was a "right smart" price for 
 handling one coupling pin, but I saved 
 about $50 by the transaction. But the 
 
 reader has not seen the "one on my- 
 self" yet. Here it is: All this business 
 kept me in this wicked town a part of 
 the time. I stopped at the American 
 hotel — a very good oil country hotel, 
 that has long since disappeared. One 
 night a dance was given for the benefit 
 of tlie guests. The music was furnished 
 by one of the dance house bands; three 
 nice-looking and very excellent musicians 
 made the melody for the occasion. I was 
 something of a violinist those days, and 
 I played a few sets to rest these musi- 
 cians, while they took a whirl at "the 
 giddy maz'es of the dance." Those three 
 young men said they were not of the 
 class tliat danced after their music, but 
 they were far from home and were get- 
 ting as much out of tlieir accomplish- 
 ments as Dossible, but that they would 
 be very sorry to let their mothers, away 
 in the east, know the quality of their 
 employers. I had no right to doubt their 
 word, and don't now. Now comes the 
 joke. The next evening I was passing 
 along the busy street and those melod- 
 ious strains of music of the night be- 
 fore floated into my ears through the 
 open door of a "dance house." I prom- 
 ised myself, when a boy, to never enter 
 one of these places, and never had 
 broken my promise. I could see my vir- 
 tuous friends making music with piano, 
 horn and violin and felt like speaking to 
 them. I stood for a few moments un- 
 decided. Just two nights before that 
 time a man had been shot and killed in a 
 "dance hall" a little farther up the 
 street. My thoughts told me that if I 
 should go in there, and break my prom- 
 ise, if anybody would be shot it would 
 be me. But for all this the music got 
 the best of me, and I stepped in and 
 greeted my newly-made musical friends. 
 I was immediately asked to take the 
 violin "and play a set." "Well, I thought 
 I could not get much lower, so I took 
 the proffered instrument and led off, and 
 disgraced the best quadrille I knew. 
 While the music of my violin floated on 
 the air. very much scented, assisted by 
 the skillful manipulations of the piano 
 and cornet, my mind was busy. It was 
 more troubled than ever was Dr. Park- 
 hurst when visiting such places. Just 
 as I was thinking that If I should be 
 shot and carried home to my wife a 
 corpse the history of the occurrence in 
 the newspapers would not be gratifying 
 to my relatives a big fight took place, 
 and one man was knocked down and 
 I could hear the blood spilling and 
 gurgling from his wounds. The dancing 
 girls came running back, dodging behind 
 the piano, crying out: "They will shoot; 
 they will shoot!" Then I thought my 
 time had come to atone for breaking 
 my promise to myself. And as the piano 
 leg? were not large enough to protect 
 the dancers and musicians, both, I opened 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 13 
 
 a door behind the music stand, not know- my hotel, with a new promise to my- 
 ing where it led to, and stepped out into self, that as this was the first "dance 
 God's pure air. By a flank movement I ! hall" visited by me it would also be 
 got around to the front street and to j the last, and I have kept the promise. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE GRANDINS AND COAL OIL JOHNNY. 
 
 I want to say something about the 
 Grandins and Coal Oil Johnny. The Gran- 
 dins, aided by their immense amount of 
 cash, always turned what at first prom- 
 ises to be a losing game into piles of 
 money. Here is an instance: A few 
 years ago they sent the Hon. J. B. "White, 
 of Youngsville, into the state of Mis- 
 souri to buy yellow pine land. Mr. "White 
 was as full of energy "as an egg is full 
 of meat," and ere long he had a deed for 
 about 70,000 acres of land nicely covered 
 with a fine quality of yellow pine. 
 Then, under the superintendency of Mr. 
 "White, an immense mill was built, and 
 millions of feet of lumber manufac- 
 tured. But this lumber had to be drawn 
 on wagons over 10 miles to reach a rail- 
 road. TJnder the circumstances the cost 
 almost kept pace with the income. And 
 now comes the point where their capital 
 came into good play. They took a large 
 amount of stock in a projected railroad 
 and insured the building of it. The road 
 ran 27 miles through their pine timber. 
 I was told by one of the brothers that 
 now they make a profit of $8 per thou- 
 sand on their lumber, and each dollar 
 counts $1,000,000 on the whole lot. In 
 other words, $1 per thousand makes a 
 million dollars on the estimated amount 
 of their timber. They will make $8,000,- 
 000 on a transaction that would have 
 broken up 20 men without capital. The 
 old saying that "it takes money to make 
 money," is fully proved here. Another 
 novelty in their way of doing business 
 will no doubt be interesting to many of 
 your readers. In their travels all over 
 the United States they never kept an ex- 
 pense account. The late Adna Neyhart, 
 their brother-in-law, the gentleman who 
 first introduced the business of trans- 
 porting oil in tank cars, was a partner 
 of the three Grandin brothers. Neither 
 of the quartette ever wasted ink and 
 paper by keeping track of traveling ex- 
 penses when abroad. Each had perfect 
 confidence in all the others. 
 
 Now, I will finish this article by a 
 couple of allusions to a couple of quite 
 noted men. The first is ex-Senator James 
 McMullen. I'll tell you how he com- 
 
 menced his career in oildom. "Jim," as 
 he was familiarly called years ago, was 
 quite an expert blacksmith at "Warren, 
 Pa. "When the great oil strikes set the 
 whole country nearly crazy Jim packed 
 his kit of blacksmith tools and his 
 household goods and made good time on 
 a raft to Oil City. Your humble corre- 
 spondent was at that time second mate 
 on a flat boat, wnich was propelled by 
 very much jaded horses up and down the 
 raging waters of Oil Creek. As there 
 were no roads to speak of and mud 
 galore the early pioneers in oildom were 
 only too glad to avail themselves of this 
 greasy mode of transportation. Jim Mc- 
 Mullen was among the number that 
 piled their "flittin" on the bottom of our 
 greasy oil boat. "We landed the goods 
 safely, but not clean enough to brag on, 
 at McClintockville, where Jim had built 
 a rude blacksmith shop and dwelling 
 house. About the first thing attended to 
 was a "house warming." Then the 
 musical ability of the "second mate" was 
 brought into play. He, with the assis- 
 tance of another music murderer, reeled 
 off the "Opera Reel," "Money Musk," 
 "Crooked S," "Chase the Squirrel," and 
 other scientific pieces of music all night 
 long for the lads and lasses of the then 
 busy McClintockville, while putting in 
 their biggest licks in the way of danc- 
 ing "hoedowns." Music sailed around 
 through the air in that hemlock shanty 
 in great chunks. Music from Coleman's 
 orchestra would dwindle down into noth- 
 ing compared to ours. "V^'^ell, all your Oil 
 City readers will know that genuine 
 genius cannot be kept In a hemlock 
 blacksmith shop and "Jim" rose rapidly. 
 The first time that I had the pleasure 
 of looking at "Johnny" Steel was at 
 Rouseville, after he had "blowed in" his 
 million and a half dollars. He was 
 seated on a high spring seat of an oil 
 wagon, driving a black team of horses. 
 The wagon was loaded with barrels filled 
 with crude oil. Johnny was complacent- 
 ly smoking a cigar. At that time I was 
 a correspondent of the Erie Morning Dis- 
 patch. I wrote him up. The item raised 
 Johnny's "dander," but he did not know 
 who to vent his wrath upon. A few 
 
14 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 months after that Johnny was the 
 trusted baggagemaster of the Oil Creek 
 railroad. One day Conductor "Pap" 
 Richards said to me: "I wish you would 
 interview Johnny and set him right in 
 the Dispatch. There are so many ex- 
 aggerated reports going the rounds of 
 the newspapers that he is terribly an- 
 noyed. Tell him that I sent you to him." 
 I called upon the baggagemaster, intro- 
 duced myself according to Conductor 
 Richards' instructions. Johnny opened 
 up in dead earnest. His talk, as near as 
 I can recollect, ran in this wise: "I will 
 give you all the information that you 
 ask, but it makes me mad to see the 
 
 d d fool reports in the papers. A 
 
 d d fool wrote me up last spring in 
 
 the Erie Dispatch. He said I was haul- 
 ing oil in a black greasy wagon, with a 
 cigar in my mouth and a lot of other 
 
 fool trash. D n him, he was drunk 
 
 all the time he was here — if ever I get 
 sight of him I'll trash him." I did not 
 feel like telling Johnny that I never 
 was drunk in my life, for the very good 
 reason that I never took a drink of that 
 which intoxicates. So I let him remain 
 in ignorance as to who the Dispatch cor- 
 respondent was. And now, to make this 
 article not too lengthy, I will briefly give 
 Steele's story: 
 
 "I will give you the correct state- 
 ment for the Dispatch. The newspapers 
 throughout the country have been say- 
 ing that I hired a fine carriage in Phila- 
 delphia for a ride and when I returned 
 to my hotel I bought the whole outfit 
 and presented it to the driver. And on 
 another occasion I rented the Conti- 
 nental hotel for one day — paying $10,000 
 as rental. The papers told too many 
 other foolish, stories about me to repeat 
 here. I will simply say that these re- 
 ports are all false. The cause of the dis- 
 appearance of my fortune in so short a 
 
 time was sharpers taking advantage of 
 my inexperience. They cleaned me out 
 before I was aware of the fact. (At this 
 point in his recital Johnny gave the 
 names of some of the rogues that rob- 
 bed him — I will omit their names.) Af- 
 ter my large fortune was gone I made a 
 solemn resolve, in my own mind, to be a 
 frugal and industrious man the rest of 
 my natural life. I have kept this self- 
 made promise, and during the past few 
 years I have paid for a home, paid for a 
 team and outfit and I have a snug little 
 bank account. I intend to reclaim a 
 small part of my lost fortune and all of 
 my good name." 
 
 While Mr. Steele was talking he im- 
 pressed me very favorably. His whole 
 demeanor showed plainly that he was no 
 ordinary man. And his words and every 
 action proved this. He was a faithful 
 and favorite employe of the Oil Creek 
 railroad when it required a good and 
 competent man to attend to the business 
 of baggagemaster at the then busy 
 Rouseville depot. Soon after this inter- 
 view Johnny's familiar face disappeared 
 from the Rouseville depot. I was told 
 that he had secured a more lucrative and 
 important situation on some western 
 railroad. There never was but one "Coal 
 Oil Johnny" on the face of the earth. 
 Who ever heard of a young man getting 
 away with $1,500,000 in a couple of 
 years, and then that same young man 
 settling down immediately to the hard, 
 solid knocks of a poor man's life and be- 
 coming an industrious, trusted model 
 man of business and integrity. "Coal 
 Oil Johnny" Is both a novelty and an 
 enigma. We may search the wide world 
 over and we will not find his counter- 
 part. Surely the "old times in oildom" 
 developed some odd characters. Further 
 on in this series of chapters I will men- 
 tion more of them. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 NARROW ESCAPE FROM BEING A BLOATED 
 BONDHOLDER. 
 
 I'll take a funny subject this time. 
 I'll take my own experience. I'll tell how 
 I did not make several fortunes. The first 
 attempt was the leasing of about 3,000 
 acres of "dry territory." I was at Oil 
 City at the time the dry territory excite- 
 ment started north. When it reached 
 Pleasantville I betook myself to my home 
 in Youngsville, Pa., where I began to 
 lease far ahead of the tidal wave. I 
 wrote my contracts somewhat in this 
 
 manner: "I agree to sell my farm to 
 G. W. Brown, of Youngsville, Pa., for 
 so many dollars per acre," and it was 
 always a price quite low. (The land was 
 worth fully the amount named for farm- 
 ing purposes.) "Provided said Brown 
 pays the amount within three months 
 from date." I picked up 3,000 acres 
 within a couple of weeks, and rested on 
 my laurels and waited for the wave to 
 come. It came, and soon leasers were 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 15 
 
 promising twice as much as I had prom- 
 ised for just as good land. I had some 
 good offers, but as my time was not 
 near up, and the price of dry territory 
 was going up and up, I held on for the 
 highest notch. I finally had an offer by 
 which I could pocket a profit of about 
 $40,000. I concluded to strike while the 
 Iron was hot; but the iron did not stay 
 hot quite long enough. I'll tell why. 
 When 1 made the sale, I found that I 
 must locate each separate lot on the 
 Warren county map. I had about ten 
 days to drive around and make my loca- 
 tions. During ♦'■■pse ten days, Sherman 
 took Atlanta, and capitalists made up 
 their minds that greenbacks were better 
 than "dry territory," and the bottom fell 
 out of tills kind of business. I paid a 
 big price for learning that "a bird in the 
 hand is worth two in the bush." 
 
 My second lesson was somewhat con- 
 nected with the first. While contracting 
 the 3,000 acres of land, spoken of above, 
 my good old friend, Alden Marsh, came 
 to me and said: "George, let me put my 
 100 acres of pine land into your deal. I 
 will let you have an option on it for 
 $1,600." As this land was worth double 
 this amount, I wrote a contract immedi- 
 ately. A month later Mr. Marsh came 
 to me with another remark, which ran in 
 this wise: "George, I let you have the 
 option on my land too soon. Now, I will 
 tell you what I will do. I will give you 
 100 acres in Cherry Grove. It did not 
 cost me much. I bid it in at a few cents 
 an acre for taxes due, and It is not worth 
 anything. I will give it to you if you 
 will give up my contract for the 100 
 acres of pine land." Mr. Marsh — bless 
 his memory — being my best friend in a 
 business way, had only to ask this favor 
 to get it. And now I will tell you where 
 the trouble came in. I thought, with Mr. 
 Marsh, that the Cherry Grove land was 
 worth nothing, and did not take the 
 trouble to get a deed made out. Tears 
 after Mr. Marsh died and about that 
 time the oil excitement began to creep 
 toward Cherry Grove. Then it was that 
 I asked Mr. Marsh's widow about this 
 land of mine. Of course, Mrs. Marsh 
 knew nothing whatever about my very 
 careless land trade, and had sold the 
 land for $3 an acre. Not very long after 
 this, the great "mystery," or "646," was 
 struck, and upon close inquiry I found 
 that the great well was located less than 
 a half mile from my 100 acres. And the 
 100 acres that I didn't own was worth 
 about $50,000 in the market. This time 
 I paid a big price for my negligence. 
 
 Now comes another close call. A short 
 time before Edenburg became a great oil 
 
 town, a citizen, of rather shaky repute, 
 living near the old hamlet, discovered 
 large quantities of white mica on his 
 land. He soon took into collusion with 
 him a man living near Youngsville, Pa., 
 and samples of "melted silver" were ex- 
 hibited about Youngsville and vicinity. 
 Men who had accumulated money by 
 shrewdness and good investment grab- 
 bed at this bait voraciously and paid big 
 bonuses for leases in this silver belt. 
 After several thousand dollars had been 
 invested by Youngsville citizens, Chapin 
 Siggins (an old California miner), D. 
 Mead and myself made a visit to this 
 new Eldorado. It was a two-day jaunt, 
 on horseback, under a broiling sun. 
 When we reached the neighborhood of 
 the "mines" we engaged board for a day 
 or two with an old farmer, who charged 
 us the princely sum of six cents a meal, 
 and six cents a feed for our horses. As 
 we expected to soon make a great for- 
 tune in silver mines, we did not kick at 
 this "extortion." Our California expert 
 soon pronounced this shining silver white 
 mica. As we were then in the confines 
 of Clarion county, and as the weather 
 was too hot for comfortable traveling, 
 and as our finances seemed to be ample 
 to pay our "bed and board," we concluded 
 to rusticate a day or two. Before leaving 
 this enchanted spot where fortunes had 
 not been made and lost, but simply lost, 
 our silver company took an option on 100 
 acres of quite good farming land. "W© 
 paid a large amount down "to bind the 
 contract." This sum was one dollar, cash. 
 This contract was gotten up in fun, and 
 ran quite a long time. It read, that if we 
 paid $4,000 within two years, the farm 
 was ours. Here is just where the fun 
 did not come in. If we had made the 
 time four years (which we could have 
 done, with the full consent of the owner), 
 we would have had an option on a $100,- 
 000 farm, for $4,000. This same farm 
 was one of the best in the Edenburg oil 
 field. When the Edenburg oil excitement 
 was at its height our silver syndicate 
 was not sure of the time of our option, 
 and hastened to look up the contract, not 
 knowing at that time whether our con- 
 tract ran one or ten years. We found 
 the limit about six months short at one 
 end. 
 
 As I have run this letter out to quite 
 a length and fearing that your many 
 readers may begin to doubt my business 
 sagacity, I will let up for awhile, but 
 may allude to a few more of my narrow 
 escapes from being a "bloated bond- 
 holder" before these articles, named 
 "Old Times in Oildom" are all written. 
 
i6 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE LUMBER BUSINESS IN PARKER CITY. 
 
 In this ninth chapter I will give a little 
 attention to the once famous Parker 
 City. 
 
 When this oil town was just getting a 
 good start, your humble correspondent 
 was crossing the Allegheny river on the 
 old chain ferry, owned by McLaughlin & 
 Fullerton. And right here let me say that 
 each of those men made a nice little for- 
 tune before the iron bridge was built 
 spanning the river at that point, and con- 
 necting Clarion and Armstrong counties 
 by this old ferry. Day and night, it 
 was loaded with teams and passengers. 
 I heard "Jim" Lambing say: "My, 
 I wish I knew where I could get two 
 carloads of lumber." I offered to deliver 
 the lumber within three days. Mr. 
 Lambing was delighted witn my offer, and 
 thus commenced quite an extensive lum- 
 ber business. When the two loads were 
 delivered to Mr. L., (Mr. Lambing was 
 afterwards mayor of the city of Corry, 
 Pa.), I contracted to deliver two car- 
 loads more to another party. When this 
 last lot reached Parker City I found that 
 my man was not a "gilt-edged" operator, 
 and I refused to let him have the lumber 
 without the "cash down." He failed to 
 come to time, and I left the lumber with 
 "Doc" Harmon, to be sold by him, he to 
 have half the profits for his trouble. 
 Doc then began to fire orders at me as 
 fast as I could fill them. Then a base 
 of operations became necessary and I 
 leased a few rods square of swamp land 
 of "Old Fullerton Parker." as he was fa- 
 miliarly called, paying $600 a year ren- 
 tal. After renting the ground I was 
 obliged to haul in about 100 loads of 
 gravel before I could pile lumber on the 
 soft land. Then an office appeared on 
 the scene, and G. W. Brown ran the first 
 lumber yard in the greasy City of Par- 
 ker. For about two years my luck was 
 the very best. I had for customers the 
 best operators in the (then) new field. 
 They paid their bills at the end of each 
 month. But "it's a long lane that has 
 no turn." If any man did owe me dur- 
 ing the first two years of my yard busi- 
 ness in Parker's Landing, and happened 
 to go into bankruptcy, he had just paid 
 me off in full. This was rather a pleas- 
 ant experience for me. But the trouble 
 came in the turn of the lane. At the 
 end of two years, when my individual 
 profits had been about $15,000, oil took 
 a downward plungs. and fell from about 
 $.3 a barrel to about 60 cents. Then it 
 was that my heretofore good customers 
 went into bankruptcy by the dozen, and 
 
 I was kept busy for a few months going 
 to Pittsburg to adjust claims with the 
 register in bankruptcy. I became quite 
 well acquainted with this genial gentle- 
 man. And this genial gentleman made 
 more money out of this kind of business 
 than I did. In the end I found that I 
 had been throwing good money after 
 poor money. I never received one dollar 
 on one of my adjusted claims. I learned 
 that when a Parker City oil operator 
 went into bankruptcy he went in to stay. 
 What monej- he had In his pockets, when 
 the crash came, stayed there. I never 
 heard of an assignee, register in bank- 
 ruptcy or any other officer of the law 
 getting his hands on any of it. The 
 creditor always paid his own railroad 
 fare, hotel bills, and register's bills, 
 witiiout aid from the debtor. The debtor 
 generally started a little business of his 
 own, as soon as he got his discharge 
 from all his former obligations. Tills 
 was my experience, at least, and I have 
 yet to hear of a creditor who came out 
 any better than I did. "Old Times in 
 Oildom" were indeed slippery times. Of 
 about 40 lumber yard men, who ran 
 lumber yards in these "old times" but 
 two, to my knowledge, came out un- 
 scathed. 
 
 I'll give a couple of items now to 
 prove the "sliperyness" of these times. 
 One of my customers at that time, a car- 
 penter, imbued with the spirit of the 
 times, took the job of building an addi- 
 tion to the Phillips hotel, owned by 
 James E. Brown, the millionaire of Kit- 
 tanning. The thrifty carpenter gave me 
 the privilege of furnishing all of the 
 lumber for this addition, amounting to 
 about $800. When the job was finished, 
 said carpenter collected the money from 
 James E. Brown for the whole job and 
 forgot to pay G. W. Brown for the lum- 
 ber. 
 
 My only hold was to take a mechanics 
 lien on the building for my claim. I em- 
 ployed a young lawyer, of Parker City, 
 whose mind — at that time — was pretty 
 well taken up in writing a novel, entitled 
 "Platonic Love," to attend to the legal 
 part of the transaction. This young 
 lawyer wrote out a lien, and left out the 
 township, county, state, and the United 
 States, from the document. The young 
 lawyer engaged an old lawyer, of stand- 
 ing, in Clarion, to help him alon'g with 
 the case. The old member of the Clar- 
 ion bar, copied the lien, and added noth- 
 ing to It. He did not commit any "sin 
 of commission," but, with his young col- 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 17 
 
 league, "committed the sin of omission." 
 When the weelt of court came around, I 
 toolt a wagon load of witnesses to Clar- 
 ion, to prove that the lumber all went 
 into the Phillips house improvement, and 
 boarded them at the "Jones House" all 
 week, and when Saturday came my suit 
 was put over until the next term of 
 court. When the next court came I had 
 my wagon load of witnesses back, for 
 another week's visit in the stilly streets 
 of the sacred precincts of the old fash- 
 ioned town of Clarion. After each wit- 
 ness helping himself to well cooked 
 viands spread out before him on Jones' 
 table for a week, my suit came on Sat- 
 urday. It required less than half a day 
 to prove my claim all right, but after 
 my brilliant lawyers had made a stiong 
 speech in my favor, the opposing lawyer 
 — Judge Campbell — arose in his majesty 
 and pointed out the fact to my lawyers 
 that they had presented a blank to the 
 august court. Judge Jenks took the case 
 from the jury before they left the box 
 and they were deprived of their little 
 visit in the jury room. My old Clarion 
 lawyer jumped to his feet (said feet had 
 been resting on a writing table) and ap- 
 plied for a new trial. The judge prompt- 
 ly refused, and that was the last of that 
 lumber bill. I suppose the judge thought 
 a lien that failed to state whether the 
 hotel was located in England, America, 
 or any other place, was not worthy of 
 his attention. I learned one fact, though 
 not worth $800 and other expenses, by 
 this experience, and it is this: That I, 
 as a Warren county man, failed to cope 
 with Clarion county lawyers and judges. 
 My second item is one showing luck, 
 and no luck. One Saturday evening I 
 took the paltry sum of $2,000 insurance 
 on my lumber yard, worth about $7,000. 
 Sunday about half of the city burned, 
 taking in my lumber yard. When the 
 news was telegraphed to me Monday 
 morning, to my Youngsville home, I 
 thought I had been lucky in getting the 
 $2,000 insurance placed before the fire 
 took place — but now comes the sequel. 
 
 The company failed to come to time, and 
 I got a tip from a reliable Are insurance 
 agent that my company was a little 
 "shaky." Then I hied me away to Phil- 
 adelphia, tlie headquarters of the con- 
 cern, where I found the president of tlie 
 company, and after parleying for half a 
 day, I received $540, which I considered 
 a good thing for a company to do that 
 would not be slated by the commissioner 
 of insurance, who considered the com- 
 pany insolvent. Some people think there 
 is no place of punishment after death. 
 I am not going to argue that question, 
 but simply say that it is my belief, and 
 hope, that there is some place, for some 
 folks, called in the Bible — hell. 1*11 give 
 your readers one of my reasons for 
 thinking so. A m^n (I will not say a 
 gentleman), had just finished a new ho- 
 tel, before this fire spoken of here. He 
 owed me $400 for windows, doors, etc., 
 used in the construction of his hotel. He 
 had $1,800 insurance on the building. I 
 had a lien on the hotel and if the flre 
 had held off one day the hotel would 
 have been sold to satisfy the claim (if 
 not in the meantime). But the flre set- 
 tled the lien business. Tlien the man 
 told me that he would certainly pay me 
 when he received his $1,800 insurance. 
 I saw him a short time afterwards, and 
 he told me that he had received his in- 
 surance money, but had invested it in 
 junk, and that he would have returns in 
 one month. He asked me to draw on 
 him at the expiration of one month for 
 $.50. I did so with not the least expecta- 
 tion of having the draft honored and in 
 a few days the draft came to the 
 Youngsville Savings Bank, with these 
 words written on the back: "Give Brown 
 my love, and tell him to draw again." 
 As I had — in the meantime — learned this 
 man had smuggled his property out of 
 his hands, I pocketed both the insult and 
 loss. Now, dear reader, do you wonder 
 that I desire a place of future punish- 
 ment. Many, many men like this were 
 inhabitants of the oil regions, and helped 
 to make "old times in oildom" miserable. 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 JOHN GALEY AND THE ROBINSONS. 
 
 A few items from the book of memory 
 coneernins: "down at Parker" will make 
 UD this tenth article. 
 
 When the lumber business had become 
 a little slow on Oil Creek the writer of 
 this article transferred his rambling 
 trade to the busy precincts of Parker's 
 Landing. There the oil business brought 
 together a most motely crowd. No oil 
 town produced a more mixed crowd. No 
 oil town produced so many rich oil farm- 
 ers as did Parker. The Parkers, Robin- 
 sons, Poxes, and scores upon scores of 
 families were rich enough to live with- 
 out oil, but when the oleaginous wealth 
 was forced upon them they very meekly 
 accepted it. Among the richest, both 
 after and before striking oil, were the 
 Robinsons. There were three brothers, 
 and each had a sood. large farm, and 
 every acre was g-ood oil territory. The 
 piling of riches on these good natured 
 and contented men did not set them up 
 above poor folks. They always dressed 
 well and had a e-entlemanly air about 
 them not often found among ordinary 
 farmers, and the strilving of dozens of 
 big wells on their farms, when oil was 
 worth $3.00 a barrel, made not the least 
 difference in their dress and actions. It 
 was always a comfort for your reporter 
 to visit with any of the brothers, before 
 and after the finding of oil on their 
 farms. Nearly evervbodv has their fa- 
 vorites, and one of these brothers had 
 thi.s for his hobby. When he bought 
 lumber of me he paid at the end of every 
 month just as regular as the end of the 
 month came. But the odd cents on the 
 bill he would never pay. If the bill was 
 $500.01 he would only pay $500, and if 
 the bill was $1.99 he would only pay $1. 
 He always drew the line on cents. He 
 would never pay only even dollars, but 
 would never find any fault with any bill, 
 either large or small. He was one of my 
 best customers while I kept a lum- 
 ber yard at Parker City. While 
 operating his large oil farm his 
 monthly lumber bills ran very high, 
 and in my four years' business 
 I never was obliged to present a 
 bill for payment. On the first day of 
 each month he would call for his bill 
 and write his check for even dollars. If 
 all my customers in Parker had been 
 Robinsons I would have been just about 
 $10,000 ahead when I quit the lumber 
 yard business. What a blessed world 
 this would be if all the people were 
 Robinsons. 
 
 John H. Galey was one of the many 
 business men of Parker at the time I 
 speak of. John's history from that time 
 to the present is well worth a brief men- 
 tion. He was an active boy, as the run 
 of boys go, generally. He had his eyes 
 open for some kind of an oil trade. For 
 awhile lie did not have his mind made 
 up as to what kind of a trade it would 
 be. Finally an operator put a well down 
 on Stump Creek island, a mile above 
 Parker. The operator struck a very good 
 paying well and offered the island to 
 Gailey for $10,000. John thought the 
 matter over and made up his mind that 
 $10,000, and more than that amount, 
 could be pumped from that well, but to 
 use his own words: "I had not the $10,- 
 000, but went to Pittsburg and borrowed 
 it and paid for the property, and I have 
 taken from that and anotlier well which 
 I put down on the same island $125,000, 
 and I have run the wells only 18 months. 
 They are producing nearly as much as 
 ever and they make a nice little prop- 
 erty." John went on making money 
 hand over hand for a time, then he went 
 far toward the setting sun and built a 
 large, thriving town. One day, when he 
 was away on business, the Indians came 
 and wiped out his town. But John Galey 
 was not the man to sit down and mourn 
 over the loss of his wealth. The next I 
 heard of him he plunged into the wilder- 
 ness at Haymaker, McKean county, Pa., 
 and leased a large amount of land far- 
 ther north than any oil company had 
 thought of going. He took that well- 
 known and moneyed firm, the McKinney 
 Bros., into the deal with him, and ere 
 long Gailey was sailing along over finan- 
 cial seas as gaily as ever before. The 
 next time I met John was several years 
 afterwards at one of his boarding houses, 
 or houses where he boarded, near Oak- 
 dale, Pa. This is the very strange story 
 he told me on that occasion: "I came to 
 McDonald a couple of years ago to lease 
 gas territory for Guffey, Gailey & Co. 
 No oil had been found in this section at 
 that time. But thinking that this was 
 gas territory I commenced at McDonald 
 and made leases along this ridge for a 
 distance of nearly three miles. Our strip 
 is a little over a mile wide, on an aver- 
 age. Now, every acre of it is the best 
 oil territory in the McDonald field. I 
 happened to keep right on the belt as 
 near as if I had known just where the 
 oil lay. A little side belt struck us oc- 
 casionally, but run out just as soon as it 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 19 
 
 crossed us. We have the largest wells 
 in this field, one of them producing 16,- 
 000 barrels a day when first struck (this 
 is the old Matthews well). One well 
 flowed 30,000 barrels before we could 
 control it. The oil rushed down the creek 
 through Nobletown, but luckily did not 
 take fire. It is the most strange thing 
 
 to me imaginable to think how I fol- 
 lowed this belt so far, and then stopped 
 at the end of it, when I was leasing gas 
 territory, with no thoughts of oil. I 
 cannot but think it almost a miracle." 
 
 I'll give a few more items concerning 
 the once famous Parker territory in 
 chapter 11. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 PARKER CITY. 
 
 I take for my subject, in this 11th ar- 
 ticle, Parker City. Who has not heard of 
 Parker City? Certainly every oil man 
 has become familiar with the name. 
 
 This little city is one of the "has 
 beens." It never will be the great oil 
 center that it once was, but it might 
 have been one of the best of its size in 
 Western Pennsylvania, if not for the 
 short sightedness of the original land 
 holders. This remark applies particular- 
 ly to "the flats," or First ward. 
 
 When Mr. Fullerton Parker began to 
 rent his land holdings along the river 
 front, the oil business was so great that 
 he could get nearly any price he put up- 
 on it as rental. If one man did not give 
 $10 a foot front as rent per year, an- 
 other man would, and Mr. Parker did 
 just what most any other man would in 
 the same situation — put on a big price 
 per year. He could get it, and it was 
 worfh a big price. His mistake was in 
 not selling the lots, and letting some- 
 body beside himself pay part of the city 
 taxes. This plan would have tied many 
 business men to the young city, and they 
 would have been residents to-day, in- 
 stead of helping boom some other city. 
 The selling of the lots would have been 
 the best plan, as, with the united efforts 
 of the many owners, the city would 
 have had a steady growth, thereby grad- 
 ually increasing the value of city prop- 
 erty. 
 
 This is no guess work. All travelers 
 know that large towns are not found in 
 bunches. As the traveler pas«;es through 
 the country, at intervals of 40 or 50 
 miles, he sees large towns. The shadow 
 of a large town keeps the little towns 
 weak and spindling. A little town don't 
 grow much with a large town just close 
 by to take all the trade away from the 
 small town. This is one of the uncon- 
 tradicted facts. Kittanning is far enough 
 down the river and Franklin Is faf 
 enough up the river to give Parker City 
 an open field. No shadows from any di- 
 rection would dwarf the growth of 
 "pretty little Parker City," with its 
 
 magnificent view of the swift running 
 old Allegheny. Coal, oil, gas, timber 
 and good soil are found all around the 
 city. What more could be desired in the 
 way of building up a lage city? It is a 
 fact, known to every Parkerite, that when 
 rents were up to fever pitch and business 
 booming, there was no grumbling, but 
 when business began to ajust itself to 
 the decreasing output of the oil wells of 
 the vicinity, rents were not adjusted. 
 
 Your correspondent speaks from per- 
 !-onal experience. He had paid $600 a 
 year rent, for several years, on a few 
 rods square of swamp land, as a spot 
 to pile lumber on. The land was made 
 usable by said correspondent hauling 
 many loads of gravel into the swamp. 
 By the application of this gravel, the 
 land was made firm enough to hold up 
 lumber. This expense was borne by the 
 renter. But. as I said before, Mr. Parker 
 was not considered an extortioner at this 
 time, as he could get the high rent from 
 other parties, if your scribe had not 
 frozen to the lot. But the trouble came 
 when business fell off nine-tenths, and 
 your humble servant plucked up cour- 
 age enough to approach W. C. Mobley. 
 the superintendent and son-in-law of Mr. 
 Fullerton Parker, and asked him, in view 
 of the fact that the profits on sales of 
 lumber would not pay the rent, to lower 
 the rent a trifle. Mr. Mobley's answer 
 was, "Not a cent." The result is easy 
 to see. The lumber yard was obliged to 
 close out business. 
 
 This was the case with many other 
 branches of business. Instead of the 
 motto being carried out, "Live and Let 
 Live," thereby holding the population, 
 the motto, "Die and Let Die," was car- 
 ried out, and Parker City missed its 
 great opportunity. I'll mention a few 
 points that will not be new to the old 
 residents of the city. 
 
 Before the bridge was built, John Mc- 
 Laughlin and 'Squire Fulletron bought 
 chain ferry, paying $8,000. It paid for 
 itself in a few months, and made a hand- 
 some fortune for the firm before the 
 
20 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 bridge took away their business. But, 
 with business foresight, McLaughlin and 
 Pullerton took a good slice of the bridge 
 stock, and again piled up money. Squire 
 Fullerton is now d^ad, but his widow 
 lives on the "Bluff," where she can over- 
 look the place of her late husband's 
 victories. John McLaughlin built the 
 Globe hotel and conducted it for several 
 year, then sold it to his two sons, George 
 and Will. Their father is connected with 
 the natural gas business and lives at 
 Murraysville, Pa. 
 
 Who of the old operators but knew 
 Fin Frisbee. "Fin," together with "Doc" 
 Book, built the Central hotel. Oh, but 
 that hotel did a great business. Just one 
 little incident will prove this. I was a 
 lodger one night, and by the noise below 
 my slumbering place, I took it that the 
 bar was doing quite a business. As I 
 was used to noise, it did not deprive me 
 of "nature's sweet restorer" — sleep. But 
 "Curt" McKinney, of Titusville, did not 
 fare so well. I stood in the office the 
 next morning after the noise, when 
 "Curt," (as he was called then, but now 
 he is called Mr. McKinney), came down 
 stairs and approached "Fin," who stood 
 in the ofBce, wearing one of his con- 
 tented smiles, and addressed him in this 
 manner: "Mr. Frisbee, if you allow so 
 much noise about your bar every night, 
 as you did last night, I will not stop 
 over night with you again." "Curt" said 
 this with his usual earnestness. "Fin" 
 looked up very much unconcerned, and re- 
 plied: "I took in at the bar last night 
 $500. I will not trade a noisy $500 at 
 the bar for a quiet 50-cent lodging." 
 Poor Frisbee. After becoming proprietor 
 of the great Kent House at Lakewood, 
 he sold out, and removed to Du- 
 luth, where he added very ma- 
 terially to his wealth, and bid a long 
 farewell to his dollars and crossed over 
 the river of death, to try an unknown ex- 
 istence. If there are no hotels to be run, 
 in that other life, "Fin" will be un- 
 happy. 
 
 I met Elisha Robinson on the street 
 this morning. He is the same unassum- 
 
 ing man of money that he was when his 
 oil wells were forcing him to go to Pitts- 
 burg every few days to deposit his piles 
 of cash. He is the same true Christian 
 gentleman yet that he was when, 33 
 years ago, he would come as regular as 
 a clock into my lumber office to pay his 
 bills. If all my customers had been 
 Elisha Robinsons I would have $10,000 
 more money to-day than I have. And his 
 brother, "Sam," still clings to this ter- 
 ritorial ball, which means that another 
 good, honest, rich man still lives. Both 
 brothers are tilling the soil, the same as 
 before that same soil poured forth rivers 
 of oil. Elisha has his affections fixed, 
 this spring, on a piece of hoarded land 
 that he will clear up this coming sum- 
 mer and put in a state of cultivation. 
 
 Fullerton Parker, who was monarch of 
 all he surveyed in this city in its palmy 
 day, has, with many other pioneers, been 
 "gathered to his fathers," but his man- 
 sion on the "Bluff," still overlooks the 
 city, which bears his name. There are 
 Parkers and Parkers here yet, but they 
 are not of the old settlers. You have one 
 in Oil City (William Parker, who is re- 
 membered here as the owner of the old 
 "Rob Roy" well at Karns City, which 
 produced nearly 150,000 barrels of oil 
 and put nearly as many dollars into the 
 pockets of its owner). There were very 
 few "Rob Roys." None ever came and 
 stopped with me. The "Rob Roy" spoken 
 of above, gave Oil City an ornament, in 
 the great brick mansion of "Bill"' Parker. 
 It is lucky for noted Oil City that such 
 men as Mr. Parker gravitated in its di- 
 rection, when they became too rich to 
 stay anywhere else. 
 
 And now, let me close this article by 
 saying that if Parker is not the Parker 
 of old it bears unmistakable signs of 
 former prosperity in its five good 
 churches, line brick school building, 
 water works, bank and many substantial 
 buildings that were paid for when money 
 was no object. For this and many other 
 blessings the Parker of to-day has rea- 
 son to be thankful. So mote it be. 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 21 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 OIL CITY SIXTY YEARS AGO. 
 
 Talk about old times! Why the in- 
 habitants, the younger ones, know 
 ones, know very little of the growth, 
 from the beginning, to the present. I 
 was born within 10 miles of the Drake 
 well, or the first well drilled, 80 years 
 ago in Centerville, Crawford county, Pa., 
 and had the pleasure of seeing its pro- 
 duction for the first two days, and the 
 same with the second well, right across 
 the creek from the Drake well, on the 
 John Watson farm. This second well, 
 known as the Williams well, made much 
 more of a splurge than the Drake well. 
 It sent the oily flui^ many feet skyward, 
 with a vim which the natives of this 
 corner of God's footstool never dreamed 
 of. The natives, your humble servant 
 not excepted, were nearly dumb. The 
 Inhabitants of that period had never 
 seen oil in all its glory before. The in- 
 habitants along oil creek had smelled It, 
 inasmuch as a few drops of it would oc- 
 casionally ooze through the ground. I, 
 myself, at that time lived here at 
 Youngsville, Warren county. Pa., on the 
 banks of the Brokenstraw creek. For 
 many years, before the time of striking 
 the first oil well, I had made trips down 
 the Allegheny river, on lumber rafts, 
 nearly every time the water came to a 
 rafting stage. Always when passing the 
 mouth of Oil creek, a strong "Seneca oil' 
 smell came floating on the air. That 
 was all there was to it — just a smell. 
 Compare that smell with the present oil 
 business, if you can. I leave it to any 
 living man or woman to make the com- 
 parison. I will not attempt it. 
 
 Oil City, at that time, consisted of a 
 grist mill, hotel, one little store and 
 two dwelling houses. The hotel was the 
 most pretentious building of the town. 
 It lacked "a small trifle" of being a mate 
 to the Arlington of to-day, in size and 
 equipment, but bore the same name of 
 the "best hotel In town." The old, and 
 Indeed most of the young inhabitants of 
 the "Hub of Oildom," have seen the old 
 Moran house, at the lower end of the 
 city. That one hotel was the real money- 
 maker of the town. When a good raft- 
 ing stage was on, the man that got a 
 good bed to sleep in had to be on hand 
 early in the afternoon, as quite a while 
 before dark the Allegheny fleets — or 
 rafts — would begin to tie up for the 
 night, in Oil creek eddy. Before dark, 
 the river would be filled nearly to the 
 opposite shore, with rafts from almost 
 every place on the Allegheny river from 
 
 Oil City to Coudersport. The main points 
 from which these rafts came were Tio- 
 nesta, Irvineton, Warren, Jamestown, 
 N. T.; Kinzua, Pa.; Corydon, Pa.; Sala- 
 manca, N. Y. ; Tununingwant, Pa.; 
 Olean, N. T.; Port Allegheny, Pa., and 
 Coundersport, Pa. The reader will see 
 that the Keystone and Empire states 
 divided the honor of furnishing this 
 great river trade. This was caused by 
 the river starting in Pennsylvania, and 
 straying off into the state of New Tork, 
 but finding the Yankees no better than 
 the Dutch Pennsylvanians, the waters 
 strayed back into the parent state, and 
 commingling with the waters of the 
 Monongahala, slowly and peacefully 
 wended their way through the slave 
 country of the south to the sea. 
 
 Speaking of rivers, let me say, fearing 
 it may slip from my memory, that years 
 ago, I sat in the office of a hotel, on 
 Keating Summit, Potter county. Pa., and 
 gazed on the drops of rain falling on 
 one inch of ground, where it divided, a 
 part going into the Atlantic and a part 
 into the Gulf of Mexico. The question 
 In my mind was, which part will reach 
 salt water first? But I am getting off 
 the subject of "Old Times in Oildom." 
 To make it plain to the readers of this 
 article, I will say that the old Moran 
 house was not supposed to hold all the 
 hardy men that manned the oars which 
 guided this large number of rafts. The 
 "hands" which did the work at the end 
 of those oar stems, generally rested after 
 their hard day's work, in a raft shanty, 
 which was anything but a shield against 
 rain and snow, being constructed of 
 green boards, roof and all. This shanty 
 was built for but a short period of ser- 
 vice. Only for a place for perhaps a 
 dozen men to sleep in, for a week or two, 
 according to the distance floated. There 
 was one man to watch the raft until sold 
 and delivered. Only the owner of the 
 raft and the pilot indulged in the luxury 
 of a bed in the far-famed Moran hotel. 
 Sometimes a "hand," leaning a little to- 
 ward dudishness, would mix in with the 
 above named owners and pilots, and in- 
 vest a quarter of a dollar in a "downy" 
 bed. I don't speak from experience re- 
 garding "downy beds," because in my 
 youthful days, I considered myself as 
 belonging "to the Brotherhood of man," 
 and I always slept, spoon fashion, In a 
 board bunk, partly filled with straw, in 
 the shanty. 
 
 Before leaving this subject, I wish to 
 
22 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 mention the fact, that old-time raftsmen 
 seemed to be of the old fogy class, in re- 
 gard to inventions. Speaking within 
 reasonable bounds, the lumber men of 
 the days gone by, for 50 years at least, 
 practised the most foolish methods of 
 landing their rafts. As the evening be- 
 gan to appear, the raft was rowed into 
 the first eddy approached and tied to a 
 nearby tree or stump, or anything that 
 would hold the raft quietly until morning 
 and until the "hands" had got out from 
 the straw, in the shanty bunks, and ap- 
 peased their keen appetites on potatoes, 
 meat, generally salt pork, and bread. 
 Then the pilot would exclaim in a sort 
 of commanding voice, "untie that cable," 
 and away Pittsburgward would go the 
 raft and crew. 
 
 And now come in the foolishness, 
 practiced for a half century. The rope 
 or cable used for tieing up the raft was 
 from one and one-half inches to two 
 inches in diameter, perhaps from 100 to 
 3 00 feet long. The raft was pulled to 
 the shore and a strong hand would pick 
 up that tremendously heavy rope, which 
 lay coiled up like a great anaconda, and 
 would struggle up a generally steep bank, 
 run to the nearest tree with all of the 
 rope that had not been pulled away from 
 him by the downward movement of the 
 raft. One end of the rope was tied tight 
 to the raft. By the time that the out- 
 of-breath man on shore could get a good 
 "half hitch" on that tree, two-thirds or 
 more of ihe rope was usually dragging 
 in the water. Then the man ashore would 
 let go of the cable, and a man on the 
 raft would pull it onto the raft, and 
 throw one end to the man on shore and 
 the same foolish work would be repeat- 
 ed over and over until all hands were 
 completely exhausted, and the lower end 
 of the eddy reached, if the eddy was long 
 
 enough. But many times, in a short 
 eddy, the raft defied all efforts to land 
 it, and it ploughed the water all night. 
 
 After about a half century of this 
 kind of work, the so-called "KenduU- 
 tuckyans" taught the so-called sharp 
 Yankees how to land a raft. Those 
 Kentuckians would take a 1,000-foot 
 inch and a half rope, and coil it up on 
 the rear end of their acre raft of logs, 
 put in a snubbing post, near the rope, 
 and when they wished to land they 
 would paddle the raft a shore with their 
 great long oars; then one of the "hands" 
 would jump ashore, and the man on the 
 raft would quietly hand him one end of 
 that light, long rope. The man ashore 
 would then take a "half hitch," and sit 
 down and hold onto the end of the rope 
 until the raft was stopped. Many times 
 not half the rope was used at the first 
 hitch. After the "lapse of years," the 
 "Yanks" caught on and we have enjoyed 
 the work of landing lumber rafts ever 
 since. Why, it is one of the wonders 
 of the world that those early day rafts- 
 men did not discover this simple, easy 
 way of landing a swift running raft. 
 The shover of this pencil belonged to 
 those slow learners. The first time I 
 ever saw the new way of landing, I took 
 the lesson from my Kentucky brother 
 raftsman. At that time I saw those men 
 land about one acre of logs at the first 
 hitch, on the Ohio river. 
 
 Of course I am talking about almost a 
 thing of the past. But little lumber 
 has been rafted to the markets since the 
 "iron horse" made his appearance. Of 
 course, said iron horse don't reach every 
 lumber mill in the country even now, 
 and once in a while when he fails to 
 make his appearance, the water trans- 
 portation takes his place. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 JACK McCRAY. 
 
 I'll commence my 13th article by say- 
 ing a few words about "Jack" Mc- 
 Cray, one of the pioneers of the 
 oil country. He owned a farm, th3 
 south line of which came within 
 a few rods of the Drake well. 
 When the Drake well was struck, leas- 
 ers came to him by the dozen. His was 
 a large farm, lying between the John 
 Watson farm and the Drake well. "Jack" 
 laid out his land in acre leases, on which 
 he charged $100 bonus and a royalty of 
 one-fourth the oil. The writer of this 
 secured two leases at these figures, and 
 
 soon found himself out of pocket $200. 
 As the wells were kicked down by the 
 aid of a spring pole those days, there 
 were more leasers than operators. Many 
 more men planked down their money and 
 signed contracts than put down wells. 
 After many weeks of kicking by stal- 
 ^•art men, dry holes would turn up in 
 disagreeable numbers, discouraging the 
 many would-be operators, myself among 
 the number, and in the course of time, 
 "Jack' had more copies of leases than 
 Interests in oil wells. The oil belt seem- 
 ed to follow Oil Creek down toward the 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 23 
 
 "mouth of the creek," instead of 
 going up Pine creek, over McCray's land, 
 as the old wells of Captain Funk, Noble 
 & Delamater, Phillips and many others 
 testified. But "Jack," with his bonus in 
 his pocket, became the owner of the fa- 
 mous McCray hotel, where speculators 
 from the east, west, north and south, 
 were wont to assemble to talk over what 
 was a business at that time, to fnem, 
 of an unknown quantity. "Jack" was 
 soon known all over this country by his 
 attempt at a laugh composed of two 
 syllables — or the same sound given 
 twice — "Cha-cha." The two sounds came 
 often, as he was of a very jovial dispo- 
 sition. No one, either by seeing or hear- 
 ing, would know that this noise was 
 meant for a laugh, as not a muscle of 
 his face moved. Yet these indescribable 
 sounds did duty as a sign of merriment 
 on his part. 
 
 "Jack" kept spanking good race horses 
 and driving teams, and made the most 
 of life for many years, then struck ofC 
 into the wilds of Forest county, as gen- 
 eral manager of a large lumber company 
 and pioneered the pine lumber business 
 for many, many years. He "grew up 
 with the country." He was elected and 
 served one term as associate judge of 
 the Forest county court. His name wili 
 be handed down to all future genera- 
 tions. During his residence in this wild 
 county of Forest, a postoflSce was lo- 
 cated in his township, which is named 
 McCray, and when the B. & O. railroad 
 was built, the station was named Mc- 
 Cray in honor of the judge. When all 
 the nice timber was cut into lumber and 
 shipped away from his jurisdiction, it 
 became too quiet for a man of his ambi- 
 tion and he hied himself back to his old 
 stamping grounds — Titusville — and soon 
 bid farewell to all mundame things, and 
 crossed over the unknown river where, 
 perhaps, there are no oil wells or lumber 
 mills. 
 
 Pithole comes vividly to my mind just 
 now. My first visit to this mushroom 
 city was an experience. I found a daily 
 newspaper, railroad, telegraph office, 
 opera house, many hotels and boarding 
 houses and everything that goes to make 
 up a modern city. The people of the 
 village said the population was about 
 25,000. I did not believe it then and 1 
 do not believe it now. But there was a 
 "right smart" of people there for a three 
 month's old city in the woods. I put up 
 at the most tony hotel in the city, and 
 had water biscuits, half baked, for sup- 
 per. Although I registered about 3 
 o'clock p. m., all the beds were engaged 
 for the night. But the obliging clerk 
 told me he would provide a place for me 
 to sleep. When bed time came this smil- 
 ing clerk took a lantern, and by its dim 
 light, I was led to the barn and handed 
 
 a blanket, by the said clerk, who told me 
 to "climb that ladder" and I would find 
 pletnty of hay at the top of the mow to 
 make a bed of. I did as directed and 
 about 40 feet skyward I found plenty of 
 hay, and also men that had proceeded 
 me to the roosting place as patrons of 
 this hotel. I found a vacant place among 
 the snoring crowd. Mingled with the 
 unmistakable smell of bad whisky. But 
 morning came at last, and also a dose 
 of the hot biscuit. When the bill was 
 paid I found the modest charge of $1 
 for each meal and 75 cents for lodging. 
 After breakfast I hired a little bunty 
 saddle horse, to ride to McCrea's Land- 
 ing — four miles distant. When I return- 
 ed the obliging livery man charged me 
 only $5 for the use of the little animal, 
 about three hours. There was never but 
 one Pithole. Just think of a six-fool 
 gauge railroad being built four miles to 
 Oleopolis and then dismantled in a few 
 short months. The last time that I 
 passed through Pithole I saw but two 
 occupied houses. As that was 20 years 
 ago, it is dollars to cents, if there is one 
 house there now. In the palmy days of 
 Pithole considerable oil was put in bar- 
 rels and towed up the river to the P. & 
 S. railroad, at Irvineton. 
 
 I loaded a boat with shingles for the 
 mouth of Pithole creek and accompanied 
 the crew of five down to the place of de- 
 lievry. After we got the shingles off the 
 boat was loaded with barrels of oil. The 
 five men rolled barrels nearly all day. 
 Two young coopers were tightening the 
 hoops on the barrels on shore. The five 
 brawny boatmen kept nagging the coop- 
 ers and poking fun at them all day. One 
 was an Irishman and the other a Dutch- 
 man. I stood on the high bank of the 
 river, late in the afternoon. I heard the 
 young Irishman say, "You have made 
 fun of us all day and now we are going 
 to pay you for it." With this exclama- 
 tion on his lips, both coopers jumped and 
 ran onto the boat and in five minutes the 
 two coopers had five big boatmen badly 
 whipped. Two of them ran, but they 
 were soon overtaken and knocked down. 
 A part of the boatmen called tnemselves 
 great fighters a few hours before the 
 coopers got their "dander up.' We did 
 not hear anything more about pugilistic 
 achievements after this battle. The 
 boatmen did not dare to let their boat 
 lie at the landing that night, but hitched 
 on their horses and towed it two miles 
 up the river and spent the night out of 
 range of the coopers. All this was an 
 1 object lesson — showing what can be done 
 j by courage, displayed by the weaker 
 : party. And this reminds me of a similar 
 I case that came under my observation at 
 I Reno, at the time General Burnside was 
 I building his railroad over the hills and 
 I through the valleys to Plumer. The 
 
24 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 railroad workers were gathered in a 
 crowd at the junction of the wildcat 
 road with the junction of the Atlantic & 
 Great Western road. A lively discus- 
 sion arouse on some question among 
 them and one stalwart young Irishman 
 took it into his head to whip the whole 
 crowd, and he did juat what he under- 
 took to do. He just walked around 
 among those laborers and knocked down 
 every one that came within reach of 
 him. After this general knockdown busi- 
 ness had gone on about five minutes, the 
 boss, a big finely developed man, belong- 
 ing to the same country of the fighter, 
 with a big plug hat on, stepped up to 
 the pugilistic gentleman and commanded 
 him to desist from his dangerous pas- 
 
 time. The fighter struck out, square 
 from the shoulder, and sent the boss 
 down among the other victims of this 
 young man's rage. His plug hat rolling 
 and tumbling another rod ahead of him. 
 The boss struggled to his feet and stood 
 as a quiet witness, until the fight ended 
 for lack of more men to knock down, and 
 the whole circus ended right there and 
 then, with the young Hercules standing 
 peacefully in the crowd — with a victori- 
 ous smile on his face and no one to 
 question his title to the name of boss 
 knocker. He was another exemplifica- 
 tion of the power of one man, energeti- 
 cally applied, that is fresh in my mind 
 to the present day. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 A GREEDY LANDLORD. 
 
 What shall I say in this article? The 
 reader may think I have run out of mater- 
 ial by this time, but let the reader consider 
 that a man who was born before such 
 things as railroads, telegraph lines, trol- 
 ley lines, steamboats, telephones, ocean 
 cables, mail delivery routes, flying ma- 
 chines, sewing machines, mowing ma- 
 chines, oil, gas, automobiles. elec- 
 tric power and many other things that I 
 could mention came into use, ought to 
 konw more tlian would fill a small book. 
 The young men and women of the present 
 time may well wonder how human be- 
 ings could get along without the things 
 above mentioned. But they did get along 
 6,000 years before these conveniences 
 came to help mankind in general. 
 
 When I was a boy a party of young 
 men and young ladies would get into a 
 big box filled with straw, on a pair of 
 wooden bobsleds, drawn by old "Buck 
 and Jerry," a faithful yoke of oxen, and 
 go on a snail's gallop miles upon miles 
 to a dance, in zero weather, with as light 
 hearts and as much — or more — merri- 
 ment than is now shown in automobile 
 loads of young heirs to millions of dol- 
 lars. A man worth $10,000 was consid- 
 ered as great a man as a multi-million- 
 aire is at the present time. I think as 
 to happiness, perhaps these old-time 
 young people had the best of it. The ox 
 teams never killed anybody. As much 
 cannot be said in favor of the automo- 
 biles. Many people of great wealth have 
 passed to the other life on account of 
 their wealth. A poor man or woman 
 cannot own one of these man-killers. 
 Human life is much safer behind an ox- 
 team than behind an automobile. Of 
 
 course a certain few. and very few, 
 owned horses and buggies, but they 
 stood no higher in society than ox-team 
 people. There were no distinction or 
 classes, at that time. All stood on the 
 same level. There was not wealth 
 enough in the country to make it worth 
 while to draw a distinction. There are 
 so many cliques and classes, nowadays, 
 that when either class gets up any kind 
 of an entertainment it is a puzzle to the 
 "committee" to know who to invite. This 
 troublesome puzzle did not come in at 
 the time of which I write, consequently 
 they had more room for unalloyed hap- 
 piness. 
 
 Where the hilarity came, in the old 
 times, was at the country corn husking 
 or apple-paring bees. The patent apple 
 dryer was not invented and the main de- 
 pendence was a pocket knife. The un- 
 sophisticated young man was right at 
 home, and perfectly contented, when, 
 sitting beside his best girl, with a pan 
 of apples on his knees, pocket knife in 
 hand, removing the skin from the 
 luscious apples, and his intended life 
 partner, busily engaged in stringing the 
 nicely quartered apples as they came 
 from the nimble knives. Whole evenings 
 would be spent in perfect contentment 
 on the part of both. In fact, the longer 
 the apples lasted the better. When bush- 
 els of apples were nicely pared and 
 strung ready for hanging all around the 
 fireplace — no stoves then to take up 
 room in a house — a nail could be driven 
 anywhere into a wall, then a halt would 
 be called and refreshments served by 
 the good lady of the farmhouse. After 
 devouring the "nick-nacks" the time. 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 25 
 
 generally running into the morning 
 hours, would be spent in dancing, or 
 playing "snap and catch 'em," "the mill 
 goes round," "chase the squirrel," and 
 dozens of these innocent plays. If I am 
 a good judge, more harmony existed then 
 than now. A good and substantial rea- 
 son for this is easy to be seen. The 
 people never had heard or dreamed of 
 these luxuries or conveniences of the 
 present time, therefore they did not 
 quarrel and wrangle over these things. 
 
 I have been writing, so far in these 
 articles, about older times, not oil times, 
 as no oil was dreamed of then. I 
 now will come down to oil times. Speak- 
 ing of dancing, I should have said in 
 the right place, that no quadrille had 
 been invented when I first kept time to 
 Arthur McKinney's single fiddle — that 
 was what we called it then. It is now 
 called a violin. We had no caller either. 
 The dancers bossed themselves. "We 
 learned to get through the "Opera Reel," 
 "Money Musk," "French Four" and many 
 other "country" dances. Each dancer 
 was a self-taught scholar. All good 
 da,ncers had learned their pieces "by 
 heart," and but few mistakes were made. 
 The writer remembers his first venture 
 on the dancing floor. He selected one of 
 the best looking and smartest girls in 
 the room for a partner. She knew her 
 business to a "t" and so did all the rest 
 except the writer. But, grabbing every 
 hand extended to him, hopping back and 
 forth, as the other seven in the set did, 
 turning every corner in the imitation of 
 my partner, and keeping not very good 
 time to McKinney's fiddle, I came off 
 victorious. I had won my first ball room 
 bai Je. But I was not a real independent 
 dancer yet. I had followed the motions 
 of others and had before me the many 
 figures to learn before becoming a full- 
 fledged dancing beaux. But, as in most 
 of the undertakings of this life, perse- 
 verance won, and ere many moons I 
 knew where to go without being di- 
 rected. 
 
 I must mention one dance given in 
 Parker City, soon after oil was struck. 
 I was in the lumber business and oc- 
 casionally visited the place before it was 
 a city. At each visit I stopped at the 
 same hotel. One evening I registered as 
 usual and soon learned that a big ball 
 was to come oft that night. The pro- 
 prietor of the hotel offered to find lodg- 
 ing for me outside ' the noise of his 
 dance. I told him not to take the trou- 
 ble, as the noise would not disturb my 
 slumbers in the least. This landlord had 
 engaged two violinists from Bradys 
 Bend. There was not a violinist at Par- 
 ker City at that time. The musicians 
 were promptly on hand; also a big crowd 
 of dancers. About 11 p. m. one of the 
 musicians received a telegram calling 
 him home immediately on account of 
 
 the death of a relative. He lost no time 
 in catching the Pittsburg train that was 
 just ready to leave the Parker depot. As 
 the absent violinist was caller of the 
 quadrilles his partner was left in a bad 
 shape. The band was also left in a bad 
 fix, with two violins and but one player, 
 and the player could not call one 
 quadrille. I had played and called 
 quadrilles for 25 years, but nobody in 
 Parker City knew it. The landlord told 
 me that he would be obliged to pay a 
 part of the money back to that large 
 crowd if he stopped the program half 
 finished. The milk of human kindness 
 began to flow in my veins, and to save 
 this clever landlord from making such a 
 sacrifice, I told him that I could fill the 
 place of the absent musician. To say 
 that he was pleased would be putting 
 it lightly. He smiled all over his face 
 and I took up the absent man's work, 
 and saved a breakup of the ball. I lost 
 my full night's sleep. I got a couple of 
 hours sleep in the morning, and that 
 landlord charged me 50 cents for sup- 
 per, 50 cents for lodging and 50 cents 
 for breakfast, and I paid it without a 
 word — just the same as he always had 
 charged me when I had not saved $100 
 for him. However, this fiddler never 
 stayed another night at that hotel after 
 paying for the privilege of saving the 
 collapse of the big ball. 
 
 Now, for the purpose of showing the 
 hardships and trials of the early settlers 
 in this part of the country, I recite one 
 circumstance which came to my own 
 family. Many years before the Phila- 
 delphia & Erie railroad was built through 
 Garland, my folks lived there, when I 
 was a boy 8 years old, 73 years ago. 
 Flour of all kinds became scarce. There 
 was none to be found in the valley of 
 the Brokenstraw; none of the stores the 
 whole length of the valley had any meal 
 of any kind. Our folks had used the last 
 in the house and starvation stared us in 
 the face We had kind neighbors, but 
 they were nearly as bad off as we were, 
 so we could not rely upon borrowing. 
 The morning after the last flour had 
 been used my father, very much dis- 
 couraged, started out from home to see 
 his neighbors and talk with them. The 
 first neighbor he met told him that a 
 man from Titusville was coming that 
 day to the valley of the Brokenstraw 
 with a wagon load of flour. The man 
 was to take the shortest route through 
 Enterprise and over Cole Hill, leaving 
 about four miles to be traveled to reach 
 the route of the "bread line." My faith- 
 ful father took the tramp with an emp- 
 ty bag on his arm and reached a place 
 on the Titusville road called the "Bircli 
 Springs" before the eagerly looked-for 
 wagon came along. When it did arrive 
 father purchased, at a high price, 100 
 pounds of nice wheat flour and carried 
 
26 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 it on his shoulder the four miles to his 
 anxiously waiting wife and three chil- 
 dren. We — the children — looked upon 
 our father as a sort of saviour, and our 
 exclamations of joy must nave been to 
 him part pay for his labor of love. You, 
 of the present age of all kinds of 
 vehicles, can form but a faint conception 
 of the labor and suffering- of the early 
 pioneers of this country. Long: before 
 the discovery of oil or gas, O, what a 
 change! In the days spoken of above 
 in order to have light at night the house- 
 wife would melt a cake of tallow, savod 
 from butchering time, and pour it into 
 tin molds — let it harden in a cool place 
 — warm it by the wood fire, and pull 
 them out of the molds. Rather a nice 
 looking candle, but a poor light giver. 
 In place of matches, which were un- 
 known then, a sliver would be lighted in 
 the stone chimney fireplace and applied 
 to the wick of the candle, and an alleged 
 light, which would burn a little while, 
 would be produced. Every now and then 
 the tallow would burn too far below the 
 top of the wick. The light would be too 
 dim for weak eyes, then a pair of iron 
 nippers would be used in clipping off the 
 surplus burnt wick. I can almost see 
 the change now that would take place in 
 the light as I sat reading, when someone 
 would say "Snuff the candle." Another 
 way of making candles was to tie cot- 
 ton wicks about two inches apart on 
 sticks and dip a dozen at a time in the 
 hot tallow, and after the tallow cooled, 
 dip again, and continue to dip and cool 
 until the candle was large enough to 
 suit the taste of the dipper, then lay 
 tliem away for use. This last mentioned 
 was named "a tallow dip." One of these 
 made about as much light as a full- 
 grown lightning bug. Compare this 
 manner of lighting with the present 
 manner. Now you strike a friction 
 match and touch it to the wick of your 
 gas fixture and instantaneousl5- your 
 room is as light as day. And if you are 
 too lazy to turn it off when you retire 
 let it burn — it needs no snuffing if it 
 burns a month or a year. The difference 
 between "the light of other days" and 
 the present is beyond my ability to de- 
 scribe. 
 
 And there is still more difference in 
 the heating of a house. Then, no matter 
 how deep the snow, the oxen were yoked 
 up and driven to the nearby woods. A 
 hardwood tree, maple, beach, birch, hick- 
 ory, oak, ash, or any hardwood, that en- 
 cumbered the ground was used. The 
 driver of the oxen would chop a tree 
 down, trim the limbs off from top to 
 bottom, hitch the ox chain to it and 
 take the whole tree to the house and 
 "the man of the house" would chop it 
 up to the desired length (generally about 
 four feet, owing to the size of the open 
 
 fireplace). You begin to think now that 
 these fire logs would have a little snow 
 on them. Well, you make a good guess. 
 When put upon the live coal you could 
 hardly distinguish those logs from snow- 
 balls, but by adding a little dry kindling 
 wood to this snow fire a warm room 
 would soon be the result. The half is 
 not told yet. No stoves were in use 
 then. The danger of sparks fiying out 
 of that open fireplace at night was a 
 .sleep-destroyer for nervous people, taut 
 custom will do great things and as ali 
 were accustomed to tliis danger a great 
 majority of the people gave it but little 
 thought. They got used to it like the 
 people of Etna and Vesuvius, who build 
 the villages on the courses of the dry 
 lava streams. I never lost a moment's 
 sleep by reason of the thought that a 
 spark might come sailing across the 
 room at any time and make a bonfire 
 of my bed. Many is the time tiiat I 
 have heard the snap of the red hot log 
 and seen the burning coal light on the 
 floor without any nervousness on my 
 part. Each chimney had a stone hearth 
 from two to four feet wiae for the 
 sparks and coals to fall upon, trusting 
 to the Great Ruler of All Things to ar- 
 rest tlie flight of sparks or coals before 
 it passed over these flat stone protectors. 
 But, as all old settlers are aware, the 
 coal was governed by force that sent it. 
 .\s many passed beyond this imaginary 
 line as stopped on the hearth, but as 
 there were no carpets the danger of fir- 
 ing the house was much lessened. I have 
 many and many a time seen a parlor 
 floor covered with black spots caused 
 by hot coals not hot enough to burn 
 clear through an inch board and set the 
 house on fire. And strange to say, there 
 were but few of those log dwellings 
 burned from the cause mentioned above. 
 This statement is hardly believable un- 
 der the circumstances. How could any 
 one of the present day go off upstairs 
 and quietly lie down and go to sleep 
 to tlie music of popping logs and flying 
 coals downstairs? Although tamillarized 
 wlien young it would disturb my nervous 
 system now when old. 
 
 Before lea\ing this firewood question, 
 I will just tell "one" on the old settlers. 
 Tliey never, except a very small num- 
 ber, cut their firewood a few months In 
 advance and let it dry before using. They 
 cut their wood — a tree at a time — as de- 
 scribed above, all winter long, instead 
 of cutting it about a third of a year bv;- 
 fore burning and letting it dry and then 
 putting it under a roof where no snow 
 could reach it, thus saving the trouble 
 of compelling green wood to burn, and 
 saving dollars and dollars. I'll explain. 
 With green wood, when you want a little 
 fire you must build a big fire. You must 
 put in lots of kindling, then pile on 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 27 
 
 many sticks of green wood before you 
 can possibly get a fire hot enough to boil 
 a teakettle. In the summer time you 
 have a hot fire, in a hot house, and must 
 wait until it burns itself out when you 
 have no use for it. On the other hand, 
 you can lay one stick on a few remaining 
 coals and It will blaze up immediately 
 and boil your teakettle, and one stick 
 of wood is soon consumed and you have 
 a cool house. No one can afford to burn 
 green wood. The cost is more than 
 double, to say nothing about the conven- 
 ience of the dry wood. As in nearly ev- 
 erything, there has been a great change 
 in the wood business. Now a large ma- 
 jority of the farmers cut their wood, dty 
 it, and house it as carefully as thoy do 
 their hay for their stock, thus keeping 
 pace with the improvements of the age. 
 Now and then a farmer sticks to the old 
 wasteful way of "from hand to mouth." 
 What I have been saying does not, of 
 course, apply to us lucky ones who live 
 along natural gas lines. All we have to 
 do is to touch a match to our gas burn- 
 er in a stove and instantly we have a 
 fire that will burn without touching 
 again for a day, week, month, year or 
 five years. How is it possible to appre- 
 ciate natural gas for cooking, lighting 
 
 or heating? Our minds are not capable 
 of measuring the distance between 80 
 years ago and to-day in the question of 
 of light and heat. I have left out a part 
 of this article. But it is not too late 
 yet to make amends. I mentioned the 
 fact of no matches being invented, in 
 the old times, but failed to describe the 
 substitute. We took a piece of hard 
 stone called a flint, then struck the flint 
 with the back of a knife, or any piece 
 of steel, a slanting blow and the fire 
 would fly, dropping on to a piece of punk 
 held under the flint. How often have I 
 seen men "striking fire" when not a live 
 coal could be found about the house! 
 Everybody depended upon the fiint as 
 much as we now depend upon matches. 
 The punk that was used to catch the fire 
 from the sparks was taut rotten knots 
 taken from old hardwood logs and dried 
 and kept as carefully as we now keep 
 matches. Hunters in the woods were 
 never without the punk and flint. In 
 fact, anyone who ever expected to need 
 a fire carried these two things. I cannot 
 say where the flint came from, but they 
 were made of very hard stone, as clear 
 and resembling common glass. The flint 
 in flint-lock guns was made of the same 
 material. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 WHEN OIL CITY WAS A SHANTY TOWN. 
 
 When I was younger than I am now, 
 and when Oil City was younger than it 
 Is now, I helped "Smith & Alison" in 
 their lumber business, all one summer. 
 The manner of handling lumber at that 
 time was crude in the extreme. A raft 
 would be run down the river and tied up 
 lielow the old gristmill. As no such a 
 thing as a brick house was thought of 
 at that time, a large number of boards 
 were used in building what passed for a 
 dwelling place. These houses wei-e con- 
 structed by putting up a frame of hewed 
 pine timbers — no scantling balloon 
 frames were in vogue at that time — then 
 nailing rough boards on the outside, af- 
 ter which "battens," about three inches 
 wide, were nailed over the cracks. Lath- 
 ing and plastering were not a part of 
 the make-up of an ordinary dwelling 
 house at that time. When the mercury 
 fell to zero, accompanied by a north 
 wind. Jack Frost found it easy to pene- 
 trate the best abodes of the few people 
 living within the limits of the present 
 Oil City of fine, warm homes. Store- 
 rooms and all business places were con- 
 structed in the manner described above. 
 
 When nothing but Cranberry coal and 
 wood were used for ' heating purposes, 
 the reader has only to guess at the dis- 
 comforts of the pioneers. No anthracite 
 coal — no railroad to bring it in— no 
 electric lights, no gas lights, and none 
 but oil lamps, fashioned in a crude state, 
 was the fate of the founders of Oil City. 
 Many old people are alive to-day who 
 can appreciate what is printed here, but 
 the young folks of the present will sim- 
 ply have to guess at the hardships and 
 inconveniences of "Old Times inOildom." 
 It is not possible for me to guide my 
 awkward pencil in giving a description 
 of all- the hardships endured by the 
 founders of this tremendous and present 
 great oil business. Just let the rising 
 generation look at the Oil City of to-day, 
 and then let them try to imagine how 
 the people got along without a bridge of 
 
 i any kind across the river — only one lit- 
 tle chain ferry, nearly up to Siverlyville; 
 an island in the middle of the river, 
 about where the covered bridge now 
 stands; an Island covered with a crop of 
 corn, accessible to skiffs. One could row 
 
 I a skiff from the north side of the river 
 
28 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 to this island, then lead it through the 
 eddy at the lower end of the cornfield, 
 then from there to the south side of the 
 river, thus getting across the Allegheny 
 without paying a chain ferry fee. But 
 what would anyone go across for? They 
 would only see one farm, with one old 
 house, and barn to match, on that side 
 of the river. But few people crossed 
 the river, owing to the fact that there 
 were but few people to cross. Well, I'm 
 wandering again; I'll get back to the 
 early lumber business. 
 
 "Smith & Allison's" lumber yard was 
 located where the Arlington hotel now 
 stands. Not all the lumber they handled 
 was piled there. The largest share of it 
 was sold on the river beach. A teamster 
 would back his wagon down into the 
 water, against the raft, and load the 
 lumber on the wagon, and drive directly 
 to the spot where it was used, thereby 
 saving a double handling. My business 
 was to measure the lumber as fast as 
 loaded, and report at the office. The 
 office was located just about where the 
 obliging clerk of the Arlington now rakes 
 in the sheckles. One teamster, in par- 
 ticular, deserves "special mention" here. 
 He was familiarly called "Nigger Jim.' 
 He was a well-to-do colored man. He 
 owned the team of horses that he drove, 
 and a house and lot, about half way to 
 Siverly. Jim worked like a man of busi- 
 ness. When he was wanted he was al- 
 ways there. He had a black skin, but a 
 white heart. It was necessary to wade 
 in the water while getting the bottom 
 course of each raft, and float the boards 
 to shore, so that a teamster would keep 
 his feet dry. This wetting of feet came 
 to the measurer as an offset to the easy 
 work that was his. For several days I 
 was "rather under the weather" and 
 hardly able to work. This came to Jim's 
 ears, and he, unasked, jumped into the 
 water and for a week he would not let 
 me get my feet wet. I never met Jim 
 after that without giving him the warm 
 hand of fellowship. For many years I 
 have not met Jim. I don't know whether 
 he is alive or not, but I hope is alive 
 and prospering as of old. Perhaps there 
 are teamsters with a white skin that 
 would be just as kind under the circum- 
 stances, but I never happened to find 
 them. The kind deeds of "Nigger Jim" 
 will never vanish from my memory. 
 
 Ballard's barrel piles were one of the 
 many wonders of the oil business. The 
 empty oil barrels were made up the 
 river somewhere, in "York state" — and 
 tied together, in great rafts, and floated 
 to Oil City. One "barrel yard" was lo- 
 cated just across the street in front of 
 where the Arlington hotel now stands. 
 I will not try to give the height of the 
 pile of barrels, generally on hand, but 
 will say that the tip top of the pile 
 pointed skyward, to about the same de- 
 
 gree as the present Chambers block. Mr. 
 Ballard's barrels found a ready sale, 
 until the advent of tank cars and pipe 
 lines. Then the great pile melted away 
 and gave place to large business blocks, 
 which are an honor to the city and a 
 source of income to the owners. 
 
 To return to Smith & Allison. Mr. 
 Smith built the first dwelling house on 
 Cottage hill. The people called him "a 
 fool for building up in that cornfield," 
 where he would be compelled to walk — 
 or climb — to his rather imposing looking 
 home. Years, and years ago, Mr. Smith 
 crossed over the divide — passed through 
 St. Peter's gate. He was the very per- 
 sonification of honesty and uprightness. 
 Mr. Allison is still in the land of the 
 living, and seems to be enjoying him- 
 self. He lives off west, somewhere, but 
 came back to Franklin a couple of years 
 ago, and make one of the best speeches of 
 the occasion of Old Home week. Thou- 
 sands of his hearers will bear me out in 
 saying this. I had the pleasure of meet- 
 ing him at the house of a relative of 
 his, at Salina, Fa., when he was making 
 that eastern visit. I was surprised to 
 find him the same "Doc" Allison of old. 
 Some men never get old, and "Doc" i3 
 one of them. The Derrick published his 
 "Old Home week speech" at the time, as 
 doubtless its readers remember the 
 speech. It was full of good things from 
 first to last. 
 
 Before leaving the lumber question I 
 will mention a little transaction that 
 does not savor of square dealing. 
 
 I landed a "river fleet" of square pine 
 building timber in Oil Creek eddy, or 
 rather in the mouth of Oil Creek. It 
 was for sale. A man came up from 
 Franklin, who owned a lumber yard in 
 the "Nursery of Great Men," and look- 
 ing all over the raft, made an offer for 
 it, which I accepted. I agreed to run 
 the timber to Franklin, the next day, 
 which I did, and landed it at the junc- 
 tion of the river and French creek as 
 directed by the man — I will not call 
 him a gentleman — paid off the men who 
 helped me run the raft, walked over 
 French creek to this man's lumber yard 
 and notified him of the arrival of his 
 timber. "All right, I will go right over 
 with you" was his answer. When we 
 arrived on the raft he made this most 
 unexpected speech "This timber is too 
 old. It must have been cut last winter. 
 I will not accept it." I told him the 
 timber was cut in the winter, but it was 
 not quite a day older than when he 
 bought it. I told the man I was below 
 the market now, as I could have sold It 
 I at Oil City, where they were using such 
 timber in large quantities. The man still 
 refused to take it. I thought I was com- 
 pletely "hoodooed." I started for town 
 using language for the benefit of my 
 timber customer that I would not like 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 29 
 
 to see In print. He started with me to | ery. I sold my raft to the city of Prank- 
 return to town, but I would not be seen lin the same day for crosswalks for $50 
 in his company going: into Franklin. I more than the rascally lumber yard man 
 walked faster than he and witn a "Bene- agreed to give me. Now, dear reader, 
 diction" left him far In the rear, but what do you think of that for a display 
 fortune favored me after all this treach- of cheek?" 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 HIGH STANDARD OFFICIALS WHO ARE NATIVES OF 
 BROKEN STRAW VALLEY. 
 
 Perhaps it will be news to many read- 
 ers to mention the fact that the Broken- 
 straw valley is the only valley along the 
 Allegheny river from Kittanning to CouJ- 
 ersport that has not produced oil in pay- 
 ing quantities. It has produced oil oper- 
 ators. John L. McKinney, J. C. McKin- 
 ney and "Cal." Payne are Brokenstraw 
 productions. All three were reared about 
 two miles from Youngsville. "Curt" Mc- 
 Kinney and "Cal." were considered good 
 average little boys, but John L. McKin- 
 ney was somewhat different from tlie 
 common run of boys. He always was a 
 little on the dude order. Other boys who 
 were not inclined to put on airs like 
 John poked fun at him. Little they 
 dreamed of him outstripping them all. 
 No doubt but that he coulu now buy 
 and sell the whole batch of those boys 
 who at that time tried to hold their 
 heads higher. In fact, he could buy the 
 Brokenstraw valley and have a good 
 wad of pocket change left. Tliis is a 
 changeable world . From boyljood to old 
 age makes changes that are hardly be- 
 lievable. John was always on hand at 
 the balls that were very numerous in 
 his boyhood days and on account of fine 
 dressing and pleasant manners he was a 
 great favorite among the fair sex. The 
 writer of this has helped to make music 
 (such as it was) for John to trip the 
 light fantastic toe many and many a 
 night. No one thought at that time that 
 he had a business streak running through 
 him that in after years would make 
 him a power in the financial world. 
 And "Curt" McKinney, although a more 
 sedate boy than some of his young com- 
 panions, has "surprised the natives." 
 Both of these brothers belong to an oil 
 family. This family of James McKin- 
 ney, one of the pioneers of the Broken- 
 straw and Warren county, I might say, 
 are a family of oil workers and have 
 done more than their share to make the 
 oil business what it is to-day. The fam- 
 ily consisted of six boys and one girl, 
 and the girl married an oil man of 
 Meadville. Colonel Drake did not know 
 
 the opportunity he was giving to de- 
 velop some energetic intelligent fam- 
 ilies when he opened up this world-wide 
 business near the city of Titusville. If 
 Mr. Drake had lived to the present time 
 he could not help feeling proud to think 
 of the growth of the business that his 
 busy brain laid the foundation for. If 
 any one had told of what the oil busi- 
 ness would come to, the morning after 
 the Drake well was struck, they would 
 have been pronounced fit subjects for 
 an insane asylum. I must not leave out 
 the boy "Cal." Payne. He always had 
 an old head on his shoulders and was 
 always doing something that boys in 
 general could not do. He first surprised 
 the denizens of the Brokenstraw valley 
 by getting an appointment as passenger 
 conductor of the Philadelphia & Erie 
 railroad. That was out of the ordinary 
 for a farmer boy to take cnarge of a 
 pas.senger <or any other) train on a 
 great railroad. Well, reader, "Cal." was 
 not content to punch tickets and be 
 looked up to as a great man by his out- 
 stripped companions and resigned and 
 started into the oil business. Nearly 
 every one who was acquainted with the 
 young conductor thought him very fool- 
 ish to leave his position on the railroad 
 for the then uncertain oil business, but 
 "Cal." knew what he was about and he 
 came up, up and up until his name as 
 one of the high officers in the Standard 
 Oil Company is a household word every- 
 where an oil derrick is to be seen in this 
 broad land of ours. 
 
 I began this article by telling the 
 readers about the barren oil territory of 
 the Brokenstraw valley. The valley Is 
 not entirely barren of oil and gas. About 
 30 years ago Mr. Nevans, of Titusville, 
 leased a lot of land in Youngsville and 
 put down a well on the John Siggins 
 farm, between the P. & E. and the D., 
 A. V. & P. railroad stations. When about 
 900 feet down he struck some gas and 
 got a one-barrel well. As this was not 
 much of a well in the days of 1.000 and 
 2,000-barrelers, he moved his tools about 
 
30 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 15 rods from the location and drilled 
 another well. This was a mate to the 
 first and Mr. Nevans left for richer fields, 
 continuing to operate until called to the 
 life beyond. Before leaving Youngsville 
 he told your humble servant that there 
 was oil in the Brokenstraw valley. His 
 theory was this: The rock, about 40 feet 
 of it, was too hard for very much oil to 
 come through, but that more open rock 
 was not far distant, else there would be 
 no oil or gas seeping through. He said 
 that if he knew which way to go for 
 this loose sand he would put down an- 
 other well, but it was impossible for 
 him or anybody else to tell which di- 
 rection to take. Several wells have been 
 drilled since Mr. Nevans left. All got 
 both oil and gas, but not enough to con- 
 vince the owners that it would pay to 
 pump them. Through all these years 
 some of these wells have been producing 
 lightly, the oil being taken out with a 
 sand pump. No well has been tested yet 
 in a scientific manner. Those interested 
 in oil matters are in hopes the new 
 methods of operating oil wells will soon 
 be tried here. A Pittsburg company has 
 secured several leases lately and will 
 commence operaitons very soon. It is to 
 be hoped that the mile-wide valley of the 
 Brokenstraw will not be left out in the 
 cold many moons longer. I think that 
 the good Lord would not place oil in 
 paying quantities in the valleys of Ma- 
 honing, Redbank, Bear Creek, Clarion, 
 Scrubgrass, French Creek, Two Mile 
 Run, Oil Creek, Horse Creek, Pithole, 
 Hemlock, Tionesta, West Hickory, East 
 Hickory, Big Sandy, East Sandy, Tidi- 
 oute, Dennis Run, Conowango, Glade 
 Run, Brown Run, Kinzua, Sugar Run, 
 Corydon, Salamanca, Olean, Portville, El- 
 dred. Port Allegany, Coudersport, and all 
 the smaller stream'^, tributary to the 
 Allegheny river, from Kittanning to the 
 headwaters, and leave the widest and 
 most beautiful, the Brokenstraw valley, 
 minus this rich blessing of oil and gas. 
 I see I have omitted in the enumera- 
 tion of valleys the most prolific of any — 
 Tunungwant. Excuse me, ye dwellers 
 
 among the never-failing oil and gas wells 
 of McKean county. And even if the 
 days of one-barrel wells ever come, 
 Youngsville and vicinity will be oil-pro- 
 ducing territory, even If Mr. Evans 
 should be mistaken in his loose 
 sand prediction. A few years ago 
 a well was drilled inside the bor- 
 ough line to a depth of 800 feet, 
 when oil and gas were struck. The gas 
 blazed 40 or 50 feet high, with a roar 
 that could be heard at a distance of a 
 mile. Several barrels of oil were thrown 
 out. The driller, Mr. Meely, had great 
 hopes of a good paying well. The well 
 was shot and the flow of gas was by 
 some means shut off. Mr. Meely com- 
 menced to clean the well. Each night 
 40 feet of quicksand would run into the 
 hole, which required a whole day with 
 the sand-pumps to remove. This kept 
 up for a week, when the superintendent 
 abandoned the well with 40 feet of 
 quicksand in the hole. Mr. Meely was 
 so much chagrined by this order of the 
 superintendent that he (Meely) said he 
 once had a similar quicksand job on his 
 hands and it required three weeks to 
 exhaust the quicksand. When exhausted 
 they had a 25-barrel well. A 
 then resident of Youngsville, a very- 
 successful Cherry Run operator, and af- 
 terwards a Tiona and Clarendon opera- 
 tor, pronounced this well good for heat- 
 ing and lighting half the borough of 
 Youngsville. But for some reason the 
 superintendent abandoned this best pros- 
 pect in Youngsville and the north and 
 west side of the borough is an uncer- 
 tainty up to the present time. A line of 
 wells had been drilled — four in number 
 — along the Brokenstraw creek, each 
 prospects nearly as good as the last- 
 mentioned, but none has had a scientific 
 test, and it is an open question, which 
 could soon be solved, whether this val- 
 ley of the Brokenstraw will remain 
 small territory, or take its place among 
 the inany productive valleys along the 
 Allegheny river. 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 31 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 BIG THINGS WHICH STARTED IN WESTERN 
 PENNSYLVANIA. 
 
 I wonJer Low many of our readers evor 
 thought of how very important a part of 
 the country is this section of Western 
 Pennsylvania. The writer of this was 
 born in Centerville, Crawford county. Pa. 
 Several great things had a beginning 
 within a radius of 18 miles of this 
 rather unpretentious country borough. 
 
 First — The A. O. U. W., a beneficiary 
 order, was organized a few miles south 
 of Centerville. Jefferson lodge, No. 1, 
 was the first fraternal insurance lodge 
 organized in the United States. Now 
 lodges are found in every nook and cor- 
 ner of this great country. They are 
 numbered by the thousands and hun- 
 dred of thousands of members have 
 died, leaving their beneficiaries — widows 
 and children — provided for, who, if not 
 for that first organization of the Ancient 
 Order of United Workmen, would have 
 been left destitute. One hundred and 
 seventy millions of dollars have been 
 paid by this order to stricken families 
 where the Great Reaper has entered the 
 homes. Reader, just try for a moment 
 to estimate how many little children 
 would have been ragged and hungry, who 
 have been clothed and fed, to-day if it 
 had not been for the A. O. U. W. And 
 not only this but other fraternal orders, 
 taking the cue from this pioneer order, 
 have multiplied until now over 200 dif- 
 ferent associations, of different names, 
 flourish in America, with over 7,000,000 
 members, paying about $80,000,000 year- 
 ly. All from that little start of eight 
 men, led by John J. Upchurch, of Mead- 
 ville, 40 years ago. 
 
 Second — The first fraternal dollar was 
 paid 18 miles north of Centerville, at 
 Corry, Erie county, Pa. Lodge No. 1 at 
 Meadville was the first lodge organized, 
 but it did not have the first death. Lodge 
 No. 2 was located at Corry and had the 
 first death. At that time the two lodges 
 had 260 members. The assessment on 
 the death of a member was $1 for each 
 member. This assessment was always 
 paid in advance. So, you can see, that 
 there was $250 lying in the treasury in 
 Meadville, awaiting a death to take 
 place. At that time the plans of the 
 order were in a very crude state. Mem- 
 bers joined for the first three years' ex- 
 istence of the society without a medical 
 examination. People by the hundreds 
 were saying that after the first death 
 and the first assessment had been paid 
 out, no more money would be paid in. 
 
 So, after due consideration, so the story 
 runs, the Corry lodge agreed to make a 
 test. They initiated an old fellow who 
 was nearly gone with consumption. He 
 died in about three weeks, and the re- 
 corder of the lodge, Mr. Fenton, of 
 Jamestown, N. Y., who now runs a pail 
 factory at that place, but who lived at 
 Corry at that time, took the $250 to the 
 home of the widow. The "smarties" lost 
 their guess. Not a member of the 250 
 failed to pay in the dollar assessment, 
 and, beyond the most ardent dreams of 
 the members, the income of the order, in 
 place of $250, is now nearly a million 
 dollars a month. 
 
 Third — The first oil well was found 
 at Titusville, Pa., 10 miles from Center- 
 ville, on the edge of "Venango county, 
 Pa. 1 need not say that from one little 
 Drake well blessings far beyond descrip- 
 tion have come to the world. And right 
 here let me call your attention to the 
 point that the hand of Providence must 
 have guided the mind of Mr. Drake. He 
 drilled his first well on the only spot 
 where he. with his limited means, could 
 have secured oil in paying quantities. 
 Had he drilled his well on any other 
 spot, we poor mortals would now be 
 warmed by coal and wood, and we would 
 be writing, at night, by the light of a 
 pitch pine knot or an old glass lamp 
 covered with soot or grease, or by the 
 light of tallow candles, or some other 
 kind of an arrangement. If Mr. Drake 
 had only enough money, by being helped, 
 to put a well down 70 feet, where would 
 he have been if he had been obliged to 
 go thrice that distance? The answer is: 
 He would have quit before another 70 
 feet was drilled. Compare the tools that 
 Mr. Dra'ke was obliged to use with the 
 improved tools of the present, and what 
 is your conclusion? I claim to know 
 something of what I am talking about. 
 Just after the Drake well was struck 
 the quiet but energetic John B. Dunkin, 
 of East Titusville, a cousin of mine, 
 took it into his head to kick down a well 
 on Pine creek. I helped him six weeks 
 with his laudable undertaking at the 
 princely wages of 75 cents per day. You 
 had better believe that during that six 
 weeks John and I did some kicking and 
 twisting of sucker rods. I left John at 
 the end of six weeks to work out his own 
 salvation, and with a few weeks more 
 of hard kicking he was rewarded with 
 
32 
 
 OLD TIMES IN 01 LOOM. 
 
 a five-barrel well. Oil was at a good 
 price at that time, ad John made a little 
 money as a reward for his perseverance. 
 John was almost a brother of mine. 
 When he was born his mother died. I 
 was only 11 months old at the time and 
 my mother, who was a sister to John's 
 mother, took care of us both. Good 
 woman that she was, she managed to 
 bring us both to the six-foot notch. I 
 always felt as though John was my 
 half-brother. I think every man, woman 
 and child in Titusville knew and re- 
 spected him. He was a walking ency- 
 clopoedia. He would take the time any 
 day to impart information concerning 
 the old settlers of Oil Creek. Several 
 years ago he passed away. 
 
 When we sum it all up, where can 
 we find another part of the United States 
 where such godsends have taken root 
 within a radius of 35 miles? Meadville, 
 Corry (Corry paid the first fraternal in- 
 surance dollar in the United States) 
 and Titusville are names to b^^ 
 emblazoned on the pages of fame. Do 
 you blame me for feeling a trifle proud 
 of being born at Centerville, about the 
 middle of this triangle of little cities? 
 Right close to Titusville lived Henry R. 
 Rouse, at Enterprise, four miles from 
 the Drake well. The lively suburb of 
 Oil City — Rouseville — took his name. But 
 to go back a little. Young Rouse came 
 to Enterprise, Pa., when but a school- 
 boy. He soon pitched into the lumber 
 business and turned the tall pine trees 
 into money. He displayed great aptitude, 
 and the people of Warren county sent 
 him — the boy representative — to tlie as- 
 sembly. He soon made himself felt in 
 legislative affairs. About the time his 
 term of law-making in Harrisburg ex- 
 
 pired, the oil business electrified the 
 world. Young Rouse took a lease of the 
 Buchanan farm, on which Rouseville 
 now stands, and commenced successful 
 operations. When nothing but bright- 
 ness and prosperity stared him in the 
 face, one of his wells caught fire, and he, 
 with many others — Willis Benedict, one 
 of Titusville's prominent men was among 
 the number — was fearfully burned. Mr. 
 Rouse lived but two hours after the ac- 
 cident, but in that short space of time 
 he made a will that could not be im- 
 proved if he had given it a month's 
 study. He was a single man, with no 
 relatives but his old father. After pro- 
 viding for his parent, he bequeathed to 
 Warren county the remainder of his 
 lumber and oil property. Half the in- 
 terest of his fortune he wanted used for 
 the benefit of the poor and the other half 
 to be used for building a court house, 
 and for building iron bridges and other 
 road improvements in Warren county. 
 The voters of the county were amply re- 
 warded for sending him to the legisla- 
 ture when he was but a boy. Warren 
 county has had no poor tax to pay and 
 but few iron bridges to build since the 
 flames burned the life out of that noble, 
 enterprising young man — Henry R. 
 Rouse. Pa-sengers passing through 
 Youngsville on either the Lake Shore or 
 Philadelphia & Erie roads can see from 
 the train the county poor farm and the 
 Rouse hospital, erected by the bequests 
 of this man. A marble monument stands 
 on the lawn in front of the hospital to 
 commemorate his memory. Although of 
 a re-pectable size, it is not half as large 
 as it should be. when compared with the 
 princely fortune left for generations yet 
 unborn. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 COULD NOT GIVE HIS ROCKY HILLSIDE AWAY. 
 
 In this chapter I will mention the "on 
 to Buffalo" business. When the Dun- 
 kirk, Allegheny Valley & Pittsburg 
 road was being built, the Buffalo 
 and Titusville people were very 
 eager for the road. They expected 
 that a competing line would be 
 built from Titusville to Oil City, con- 
 necting with the Lake Shore branch to 
 Ashtabula, O. If this could have been 
 carried out the Lake Shore, as it Is now 
 called, would probably have been a bet- 
 ter paying road to-day. This 
 route would have given a traveler 
 from the east to the west a 
 trunk line ride through the oil region In- 
 
 stead of going up the lake, where not a 
 derrick is to be seen. But the managers 
 of the old W. N. Y. & P. put up the bars 
 by laying down a track on the east side 
 of Oil Creek to hold the right of way 
 against all comers. I write this to show 
 the moves on the railroad checker board. 
 I never saw in my limited travels a 
 railroad built such a distance and lie 
 unused until the ties rotted under the 
 rails, except in this one case. Perhaps 
 the embargo will be lifted some day and 
 that link in the line of 17 miles will be 
 put in. But even with this drawback 
 the D., A. V. & P. road was needed be- 
 tween Titusville and Dunkirk to take 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 33 
 
 care of the Chautauqua Lake and Lily 
 Dale travel, the local business all along 
 a good farming country, including War- 
 ren and Toungsville, and the oil and 
 lumber trade of Grand Valley. The 
 smoke has ceased to pour forth from 
 
 I e stacks and at the lumber mills, as 
 is always the case at all lumber camps 
 in the course of time, when the timber 
 is all sawed, and the production of oil 
 and gas has fallen off to a certain ex- 
 tent. But it will be many days before 
 all the oil and gas is gone. Two of 
 the men familiar to the lumber operators 
 have handled their last carload of lum- 
 ber and the last barrel of oil. I allude 
 to L. B. Wood and Judge C. C. Merritt. 
 The judge left for the Untried Land a 
 few weeks ago and Mr. Wood a few 
 years ago. And let me say the judge 
 was the first to die of a most remark- 
 able family of brothers. The judge had 
 
 II brothers. There were 12, counting 
 himself, in that family. All lived to be 
 old men, and not one of the 12 ever 
 used tobacco or whisky in any form. L. 
 B. Wood was a man who is missed. In- 
 deed he was "Grand Valley." When lie 
 was gone the whole Valley seemed al- 
 most deserted. He did a vast amount of 
 business and was a leader indeed. Wood 
 left a son (Williston), who has the 
 father's traits about him to such an ex- 
 tent that the immense business of his 
 father will not suffer. L. B. also left a 
 brother, Frank, and the large business 
 built up by the lamented L. B. Wood 
 will move along without much change. 
 But the pleasant and business face of L. 
 B. Wood has been missed in his ofRce, 
 store and on the streets of Grand Valley. 
 
 The first man of Youngsville who 
 made money at the oil business was 
 John Davis, a shoemaker for years be- 
 fore oil was thought of. He was born 
 and reared on a farm near Youngsville. 
 He, bj' hard work, could only make "both 
 ends meet." He had but little money, 
 but a good supply of courage. At the 
 very first of the developments at Tid- 
 ioute he moved his family to that town 
 and took a lease, set up a springpole 
 and pegged away until he struck one of 
 those shollow wells that was the fash- 
 ion, those days, and sold it out for 
 $6,000. John worked away until he got 
 money enough ahead to live in Mead- 
 ville. Then he took the opportunity and 
 migrated to the county seat of Crawford 
 county. Pa., and thereafter rather 
 dropped out of the ranks of the numer- 
 ous Davis family in Youngsville. His 
 interesting family received an education 
 in that college city that they never could 
 have had if they had remained in 
 Youngsville. The members of the Davis 
 family remaining here have always been 
 noted for their musical abilities, the M. 
 E. choir at one time being entirely com- 
 posed of Davises. It was named "the 
 
 Davis choir." John's family was not an 
 exception in that respect, one of his 
 daughters being the organist in Miller 
 and Sibley's Baptist church choir at 
 Franklin for many years. It may natur- 
 ally be supposed that a lady who 
 can play a pipe organ and give 
 perfect satisfaction in the far-famed 
 cliurch and Sunday school patronized 
 and financially sustained by those world- 
 wide Christian workers. Miller and Sib- 
 ley, is pretty well up in the music line. 
 Well, the genial John came from his 
 Meadville home, about two years ago, to 
 visit his numerous relatives at Youngs- 
 ville, at the "ripe old age" of 92 years. 
 One of his relatives was his "Aunt Pru- 
 dence," but two years his junior. He 
 told her that he feared it would be their 
 last visit. His fears were well founded, 
 as within the next year both were 
 "sleeping the sleep that knows no wak- 
 ing." 
 
 Reading a few days ago, concerning 
 R. K. Hissam, the bank president, re- 
 minded me of a conversation that I had 
 with Rev. Mr. Hissam, who owned an 
 oil farm straight across tlie river from 
 Sistersville, in tlie state of Ohio. Tie 
 gave me a sliort history of his oil career. 
 He was a Methodist Episcopal minister 
 and years ago was "a circuit rider" on 
 both sides of the Ohio river. The coun- 
 try stands on edge in that section, and, 
 as Rev. Mr. Hissam weighs over 300 
 pounds, riding up and down these moun- 
 tains was very laborious for both him- 
 self and his horse, the horse in partic- 
 ular, and he concluded to make a change. 
 He bought 200 acres of sideliill land, a 
 mile from the river, on the Ohio side, 
 and became a Buckeye farmer. A year 
 or two convinced liim that he was not 
 intended for a farmer^certainly not for 
 a farmer with land that stood edgeways. 
 He then tried to sell his farm. Now 
 came "the tug of war." By hunting liigh 
 and low he could find no man anxious 
 enough for farming such a hillside will- 
 ing to give half the amount he gave 
 for it. In other words, he could not 
 give it away. He was in for a farmer's 
 life, and he settled down to his fate. 
 Then oil was found at Sistersville, W. 
 Va., and oil operators found that the oil 
 belt did not run with tlie windings of 
 the Ohio river, but that it ran straight 
 across the river, through Mr. Robison's 
 600-acre farm about a mile and then 
 through Rev. Mr. Hissom's 200-acre 
 farm. The reverend gentleman did not 
 have to look after buyers for his farm 
 after that. He leased it to an oil com- 
 pany at a good royalty, and when I 
 talked to him his income was about 
 $500 a day, with oil at 60 cents per bar- 
 rel, and no wells drilled except protec- 
 tion wells half way around the 200 
 acres. I don't know what his income 
 was when the rest of the protection 
 
34 
 
 OLD TIMES I N OILDOM. 
 
 wells were drilled and all the center of 
 the 200 acres, and oil at $1.75 per bar- 
 rel. James McCray had nearly such an 
 experience. Just before Petroleum Cen- 
 ter, Pa., became a prolific oil town, "Jim" 
 owned a farm there of about 200 acres. 
 About 50 acres was a very rocky side- 
 hill. He did not value it enough to pay 
 taxes on it. He paid a surveyor for the 
 work of surveying off this 50-acre piece, 
 made out the papers and went to Frank- 
 lin and put it on the "unseated list." 
 The county tre.asurer learned that there 
 was an error in the transaction, and he 
 refused to sell it as "unseated" land, and 
 dropped it from his list and it fell back 
 into "Jim's" hands again. Soon after 
 the "Maple Shade" well, with its 1,000 
 barrels a day, was struck. When J. S. 
 McCray related this circumstance to me 
 he had leased this rocky sidehill, in one- 
 acre leases, at $3,000 bonus and half the 
 oil. Oil was at that time bringing $3 
 a barrel. His income from this 50 acres 
 of "unseated land," not sold for taxes, 
 was $5 a minute — night and day, Sun- 
 days included, all the year around. Here 
 the old saying comes in play, "It is bet- 
 ter to be born lucky than rich." 
 
 In these articles I spoke of working 
 for Smith & Allison in their lumber yard 
 in Oil City, one summer. I have told of 
 Mr. McCray's streak of luck. In a very 
 small way, I had a little streak of luck 
 in the early winter of that year. Now 
 this little sketch will look insignificant 
 compared to the one just related above, 
 but it was luck, all the same. After I 
 finished up my summer's work among 
 the board shanties of Oil City I came 
 home to Youngsville and bought a couple 
 of "creek pieces" of boards and a boat, 
 such as was used to run oil out of Oil 
 creek, in bulk, at that time. When ready 
 to start from Brokenstraw eddy I made 
 common cause with J. C. and D. Mead, 
 two brothers who had been in the lum- 
 ber business as partners for many years, 
 but at the time mentioned above wer>i 
 operating for oil at McClintockville, a 
 mile above Oil City. I hitched on to 
 their raft and was accompanied by one 
 of the brothers to OH City. We sold put [ 
 our lumber and oil boat. Then one of the 
 brothers went on to Pittsburg and sent 
 me back after a few creek rafts that I i 
 had formerly engaged and had come out 
 of the Brokenstraw creek on a sudden 
 rise of water. We were to be partneis 
 in this last mentioned deal. When I ar- 
 rived at the eddy I found the other 
 brother in possession of the lumber I 
 had had engaged. Of course he knew 
 nothing of my claims to the promise of 
 this lumber and ignored my claim to It. 
 Of course the fault was with the former 
 owner of the lumber in not telling this 
 brother up here what he had done. I 
 finally said, "Am I out of this deal?" 
 The answer was, "You were never in. ' 
 
 Well, as rough oil country lumber was 
 nearly as scarce as hen's teeth that year, 
 and I had promised Smith & Allison the 
 lumber that I had engaged, and that had 
 slipped out of my hands as slick as oil, 
 I felt somewhat blue — not the "blue* 
 that the raftsmen in general were af- 
 flicted with, but the real sober kind. As 
 I stood on the bank of the old Allegheny, 
 with no pleasant thoughts passing 
 through my mind, I cast my eyes in the 
 direction of the upper end of the Broken- 
 straw eddy. There I saw a vision that 
 roused my drooping spirits. A half 
 dozen little creek rafts were tied to the 
 bank. I soon found the owner. I trav- 
 eled five miles the next morning and 
 soon became the proprietor of those 
 rafts, which were loaded with nice pine 
 shingles. One day's run put this lumber 
 safely into OH City. It was the night 
 before Christmas and the river was cov- 
 ered with slush a foot deep from shore 
 to shore Christmas morning. If I had 
 been one day later I would not have got 
 that much needed lumber into market 
 that winter — perhaps never — as the ice 
 in the spring might have swept it away. 
 I settled with Smith & Allison in the 
 evening after I landed the lumber and 
 started for Youngsville at 4 a. m. Christ- 
 mas morning, my route being up Oil 
 creek, creeping along the shore of the 
 creek in places between the high moun- 
 tain and water's edge. When daylight 
 came I had reached "Tar farm," and had 
 enjoyed a warm and well cooked break- 
 fast at the hotel. Was not that a rather 
 ticklish job — traveling up along the 
 fearfully rough bank — part of the time 
 through woods and darkness all alone, 
 and liable to a holdup any minute by 
 footpads? A man had been murdered a 
 few nights before on this path, within 
 the limits of Oil City, for the few dollars 
 in cash he carried in his pocket. The 
 spot was near the tunnel of the Lake 
 Shore railroad and several holdups had 
 taken place in different parts of the new- 
 oil country a short time beforfe my 
 Christmas morning's walk. As there 
 were no policemen to protect the lone 
 traveler in those early days, I confess I 
 felt slight misgivings concerning my 
 personal safety, as I was carrying the 
 price of my raft and shingles in paper 
 money in my pockets — not, as it 
 would be nowadays, in a check which no 
 thief could use. After breakfast I made 
 my way up, up, and to the Shaffer farm, 
 where the terminal of the railroad was 
 located at that time, and took a glad 
 seat in a comfortable coach, and I found 
 myself enjoying my Christmas dinner 
 under my own rooftree. Now, reader, 
 can you see any good luck about tills 
 trip? Perhaps you can better under- 
 stand the buoyancy of my feelings bet- 
 ter if I tell you I doubled my money by 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 35 
 
 that one day's run on the raging Alle- 
 gheny. The reason is apparent. Winter 
 was so near at hand that the man that I 
 bought the lumber of feared to run the 
 lumber when such slush as I have been 
 writing about was liable to tie up navi- 
 
 gation for the winter at any hour. Con- 
 sequently, he gave me a low price for 
 taking the risk of rafting so far out of 
 season. Now, what do you think of my 
 luck? 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 A PUBLIC SPIRITED AND SUCCESSFUL EDITOR. 
 
 These articles would not be complete 
 without a reference to one of the most 
 lively, energetic and public spirited men 
 to be found in the oil regions. This man 
 commenced in his younger days as a writ- 
 er from the oil towns. A visit to a dozen 
 towns a day, and a letter sent from 
 each *own, to the lucky paper tliat had 
 him for correspondent, was just a play 
 spell for him. He soon devMoped into 
 an oil scout — a very impoitant part of 
 the oil business in the early days of oil- 
 dom — and the new well that came in 
 without a diagnosis from his eagle eyes, 
 was far away, indeed, and had a good, 
 dark hiding place in rome swamp, or 
 far-off section. This man, to make a 
 long story short, kept on rising until 
 he owns and edits the only paper on 
 earth that gives a complete account of 
 the oil business. About the first litera- 
 ture to meet the eye of the writer of 
 "Old Times in Oildom" as he has stepped 
 into hundreds and hundreds of oil der- 
 ricks, is this man's newspaper. In tlie 
 business it is regarded as indispensible, 
 all the way from the millionaire owner 
 of many wells to the poorest pumper. 
 
 As showing the enterprise of this man 
 it is only necessary to mention that he 
 bought and placed in his large establish- 
 ment one of tlie first lynotypes ever used 
 out of the great cities of New York and 
 Chicago. To show how he is regarded by 
 his fellow workers in the newspaper 
 field it is only necessary to mention that 
 he was one of the first presidents of the 
 International League of Press clubs. 
 "With all this he is a model of modesty. 
 If he was aware of my writing this he 
 would soon draw his blue pencil through 
 this scribble of mine. "Well, reader, you 
 already know tlie name of the paper, and 
 the editor. But fearing that this may 
 fall into the hands of some backwoods 
 reader, in this wide world of ours — some 
 one who knows little or nothing of jour- 
 nalism and the wide, wide world, I'll 
 proceed to give the name. The name of 
 the paper is the Oil City Derrick, and 
 the name of the editor is P. C. Boyle. 
 My first acquaintance with Mr.Boyle was 
 at the hanging of young Tracy, at 
 
 Smethport, Pa. Tracy liad made a 
 lengthy statement, and left it with his 
 lawyer — not to be read until after the 
 lianging. Mr. Boyle was then a corre- 
 spondent of the Titusville Herald. Many 
 other correspondents were tliere, from 
 the New York Herald, New York Tri- 
 bune, New York World and other papers. 
 Tlieir fingers were itcliing for tliis state- 
 ment. Immediately after the execution 
 Mr. Boyle hurried to Tracy's lawyer and 
 borrowed the document, telling the law- 
 yer that he wanted to copy it. The last 
 train for the day was ready to leave. 
 Mr. Boyle made all haste to the depot, 
 and sent the story by express to the Ti- 
 tusville Herald, which had column after 
 column of this "confession" the next 
 morning, and the big New York corre- 
 spondents were obliged to go to the 
 Herald for their "news," one day late. 
 
 Venango county people have all heard 
 of Judee Cross, of Clintonville. I am 
 now going to tell about something that 
 happened long before the Drake well was 
 thought of. I tell this to show what a 
 wonderful memory some people have. 
 About 50 years ago I traveled all one 
 summer with a concert company. In the 
 wanderings of our musical aggregation 
 we struck Franklin — that "Nursery of 
 Great Men." Our show held forth two 
 nights in the old Presbyterian church. 
 And, by the way, I engaged the use of 
 that church of "Plumb" McCalmont, the 
 then brilliant young lawyer and after- 
 wards the greatest temperance advocate 
 in Western Pennsylvania. Mr. McCalmont 
 was a genial gentleman. Even then he 
 made the green young fiddler and show- 
 man feel right at home as he tramped 
 along with him to a back street to show 
 him the capacity of the old red clap- 
 boarded church. Judge Cross was one of 
 the associate judges of Venango county 
 at that time. Accompanied by his daugh- 
 ter he was attending court that week. 
 They stopped at the same hotel with our 
 famous concert troupe of two violins, 
 two singers and one melodeon. Both 
 nights the judge and his daughter 
 attended our musical entertainment. 
 Twenty years after that I went down 
 
36 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 to Pittsburg as an oar puller on a lum- 
 ber raft and came back by stage. The 
 route led through Clintonville. When 
 Hearing the little town I asked the stage 
 driver if Judge Cross lived there. He 
 said: "Yes, lie is now postmaster." I 
 made this remark in the hearing of the 
 stage full of passengers: "I saw the 
 judge 20 years ago at Franklin and have 
 not seen him since." The stage driver 
 replied in this wise: "If he saw you 20 
 years ago he will know you now." I told 
 the driver that could not be as when I 
 saw the .iudge I was dressed fit for a 
 showman — a great contrast between my 
 clothes then and now. "I am returning 
 from a 'trip down the river' with old 
 dirty clothes and have slept in a raft 
 shanty bunk with nothing but straw 
 for a bed for the last eight nights and I 
 am 20 years oldea-, 20 years dirtier and 
 20 years raggeder." The driver said: 
 "That makes no difference. If Judge 
 Cross ever sees any man, woman or 
 child once he will know them if he ever 
 sees them again. Come in and wait while 
 he changes the mail and when he sees 
 you he will know you." When the stage 
 drew up to the door of the judge's store 
 in which was the postofflce I walked in- 
 to the store and took a seat on the far- 
 thest end of the counter. The whole 
 stage load of passengers had become so 
 much interested that all followed me in- 
 to the store and stood around as very 
 much interested spectators awaiting the 
 result. The judge sat behind the boxes 
 busily sorting the mail. He inadvert- 
 ently cast his eyes in my direction and 
 immediately exclaimed: "Isn't your name 
 Brown?" Then a big roar of laughter 
 came from the stage load of passengers, 
 and the stage driver claimed a victory. 
 
 I will say a few words about the old 
 Noble & Delamater well, near Pioneer, 
 on Oil Creek. What I am going to relate 
 
 many old people already know, some 
 middle-aged people know about it, but 
 not many young people have heard of it. 
 When the well was drilled In it flowed 
 at an average of nearly 1,500 barrels a 
 day for the first year. The price of oil 
 was $14 per barrel — no wonder the pro- 
 prietors started two banks, one in Erie 
 and another in Meadville. The well was 
 drilled on the very edge of the lease. 
 The adjoining lease holder thought he 
 could plainly see a "scoop" and lost no 
 time in putting up a derrick, nearly 
 touching the Noble & Delamater rig. 
 He soon had a neighboring well in close 
 proximity to the big gusher. The theory 
 is that the Noble & Delamater well 
 struck a crevice in the rock. In other 
 words, the crevice was composed of one 
 crack in a solid rock, with the oil fiow- 
 ing through it. Be that as it may, the 
 cute business man that tried to tap the 
 source of the Noble & Delamater for- 
 tune did not even grease his drilling rope. 
 This sho^s the uncertainty of the oil 
 business. ' And about a mile from this 
 great money-maker occurred an exempli- 
 fication of the uncertainty of keeping 
 money when once in your possession. 
 Mr. Benninghoof, whose farm was sec- 
 ond to none in the production of oil, 
 bought a safe to store his immense piles 
 of greenbacks in, thereby saving him 
 many long trips to town to deposit the 
 burden of cash, which poured in upon 
 him almost daily. While quietly seated 
 at his farmhouse table, surrounded by 
 his wife and happy farmer sons and 
 daughters, a gang of ruffian robbers en- 
 tered and, at the point of many re- 
 volvers, they were obliged to watch and 
 see their honest cash carried off — by the 
 $100,000 — by the lowest pieces of hu- 
 manity that God ever permitted to walk 
 the earth. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 SOMETHING ABOUT GAS. 
 
 In these articles I have said but 
 little about gas. In fact I tell 
 little in these articles that would 
 permit them being called "Old 
 Times in Gasdom," instead of "Old Times 
 in Oildom." Just think a moment — 
 those of our readers who were on earth 
 when the first big flow of gas was 
 struck at Tltusville on the Jonathan 
 Watson farm. The first big flow of gas 
 was not worth ten cents; not good for 
 anything in fact but to scatter the nice 
 flowing yellow oil to the four points of 
 
 the compass. For years after that the 
 gas from the many wells in the oil re- 
 gion was more of a nuisance than a ben- 
 efit. It caused considerable expense. 
 The owners of the wells were obliged to 
 buy iron pipe to carry the gas to a safe 
 distance from the well, where it was 
 burned, to prevent the mischief it might 
 do. And mischief it did do In hundreds 
 of cases. It killed the lamented Henry 
 R. Rouse, and several others with him 
 at the same time, besides difiguring for 
 life a score or more. Many lives have 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 37 
 
 been lost and much property destroyed 
 before this vapor was finally bridled by 
 the ingrenuity of man. The operators in 
 Butler and other sections soon found a 
 safe way to destroy this terror. They 
 laid a pipe, as described, touched a 
 match to the gas, thereby destroying its 
 power to kill. I stood on a high emi- 
 nence in Butler county one night, and 
 county 63 great gas torches high up in 
 the air. It was a grand sight. But oh! 
 the millions of money that was vanish- 
 ing, all unawares to all mankind. Even 
 "Cal" Paine, who at that time lived in 
 his big new house, at the city of Butler, 
 was doing his full share in destroying 
 one of the best servants of mankind 
 ever known. I guess he knows some- 
 thing about it now, as he sits on the 
 throne and gives directions in regard to 
 this vapor, as it lights milions of homes 
 with a brighter light than oil, and softer 
 light than electricity. And more than 
 that — it cooks millions of meals, and 
 good housewives have only to strike a 
 match, and one match may even suffice 
 for all winter. My own little thriving 
 town of Youngsville would be in com- 
 parative darkness if not for this mis- 
 chievous gas. Insted of a dim, flicker- 
 ing street lamp, as in nights of old, we 
 now have street lamps on nearly every 
 corner and one bright light greets 
 another all over the borough. The For- 
 est Gas Company leads this once un- 
 controllable stuff, in iron pipes, from 
 away over to the Allegheny nver, in the 
 wilds of Forest county, to nearly every 
 room in nearly every bourse in Youngs- 
 ville. All stores and public places are a 
 bright blaze of light. Did you ever think 
 of the triple benefit of this excellent il- 
 luminant. First it saves you from 
 straining your eyes while reading at 
 night; second, it saves much hard work 
 in cleaning lamps, and third, it saves a 
 vast amount of wood chopping and whit- 
 tling shavings every time a little fire is 
 started. People within range of the gas 
 are apt to forget to be thankful every 
 day that gas was struck in their time 
 and that it was not postponed until 
 another generation. And I must not for- 
 get to say that another great benefit is 
 derived from this source. The young 
 timber, instead of being cut up for fire- 
 wood, is allowed to grow up into high 
 priced lumber all over the gas producing 
 region. 
 
 The great Ruler of the universe — God 
 — will provide for future generations. 
 This is only one of many benefits that 
 will be vouchsafed to the millions of 
 people who will come to fill our tracks 
 after we have traveled that imreturnable 
 journey. Great is gas, and it came from 
 small beginnings. 
 
 When oil was stored in large iron 
 tanks to a greater extent than it is since 
 the Standard Oil Company commenced 
 
 the business of transporting it directly 
 from the wells to the refineries, lightning 
 played a conspicuous part in depleting 
 the producer's bank account. Now and 
 then, a tank is struck by lightning, even 
 yet, but a good share runs to the refin- 
 eries or to the seacoast safely under 
 ground in iron pipes, free from danger 
 from lightning. I have seen a great 
 many tanks burning after being struck 
 by lightning and the most dangerous one 
 of the lot that I have ever seen was one 
 at Monterey, Clarion county. Pa., about 
 2 8 years ago. Near a half dozen large 
 tanks, of about 28,000-barreIs capacity, 
 stood on the left bank of the Alle- 
 gheny river at Monterey. They stood 
 on a side-hill, about 40 rods from the 
 railroad tracks and the river. One 
 morning during a heavy thunder storm 
 lightning struck one of the tanks and 
 there was a wicked blaze immediately. 
 It burned all day and in the evening a 
 carload of us traveled five miles in a 
 chartered car on the Allegheny Valley 
 railroad to see the tremendous big black 
 blaze. At this time I was a reporter for 
 the Erie Daily Dispatch, and I went 
 with the crowd for the purpose of re- 
 porting this oil fire. A couple of hun- 
 dred people, both men and women, had 
 gathered about this great blaze and 
 about 5 o'clock in the evening, the over- 
 flow that always comes when a full tank 
 of oil burns about half down came and 
 rivers of burning oil started down the 
 side-hill. The volume before speading 
 was about four feet high. For some un- 
 accountable reason, I happened to be be- 
 low, right in the way of this burning oil. 
 All the others happened to be off at one 
 side, where they easily got out of the 
 range of the burning fluid. I was the 
 onlv one who had a nip-and-tuck race 
 with the flames. I ran slantingly across 
 the side-hill toward a piece of woods. 
 I came to a rail fence, which I climbed 
 on the double quick and dodged into the 
 woods. As I went under the trees the 
 blaze from the burning oil struck the 
 tops of the trees over my head with an 
 ugly roar. As I ran the heat struck my 
 back with great force and I was quite 
 strong in the belief that there would 
 soon be one less reporter for the Erie 
 Dailv Dispatch. But as was my luck, 
 when I struck the edge of the woods I 
 found a rise in the ground that turned 
 the oil straight down the side-hill, leav- 
 ing a breathless correspondent sitting on 
 a log, thanking God for deliverance frcm 
 a sudden death. This was a fire to be 
 remembered, as it cleared a couple of 
 acres of woodland between the oil tanks 
 and the railroad. The burning oil poured 
 I down the hill, devouring green trees and 
 I everything it came to. It swept the Al- 
 ! legheny Valley railroad tracks, stopping 
 i trains "for a day or two; burned a plan- 
 ning mill, a lumber yard, several dwell- 
 
38 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 ing houses and a barn — then poured a 
 great burning stream into the river — a 
 stream which spread from shore to 
 shore and floated Pittsburgward. It was 
 a strange sight indeed to see that broad 
 expanse of fire towering high and mov- 
 ing down the old Allegheny on top of 
 the water. 
 
 I began this letter by speaking of gas. 
 I am reminded by this Monterey fire of 
 the Wilcox <Pa. ) burning well. Here 
 was another gas freak. I and three 
 others drove four miles from the Wil- 
 cox hotel to see the famous burning 
 well. We were amply rewarded for the 
 trip. When we arrived it was dark. 
 Every seven minutes, without fail, the 
 gas would throw the oil and water near- 
 ly twice as high as the derrick. Each 
 time, when the flow would come, a man 
 with a long pole, having an oiled rag on 
 the end of it, would reach out the full 
 
 length of this pole and set fire to the oil 
 and gas. The gas would thrown an 
 eiglit-inch stream far up into the air. 
 The water would form itself into a bar- 
 rel shape, and the gas and oil would go 
 straight up this round tunnel, all ablaze, 
 entirely encircled by the water. Then 
 the water would spread and fall in 
 beautiful spray, forming all colors of the 
 rainbow. Such a sight taking place ev- 
 ery seven minutes cannot be described 
 by my weak pen. This free show has 
 long since gone into innocuous desue- 
 tude. It is doubtful if ever a counter- 
 part of this wonderful Wilcox well will 
 ever be seen again. This is an age of 
 wonders, and perhaps something will 
 turn up in this picturesque line that will 
 excel the wonders of the burning well 
 at Wilcox. But, I say again, it is 
 doubtful. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 YOUNGSVILLE'S PROSPECTS OF OIL AND GAS. 
 
 It is rumored thatparties from Oil City 
 are quietly leasing land around the Alle- 
 gheny sulphur springs, about one mile 
 south of Youngsville, with the inten- 
 tion of giving this territory a thorough 
 test. 1 liave already mentioned the small 
 wells about Youngsville. I left off a de- 
 scription of the work that lias been done 
 along the Brokenstraw creek, between 
 Youngsville and Irvineton. Twenty years 
 ago five wells were drilled within a dis- 
 tance of two miles. All produced more 
 or less oil, but not quite enough in the 
 minds of the different owners to justify 
 the expense of pumping them. It takes 
 quite a good well to pay the expense of 
 pumping one well, but when a dozon 
 small wells are pumped by one engine 
 the case is different. No two wells have 
 ever been hitched together in Youngs- 
 ville and vicinity, although there are 
 about a dozen of them. A "second crop" 
 operator could probably make money by 
 getting control of a half dozen or more 
 of these and harnessing them together. 
 The owners of a majority of these wells 
 contented themselves by sand pumping 
 the well until they got a wagon load. 
 Then they would drive to a Warren re- 
 finery and ."^ell it. But I am wandering 
 from my subject — the five wells along 
 the Brokenstraw creek. One of the five 
 was owned by A. McKinney and others. 
 It produced about two barrels a day by 
 flowing. The owners put up a 250-barrel 
 tank to receive the oil. The well flowed 
 at intervals until there was about 150 
 
 barrels of oil in the tank- — a wooden one. 
 Then came the .great flood when so many 
 lost their lives at Oil City and Titusville. 
 The Brokenstraw creek went over its 
 banks doing about $200,000 damage in 
 the Brokenstraw valley. The tremendous 
 rush of water swept everything off this 
 lease — tank of oil. and all. That was the 
 last work done on that lease to this day. 
 But the well flows occasionally — up to 
 the present date. The oil is not saved, 
 however. Some day the well may be 
 cleaned and tested. This same company 
 drilled a well about 200 rods above the 
 one just spoken of and it was nearly a 
 mate for it. I, with my own eyes, saw 
 the above mentioned well flow about 
 three barrels of oil into a wooden tank 
 in the space of 15 minutes after being 
 "shut in" two days. Although this was 
 the time of the great flood this last 
 named well has continued to flow and 
 many a wagon load has been drawn to 
 the Warren refineries from il. Now we 
 come along u:i the creek a few dozen 
 rods and another well has about the 
 same history only the oil that it flows 
 has not been saved. Then we come along 
 up about 60 rods and we find the most 
 abuse! well in the lot. It tried to be 
 something but the superintendent "shut 
 up shop" when it did not prove to be 
 a great gusher without cleaning out the 
 quicksand that gathered with oil and 
 gas in fair quantities in the hole. At the 
 west cMul of this two miles of wells, 
 with not a dry hole, is a vast expanse 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 39 
 
 of territory which has never been tested. 
 
 I recently read a communication in 
 the Oil City Derrick from the Rev. P. S. 
 G. Bissell, concerning his father's claim 
 to the honor of drilling the first oil well. 
 Then I read in the Derrick the editorial 
 comment on the letter. I saw the Drake 
 well the second day after oil was struck. 
 I have seen Georgre H. Bissell many 
 times at Titusville. I have stopped at 
 the same hotel with him, conversed with 
 him, and I always found him to be a 
 very agreeable gentleman and a strong 
 believer in the great future of th oil 
 business, but I never heard his name 
 mentioned as the discoverer of the first 
 oil well. It was Drake, Drake, Drake, on 
 all sides there at Titusville, but never 
 once Bissell — so far as I ever heard. The 
 name of Colonel E. L. Drake has been a 
 fireside word the whole world over. How 
 many of the young people, at the pres- 
 ent time, have ever heard of George H. 
 Bissell? The intelligent business men 
 who furnished the money to pay for the 
 fine memorial in Titusville cemetery are 
 not likely to make a mistake and put 
 the monument over the wrong man. If 
 George Washington's monument had been 
 named Thomas Jefferson's, it would have 
 looked funny. To my mind, the editor- 
 ial in the Derrick relating to Queen Isa- 
 bella and Mr. Bissell did not go far 
 enough. There was quite a difference 
 between the two. Queen Isabella did 
 not drop Christopher, but continued to 
 furnish the "dingbats" until the discov- 
 ery was made. She did not let the burden 
 fall on a Fletcher or a Wilson, as did 
 the men who are now trying to take the 
 honors away from Drake. 
 
 How things have changed since I was 
 a boy! I saw this country when it was, 
 you might say, "a howlin.a wilderness." 
 Tall pine trees darkened the country in 
 places, as far as the eye could reach. A 
 large part of it belonged to the Huide- 
 kopers. of Meadville, Pa. Each quar- 
 ter sessions of court at Warren two of 
 the brothers would drive in a covered 
 carriage to Warren on Monday and write 
 contracts and deeds all the week. All 
 the people in this section of the country 
 thought the Huiilekopers "some pun- 
 kins." Everybody tipped their hats 
 when they met the Huidekopers driving 
 their fine team of matched horses hitch- 
 ed to a shiny covered carriage. A man 
 in a covered buggy, those days, looked 
 bigger than a man in an automobile | 
 does nowadays. And the price — there 
 was but little difference between giving | 
 the timberland away as a present and 
 selling it at only .n.50 an acre. Think 
 of good soil for farming, covered with 
 the finest of pine timber, bringing the I 
 magnificent price of $1.50 per acre! Ii 
 myself borrowed $150 of that kind-heart- 
 ed and wealthy gentleman, John McKin- 
 ney, often calle'd the "Uncle to Standard 1 
 
 Oil," and paid Huidekopers for one hun- 
 dred (100) acres of good land, covered 
 with the best of pine timber, and one 
 year from the time of borrowing the 
 money had paid back the money. And 
 the Good Samaratan that he always was, 
 would not take one cent of interest. Was 
 that not getting land on easy terms? 
 
 The Huidekopers had their own 
 troubles, as "all the sons of men" have 
 in this business world. Timber thieves 
 were numerous. Nearly every man that 
 made shaved shingles helped himself to 
 all the pine timber that he manufac- 
 tured into shingles the year around. The 
 Huidekopers tried to guard against this 
 wholesale robbery by engaging men who 
 lived in the vicinity to watch their prop- 
 erty. This plan did not even retard the 
 shingle making business. The many 
 shingle makers never lost a day's work 
 after the appointment of the watchers. 
 The watchers seemed to have enough of 
 business of their own on hand, without 
 meddling with the shingle making of 
 their neigbors — at least not according 
 to my best recollection, was a man ever 
 arrested for stealing timber. The woods 
 were full of shingle makers. There were 
 no shingles sawed in those days.' Shin- 
 gle mills were unknown. The shingles 
 were all split out with a frow and maul, 
 then shaved on a "shaving horse" and 
 packed into half-thousand bunches, and 
 they were ready for the Pittsburg mar- 
 ket. Nearly the who'* output of shin- 
 gles in this then vast lumber country 
 was hauled to Brokenstraw eddy on 
 bobsleds in the winter time, and then 
 piled on board rafts in the spring and 
 run to Pittsburg and sold to the farmers 
 all around the Iron City, and far into 
 the Buckeye state. Not all stopped in 
 Pittsburg, as many of these rafts ran 
 the whole length of the Ohio river. Cin- 
 cinnati got quite a share of this shingle 
 trade. But I am wandering from this 
 stealing subject. This cutting Huide- 
 kopers' pine timber became so respect- 
 able and safe that a man was thought 
 just as much of when working up stolen 
 timber as if it was his own. It was a 
 common occurrence for a couple of men 
 to go into the woods, build a shanty on 
 Huidekoper land, and live in the shanty 
 all summer and pick out the .best pine 
 trees and make them into shingles, with- 
 out even a thought of wrong doing or of 
 being arrested for theft. In fact, these 
 men often stole the timber from each 
 other, after the first man had cut the 
 timber lengths, ready for the frow. In 
 one case amusement comes In. A cer- 
 tain man living about a mile from 
 Youngsville hired another man to help 
 him saw and split into bolts a goodly 
 pile of this timber, for his own use 
 when he would get the time to work it 
 up. A short time after a neighbor came 
 to him and asked the loan of this ready- 
 
40 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 cut timber for a short time, or until he 
 could get time to steal and cut enough 
 to pay it back. The man that owned 
 the timber refused to lend it to his 
 neighbor, as he was ready to commence 
 the job of manufacturing the stuff into 
 shingles. Then it was that the would- 
 be borrower, without a blush, made this 
 remark: "I have already made that tim- 
 ber into shingles and sold them, but I 
 will cut more on the same lot and pay 
 you back again, soon." He never made 
 his promise good, and as it would be a 
 delicate and dangerous business for one 
 thief to arrest another, the transaction 
 <Jropped right there. All the satisfac- 
 tion ever gotten out of it was that the 
 thief of the first part seemed to enjoy 
 himself in telling his neighbors what a 
 mean man the thief of the second part 
 was. The writer of this got this nearly 
 unbelievable story from the man who 
 stole and sawed the timber. Both men 
 have long since gone to put in their 
 claims to heavenly mansions not covered 
 This stealing timber business is not 
 with pine shingles. 
 
 guess work with me. I once bought two 
 tall and large pine trees from Judge 
 William Siggins. This was a legitimate 
 transaction. The stealing comes right 
 in as soon as I can get this pencil to it. 
 I hired a neighbor to help me cut the 
 trees down, saw them into "double 
 lengths," and pile them up, ready for 
 hauling to our shingle shanty to be man- 
 ufactured into shingles. When the time 
 came I yoked up "Buck" and "Bright," 
 the very faithful old ox team belonging 
 to my father, and hitched them to the 
 
 wooden shod sled and drove two miles 
 into the forest where I expected to get 
 a load of my timber, but I didn't. Not a 
 bolt wa.s to be seen. Then I began to 
 look for tracks. I found sled tracks in 
 abundance, but a lack of timber. I fol- 
 lowed the sled tracks about a mile and 
 found my timber snugly piled up by the 
 side of another man's shanty. "The man 
 was contentedly smoking a pipe and 
 shaving shingles. He looked up — with- 
 out any appearance of embarrassment — 
 with a smile and a hearty "good morn- 
 ing." I soon broached the subject nearest 
 my heart and inquired the cause of my 
 timber being piled at the wrong shanty. 
 He answered in these words: "I got in a 
 hurry for some shingles and took yours. 
 I will cut it on the Huidekopers land 
 and pay it back to you right away." I 
 told him that I must have those shingles 
 and as he had made 4,000 already and a 
 large hill would have to be climbed be- 
 fore reaching my shanty, I would give 
 him the "going price" for making up 
 the balance of the timber, about 16^000 
 shingles, and delivering them at the 
 Brokenstraw creek raft landing. He 
 readily agreed to my proposition. But 
 when I came around for a settlement, 
 he had worked up all the timber and 
 sold all the shingles, and pocketed all 
 the money. In place of putting the sher- 
 iff on him immediately, I took his 
 promise to replace them in a fixed time. 
 He never paid me a dollar, and I was 
 green enough to let it stand until he, 
 too, crossed over where no sheriff an- 
 noys. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 BAD OIL SPECULATION. 
 
 My experiences were not exten- 
 sive as an oil operator. My first, 
 last and only venture in drilling a 
 well was on Cherry Run, in Rouseville. 
 ■When the .oil business was yet in a very 
 crude state, J. C. and D. Mead and I, 
 formed a co-partnership, and leased one 
 acre of the old Smith farm, at Cherry 
 Run, so close to Rouseville that it was 
 really a part of the village. Having a 
 majority vote of "the company," I was 
 elected as superintendent. This was 
 making a superintendent out of raw ma- 
 terial. But no more raw than a ma- 
 jority of the bosses in that early day 
 of the oil business. Superintendents 
 that had learned the business were not 
 to be found, as the business had not 
 been learned by any living man. It was 
 
 "cut and try" with the best of operators 
 at that time. I am very sure it was 
 "cut and try" with my company. I am 
 quite certain as I was the "cutter and 
 tryer." And there is no use in postpon- 
 ing the acknowledgment that I was not 
 a howling success at the oil business. 
 My first work required more muscle 
 tlran brains. The work consisted of 
 chopping down a big white oak tree, on 
 the sidehill above Rou.seville, and hew- 
 ing out a Sampson post. I did about 
 half the work on all the timber fram- 
 ing for our derrick and engine house. 
 But now comes in the brain work. After 
 consultation with my partners who 
 knew as little about the business as 1 
 did, I bought an old boiler and a new 
 engine. The boiler was somewhat anti- 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 41 
 
 quated, and in shape and size it would 
 compare favorably with a 12-foot aver- 
 age saw log. One little "lackage" about 
 this boiler was the fact that it did not 
 have a single flue in it, and it showed 
 weakness from the very start. After 
 much tribulation and vexation, and con- 
 sultation with my partners in this ven- 
 ture, I concluded to sell the old cylin- 
 der out and replace it with an up-to- 
 date boiler. I forget the price of this 
 new fangled boiler, full of flues, but it 
 took quite a little pile of notes on the 
 State Bank of Ohio to pay for it, and 
 commence operations. The cost of coal 
 was an item that bore down hard on oil 
 operators. We used Cranberry coal, at 
 11.25 per bushel, delivered at the 
 well. This seems funny now when 
 all around us millions of feet of gas 
 are being piped away from the wells. 
 It compares favorably with work that 
 I helped my father do when 1 was a boy. 
 When clearing land for farming we 
 would girdle nice, green, pine trees, 
 killing them, so that they would not 
 shade the crops, or cut beautiful clear- 
 stuff red oak into logs, hitch oxen to 
 them, haul them and roll them up into 
 "log heaps, "with much hard lifting, and 
 burn them. And this burning was no 
 "fool of a .job," as the timber was ver^ 
 green and soggy. It needed punching up 
 while burning, at very short intervals. 
 It required much attention for two or 
 three days and nights before the last 
 embers were consumed. This same red 
 oak timber — if standing on the ground 
 today, would bring $30 per thousand 
 feet, without the owner touching it. We 
 have two large furniture factories in 
 Youngsville which consume 20,000 or 
 30,000 feet of .lust such lumber daily. A 
 part of it is now brought by rail, from 
 "West Virginia. 
 
 But let me get back to my oil business 
 again. When this Cherry Run well was 
 finished, it had cost about $3,000. It was 
 a fair producer, about 10 barrels a day. 
 Oil at that time was bringing $3 per bar- 
 rel. But in the course of a year the 
 output commenced falling off, and as the 
 Roberts torpedoes were beginning to 
 make a stir in the oil region, my part- 
 ners asked me to go to Rouseville and 
 have a shot put in our well. I told them 
 that I would go down and attend to that 
 shooting in 10 days. The Warren Coun- 
 ty Agricultural Fair, of which I was 
 chairman, was on hand, and I did not 
 propose to put "business before pleas- 
 ure," but stayed by the agriculturists 
 until the end of that year's exhibition. 
 One of the Mead brothers became im- 
 patient with this delay in the meantime 
 and went down to Rouseville and sold 
 out our lease at a ridiculously low fig- 
 ure to Mr. Nelson, a Philadelphia op- 
 erator. This purchaser Immediately did 
 what I should have done — had a shot 
 of glycerine put In It. This shot 
 
 brought the well up to 40 barrels a day, 
 and convinced Mr. Mead that he acted a 
 little hastily in the premises. If he had 
 waited until the close of the county fair 
 that glycerine shot would have put 
 quite a sum of money in our pockets, in- 
 stead of passing into Mr. Nelson's. We 
 were having another well drilled on the 
 other end of this acre which came in as 
 good a producer. But my being so slow 
 and Mead so fast deprived our company 
 of doing much in the way of oil opera- 
 tions. 
 
 The old times in the oil country were 
 frequently enlivened by fire getting 
 started in the tinder-box houses form- 
 ing all new oil towns. I was running a 
 lumber yard at Karns City at the time 
 that that quite noted town went up in 
 smoke. I owned an opera house, a build- 
 ing for a lumber office and Western 
 Union telegraph office and lumber yard 
 and hotel, all located in the lower end 
 of the town. Fire companies came from 
 Millerstown, Petrolia and Parker City 
 just in time to stop the fire before It 
 reached any of my property. In fact, 
 nearly every building In town was 
 burned except mine. I scored good luck 
 for once. The fire started in a little 
 store. The proprietor was away from 
 home. The story flew fast that the man, 
 a Hebrew, by the way, had been burned 
 out three times and had been insured 
 every time. When the man came home 
 the next day an angry crowd met him 
 on the street and accused him of being 
 the cause of their homes being In ashes. 
 The man turned white with fear in a mo- 
 ment and protested his innocence. But 
 his hearers were crazy mad and threat- 
 ened him with lynching. A rope was 
 I procured and preparations made to hang 
 him to the nearest tree. Just then the 
 constable arrested him and started with 
 his prisoner for the lockup. On the way 
 to the lockup an. amateur cowboy sent 
 a rope whirling through the air three 
 times, but each time it failed to coil 
 around the man's neck. I never saw a 
 lynching bee, but I might have seen one 
 if that rope had caught on around the 
 man's neck, as lots of men were ready 
 to grab the end of the rope and run for 
 the nearest tree. That night a trial was 
 had before 'Squire Stewart and tne store 
 proprietor was sent to the Butler Jail 
 for safe keeping. He remained in jail a 
 few days and then caused the arrest of 
 his captors for false imprisonment. He 
 proved that he was in Clarion all day on 
 the day of the fire. He also proved that 
 his wife's gold watch and chain and all 
 of his best clothes were burned, and 
 that one child, through fright, ran and 
 concealed itself under a bed and was ac- 
 cidentally discovered just in time to 
 save it from a horrible death. The 
 would-be lynchers had to pay quite dear- 
 ly for their cowboy play. 
 
42 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 Although this fire swept the most of 
 Karns City from the face of Butler 
 county, no lives were lost. But after 
 all this, when a iiotel had been built 
 near the depot of the Parker & Karns 
 City railroad, a terrible loss of life took 
 place when the hotel burned — seven per- 
 ishing. The hotel people, and two tran- 
 sient lodgers were burned. But this 
 was not as bad as the hotel fire at 
 Chicora a short time before that, when 
 eig-lit people were cremated in one hotel, 
 and many more injured. 1 was an eye- 
 witness to this holocaust. 
 
 If all the sudden and tragic deaths 
 that have taken place in the oil region 
 since the Drake well was drilled were 
 mentioned, it would fill a large sized 
 book. Of the hundreds and hundreds of 
 lives lost by glycerine I will just men- 
 tion one that took place over on Bear 
 Creek, not far from the places that I 
 have been writing about. A man. I for- 
 get his name, was dViving a one-horse 
 load of glycerine over a stony road up 
 one bran<^h of Bear Creek when the stuff 
 let go with a jar that broke plate glass 
 windows in Parker City, two miles away 
 over a hill. I accepted an invitation from 
 
 I a Mr. Stephenson to ride with him in his 
 btiggy to the place indicated by the 
 sound. When we reached the spot we 
 found a great hole in the ground, about 
 eigiit feet deep and eight feet in diameter. 
 I About one half of a horse lay in the 
 road unscathed, cut as clean as it could 
 be done with a knife. It was the for- 
 ward part of the animal that remained 
 I in the road cut through the middle about 
 I half way between the fore legs and the 
 : hind legs. The hind-quarters were no- 
 where to be seen. Only a little of the 
 wagon could be found. Not a vestige 
 I of the well-shooter could be discovered 
 ] except a portion of the skin of his face. 
 That was found hanging on a bush about 
 20 rods away. One wagon tire was driven 
 i through a hemlock tree a foot in diameter. 
 I might describe many other scenes 
 that I have observed in the torpedo line. 
 I have stood in three different towns, 
 and have saw plate glass breaking, and 
 falling onto the sidewalks, all caused 
 by glycerine magazines exploding — But- 
 ler, Willow Grove and Parker City. 
 Death followed in the wake of all these 
 explosions. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 H. P. KINNEAR AND THE I. O. O. F. 
 
 What changes come with time? As I, 
 with my mind's eye, look back 
 through the years, many things 
 come to me that, to say the least, 
 are surprising. A few remarks about 
 Youngsville lodge. No. 500, I. O. 
 O. F., will not be amiss. There were 
 about 50 memVjers when I joined, a half 
 century ago. Only one, besi.les myself. 
 is a member to-day — David McKee. of 
 Corry, Pa. I am the only one living 
 within the vicinity of tlie lodge room. 
 The Kinnears, Meads, Siggins. Johnsons, 
 Marshs, Davises, McKinneys. Blodgets 
 and otliers — all gone — either dropped out 
 of the order, left the town or have passed 
 to the Grand Lodge beyond. Reader, try 
 and put yourself in my place. Think of 
 stepping into a lodge with over 200 mem- 
 bers all initiated since I was sliown the j 
 secret workings of the order. Is it any 
 wonder that a gentleman living in this 
 town recently published the alleged fact 
 that I had "long since passed the age 
 of imbecility." The gentleman himself 
 is no "spring chicken," and if God lets 
 him live as long as he has let me live, 
 he will not be one day younger than I 
 am now. 
 
 Several items are worth mentioning in 
 "Old Times in Oildom" concerning this 
 lodge. Mr. Kinnear, who was the orig- 
 inator of this lodge neary 60 years 
 ago, was the moving spirit in the busi- 
 ness of the lodge and all ot)ier move- 
 ment.s for the upbuilding of Youngsville. 
 He was the representative of the lodge 
 at the grand lodge of Pennsylvania ev- 
 ery >ear of its existence, from its organ- 
 ization until he passed beyond all earth- 
 ly things. He voted on the destiny of 
 No. 500 about 45 years. Mr. Kinnear 
 was one of the go-ahead men of his day. 
 He held the office of sheriff of Warren 
 county for two terms; represented the 
 county in the legislature two terms; was 
 one of the founders of Point Chautau- 
 qua; held the triple position of chairman 
 of the committee on Grand hotel, super- 
 intendent of the grounds of the asso- 
 ciation and treasurer from the time of 
 the starting of this association up 
 to the time of the destruction of the 
 great summer resort by fire. To enumer- 
 ate all the achievements of this public- 
 spirited man for the interest of Youngs- 
 ville would take more space than can be 
 spared. Suffice it to say that he "build- 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 43 
 
 ed better than he knew," for upon the 
 foundation that he laid the liveliest and 
 best town of its size in western Penn- 
 sylvania stands to-day. Mr. Klnnear 
 was president of the Youngsville Sav- 
 ings bank at the time of his death, 22 
 years ago. His picture hangs on the 
 wall of the lodge room and is a smiling 
 reminder of the founder of the second 
 lodge organized in Warren county. The 
 three-story building, constructed of 
 wood, is owned by the lodge, and next 
 year it will be replaced by a fine brick 
 buildin.er of modern design. Toungsville 
 is proud of another man who has been a 
 credit to the place — the Hon. William 
 H. Short, who is 86 years of age and 
 who steps along the streets without the 
 aid of a cane. He has been a man of 
 ability and business, a resident of 
 Toungsville since a boy. He has filled 
 the offices of everything that the bor- 
 ough of Youngsville could bestow upon 
 him, besides being president of Sugar- 
 grove Savings bank for many years. He 
 was one of the directors of the far-famed 
 Chautauqua founded by the great Vin- 
 cent, and, last but not least, Mr. Short 
 has filled the office of United States con- 
 sul to Cardiff, Wales. 
 
 Youngsville lias many excellent busi- 
 ness men of a younger generation, but I 
 am writing of "old-timers" and the 
 younger men must be left out for the 
 present. 
 
 A little incident that came near being 
 a big incident is this: I, in partnership 
 with William Davis, built a boat for 
 the purpose of sending out oil by the 
 barrel to Oil City. When finished we 
 floated it out into the river, preparatory 
 to going to the Hub of Oildom. When 
 we were about to cut loose from Youngs- 
 ville 40 ladies came on board for a ride 
 of three miles to Irvineton. As it was a 
 flat-bottomed boat, with no seating ca- 
 pacity, the ladies were obliged to stand 
 up during their ride. When nearing the 
 Irvineton mill dam, j-our humble ser- 
 vant, who had the distinction of being 
 pilot of the craft, discovered the dis- 
 agreeable fact that the water pouring 
 over the dam was hardly deep enough 
 to run the boat ovfer lengthwise; so, to 
 make sure of not sticking on the high 
 dam, I plied my oar with much vigor 
 until the boat was lengthwise of the 
 dam, thereby catching all the water in 
 the creek, from shore to shore. The 
 boat obeyed the rudder to perfection and 
 the water was found to be deep enough 
 to carry the boat over. But now comes 
 the sequel. The pilot never had this ex- 
 perience before, always finding the water 
 deep enough to run the boat endways. I 
 did not have forethought enough to let 
 the ladies disembark, walk past the 
 dam, then run the light boat over the 
 dam and land, taking them on again and 
 out into the river eddy, but instead 
 
 rushed into danger. The boat alighted 
 on the roaring and swirling water on 
 one edge, coming up nearly full of water. 
 The ladies all stood in water knee-deep, 
 with a chance of the boat sinking any 
 moment. The weight of the ladies caused 
 the boat to sink so deep that an inch 
 more would have let the water pour over 
 the top. One inch more and 40 ladles 
 and ten gentlemen would have been 
 floundering in 16 feet of water. As it 
 was, by order of the pilot, they all stood 
 perfectly still until the water-logged 
 boat, loaded with feminine humanity, 
 slowly floated to more shallow water, 
 where the boatload of fair ones waded 
 ashore and were happily saved. The 
 pilot would have had many lives to an- 
 swer for if that boat had been a trifle 
 more shallow, but "a miss is as good as 
 a mile." 
 
 I never was troubled by ladles asking 
 me for a boat ride, after that trip. Bad 
 management has been the cause of many 
 ships, and many lives being lost. Bad 
 management would have had the same 
 effect in this case, only on a smaller 
 scale. Anil I may as well tell it all 
 when I am about it. I am now living, 
 and have been for many years, in part- 
 nership with the best one of that lot ot 
 ladies. But she has never invited me 
 to take her boat riding since that par- 
 ticular occasion. 
 
 Years ago, when I was at Smethport, 
 Pa., I witnessed the only hanging of my 
 lifetime. The readers of this will no 
 doubt call to mind the taking off by the 
 rope route of Young Tracy, for the 
 murder of his sweetheart. The nighi 
 before the hanging, I spent an hour 
 with W. Ed Marsh, a young lawyer of 
 Corry, Pa., but who had an office in 
 Smethport. The sheriff chanced to call 
 on the young Blackstone. We both 
 tackled him for a ticket admitting us 
 I to the jail, where the hanging was to 
 take place. The sheriff was a very 
 kindly man, and told us that his tickets 
 were all gone — to 12 witnesses, 12 jury- 
 I men, several deputies, about 30 news- 
 paper reporters and a few friends, but 
 i if we would come to the front steps of 
 I the court house at 2 p. m., he would 
 j come and open th'3 door and let us in. 
 [ My only excuse for asking admission 
 j was that I was a correspondent of the 
 1 Titusville Herald, but as P. C. Boyle was 
 the regular traveling oil region corres- 
 pondent for the same paper, and had trav- 
 eled in ahead of me, my chances seemed 
 slim, for a while. Well, 2 v- m. next 
 day found us eagerly awaiting the ap- 
 pearance of the sheriff at the door 
 Ticket holders by the dozen — P. C. Boyle 
 among the number — came rushing along, 
 and handed their pasteboard to the 
 guardian at the door, and passed on to 
 the death chamber. The limb of the 
 law and myself stood on the stone steps 
 
44 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 of the court house, with a battery of 
 3,000 pairs of eyes fixed upon us, acting 
 like a couple of little boys trying In 
 some manner to gain entrance to a 
 show, "without money, and without 
 price." 
 
 The situation seemed to work on Mr. 
 Marsh's nerves and he said, "Let us go. 
 The sheriff has forgotten his promise 
 to us and will not be likely to open this 
 door for us. It is now 10 minutes past 
 2." My answer was: "We have not for- 
 gotten our promise. We are here as 
 agreed upon. If we leave and he comes, 
 we liave broken our promise. Let us do 
 as we agreed. That agreement was to 
 stay at this door until he comes to let 
 us In." Every few minutes my lawyer 
 friend would renew his request and I 
 would get up new arguments why we 
 should stay. After quite a delay the 
 sheriff, true to his word, opened the door 
 and politely escorted us to an advan- 
 tageous standing place near the scaf- 
 fold. We saw a double hanging. Tracy 
 passed within a few feet of us, with a 
 complacent face, and a priest on either 
 side of him, trying to give him spiritual 
 comfort. And, indeed, he did not seem 
 to harbor any fears although death was 
 staring him in the face. He stepped 
 
 boldly onto the scaffold and when the 
 black cap was drawn over his face and 
 the trap was sprung his body shot down 
 tlirough the opening, the rope became 
 untied from his neck, and he fell nearly 
 on his coffin, which sat beneath the scaf- 
 fold. Then he was pushed back through 
 the opening and another rope was ad- 
 justed by ex-Sheriff King and the trap 
 was sprung the second time, and in a 
 few minutes he was pronounced by the 
 physician as dead. It did not require a 
 very long time to get the second rope 
 around his neck, as the sheriff had fore- 
 sight enough to have the second rope, 
 in case the first one would not hold. A 
 professional hangman, of Buffalo, tied 
 the knots on both ropes; one neld and 
 the other did not. Not very complimen- 
 tary to his "profession." When the sec- 
 ond rope was being adjusted Tracy made 
 the remark, "Jesus, Joseph and Mary, 
 save me." I was told by an old citizen 
 of the town that only one man had been 
 hanged in McKean county before this and 
 this man showed exceeding coolness. 
 When he was led onto the scaffold he 
 put one foot on the edge and let his 
 weight on by degrees, before he would 
 trust his whole weight upon it. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 OIL REGION INHABITANTS. 
 
 In writing of "Old Times in Oildom" I 
 have left off until the 24th article what 
 should have come in the first ar- 
 ticle. I have, within the last 31 
 years, organized 475 lodges (158 Good 
 Templar lodges and 317 insurance 
 lodges) in New York, Pennsyl- 
 vania, Ohio, West Virginia and Can- 
 ada. More than half of these lodges were 
 organized in the oil region, and let me 
 say that no better people are found any- 
 where than in the oil towns. The towns 
 are made up. in general, of the best- 
 hearted people in the world. They are 
 intelligent, industrious, kind and good, 
 and a majority are skilled workmen. Go 
 into an oil town and look at a crowd of 
 greasy, dirty men. The crowd is prin- 
 cipally composed of pumpers, drillers, 
 pipe line men, telegraph operators, rig 
 builders and representatives of other oc- 
 cupations. 
 
 Skill of the first order is required. The 
 oil regions are principally made of edu- 
 cated and go-ahead people. The old 
 drones are not apt to dig out, an<l move 
 into, and take up the activities of an oil 
 
 I country life. They leave that life to the 
 1 most energetic of their children. True, 
 I there are people living in oil towns who 
 1 are getting old that commenced an oil 
 j countrj' life many years ago. 'iney were 
 ! young when they took up the business. 
 j As to the men making provision for their 
 families, but few die in the oil region 
 : leaving their families destitute. 
 I Many men die and leave more than 
 enough money to bridge over necessities. 
 j Many belong to several insurance lodges, 
 j It is a common thing to find men carry- 
 ing from $5,000 to $10,000 insurance. Not 
 only the married, but the single men, are 
 j insured. About five years ago I organ- 
 I ized three lodges in succession in But- 
 [ ler county — at West Sunbury, Middle- 
 I town and Butler. While I was at work 
 { in each town a single man was brought 
 j home dead and one mother got $3,000, 
 j another got $5,000, and another got 
 j $1,000. Each young man had named his 
 I mother, with the understanding that if 
 I he should ever get married the benefit 
 certificate could be changed in favor of 
 ' his wife. One of those mothers that I 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 45 
 
 speak of came within a day of losing 
 $3,000. Her son was killed at an oil well 
 just one day before he was to have been 
 married. I write this to show that many 
 young men carry protection. A young 
 man who promises to shield and protect 
 a young wife and then dies and leaves 
 her over a washtub to keep starvation 
 away, is looked upon as failing to do a 
 part of his duty towards a loved one, 
 when he could have protected her by put- 
 ting a few cents into some lodge treas- 
 ury once a month. But I am getting 
 away from what I started out to tell. I 
 wish to say to the readers that although 
 some bad characters inhabit the oil 
 towns, that their number is surprisingly 
 small, considering the heterogeneous 
 crowds which naturally drift into a new 
 oil town from all points of the compass 
 and from nearly all nationalities. It is 
 a remarkable fact that there are towns 
 and towns where there never was a drop 
 of oil found that will outstrip the oil 
 towns, two to one, in all kinds of rascal- 
 ity and meanness. I think I have had 
 ah opportunity to judge of this matter. 
 During my 31 years' rambling over the 
 states mentioned above, I never felt un- 
 safe many times. 
 
 The first time was between Lines- 
 ville, Venango county, Pa., and Eden- 
 burg, Clarion county, Pa., near 30 years 
 ago. It was on a bright, shiny Sabbath 
 morning, that I left Line-sville and took 
 the nearest road for Edenburg. I trav- 
 eled along about two miles, by pleasant 
 farm houses, where all, to a lone trav- 
 eler, looked happy and serene. Birds 
 were singing their best Sunday tunes, 
 and all nature seemed to be at rest. 
 Then came a sudden change. The 
 pretty farms gave way to a dense thick- 
 et of oak and chestnut underbrush. The 
 road led down quite a steep hill, at the 
 foot of which stood an old, very old, 
 two-story log house. Where there had 
 been long ago glass in the window, old 
 hats, and any old thing that could take 
 the place of a light of window glass, 
 did duty in the way of keeping the 
 wind and rain out. Right opposite the 
 old castle was a water trough, with a 
 cool crystal stream of spring water 
 rippling into a horse trough. So inviting 
 did this look to me that, although noi 
 very thirsty, 1 could not pass such a 
 clear, cold stream of water untasted. So 
 I leaned over to the rippling watei-fall 
 and had just absorbed a couble of swal- 
 lows of water, when bedlam seemed to 
 have been let loose across the road in 
 the old house. Although it was the holy 
 Sabbath day, profanity poured forth In 
 its rankest form, and a sound came to 
 my ears resembling pots, kettles, chairs 
 and household furniture in general being 
 hurled through the house. I cut out 
 the water drinking very suddenly, and 
 took a glance across the road, and there 
 
 at a front window sat a man with a long 
 black moustache. He had an expression 
 on his face that was anything but re- 
 as=;uring to me. The man sat with his 
 elbows on the window sill, his face rest- 
 ing on his hands, and his eyes steadily 
 fixed on the lone traveler. I had on my 
 Sunday-go-to-meeting" clothes, a gold 
 watch and chain, and a new handbag. It 
 did not take very long for the following 
 reasoning to slip through my mind: 
 People that would get up a Sunday 
 morning's battle of both words and fists, 
 might take a notion to inspect my pock- 
 ets and handbag. Lodge organizers are 
 very seldom worth robbing. But these 
 people did not know that, and I coula 
 not tell but what they might take a 
 notion into their heads to find out for 
 themselves, so I put a very unconcerned 
 expression on my face, picked up my 
 satchel and started on my way without 
 a parting look or word. The road led 
 up hill from this habitation, in the little 
 narrow valley in the woods, with dense 
 brush on both sides of the road. I ex- 
 pected every moment to see an investi- 
 gating party step from this thick under- 
 brush into the road ahead of me. I did 
 some pretty tall Sunday walking up that 
 mile long hill through the woods. And 
 how glad I was to reach the top of that 
 hill, and see a beautiful farm, and 
 farm house, and hear beautiful strains, 
 of music floating out from a quartette 
 of two brothers and two sisters, accom- 
 panied by an organ! What a transfor- 
 mation—from the valley a mile below, 
 to a mile above. I called at this Chris- 
 tian home, and for an excuse asked for 
 a drink of water. The reader will re- 
 member that I did not finish my last 
 drink. The young people played and 
 sang their best hymns for the benefit 
 of the lone organizer, and after a pleas- 
 ant hour. I resumed my lonely Sunday 
 walk, and reached that busy oil town of 
 Edenburg in due time. I said nothing to 
 my new found friends on the nice farm 
 at the top of the hill about their neigh- 
 bors a mile below, and I am in ignorance 
 to this day as to who, or what kind of 
 a family occupied that old two-story 
 log house in the deep hollow, two miles 
 on the road from Linesville to Edenburg. 
 
 The second rather alarming place that 
 I struck was between FroStburg and 
 Byrom Station, in Forest county. Pa. 
 The distance is a little over a mile, and, 
 like the last woods described, lined by 
 dense underbrush on both sides of the 
 road. When I was nearly half way 
 through this piece of woods I saw at 
 quite a distance ahead a large man come 
 from the brush into the middle of the 
 road and take a good look at me, and 
 then step back out of my sight into the 
 brush. I put my watch and chain into 
 j my inside coat pocket, so that no in- 
 i ducement in that line would be held out, 
 
46 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 if the big fellow turned out to be a rob- 
 ber. I put on as bold a front as could 
 be expected under the circumstances and 
 trudged along. When opposite to the 
 place where I had seen him reconnoiter- 
 ing, I turned my eye around and beheld 
 this giant, with a cowboy moustache, 
 standing in a path about two rods from 
 the main road, looking me square in the 
 eye. As I did not want to form an Inti- 
 mate acquaintance with a stranger 
 adopting those tactics, I did not even 
 pass the time of day with him, and he 
 proved to be as "short on courtesy" as I, 
 so I walked along, not showing any 
 alarm, and, of course, I did not look 
 around to show that I was interested in 
 him, and I never saw him again. He 
 may be there yet, as far as I know. I 
 was perfectly safe all the time, but I did 
 not know it until I was safely out of 
 that luxuriant underbrush. The same 
 God that has guided me in those hun- 
 dreds of strange places was with me 
 then, but, with my dim vision, I could 
 not see this until distance proved it to 
 me. I have often wondered why this 
 last man was there. I have thought that 
 he was evading the officers of the law 
 and was keeping an eye out, but the 
 fact that he remained so near the road, 
 instead of going a little further back, 
 would disprove this theory. Then again, 
 if he was there for the purpose of rob- 
 bery, why did he not pitch into me. 
 
 And now I come to the third fright. 
 About 16 years ago I was walking down 
 the Lake Shore railroad track, between 
 Ashtabula and Ashtabula Harbor. As 
 night came on I overtook four men 
 walking leisurely. As soon as I came 
 up to them and spoke, I made up my 
 mind that they were common tramps. 
 
 My pleasant "good evening" was an- 
 swered in a very surly manner. My 
 fears got the better of me and I quick- 
 ened my gait. There was a deep cut in 
 the road at that place, and the only way 
 to get out of that company was to out- 
 walk the big lubberly fellows and reach 
 a street crossing, where steps could be 
 found leading up to the wagon road. 
 The faster I would walk the faster the 
 tramps would walk. When I reached the 
 wagon road there happened to be two or 
 three teams crossing at that time, and I 
 skipped up the bank and mixed in with 
 the crowd and I was safe from the 
 tramps. Two weeks after that time I 
 read of a gang of tramps killing a man 
 for his money at that identical spot. I 
 really think that this quartette of tramps 
 expected me to travel down the railroad 
 and that they would "go for me." I 
 "showed the white feather," but I would 
 rather show "white feathers" while alive 
 than have an undertaker show black 
 feathers at my funeral. 
 
 Anyhow I think I have proved my 
 original assertion that, after having 
 worked up and organied 475 lodges, over 
 half of them in the oil regions, with 
 only three little "scares" and no real at- 
 tacks, the oil country is not a very 
 dangerous place in which to live. I 
 have a very warm spot in my heart for 
 the oil country and its inhabitants. When 
 I say this, I praise a great many peo- 
 ple, and they are getting more and more 
 numerous every day. Just think of it! 
 From a little spot here in Western 
 Pennsylvania, this business has spread 
 to New York, Ohio, West Virginia, Ken- 
 tucky, Illinois, Texas, Oklahoma, Indian 
 Territory, California and Canada. Truly, 
 oil is a wonderful thing! 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 PICKPOCKETS. 
 
 These articles would not be complete 
 without a mention of my experiences in 
 the pickpocket line. The first greenbacks 
 that I ever saw, when they were first is- 
 sued, were stolen by a light-fingered and 
 low-lived rascal in Pittsburg, Pa. I ,in 
 partnership with Nelson Mead and Hi- 
 ram Belnap, floated a raft to Pittsburg 
 and sold it and received $425 to bind the 
 bargain. My partners trusted me tc 
 carry that package of new and bright 
 bills home, while they agreed to stay 
 until the raft of boards was delivered on 
 the south side, when the balance of tho 
 money would be paid to them. I was 
 obliged to sit in the union depot until 
 
 1:30 a. m. before a train left for up the 
 river. I bought a ticket and took my 
 seat in the waiting room and, like the 
 greenhorn that I was, fell asleep, and 
 waked up when the starting of the train 
 was announced. I took my seat in the 
 coach and when I felt for my pocketbook 
 it had disappeared, together with the 
 $425 of the handsomest paper that I had 
 seen up to that date. I was unsophisti- 
 cated enough to think that possibly the 
 book had fallen into honest hands and I 
 quit the train and returned to my hotel 
 and took one of my partners with me at 
 the break of day to look about the depot. 
 This was a sign of imbecility on my 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 47 
 
 part, but I was not as old then as now. 
 We looked around the depot a short time, 
 but did not find any pocketbook lying 
 around loose filled with brand-new 
 greenbacks. I then went and called on 
 "Bob" Ford, the well known Pittsburg 
 detective. He told me that this kind of 
 business was of almost nightly occur- 
 rence at that depot and that three nights 
 before I called upon him a man had 
 $1,300 stolen. Mr. Ford told me that he 
 offered to pay every dollar stolen from 
 that depot in one year if the city would 
 pay him $1,000, but the cify fathers re- 
 fused and the traveling public was suf- 
 fering in consequences daily. 
 
 I felt a little bit green over this tran- 
 saction and told the partner that went 
 to the depot in the morning to not let 
 the other partner know anything about 
 it and I would stand the loss. I didn't 
 want to tell anyone — not even my wife 
 — until I struck oil. In about two years 
 I struck a little oil and then told the 
 story on myself. 
 
 The second time that I was robbed 
 was at Warren, Pa., at the time of the 
 Cherry Grove excitement when "The 
 Mystery," or "Six Hundred and Forly- 
 Six," was struck. The price of oil depreci- 
 ated at this time to such an extent that 
 small operators suffered greatly. If the 
 Standard Oil Company had never done 
 anything but steady the price, and stop 
 such fluctuations, tlie Standard would 
 have proved a godsend to the country. 
 Well, as I was saying, a great rush was 
 caused by this strike. Warren was full 
 of all kinds of people, with a sprinkling 
 of pickpockets to boot. And as I stepped 
 on a P. & E. train at Warren in a great 
 jam and took my seat in a coach I 
 missed my pocketbook. When I missed 
 that I immediately felt for my watch 
 and was really surprised to find it in my 
 vest pocket untouched. However, pick- 
 pockets at that time generally let time- 
 pieces alone for they were much more 
 easily identified than the money. I had 
 one satsfaction in this. I had only about 
 $10 to lose that time, although it did 
 happen that I lost some valuable papers. 
 The third call by this class of visitors 
 was in my own town of Youngsville. I 
 T\-as returning from attending Buffalo 
 Bill's Wild West show. There was a 
 gang of those miserable blots on the 
 face of the earth following Buffalo Bill's 
 Wild West show at that trip and two of 
 them took the same train west on the 
 P. & E. road that I did. In getting off 
 the train I was considerably crowded by 
 two young, good-looking men, who pre- 
 tended to be in a great hurry to get to 
 vacant seats. They were crowding from 
 both sides of the aisle. I thought that 
 I recognized them as pickpockets and as 
 I stepped out of the coach door I felt 
 for my pocketbook, but, as I expected, 
 it was not there. I stepped off the train 
 
 and told the conductor that he had pick- 
 pockets on board his train. He asked me 
 if I could point them out to him. I told 
 him that I could not, as they were lost 
 in the crowd, and consequently they es- 
 caped arrest. But this time the joke was 
 on the thieves, as they got only about 
 $2 — hardly worth the risk. I suppose 
 tlie rascals must have let off some cuss- 
 words when they opened that book. But 
 I was inconvenienced somewhat by the 
 loss of papers which could do the thieves 
 no good. 
 
 Three days after this I attended the 
 grand lodge I. O. O. F., of New York 
 state, at Jamestown. In the afternoon a 
 little party concluded to take a ride on 
 the lake, and as I thought I might not 
 have money enough to carry me through, 
 I asked a friend if he had $5 that he 
 would not need until he reached 
 YoungsvUle. He answered, "I don't 
 know, but will look." I said: "Don't 
 look at your money in this crowd. 
 There may be pickpockets here — go into 
 the writing room." He complied with 
 my request and soon came back with 
 the remark, "Yes, I can let you have 
 it." I stepped into the writing room ot 
 the Sherman house, and wrote a check 
 for five dollars, came right out into 
 the public room, handed my friend the 
 check and he handed me the money, in 
 the presence of a hundred men. I put 
 the money in my book, and — reader — 
 give a guess as to the length of time 
 that I had possession of that money. 
 Being well aware that you will make the 
 time too long, I'll tell you — just about 
 three minutes. A street car came to 
 the door of (he hotel, and our party 
 rushed for seats. A party of New York 
 pickpockets also rushed for seats, or 
 pretended to, and my pocketbook. They 
 got the book, but not the seats. They 
 preferred to stay in Jamestown, and ptck 
 up other easy marks, like myself. I was 
 quite certain — before I got into the 
 car — by the actions of this crowd of 
 New York city excursionists — that they 
 belonged to the fraternity that always 
 had a liking for me, and I found my 
 prognostications to be correct when 1 
 felt for my pocketbook and found that 
 it had very recently changed owners. 
 When I made my predicament known a 
 friend loaned me a sufficiency of cash to 
 enable me to stick to my 
 crowd of "Brother Odd Fellows" 
 until my arrival in Youngsville. 
 And let me say, that although 
 sixteen years have come and gone, 
 I have not lost a pocketbook since that 
 time, for the good reason that I have 
 not had a book in my pockets since. I 
 don't know how many times those mean- 
 est of things in the shape of men have 
 had their hands in my pockets since the 
 Jamestown donation, but I do know that 
 they have gone without their regular 
 
"48 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 meals if they depended on me to pay 
 their bills. It is a little more safe to 
 keep your money in bank, and All blank 
 checks when you wish to use it than to 
 carry your money in your pockets. 
 
 This reminds me of a funny little in- 
 cident. Away up in the mountains of 
 the "Mountain State," "West Virginia, I 
 gave a check for 75 cents on the Toungs- 
 ville Savings bank, 400 miles away, to a 
 hotel man in payment of my hotel bill. 
 I happened that way again six months 
 afterwards. He was still the owner of 
 the check. He said it was too small an 
 amount to send to his bank. I remained 
 under his hospitable roof on this second 
 
 visit until my check was large enough 
 for him to "bother with," but I am not 
 taking any chances with pickpockets. I 
 cannot account for the fact that I am 
 "a shining mark" for this class of mis- 
 creants that I have mentioned, when my 
 neighbors all escape. I know I have 
 reached the point of intense hatred of the 
 people who make their living that way. 
 They have nothing to lose and every- 
 thing to gain. They don't risk one cent. 
 It is all income and no outgo. Nothing 
 would please me more than to see the 
 whole crowd — no, I could not see them 
 all at the same time, there are too many 
 of them — hanging by their necks. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 OLD TIME LUMBERMEN, 
 
 In writing this chapter there comes to 
 my mind old rafting times. Years ago, 
 when I was a pilot of lumber rafts on the 
 .Allegheny and Ohio rivers, when the 
 spring flood came, us young fellowg, 
 and many of the old fellows, w"ould be- 
 gin to look around for work at rafting. 
 Even before the water came, deep 
 enough for rafts, we would begin to 
 build our "creek pieces" on the ice at 
 the mills. We had no steam mills then. 
 Vi^ater power made all the lumber then. 
 The logs were hauled to the streams, 
 for the sawing into boards. And oh! 
 what boards. The logs were rolled on 
 to carriages, and set to the right thick- 
 ness with crowbars — by guess. Some- 
 tirhes a board would be a quarter 
 or a half inch thicker at one end 
 than at the other end. The saw was 
 hung in a sash, made for one single saw, 
 and played up and down with an un- 
 certain speed, owing to the height of 
 the water in the dam above the mill. 
 And after a log had a slab taken off of 
 both sides — sometimes a board or two 
 would be sawed, thus flattening a log. 
 These boards would be piled on the flat 
 side of the log, to be edged. The saw- 
 yer would sit on these boards in front of 
 the saw .and as tlie saw would near him 
 he would hitch away from it, but must 
 keep his weight upon the boards, to 
 keep them down, so that a single saw 
 could do its double duty of sawing the 
 board under and edging the board on 
 top ,at one and the same lime. AVhen 1 
 was a young, green millhand I came the 
 nearest to passing into the life beyond 
 I ever did, through this very method of 
 edging boards. I was sitting in front of 
 the saw, hitching away at intervals. The 
 skirt of my coat dragging behind, I, like 
 
 the fool boy that I was, took a notion 
 that I would let the saw clip a little 
 iiotch in my coat, so I let the saw creep 
 up to it. But instead of clipping a lit- 
 tle notch, the coat was jerked down into 
 the log with such violence that the 
 skirt was nearly torn off, with a dozen 
 holes in it. As the saw came up out of 
 the log for another stroke I jumped 
 with the agility of a cat, or any other 
 smart animal. If not for that quick 
 motion I would have been mincemeat in 
 a second. I never again tried such an 
 experiement. But to the subject: 
 
 When the snow melted and raised the 
 creek to a rafting stage then the fun 
 began. The Brokenstraw creek would be 
 full of rafts passing through Youngs- 
 ville from morning until night. One 
 might stand on the bridge spanning tlie 
 Brokenstraw creek all day long and not 
 be out of sight of a floating raft, either 
 up the creek, down the creek or pass- 
 ing through town. At that time saw- 
 mills were strung along the creek from 
 Irvineton to the headwaters in Chau- 
 tauqua county, N. Y. And as no rail- 
 road was even contemplated all the lum- 
 ber was floated. Even the tributaries, 
 little Brokenstraw, Garland, Spring 
 creek and Hare creek, put out their 
 share of this lumber. But the show 
 came when these hundreds of "creek 
 pieces" were landed in the Brokenstraw 
 eddy. They must be coupled up prep- 
 aratory to starting for Pittsburg. At 
 times the Brokenstraw eddy was not 
 large enough and a share of the coupling 
 up into river rafts of about a dozen creek 
 rafts, put into one river raft, went to 
 Dunn's eddy and to Thompson's eddy. It 
 required a considerable fishing and fig- 
 uring for each of perhaps 50 owners to 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 49 
 
 get their different creek pieces out of 
 the general mixup and coupled into river 
 rafts. Well, I guess there was a hurry- 
 ing time among the men that did this 
 work when water was falling in the 
 river. Men have been known to work 
 all night with only the light of pitch 
 piiie knots. No electric, gas or acetylene 
 lights were even dreamed of those days. 
 And when the "Allegheny fleets" were 
 all coupled up a shanty was built of 
 boards, a stove put in and some hard 
 "bunks" for the "hands" to sleep in. A 
 supply of salt pork, potatoes and bread 
 was put aboard and the raft was ready 
 to "pull out." The pilot would say "Left 
 Forward" and the fleet would be pro- 
 pelled from the shore where it has been 
 tied by a long cable since the work of 
 "coupling up" commenced by the most 
 willing set of workers that ever left 
 friends and foes behind for an outing 
 down the river to Pittsburg, Wheeling. 
 Cincinnati, Louisville and many times to 
 the falls of the Ohio river and New 
 Orleans. Those robust raftsmen were 
 the most jovial, rollicking fellows to be 
 met with anywhere. None but the stout- 
 est men undertook that work. It re- 
 quired being out of doors in all kinds of 
 weather. The men had to be near their 
 oars every moment as when the pilot 
 gave orders to right or left each oar was 
 expected to be dipped in tlie next few 
 seconds. Rain, snow and sometimes a 
 mixture of both had to be endured. 
 Weakly consumptive fellows were very 
 seldom seen on a raft. Only young men 
 full of warm blood and deviltry were 
 right at home on a raft in the old times. 
 These latter named would pull into a 
 river eddy in any kind of a storm, take 
 their hurried meal and after all kinds 
 of jokes and pranks would crawl into 
 the bunks filled with straw, with their 
 clothes on, and sometnifs frozen stiff, 
 lie down, spoon fashion, go to sleep, and 
 not wake up until the break of day 
 when the pilot would jump out and yell 
 "Tie Loose." In about a minute the raft 
 would be gently floating towards the 
 "Smoky City." If those early pioneers 
 had been obliged to adjust their cuffs, 
 collars, neckties and see that the seams 
 in their pants had the desired appear- 
 ance it would have taken more than one 
 minute to get afloat each morning. And 
 air would be filled with cusswords. The 
 pilots, in general, were men who used 
 steamboat language when they got in a 
 hurry. And the wages for hard work and 
 fare, we, "the hands," got the magnifi- 
 cent sum of $10 a trip and pay our own 
 way back. 
 
 If a man walked back home he couid 
 clear $1 a day, if he did not "tie up" for 
 high water or walk too slow in coming 
 back. The average walker would clear 
 about $1 a day if he was a total abstain- 
 er. If not, he would fall short, as those 
 
 who indulge in strong drink will testify 
 to, even at the present time. Since the 
 world began strong drink has been a 
 great absorber of money, and the sad- 
 dest of all sad things is that all the 
 money spent for strong drink vanished 
 into the air. No good ever came from it 
 — all bad, bad, and no good. Since Adam 
 and Eve's time it has a poor record. If 
 our legislators would wait before pass- 
 ing laws to protect the sale of intoxi- 
 cating liquors until they see any benefit 
 derived from a drink of whiskey, taken 
 as a beverage, they never would pass 
 another law of that kind until doomsday. 
 And now arises the question, Why can- 
 not our lawmakers make good laws just 
 as easy as bad laws? No doubt but 
 what the people, 100 hundred years 
 hence, will look back upon us and call 
 us barbarians for making laws for the 
 protection of the greatest evil on the 
 face of God's green earth. I said the 
 greatest evil; I'll make it stronger — I'll 
 say it outweighs all other evils com- 
 bined. It is time that the north quits 
 looking down upon the south. We ought 
 to begin to look up to them on the tem- 
 perance question. Why, God bless them! 
 they are nearly half prohibition now, 
 and If Pennsylvania and New Jersey 
 don't wake up soon the south will be all 
 prohibition before they begin the good 
 work. 
 
 Now I'll come back to my subject 
 again. When those footsore travelers 
 got back to their homes along the upper 
 waters of the Allegheny river a large 
 majority would swear off going down the 
 river on a raft again. But when the 
 next "rafting fresh" came there would 
 be more begging for trips down the river 
 than could be used. And now, about the 
 price of lumber. Good pine boards have 
 been sold in Pittsburg for $4 per thous- 
 and feet and nearly a fourth of it "clear 
 stuff." Compare this price with the 
 present price and you are almost stag- 
 gered. The same quality of lumber 
 to-day would bring eight times as much 
 in the same market. 
 
 Among the old-time lumbermen in 
 Warren county, was "Joe" Hall, L. F. 
 Watson, Boom Mead, Erastus Barnes, 
 Orris Kail, Guy Irvine, John McKinney, 
 James McKinney, Eben Mead, John 
 Mead, J. C. and D. Mead, John Garner, 
 Aniasa Ransom, James Durlin, John 
 Durlin, Robert Andrews, Dr. Wm. A. Ir- 
 vine, Samuel Granclin, H. P. Kinnear, a 
 Mr. Funk. .Joseph Green, James Eddy, 
 Charles Whitney, J. B. Phillips, Alonzo 
 Patch, Joseph Mead, Hardin Hazeltine, 
 William Siggins, Daniel Horn, William 
 Demming, Alden Marsh, James Donald- 
 son, Sterling Holcomb, John Brown, 
 William White, William Freese, Philip 
 Mead, L. B. Wood, Chapin Hall, and 
 many more that I could name. In fact, 
 there were more lumbermen than farm- 
 
50 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 ers. Farming was not the picnic those 
 days tliat it is now. Wliere farms were 
 cleared up the stumps were compara- 
 tively green. The trees had been but 
 recently cut, and the stumps were green 
 with tough roots, extending out in all di- 
 rections, a rod or two, making anything 
 but pleasant work in ploughing and 
 making land ready for the crops. The 
 main crops were hay, oats, corn, wheat, 
 potatoes, rye and buckwheat. What a 
 difference between now and then. Now 
 the most of the stumps are rotted, or 
 pulled out with a machine I Many of 
 the fences were made of pine stumps. 
 
 These fences were not beautiful to 
 look at. but they were very durable. The 
 pine roots were filled with pitch, and 
 never would rot. A few of these fences 
 can be seen at the present time scat- 
 tered over the country. If these fences 
 had not gone out of fashion, they would 
 
 be here yet, sound and in good order. 
 But a new-fangled way of farming 
 sprang up and no fences, or but a few, 
 are needed. In the early days, cattle, 
 sheep and horses ran all over the coun- 
 try at random, where now the farmers 
 only make fences around their pasture 
 fields and keep all their stock shut in, 
 so that few fences are found in the 
 country, and where boards and rails 
 were used tlien, now posts and wire are 
 used. 
 
 When I finished writing the names of 
 the old time lumbermen the thought 
 struck me that I would look over the 
 list and see how many of those old time 
 lumbermen were alive to-day. And, dear 
 reader, how many do you think are alive 
 out of the 40 named? To my utter sur- 
 prise, I found not one alive. Now, do 
 you believe that I am writing of "old 
 timers?" 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 NEW TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 This article begins witli what might be 
 named "New Times in Oildom," as it is 
 a mention of the latest in oil in Youngs- 
 ville. Recently a Pittsburg company 
 commenced drilling a well in this row 
 of small wells below Youngsville, or on 
 the very edge of the borough. And a 
 w^ell a little farther west of that will 
 be put down in the town by local parties 
 and another four miles north of town 
 will be put down by a foreign company. 
 This seems like a revival of the oil busi- 
 ness here, two commenced and two talked 
 of. If it can be arranged to hitch the 
 two dozen wells that have been drilled 
 in Youngsville and vicinity together and 
 run them with one power the produc- 
 tion would pay nicely. If oil ever gets 
 scarce, and rises in price, Youngsville 
 will be an oil town. If all the wells put 
 down in Youngsville and vicinity, say a 
 distance of three miles in diameter, were 
 hitched together it would make a nice 
 thing for the owner or owners. Of course 
 it would not be a big income, but it would 
 help some. 
 
 I will mention a change in the oil 
 business in our nearby neighbor. Gar- 
 land, seven miles west of Youngsville. 
 Before the pipe line days, the oil came 
 from Enterprise, Pleasantville and that 
 section of the country by teams and 
 wagons to Garland, and there the P. & 
 E. railroad was reached and the oil was 
 loaded on the cars for market. It came 
 in barrels. Six or eight barrels made a 
 wagon load, according to the size of the 
 
 team. Eight barrels were a heavy tug 
 for even the stoutest of teams. The 
 roads were anything but smooth when 
 the oil business struck the country. But 
 when this array of teams began their 
 tramping of the mud. a motar bed was 
 soon formed that was something awful 
 to behold and much more awful to navi- 
 gate. When this mud became frozen, 
 but still not quite hard enough to hold a 
 horse's weight and not quite soft enough 
 for ea = y wading, it was killing on the 
 poor brutes, and not easy on the drivers. 
 I, one day, met "Bob" McMillen, of Gar- 
 land, driving a big "team of grays" with 
 an eight-barrel load. "Bob's" face looked 
 as though it had been through a thresh- 
 ing machine. In crossing one of those 
 corduroy bridges, he had been to-sed 
 from his slippery seat on an oil barrel, 
 alighting face downward on a rock. He 
 was a sight, but he kept his place in 
 that long line of teams until he reached 
 the railroad and also helped unload his 
 wagon. Garland was a lively little town 
 in those days. A heavy lumber business 
 was carried on. 
 
 The D., A. v. & P. was not built then 
 and the P. & E. had all the railroad bus- 
 iness. Garland is not as large as it was 
 at that time, but is a town more solid 
 and permanent. The people have to a 
 large extent pursued farming and depend 
 on agriculture. Oil may come and oil 
 may go, lumber may come and lumber 
 may go, but the good soil will always 
 be with them. Garland has soil that is 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 SI 
 
 rather above the average Warren county 
 soil and the inhabitants are of the thrifty 
 kind, and they will not starve. The 
 writer was a citizen of that town when 
 he first began attending school and will 
 make a mention of the first and only 
 punishment that he ever received at any 
 school. This was the way of it: An 
 old Scotchman was the teacher. His 
 rules were ironclad. One day when he 
 "let the boys go out," one boy — a sort of 
 an Ananias — said the schoolmaster asked 
 him "to tell the other boys" to wade in- 
 to the "West Run," a nice little stream 
 that invitingly passed close to the 
 schol house, and wash their feet. All at- 
 tended school barefooted in those days, 
 and, of course, our feet could bear con- 
 siderable washing, and then not be any 
 too clean. Well, believing this to be a 
 reasonable request, we all pitched in, do- 
 ing some lively kicking and splashing. 
 When we were called in the teacher soon 
 took a look at our drabbled pants. He 
 called us out on the floor and lined us up 
 in a row. Then he took his ferule — a 
 great wide ruler — and grabbed each boy 
 in rotation by the fingers, holding the 
 palm of the hand upward. He then gave 
 each one five heavy strokes, applying his 
 whole pedagogical strength. That long, 
 wide and heavy ferule had its effect on 
 that line of a dozen boys in different 
 ways. Some would quietly cry, some 
 would cry with a loud voice, some would 
 smile, and others hop and yell. I took 
 my medicine with quiet heroism. The 
 old bachelor teacher then permitted us 
 to take our seats, and we put in the rest 
 of the afternoon in considerable unhap- 
 pineps, caused by wet pants and tingling 
 fingers. And thus ended my first and only 
 punishment, brought on by my faith in 
 our Ananias. 
 
 Before leaving the subject of this 
 school house I wish to enlighten the 
 present generation in regard to pioneer 
 Sunday schools. My first Sunday school 
 training was in this old Garland school 
 house. The services consisted princi-, 
 pally of committing Bible verses to mem- 
 ory and reciting them to the teacher of 
 tlie class. We had no leaflets, gotten 
 out by the best Bible schools of the age, 
 as we have now. The exercises were in- 
 deed crude. But we worked the best we 
 could considering the tools we had to 
 work with. The class that I belonged to 
 had a scolar, a boy by the name of Da- 
 vid Moore. He had a good memory, but 
 I had conceit enough about me to think 
 that I could equal if not exceed him in 
 that line. Well, I bantered him for a 
 test. We agreed each to do our best for 
 one week and, for our own enlighten- 
 ment, find out which could to commit to 
 memory the largest number of verses 
 anS recite to our teacher at the end of 
 the week. The result was: Moore, 145; 
 
 and Brown, 105. David died many years 
 ago after living an exemplary. Christian 
 life. 
 
 And now, before I leave this old school- 
 house, let me tell a litle fish story: I 
 fished for the beautiful and palatable 
 speckled trout in the streams about Gar- 
 land in those long ago days that I have 
 been talking about. One day not satis- 
 fied with the Garland fishing streams I 
 hied me away a couple of miles to 
 "Blueye" and fished all day, and failed 
 to get a nibble at the hook. When on 
 my way home I stopped on a bridge, 
 right in front of the old schoolhouse, 
 and as I had quite often discovered an 
 immense trout, lying quietly in quite 
 deep water, under this bridge, I took a 
 peep through the cracks of the floor of 
 the bridge, and there lay the big speckled 
 trout. I immediately set myself about 
 preparationes for his capture. I took my 
 hook and line from my pocket, tied the 
 line to a long stick, dug up a fish worm 
 from the ground nearby, baited the hook 
 with the worm, and slipped up noiseless- 
 ly, and dropped the bait down through 
 a convenient crack in the bridge, and 
 watched the result. The bait landed on 
 the gravel, on the bottom of the stream, 
 about 10 inches in front of the trout's 
 nose. I watched a moment, but no mo- 
 tion of the fish. Just as I had made up 
 my mind that the big fish was not 
 hungry I noticed a very slight motion 
 of its tail, but the movement was al- 
 most as a lightning flash. He grabbed 
 that bait on the run. and started for his 
 hiding place under the edge of the bank. 
 However, his rapid movement was stop- 
 ped by my long stick and line. The re- 
 sult was I pulled a trout up through 
 that bridge that weighed a little over 
 two pounds. This convinced me that 
 fishing at home was better than two 
 miles away in Blueye creek. This was 
 the largest specked trout that I ever 
 saw. except one. My brother and I were 
 fishing in a mill pond, about 50 rods 
 from the bridge that is spoken of above, 
 about one month after this, and he 
 pulled a speckled trout to just above 
 the surface of the water and not being 
 able to bring it ashore let it sink back 
 into the water again. Being older, and a 
 little stronger. I grabbed his pole, and 
 swung the fish to land. That one weighed 
 over two pounds and a half. Garland had 
 big speckled trout 65 years ago. 
 
 A recent fiood in the Brokenstraw 
 creek reminded me of the old fellows of 
 the rafting times which have passed 
 away, when we had no railroads to car- 
 ry the lumber. Such a freshet in the 
 creek would have brought joy to the 
 hearts of all the young men of the vicin- 
 ity, for rafts would be running lively. 
 j Think of the changes! When I piloted 
 j my first raft on the Brokenstraw creek 
 
52 
 
 OLD TIMES INOILDOM. 
 
 there was not a railroad in the United i 
 States. When the P. & E. road was built ! 
 throug-h Youngsville many people had 
 never heard a locomotive whistle. One 
 man played a great joke on himself. ' 
 When he heard the whistle of the old 
 Ohio locomotive, "Zenia," the construc- 
 tion engine, he seized his gun and ' 
 started for town, about a mile distant, I 
 with the intention of killing what he | 
 thought was a panther. 
 
 The locomotive "Zenia," spoken of 
 above, was brought from some Ohio rail- 
 road to haul the material for building 
 the western division of the Philadelphia 
 & Erie railroad. "Dick" Poor was the en- 
 gineer and "Jim" Horigan was the con- 
 ductor of the construction train. Scott 
 Patten and William, his brother, were 
 the contractors. Robert Beveridge, af- 
 terwards cashier of an Oil City bank, 
 who died recently, was the store clerk. 
 
 The people of this section were unani- 
 mous in thinking all those named were 
 great men. They were bringing a rail- 
 road into our isolated country. When 
 the old locomotive would leave Youngs- 
 ville for Corry after supplies, it would 
 often be filled with women and men, 
 anxious to have a ride on something pro- 
 pelled by steam. The crowd would be 
 so dense that it was with much diffi- 
 culty that the fireman could shovel his 
 coal. And "Dick" Poor, a big fat man, 
 would share a seat at the lever with 
 any of his free passengers. He was the 
 very embodiment of good humor. In 
 fact no one who wanted a ride on the old 
 locomotive was turned away as long as 
 there was room to sandwich in one more. 
 Everybody in those days carried high 
 heads and their faces almost said the 
 words, "We are going to have a rail- 
 road." 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 OLD TIME OIL TANKS. 
 
 This article will begin with a 
 few remarks on tank building be- 
 fore it became a science. The first 
 oil tanks that came under my ob- 
 servation were on the ".Jim" Tar farm. 
 And, Oh! what tanks they were! Per- 
 haps a dozen or 15 were constructed at 
 the Phillips well. They occupied all the 
 little narrow strip of flat land that lay 
 between the well and Oil Creek. They 
 were made of pine plank. A hole was 
 dug into the ground about eight or ten 
 feet deep, the diameter varying some- 
 where from eight to 12 feet. The top 
 of the tanks were just even with the 
 ground, being covered over with pine 
 planks to prevent pedestrians from walk- 
 ing into them at night. The few old 
 operators who saw this kind of storage 
 will bear me out in saying that there 
 was a frightful amount of money in 
 wastage. Oil wa-^; selling at from $8 to 
 $14 a barrel, while the old Phillips well 
 was gushing out hundreds of barrels a 
 day, and the leakage from those home- 
 made tanks ran into thousands and thou- 
 sands of dollars. And it would make a 
 young operator of the present day laugh. 
 or cry, to see the owners getting oil into 
 and out of those tanks. A three-cornered 
 trough was made of boards an inch 
 thick, but any width that came handy, 
 and the oil that did not escape through 
 the cracks and holes in those crude lit- 
 tle conveyors ran in great streams from 
 i-.e well to those things called tanks. 
 And when a "pond fresh" would come 
 
 down the creek, away the greasy fluid 
 would go to the Allegheny river in a 
 "bulk boat," which means an open boat, 
 previously filled .jy pumping the oil with 
 a dandy looking pump from the tank to 
 the boat through the wooden pipe. It 
 was not many moons, however, before 
 improvements began to appear in the 
 tank line. The late Frank Tarbell, of 
 Rouseville, soon began to manufacture a 
 wooden tank that could be set up above 
 ground. And soon after iron pipes were 
 used in the running of the oil in and 
 out of the tanks. Mr. Tarbell, aside from 
 his tank business, ran the only lumber 
 yard at Rouseville. In addition to all 
 this, he put down a few oil wells and 
 found no dry holes. I had the pleasure 
 of supplying the lumber for his yard 
 and tank busines=!, and will say right 
 here that in my long life I never dealt 
 with a more honest and upright man. 
 Nearly everybody has heard of Ida Tar- 
 bell. At the time I speak of, she was a 
 bright and lively school girl of 16. My 
 wife and Ida were good friends. The 
 young girl made visits at our home 
 lasting several weeks. She was a fine 
 piano player and a very pleasant visitor. 
 At that time she had never thought of 
 becoming an authoress of national re- 
 pute. The Tarbell family become resi- 
 dents, in after years, of Titusville, where 
 Frank was a leader in the Methodist 
 Episcopal church and in the up-building 
 of the city in general. He continued in 
 the oil business and other activities of 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 53 
 
 life up to the time of his death not long 
 ago. 
 
 I wish to make a few remarks con- 
 cerning a very important part of the oil 
 trade, showing that the present times 
 are better than "Old Times in Oildom." 
 I'll speak of the matter of leasing oil 
 lands. There is not much said about 
 land sharks nowadays. But in those old 
 times was there not "wailing and gnash- 
 ing of teeth?" Sharpers soon laid plans 
 to catch the unwary farmers, and they 
 worked their games for all they were 
 worth. To prove this I will give one case 
 which is but one of many. I called upon 
 a man of 80 years in McKean county. 
 I found him sitting on a chair on his 
 porch, churning butter in the old fash- 
 ioned way, moving a "dasher" up and 
 down. He was the picture of despair. 
 This is his story, given to me as he pro- 
 pelled that churn dasher: "I own a 100- 
 acre farm that is without doubt one of 
 the best oil farms in McKean county. 
 But I am one of the most poverty strick- 
 en men in this county. I leased my farm 
 to an oil company before I had given the 
 subject any thought. I went into writ- 
 ings with this company blindly. The 
 conditions of the lease were that the 
 company was to put down one well with- 
 in one year. They fulfilled their part of 
 the agreement. The well went down, but 
 when near the oil they spoiled the well. 
 They filled it about half full of sand and 
 worked and fussed with it a few days 
 and pronounced it a failure. And that 
 is the shape of things at present. Good 
 wells are being struck all around my 
 farm, but I am a poverty stricken man. 
 The offer is so low that it is an insult 
 to me. They know my situation and 
 think that I will be obliged to accept 
 their offer. Their offer Is so small that 
 it would not help my family much when 
 I drop off and I never will accept It. I 
 cannot force them to clean out this well 
 or put another down. They have ful- 
 filled their contract. And I am in an 
 awful shape. I am 80 years old and I 
 have the consumption and I have 30 
 acres of hay to cut, and not one dollar 
 to hire men to do the work. And I can- 
 not do a thing except the very lightest 
 of work. I would be a rich man to-day 
 if not for these land sharks, but as it 
 now stands I am one of the poorest men 
 in this country. There ought to be a 
 law to hang such men as these men, who 
 took advantage of my ignorance. I don't 
 know what I will do." 
 
 Thus ended my visit with the old 
 gentleman and I left him looking the 
 very exemplification of despair. A few 
 months after that I saw the announce- 
 ment in a paper of his death. Although 
 really in the midst of wealth he died a 
 poor man. But what a change has taken 
 place in the last 25 years! We hear of 
 
 few such complaints now. This leasing 
 business has become a settled, honest 
 business. Nearly all farmers are fully 
 posted in this leasing business and 
 at times they get the best of the oil man. 
 As a general thing it now becomes a 
 square deal between the farmer and the 
 oil man. Both know their business, and 
 there is a kind of sameness in the con- 
 tracts, which leaves both parties satisfied. 
 All pioneer operators well know that 
 the rough and tumble way of doing 
 business at the beginning has now 
 been systematized. This is the age of 
 progress. Any man of my age can look 
 back and see changes that could not be 
 described in a book as big as a barn. I 
 have often thought that I would like 
 to look back upon this old world 100 
 years from now, and see how people 
 would be doing things. If such strides 
 in new inventions are made in the next 
 100 years as have been made in the last 
 100 years, what will this world look like? 
 Perhaps the spirits of the dead can look 
 back. The way things have been going 
 I for the last few years a man cannot con- 
 sistently doubt anything. A few years 
 I ago if I had told people that two men 
 could stand 3,000 miles apart and carry 
 I on a conversation with each other over 
 1 a wire, or that men could converse with 
 I each other, standing hundreds of miles 
 I apart, with no wire, I would have been 
 ' pronounced a fit subject for an insane 
 asylum. Oh, how will it be 100 years 
 hence? 
 
 I have just thought of a strange hap- 
 pening in my life, which is worthy of 
 mentioning. The two extremes of heat 
 and cold came to me at Conneaut Lake, 
 Crawford county, Pa About 26 years 
 ago I was in the temperance work, or- 
 ganizing Good Templar lodges. I struck 
 the lake about the middle of the after- 
 noon, on a fearful cold day. The first 
 call I made was on the postmaster. I 
 found in him a strong temperance man. 
 He put his name and the names of mem- 
 bers of his family on my lists for ap- 
 plication for membership, and invited 
 me to take supper with him, which I 
 did. It was the regular meeting night 
 of the A. O. U. W. Being a member of 
 thut order I attended their meeting, en- 
 gaged the use of their hall and organized 
 a lodge the same night. The postmaster 
 and family did not come to the meeting. 
 After the organization was completed I 
 went to the only hotel in town. I 
 walked into the office, traveling bag in 
 hand. A lot of men sat around, and 
 no one made a noise. I inquired for the 
 landlord. A big fat fellow clapped hla 
 hand on his breast, and said: "Here he 
 
 IS, this big fat fellow." I asked for ac- 
 commodations. He said the rooms were 
 occupied. Said he, "Some of the beds 
 have but one man in them, but they 
 
54 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 don't like to double up." I a.sked him if 
 there was any other place that a man 
 could get shelter at that time of night, 
 11 p. m. He directed me to "a boarding 
 house down on the edge of the lake, the 
 <ast house at the end of the sidewaiK. 
 I started out in the zero weather and 
 pitch dark — no street lamps at that 
 time. I got to the end of the walk, and 
 found quite a large boarding house. I 
 pounded on the front door, but got no 
 response. I pounded again, with re- 
 newed vigor. Same result. Then I tried 
 my lung power — for all it was worth, 
 but it was just as valuable as the 
 pounding. Finally I was obliged to give 
 it up as a bad iob. The next day 1 
 learned that the ov/ner of the boarding 
 house was a deaf woman, that could not 
 hear me, and her helper was a foolish 
 son. Between the two it was an impos- 
 sibility for a belated stranger to gain 
 admittance to that boarding house at 11 
 p. m. I then retraced my steps up town. 
 I felt somewhat lonely, as everybody in 
 town was in bed and asleep, except the 
 lone stranger. 
 
 My next move was to rouse a doctor — 
 one I had initiated that night into the 
 I. O. G. T. lodge — from his slumbers. 
 In response to my knock at his door, he 
 appeared. I then told him my situation; 
 that I had been turned away from the 
 licensed hotel because I had organized a 
 society that night which would work 
 against his liquor trade, and that I could 
 not get into the boarding house. The 
 doctor was a good natured and well- 
 meaning individual, but he said he had 
 visitors and could not find room for me. 
 He advised me to go to another of my 
 Good Templar members. The doctor 
 gave me verbal directions. Those di- 
 rections were such that no one but an 
 expert tramp organizer could follow 
 them successfully. I failed as an ex- 
 pert. I was told to go down street a 
 little way, then cross a street, then up 
 a street, with several turns, and stop at 
 the third house on the left. I undertook 
 the job of finding this brother, as I had 
 nothing else before me to do. It was 
 not an easy task — looking for a strange 
 house in a strange town and as dark as 
 a stack of black cats, and zero weather 
 at that. After I had turned as many cor- 
 ners as I thought would fill the bill and 
 counted, in my mind, as many houses as 
 the doctor had told me to — it really was 
 so dark that I could not see a house — I 
 walked up to a house that felt like the 
 one that I was in search of, and rang 
 the bell. I found it by sense of feeling 
 and not by seeing. A man came to the 
 door — I was at the wrong house, of 
 course — and scolded out the directions 
 so plainly that there was no misunder- 
 standing them. 
 
 The next hunt brought me to the hos 
 
 Good Templar. I laid my case before 
 him in as mild language as I could com- 
 mand. His answer was, "We are in just 
 as bad shape as the doctor. We have 
 visitors and could not make room for 
 you." By this time I had crowded my- 
 self into his house and shut the door to 
 keep out the zero air. I told my Dear 
 Brother that as it was my first night in 
 Evansburg — the town was plain Evans- 
 burg then; it was before it became a 
 noted summer resort — I would not care 
 to stay out of doors, considering the 
 temperature. By this time I had become 
 almost saucy — perhaps desperate would 
 be the better word. I cast iny shivering 
 eyes around the room and beheld a cold 
 wood stove setting there with two sticks 
 of green wood lying near it and a lounge 
 sitting near it also. I said, "Is there any 
 fire in that stove?" He said, "No." Then 
 I said, "Could you put some fire in it?" 
 He answered in the affirmative. Then I 
 said, "If you will heat the stove and 
 give me a comforter I will sleep on that 
 lounge." The brother disappeared to his 
 bedroom and consulted his life partner, 
 and soon came with this answer: "My 
 wife says she has no comforter to 
 spare." Then I said, "Put some fire in 
 that stove and I will use my overcoat 
 for a covering." He obeyed my com- 
 mand and I laid down with all my clothes 
 on except my overcoat, which took the 
 place of what ought to have been about 
 three comforters. I soon fell into a 
 sleep, with uncomfortable dreams. 1 
 waked up about four hours before day- 
 light — the coldest man in Crawford coun- 
 ty. Pa. That stove was cold as Alaska 
 and I was nearly frozen. When I would 
 wink, I could not only see stars, but I 
 could actually see half-moons. I exam- 
 ined that stove and found not a live coal 
 in it. I saw two or three sticks of green 
 wood on the floor. I concluded not to 
 start a fire, for several reasons. First, 
 no matches could be found; second, I 
 could not make green wood burn if I had 
 had the matches, and I did not feel like 
 arousing my brother twice in one night. 
 So I doubled up and held my feet in my 
 hands and kept up a little circulation 
 until my brother and entertainer came 
 with some dry kindling wood and built 
 a good fire in that cold stove. After 
 daylight appeared and after partak- 
 ing of a good breakfast I said 
 good-bye to these Good Templars and I 
 have never seen them since. When I 
 saw the doctor at his office before I left 
 I town, he eagerly asked me if I got a 
 I bed I lold him that I did, and he seemed 
 greatly pleased with the idea that I had 
 found a downy bed. He never knew that 
 I my bones were aching and did ache for 
 four days afterwards. 
 
 But now comes in the joke. I called 
 
 pitable home of my newly made brotheri at the postofflce the next morning after 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 55 
 
 my freezing and the postmaster said: 
 "Where did you stay last night? My 
 wife reserved a bed for you and sat up 
 until midnight, keeping up a warm fire, 
 for you. We could not get out to the 
 meeting, but expected you to stay with 
 us." Just think of it! A woman sitting 
 up until midnight, keeping a good warm 
 fire and making a bed for me, when I 
 wa^ tramping all over town hunting for 
 both and finding neither. 
 
 And now for the other extreme — the 
 extreme heat. It will take but a few 
 words to give the heat side of it. About 
 10 years after my work at Evansburg in 
 organizing the Good Templars, I organ- 
 ized an insurance lodge. Another man 
 conducted the hotel. I stopped at the 
 place nearly a week. My room was on 
 
 the west side of the house. The first 
 night I slept in that room was the 
 warmest of my life. I slept on a feather 
 bed. It was in tlie middle of summer 
 and one of the hottest nights I ever 
 saw, or felt. The window had been 
 open all day and the afternoon sun had 
 poured through the window onto that 
 feathered bed, and to say that I had a 
 hot night of it would be putting it 
 mildly. There had been no rain for 
 about six weeks. Now, reader, I 'think 
 I have convinced you that I have met 
 the two extremes of heat and cold in 
 my experience in the same town. I 
 would hesitate about visiting that place 
 again, fearing that something awful 
 migiit happen to me. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 STARVING ANIMALS. 
 
 There was a lot of talk about Theodore 
 Roosevelt's horseback ride of 90 miles in 
 one day, at the time he was president. I 
 suppose that not one of his "subjects" 
 in the United States took as long a 
 horseback ride that day as did the chief 
 executive. It reminds me of my ride 
 from Titusville to Garland, 75 years ago, 
 a distance of less than 20 miles. I rode 
 behind my grandfather, astride of a big 
 white horse. When I reached Garland 
 my legs were unable to do duty satisfac- 
 torily. When my grandfather, George 
 McCray, of Titusville, lifted me from 
 the horse and set me right end up on 
 the ground, I staggered and fell, my legs 
 being much benumbed. I well remember 
 this, although I was but 6 years old. In 
 fact, this is as far back as my memory 
 runs. But I give up to President Roose- 
 velt. I think he can hold the champion- 
 ship for years and years to come — at 
 least so far as I am concei-ned. 
 
 The Rev. J. P. Burns, of the M. E. 
 church, has been holding revival meet- 
 ings here. He is a faithful Christian 
 worker, and has started many souls out 
 on the Christian pathway. His oratori- 
 cal powers are far abov- the average. 
 As a proof of the appi-eciation of his 
 parishioners, he has preached here over 
 eight years. The year he was called to 
 the ninth year the call was signed by 
 about three hundred petitioners. I men- 
 tion these things in order to compare 
 the present with the past. The first 
 revival that I witnessed was carried on 
 at what was called Whitestown, about 
 midway between Pittsfield and Garland. 
 •People were affected differently those 
 
 days. Strong men would jump, 
 and dance around, and . fall help- 
 less to the floor, and lie as still as death 
 for hours at a time. The leader of 
 Methodism in Garland. John McCray, 
 fell to the floor one day, about noon, and 
 lay quietly nearly all the afternoon. He 
 was a large strong man, in both mind 
 and body. To young, unsophisticated 
 eyes, this seemed a strange sight Men 
 and women, oid and young, were there 
 on that barn floor. They had no church 
 then, and James White's barn did its 
 full duty in that line. Generally before 
 falling there would be considerable loud 
 shouting. There is a little of the same 
 style of worship carried on by the Free 
 Methodists at the present time. Indeed, 
 a Free Methodist church stands directly 
 across the street from the home of the 
 writer of this, and sometimes thev are 
 quite noisy, but the noise of a Christian 
 is music compared to the brawl of the 
 drunkard, or protane man. There is one 
 glorious feature about the Free Meth- 
 odist church, and that is this: No man 
 or woman can remain a member who 
 uses intoxicating liquor or tobacco, in 
 any form. If all the people on this old 
 earth of ours, were Free Methodists, in 
 this respect what happiness would reign 
 supreme. Speaking of this invisible 
 thing which the church people call "The 
 Power," I will say it is impossible for 
 me to give any satisfactory explanation 
 or reason for it. My good wife and 1 
 drove to Stilson's Hill, many years ago, 
 to attend a United Brethren in Christ 
 camp meeting, in the woods. The preach- 
 er was eloquent and interesting, but he 
 
56 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 did not get to the end of his sermon. 
 AVhen he had reached, perhaps, the mid- 
 dle of his sermon, lie cast his eyes up- 
 ward toward heaven, and exclaimed: 
 "He is coming: He is coming!" and fell 
 over bacVcwards on tlie floor of tlie plat- 
 form. Another preacher took his place 
 and finished his sermon without a 
 break. Tlie preacher remained there 
 until the meeting closed for the evening, 
 and he had not moved a particle when 
 wife and I left the camp ground. Oth- 
 ers, men and women were lying around 
 in the same comatose state. I have wit- 
 nessed such exhibitions of "an unseen 
 power" many times in my life, but I am 
 no nearer solving the problem now than 
 I was in the long ago. 
 
 There is quite a contrast between the 
 winter this year and one I recall about 
 61 years ago. The snow fell about four 
 feet deep and lay on the ground three 
 months without thawing. Not an icicle 
 was seen on the buildings for three 
 months. Hay was "worth its weight in 
 gold." On the fifth day of April my 
 father and I drove a team the length of 
 the Brokenstraw creek hunting for hay 
 or some kind of feed for our cattle, and 
 found but two dozen sheaves of oats. 
 The snow was three feet deep the fifth 
 day of the second month of spring. It 
 thawed just a trifle, enough to melt the 
 snow in the road and to make a little 
 triclfling stream of water. It was a hard 
 winter for the poor cattle, horses and 
 sheep. There was too much snow in the 
 woods. It was so deep that the deer 
 could not wade through it and browse 
 on the shrubbery, their usual winter 
 diet, and the cattle could not do any bet- 
 ter than the wild animals. Both the 
 deer and tame animals died by the hun- 
 dreds. My father lost a very valuable 
 ox. It was starved to death, and a half 
 dozen cows did not make good shadows 
 in the spring. Such a thing could not 
 take place now, as railroads are great 
 distributors. If any article becomes 
 scarce in one place and plenty in an- 
 other place, the railroads will even up 
 things. Just stop and think a moment. 
 If we had been blessed with railroads at 
 that time not one of those hundreds of 
 poor cattle, horses, sheep, etc., would 
 have died. A farmer was simply obliged 
 to stand and see his poor suffering ani- 
 mals die, with no earthly chance to feed 
 them. 
 
 Many people are fighting railroads to- 
 day who have never lived without them. 
 They do not realize the fact that all the 
 new inventions of the last 70 years are 
 real godsends to the very people who are 
 fighting them. If those fighters had 
 seen 81 years of progress, as has the 
 writer of these lines, they would not be 
 ready for fight every time some little 
 mishap occurs. And in addition to the 
 great and wonderful benefits of the rail- 
 
 roads are the benefits of the telegraph, 
 telephone and trolley lines. Now a busi- 
 ness man can sit at his desk in his office 
 and do business all over town. He can 
 do more in 10 minutes at that 'phone 
 than he could do a few years ago by 
 footing it over town all day. He can do 
 business with another man 10 or 15 
 miles out in the country in a minute, 
 when before Edison's Invention carriage 
 hire and a whole day's time would have 
 been required; or, if the business neces- 
 sitates a personal interview, this busi- 
 ness man can step into a trolley car, 
 and wjthin a few minutes he is face to 
 face with his customer. In addition to 
 this, if he wishes to talk face to face 
 or tongue to tongue, he can interview a 
 man a thousand miles away. On the 
 other hand, if a farmer wants to do 
 business with a townsman, he can step 
 to his 'phone and in a minute the busi- 
 ness is transacted. A few years ago 
 this same farmer would be obliged, on 
 all occasions requiring his presence in 
 town, to go to his barn, harness up old 
 "Jim" or "Tom," hitch him to the buggy, 
 if the farmer had one. If not he would 
 have to to go a neighbor and borrow 
 one, and drive over, at times, very rough 
 roads to town and back, losing a half 
 or a whole day. 
 
 And then another great thing for the 
 farmer, outside of the inventions, is the 
 custom which has grown up like a mush- 
 room recently of the merchant deliver- 
 ing goods at the door of any customer 
 regardless of the distance from the mer- 
 chant's place of business. All the farmer 
 has to do is to give a ring at his 'phone 
 and say "Hello," and the goods are there 
 when the horn blows calling the field 
 men to the table. Is it any wonder that 
 the farmers are paying off their mort- 
 gages on their farms? They are saving 
 millions of dollars in time saved by these 
 late inventions of big-brained men like 
 Edison. In fact, the farmer is the favored 
 person now. "Uncle Sam" is really par- 
 tial to him. The United States mall car- 
 rier leaves his mail matter in boxes at 
 his door, while the inhabitants of a town 
 not large enough for free delivery must 
 travel a mile or two and stand at the 
 postofiJice window until the "mail is 
 changed" and handed out to him. The 
 farmers will soon be, and some of them 
 are now, riding in automobiles and look- 
 ing down on common folks. And the 
 millions of dollars that they are sav- 
 ing in time alone will be expended in 
 beautifying this favored country for as 
 a class they are the most economical of 
 all workers. Edison never dreamed of 
 the unspeakable benefit that he has 
 brought to the world at large and still 
 his head is too small to realize the 
 many blessings he has brought to man- 
 kind. 
 
 I have wandered far from my sub- • 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 57 
 
 ject of the deep snow. But I have never 
 experienced such a winter again. Sev- 
 eral very "soft" winters have come and 
 gone since that time. The young people 
 of this country will remember that 10 
 or 12 years ago, we were not favored 
 with one day of good sleighing all win- 
 ter. Farmers plowed nearly every day 
 and could have plowed every day if they 
 had wished to do so. Another winter, 45 
 or 50 years ago, was its equal. My 
 father had prepared for an all-winter 
 log hauling with two yoke of oxen. He 
 
 had but one outfit, so he bought another 
 yoke of oxen, bobsleds and chains, and 
 all was ready for the hauling of those 
 logs one and a half miles to Youngsville, 
 to the nearest mill, to have them cut 
 into boards, but not a day of sledding 
 came, and consequently not a log was 
 hauled. By the time of the next sleigh- 
 ing, one year afterwards, the logs were 
 so badly decayed and hurt by the worms 
 that we had "cull" boards when they 
 were sawed. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 OLD TIME QUADRILLE BAND. 
 
 In a recent article I spoke of dancing, 
 but gave but little dancing news. It wilJ 
 be interesting to the people of to-day to 
 hear a little about the dancing of the 
 olden days. Time was when there were 
 more dancers in this part of the coun- 
 try than musicians. The violinists who 
 cculd play and call quadrilles at one and 
 the same time were few and far between. 
 "U'arren did not have a fiddler in the bor- 
 ough when your humble servant be- 
 longed to a quadrille band composed of 
 players from Youngsville and Pittsfield, 
 who had a corner on the dancing music 
 in all Warren county. We played for 
 private parties at Orris Hall's, Thomas 
 Struthers' and other "upper ten" fami- 
 lies of the county seat. One night we 
 took but a part of our band. William 
 Stright and son, Orra, and myself. When 
 we arrived at the stone mansion of the 
 Hon. Thomas Struthers we found more 
 guests than could dance in the parlors 
 down stairs. We were obliged to split 
 our band, and Stright and son took the 
 upstairs crowd and I the downstairs 
 crowd. The Struthers house contained 
 an organ upstairs and a piano down- 
 stairs. I lacked a piano player to make 
 my music acceptable and I was more 
 than pleased when the cultured, hand- 
 some and amiable daughter of Mr. 
 Struthers offered her services and sat 
 down and played a beautiful accompani- 
 ment from 10 p. m. until 4 a. m. with- 
 out missing a set, although her young 
 lady cousin offered to give her a rest by 
 taking her place at the piano. She re- 
 fused, saying that she was not in the 
 leest fatigued, a few years after I 
 read of her death with much regret. The 
 remembrance of her helping me out with 
 my side of the music that night still 
 lingers. Without her piano my lone vio- 
 lin would have given out doleful strains 
 for that large crowd of Warren people. 
 
 Being the only quadrille band in the 
 county and our music being In de- 
 mand, gave us somewhat of a high opin- 
 ion of ourselves, so we arranged a series 
 of balls in this section of country. 
 
 We commenced the round at Tidioute. 
 The young people of Grandintown did 
 not tumble over on3 another to reach 
 our ball. Our aggregation of three mu- 
 sicians only made enough, at so much 
 per couple, to pay our lodging, board and 
 horse feed. We owned our own rig or 
 we should have failed to reach our ap- 
 pointment at the next town, Titusville, 
 where neither Drake nor oil was known 
 at that time. When we arrived at Ti- 
 tusville we found a rather poor prospect 
 of a turnout. Jack McCray, then a mill 
 man, came to the rescue, and saved vis 
 from an utter failure by getting out 
 among the young dancers, with whom 
 he seemed to be immensely popular, and 
 in his impetuous way, got out enough of 
 his young friends to save us from utter 
 defeat. The next morning we found that 
 we lacked one dollar of enough money to 
 pay our hotel bill. As there was but one 
 hotel in town, the landlord had a mo- 
 nopoly of the business, and his bill being 
 a trifle larger than the TiJioule bill, left 
 us one big dollar short. But we soon 
 found that his confidence in us fiddlers 
 was as big as his bill. He cheerfully 
 took our word for it, inat we would send 
 him that dollar after we reached the 
 moneyed town of Youngsville. And we 
 kept our word. On our arrival home we 
 enclosed a yellow gold dollar, and our 
 band thereby kept itself in good finan- 
 cial standing. Our band held a council 
 of war, and in about a minute come to 
 the conclusion that disappointment 
 would come to but few if we would call 
 off our appointments ahead of us, and 
 take the shortest route to our homes in 
 the Brokenstraw valley. When, after a 
 
58 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 pleasant sleighride through Enterprise, 
 and where Grand Valley now stands — 
 no town there at tliat time — the same 
 with Torpedo, Garland, we called at 
 Pittsfield, where on short notice the 
 sprightly young people of that burg got 
 up a dance that exceeded both tlie oth- 
 ers. Thus ended our self-appointed 
 dances — only three miles from home. 
 We took this view of the whole thing; 
 that what we lost in time, we made up 
 in knowledge. We learned the fact that 
 the young people knew when they 
 wanted to dance better than we did. 
 
 After that we waited until we were 
 sent for before going to play for a dance. 
 And we were sometimes sent for as of- 
 ten as every night in a week. Once in 
 awhile two dances would come off the 
 same niglit. Then we would be obliged 
 to divide our band. Several times I was 
 obliged to "go it alone" both calling and 
 sawing on the violin. I think I did more 
 poor playing those days than any other 
 man. I never was a match for Ole Bull, 
 but as there were no Y. M. C. A.s, basket 
 ball gymnasiums or women's clubs, the 
 young people had to do something, and 
 that something was shaking the "heavy" 
 fantastic heel. Some call it the "light 
 fantastic toe," but I like to have things 
 changed. 
 
 But nothing lasts forever. As time 
 passed along musicians became more 
 plenty, some migrating to our county 
 and some educating themselves. I final- 
 ly bought a book called "The Violin 
 Without a Master." It was a good and 
 appropriate name for me. I never be- 
 came "master" of the violin, consequent- 
 ly it was a violin without a master at 
 our house. The first outsider that came 
 to Youngsville to compete with our band 
 and capture the affections of the best 
 looking young ladies, was a very prepos- 
 sessing young man named "Bob" Cross. 
 He captured the whole crowd of dancing 
 young people, both male and female. He 
 had only to throw out a hint that he 
 wished a benefit and the ball room would 
 be crowded in a few hours. In fact, 
 "Bob" ran the town, as far as the young 
 people were concerned, and many old 
 people thought he was "all wool and a 
 yard wide." All doors were open to 
 "Bob" Cross. He had only to crook his 
 finger and what he wanted was forth- 
 coming. He was an extremely sweet 
 player on the violin, but he "played by 
 ear." He never learned to read music. 
 But he was a sort of Blind Tom in pick- 
 ing up a tune as soon as he heard it. 
 Politics came in handy then and we 
 made him a member of our quadrille 
 band, fearing that he would run us out 
 entirely. He played several years in our 
 band, then married into a wealthy fam- 
 
 ily, finally dying a few years afterwards. 
 
 Others who have helped me out with 
 my music and who have since passed 
 away were Josiah Duprey, wlio was an 
 honest, easy-going young man, and who 
 died about four years ago; Enoch Du- 
 prey, brother to Josiah; William Stright, 
 a composer of music, who led a quadrille 
 band many years, and who in his riper 
 years worked in a sawmill at Vorwinkle, 
 Forest county. Pa., for a period of 10 
 years and loved his violin so well that 
 he played nearly every evening for tlie 
 free entertainment of the hardy lumber- 
 men at his boarding house, and who died 
 about five years ago — sending out sweet 
 strains from his violin until 10 p. m., 
 then went to sleep. In the morning lie 
 was found dead in bed. He had played 
 his last tune. To my notion, Mr. 
 Stright's only daughter, Nellie, is the 
 best pianist in the city of Bradford, 
 where she now resides. I know this is 
 high praise, as Bradford is full of fine 
 pianists. His anly son, Orra, is one of 
 the best violinists of the country. Ches- 
 ter Shaw, the bass violin player of our 
 band, met a tragic death at Clarendon, 
 Pa., by falling into a tank of oil and 
 perishing by asphyxiation. Another, 
 William Jewell, a justice of the peace 
 for many years and a merchant of North 
 Warren, died eight or ten years ago. Of 
 the many who have helped make music 
 for the dancers of long ago, none but 
 Calender Arthur, of Warren, Pa., and 
 Perry Acocks, of Pittsfield, Pa., are alive 
 to-day. 
 
 Before leaving the subject I must 
 speak of one novelty. At one time our 
 band consisted of William Stright. jus- 
 tice of the peace; Calender Arthur, con- 
 stable of Brokenstraw township. Pa.; 
 Chester Shaw, constable of Pittsfield 
 township. Pa., and G. W. Brown, cor- 
 oner, Youngsville borough, Warren coun- 
 ty. Pa. This gave us a full band of 
 peace officers — enough to keep peace at 
 all times In those days the balls were 
 made up from mixed crowds. It was 
 seldom tliat an invitation party was 
 held. It required the whole population 
 to make a "big crowd." The oil country 
 crowds had not "arrived" at the time I 
 am speaking of. And strange to say at 
 all those private parties and public balls 
 I never saw a fistic encounter in the 
 rooms where the ladies and gentlemen 
 were when I was one of the musicians. 
 It is true in writing "Old Times in Oil- 
 dom" I mentioned a knockdown on a 
 dancing floor at Petroleum Center, but 
 I was not one of the regular musicians. 
 I only assisted the regular musicians 
 temporarily or until I was forever fright- 
 ened away and stopped helping to make 
 music for "wicked dancers." 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 59 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 CHURCHES IN THE OLD TIMES. 
 
 I will next mention the growth of the 
 churches in the Brokenstraw valley. 
 The first church that I, in my babyhood, 
 attended, was no church at all. It was 
 a school house — my first school house. 
 We sat on pine slabs, with holes bored 
 in them, and with wooden legs driven 
 into them. These made seats, but very 
 uncomfortable ones. There were no 
 backs to them. The occupants were 
 obliged to sit up stroight, with no back 
 support, or else they were forced to lean 
 forward. The singing was carried on 
 without the assistance of musical in- 
 struments. No church in Warren coun- 
 ty had an organ to lead the untrained 
 singers. Robert and Moses Andrews, 
 two brothers, were the "standbys" in 
 that school house in the singing line. 
 Robert sang soprano, and "Mose" sang 
 bass. To my young ears that bass voice 
 of "Mose" Andrews was melody, indeed. 
 It gave me a kind of liking for the bass 
 part in music, either instrumental or 
 vocal, which is still within me at the 
 age of fourscore. It is very doubtful 
 about my living long enough to lose my 
 liking for this part of a .juartette. Alto 
 comes next in the four parts of a quar- 
 tette, but I had not heard the sweet and 
 captivating strains of the part named 
 alto at that time. Soprano and bass was 
 the whole dependence in all churches in 
 T^^arren county. This congregationa' 
 singing, at the old log school house hi 
 Garland, wtus participated in by John 
 McCray, the real standby of the church 
 — the Mandevilles, the Hamiltons, 
 Browns — the father and mother of the 
 writer. The Uptons and many others, 
 had fine natural, untrained voices, and 
 better melody than one would suppose — 
 considering the absence of tenor and 
 alto — floated out of the windows and 
 doors of that old school house. The 
 preachers at this "church" were .iusi 
 such as could be picked up occasionally. 
 The Bible expounders of those days were 
 not men of very much "book larnin"," 
 but in the matter of real Christianity 
 they were full equals of the college bred 
 doctors of divinity of the present time. 
 
 Well, in the course of time, our family 
 flitted down the creek as far as Youngs- 
 ville. There we attended a frame church, 
 with a regular preacher. This church 
 was a good type of the church of that 
 day. It had no steeple or belfry. It was 
 a square sort of a structure, with a gal- 
 lery all around, except the end where 
 the tall candlestick pulpit stood. The 
 preacher was obliged to climb a pair 
 
 of stairs to get into it and when he 
 reached it he had barely room to stand 
 in it. This pulpit had every indication 
 of a scarcity of lumber and space for 
 its diminutive proportions. The choir here 
 had tenor and alto, in addition to the 
 other parts necessary for the making 
 of a good church choir. This was the 
 only church in Youngsville and was a 
 Methodist church, with good and faith- 
 ful members. The standbys were the 
 Meads, Davises, Whitneys, Siggins, Mc- 
 Kinneys, Hulls, Arthurs, Kinnears and 
 others. The main singers in the choir 
 were the Arthurs and Davises. The choir 
 sat up in the gallery opposite the pulpit. 
 After a few years an innovation came in 
 the shape of a big bass viol played by 
 a stump puller named Evans. It was a 
 short lived innovation. After the first 
 hymn was sung, with bass viol accom- 
 paniments, an old member of the church 
 whose word was law walked down the 
 aisle, climbed up the stairs and came 
 in front of the choir and pointing his 
 finger at the huge instrument exclaimed 
 in a voice not easily misunderstood: 
 "Take that ungodly fiddle out of this 
 choir and keep it out." The command 
 was obeyed, with alacrity, and that was 
 the first and last bass viol music for that 
 Youngsville choir. M^hen the preacher 
 read the next hymn profound silence fol- 
 lowed, not a chirp was heard from any 
 member of the choir. Finally a weak 
 quavering voice struck up a hymn and 
 we had congregational singing in that 
 church for quite a long time. Then 
 as time passed by a choir was organized 
 and strange to relate, an organ crept into 
 this last organization with but little 
 opposition. A gradual change came in 
 music matters. The old member who 
 vetoed the bass viol was just as honest 
 in his opinion that instrumental music 
 was an evil, as the old members of to- 
 day are that instrumental music is a 
 blessing. If the old gentleman was 
 alive to-day. and could step into General 
 Charles Miller's Sunday School in the 
 first Baptist church, of Franklin, Pa., 
 and hear the orclwstra of a dozen pieces 
 manipulated by professional musicians, 
 and hear the soul stirring religions 
 hymns that delight the hearts of a 
 thousand worshippers, both young and 
 old, every Sunday afternoon, the year 
 around, he would no doubt enjoy the 
 sweet and soft Heavenly strains as much 
 as any other listener. No man in Youngs- 
 ville was a more devout worshipper than 
 he, and no man who knew this old man 
 
6o 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 here on earth has the least doubt of his 
 listening for these many years to the 
 Heavenly orchestra that makes sacred 
 music in the golden streets of the New 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 Well, time moves on, and the church 
 of Youngsville has been sold to the Luth- 
 eran Swedish congregation, who have 
 torn it down and replaced it by a beau- 
 tiful brick structure of late design, and 
 the M. E. congregation has a brick build- 
 ing to worship in. In addition to the 
 two churches mentioned above, Youngs- 
 ville has a Free Methodist church and 
 an Episcopal church, the two latter 
 named built of wood, and before many 
 moons the United Brethren in Christ wiH 
 have a brick church building. 
 
 And now a few remarks as to many 
 churches in many places in this country. 
 I'll begin with the Cumberland, Taren- 
 tum. Pa. I organized an insurance lodge 
 tnere about 18 years since. It is the so- 
 ciability and lack of sociability of 
 churches that I will speak of. I had for 
 my chaplain the pastor of the church 
 named above. I attended the regular 
 Sunday services at his church the first 
 Sunday I was in town. No man or wo- 
 man spoke to me. Not one word to "the 
 stranger in their midst." The next day 
 I met the pastor and in a kind of non- 
 complaining way told him that sociabil- 
 ity was at a low ebb in his church. His 
 answer was: "I am well aware of It 
 and have been ever since I came here. 
 Next Sunday I will preach a sermon on 
 sociability." I was on hand the next 
 Sunday and the good man preached a 
 very eloquent sermon. After the bene- 
 diction was pronounced I remained 
 standing at the end of my pew until 
 nearly the entire congregation had passed 
 out, by me, waiting for a friendly hand- 
 shake. I waited in vain. One old, bald- 
 headed, fat, good-natured looking fellow 
 came up the aisle. My hopes went up. 
 Surely such a pleasant face and open 
 countenance would not follow the exam- 
 ple of those who had preceded him. But, 
 like the priest and the Levite who 
 "passed by on the other side," his eyes 
 were steadily fixed on the church door 
 and soon he was wending his way to his 
 Sunday dinner without a word for me. 
 I gave all a fair chance to cheer the 
 heart of the lonely stranger, but none 
 seemed to act as if the forcible sermon 
 of their pastor had "struck in." And the 
 only hope I had was 'that the sermon 
 might, like vaccination, work by degrees 
 by giving it time. 
 
 The next place I attended church was 
 in a high-toned edifice in Pittsburg. 
 Tarentum was reversed here. A very 
 pleasant usher conducted me to a cen- 
 trally located seat and soon the master 
 of that pew came with his family, wife, 
 daughter and son. After the benediction 
 they introduced themselves in such an 
 
 agreeable manner that I could not help 
 draw-ing a comparison. The next church 
 visited was the First M. E. church of 
 Parkersburg, "W. Va. I happened to so- 
 journ in the West Virginia city three 
 months. During that length of time I 
 attended the First M. E. church 10 times. 
 Here I found the members all "priests 
 and Levites." They all "passed by on 
 the other side," except the pastor and 
 his wife and one alderman and his wife. 
 These four had joined my insurance 
 lodge and had a fraternal hand to offer 
 me. As to the effect of the lack of so- 
 ciability, I will state the case of a rail- 
 road oiTiciars wife. She informed me 
 that she had lived in Parkersburg two 
 years, had attended that church regular- 
 ly and had seldom been spoken to. She 
 held a transfer letter from another M. E. 
 church, but she had concluded to never 
 offer her letter. But now I come to the 
 contrast. I was stopping at the Palace 
 hotel and one Sunday evening got into 
 conversation with a Presbyterian com- 
 mercial traveler from Cincinnati. He in- 
 vited me to go witli him to the Presby- 
 terian church. He said he was a stranger 
 in the city and would like to have com- 
 pany. I told him that I was a Metho- 
 dist, but the M. E. church that I had been 
 attending there was but a little above 
 zero and I would try the Presbyterians 
 that night; but as the Presbyterians had 
 a great new stone church, resembling a 
 fine theatre, I had my doubts about find- 
 ing a warmer atmosphere there than at 
 the M. E. But there is nothing like 
 making the effort to find out things. So 
 I accompanied my new-made friend and 
 we were soon seated in a pew behind two 
 ladies, who were dressed in their "silks 
 and satins." We were not more than 
 seated by a warm-hearted and smiling 
 southern usher than both ladies handed 
 their hymn books to us and gallantly de- 
 prived themselves of those useful ar- 
 ticles. When the services closed these 
 pleasant Christian ladles took us by the 
 hand, inquired about our place of resi- 
 dence and invited us to come again. It 
 had been so long since I had been treated 
 that way I hardly knew how to act. 
 
 Tlie next Sunday evening I attended 
 the M. E. church South and there I found 
 a duplicate of the Presbyterian recep- 
 tion, only more so. A fine gentleman, 
 son and two daughters, composed the 
 quartette, and that church had fine sing- 
 ing. The leader, or father of the help- 
 ers, invited me to dinner the next day 
 and I had good cheer all round, but a 
 surprise awaited men when, in addition 
 to the vocal music, they brought forth 
 four instruments and rendered some 
 very fine band music. Now don't think 
 me egotistical, for I am writing this to 
 show the great difference between social 
 churches and non-social churches. No 
 one but a wanderer can fully appreciate 
 these things. 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 6i 
 
 Now, let me say a word about the min- 
 isters of the gospel. In all my organiz- 
 ing work in getting up and organizing 
 475 lodges, I never met a better class of 
 men than the preachers of all denomina- 
 tions. They are the most provident men 
 found in the country. Not more than 
 one in 30 omits to carry insurance for 
 the families. They look at it in this 
 light: They are not expected to make 
 and lay up a fortune to protect their 
 families when they are gone. They can- 
 not do it and follow the work of their 
 Lord and Master, but they can pay a 
 dollar or two a month from their salar- 
 ies and keep their families safe all the 
 time, and they do it. No class of men 
 in the country are so generally insured. 
 
 A preacher without insurance is indeed 
 a novelty. I have taken into insurance 
 lodges over 300 preacliers of different de- 
 nominations. Indeed, I have never found 
 a Disciple preacher in all my work in five 
 states who did not become a member of 
 one of my lodges, securing his family 
 against want at the time of his death. 
 I had five ministers of the gospel in one 
 lodge in Clarion, Pa., four M. E. clergy- 
 I men and one Baptist. About a dozen of 
 i my clerical members died, leaving $1,000 
 1 to $2,600 for the protection of their fam- 
 j ilies. One Presbyterian minister. Rev. 
 I.saac Smith, of Tonawanda, N. Y., died 
 four months after joining, leaving his 
 i wife $2,600. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 GOD BLESS THE SWEDES. 
 
 I am going back a little beyond "oil- 
 dom" to begin this particular article. My 
 mind wanders back 50 years to a time 
 when we had springtime all win- 
 ter. In those days the main busi- 
 ness was either making shingles or 
 boards, and the hauling of this lumber 
 made lively times. From the break of 
 day until long after dark a steady 
 stream of teams lined the streets. Near- 
 ly every farm from Toungsville to 
 Sugargrove and beyond into York state 
 had pine trees growing on the uncleared 
 portions. And the uncleared was gener- 
 ally the largest part of the farm. All a 
 majority of the farmers had in those 
 days was a log liouse in the woods, with 
 a very few acres cleared. Each settler 
 had a log shingle shanty close by his 
 domicile, where, from 4 o'clock in the 
 morning until 10 at night, the faithful 
 builder-up of this wild country would 
 be found either "riving" or shaving 
 shingles. If he had a voice for singing 
 he would use it for all he was worth. 
 Trouble seldom came to him because of 
 the fact that there was but little in the 
 country to be troubled about — no rail- 
 road right of way across his farm to 
 worry about; no trolley lines being sur- 
 veyed through his orchard, garden or 
 dooryard; no telegraph poles being set 
 near "the old oaken bucket that hung in 
 the well"; no telephone agent putting a 
 machine in his house despite his remon- 
 strances;no bicycles bumping up against 
 him; no automobiles chasing him into 
 the fence corner and causing his horse 
 to run away; no millionaires being killed 
 by their great steam or gasoline wagons; 
 no railroad accidents, for the good rea- 
 
 son that there was no railroad; but few 
 burglaries, because there were but little 
 money or jewelery to steal; no flying 
 machines, liable to light on the roof of 
 log houses at any moment: no earth- 
 quakes, worth speaking of; no oil or gas 
 fires, and but few murders, for the rea- 
 
 1 son that there were but few Harry 
 
 ! Thaws and Hains brothers in the coun- 
 try. In fact, the hard-working shingle 
 maker had but little to worry about — 
 barring sickness and death, which came 
 to him, as to all mankind, in all ages 
 of the world. Of course there were good 
 
 I and bad shingle makers. The good ones 
 had nothing on their minds but the hap- 
 piness of their families, and the bad 
 ones had not as many chances to wander 
 from the straight and narrow path as 
 can be found now-a-days. There were 
 but little bank stealing, through dis- 
 honest officers, because there were few 
 banks to "break." However, the bad 
 shingle makers had one peculiar sin to 
 
 I answer for, and the sin was almost 
 hereditary. In riving his shingles he 
 would split the shingles so close to the 
 knots in the timber that it was impos- 
 
 1 sible to shave them so that they would 
 be of any value whatever. It required 
 five times as much labor to make this 
 crooked shingle fit into the "bunch" 
 nicely to deceive the buyer as it required 
 
 I to shave a good straight shingle. And 
 
 i the timber in m.any cases was stolen, 
 costing the maker nothing. It was one 
 of the puzzles "past finding out" why 
 this extra labor should be put on these 
 frauds, which only amounted to some 
 tall swearing by profane carpenters 
 
 ' down the Allegheny, Ohio and Missis- 
 
62 
 
 OLD TIMES I N OILDOM. 
 
 sippi rivers. It would try the heart of 
 the best Christian purchaser of several 
 thousand shingles to find his good money 
 paid to the raftsman that had landed his 
 raft by his river farm about one-fourth 
 dead loss. When the purchaser opened 
 the bunches of shingles his usual way of 
 disposing of this fraudulent part would 
 be to make a bonfire of them. The worst 
 of this business was the fact that the 
 purchaser always found himself short of 
 the required amount of shingles and 
 would be compelled to send off some- 
 where to buy again before he could put 
 his roof on his building. I never heard 
 of one of the defrauded purchasers put- 
 ting the law in force against those ras- 
 cals. The barges immediately "pulled 
 out" and floated down the river, perhaps 
 cheating several more innocent buyers 
 before tlie first purchaser had opened a 
 bunch of shingles. The purchaser always 
 pocketed his loss with as much grace as 
 possible rather than undertake to find 
 the man who defrauded him. Pinkerton 
 was not around about in those days. 
 Now all that the purchaser would have 
 to do would be to give warning and he 
 would be a cute shingle seller that could 
 escape the penalty of such a transaction. 
 At the present time no such crimes as 
 the ones just described could take place, 
 as no shingles are shaved by hand and 
 the tall pines are few and far between. 
 Shingles are now made by machinery, 
 as nearly everything else in the way of 
 manuiactured goods. The tld shingle 
 shanties have all gone the way of the old 
 log nouses and indeed the occupants of 
 both are nearly all gone. As a proof of 
 this I will say that I, very recently, 
 counted the deaths that have taken 
 place on four miles of the street leading 
 from Youngsville to Sugargrave within 
 50 years. The number surprised me. Al- 
 though not a village intervenes, only 
 farms all along that road, the number 
 is 137. "All are born to die." One fam- 
 ily on this road, named Duprey, con« 
 sisted of husband and wife and 14 chil- 
 dren. All the children were married, 
 save one, 50 years ago. Now all — father, 
 mother, sons, daughters, sons-in-law, 
 and daughters-in-law — are dead, but the 
 youngest daughter. 
 
 W'lien the timber was gone from this 
 section of the country tlie people at first 
 thought they could not make a living 
 without the tall green pines, but time 
 has proved that the clearing and culti- 
 vating of the soil is much more to be 
 depended upon tlian the pines. Consid- 
 erable of the wealth of Warren county 
 now consists in nice farms. And let me 
 say that the light-haired Swedes have 
 done as much to bring these farms to 
 perfection as the native Americans. 
 Where a few years ago wooded hills, 
 valleys and swamps abounded beauti- 
 ful farms, with orchards, painted houses 
 and barns, fat cattle and horses, and 
 
 everything pertaining to a well-equipped 
 farm, are found. God bless the Swedes! 
 They take to the American way of do- 
 ing things as a duck takes to water. 
 Just stop a moment to think what these 
 people from the bleak country of the 
 Scandinavians have done for us in this 
 part of Uncle Sam's domain. They have 
 built up whole streets in Youngsville 
 and most of the neat farms surround- 
 ing the town are owned and occupied by 
 families who spell the last syllable of 
 their names with the three letters, "son." 
 Then look at Kane, McKean county, Pa. 
 The town would be in the woods but 
 for these same industrious Johnsons, 
 Swansons. Carlsons, Ericksons, Peter- 
 sons, Samuelsons, Thompsons and many 
 other "sons." The traveler who has 
 passed from Kane to Mt. Jewett has 
 noticed the continual string of new 
 farms all along both sides of the B. & 
 O. railroad for the whole distance ot 
 12 miles from Kane to Mt. Jewett. When 
 I passed between these two enterprising 
 towns I was informed by an old settler 
 that every farm, except one, and that 
 was owned by a Frenchman, was owned 
 and occupied by Swedes. It looks as if 
 it were not for the Swedes owls, bears 
 and wildcats might now be inhabiting 
 these farmlands. 
 
 Almost the same can be said of the 
 land along the B. & O. road west of 
 Kane. Then look at Jamestown, N. Y. 
 One wing, called Brooklin, I think, is 
 composed entirely of Scandinavians, and 
 it is a very prosperous part of the city 
 at the outlet of Chautauqua Lake. A few 
 years ago I attended a county agricul- 
 tural fair at Jamestown, N. Y. The first 
 tiling that attracte.l my attention was 
 the Penton, or Pendergrast, Guards 
 marching down the sidehill street. When 
 I spoke of the melodious music and fine 
 uniform of the band and the precise 
 step of the military company to an old 
 resident he informed me that every 
 member of both the band and military 
 company was a Swede. And when I vis- 
 ited the fair grounds and saw tlie mili- 
 tary drill and listened to the strains 
 from those "sons of a cold climate" I 
 tnought that surely James*^own would 
 have had a dull fair if iiot for her 
 adopted "sons" from Sweden. And I 
 do not have to go to Jamestown and 
 Kane to see the beauties of this foreign 
 population. I can travel a mile from 
 tlie borough of Youngsville to the top 
 of Huirs Hill and cast my eyes west- 
 ward, southward, eastward, northward, 
 and I see a panorama of fine, well-kept 
 farms stretched out before me. The ques- 
 tion arises, "Who cleared up this rough 
 wooded country and made it blossom as 
 the rose?" The answer echoes back: 
 "The Swedes." 
 
 But I have wandered away from my 
 old shingle makers and left them sitting 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 63 
 
 on a bench, pulling the draw shave. Be- 
 fore they were entirely through with 
 this hard hand work shingle mills came 
 by slow degrees, but circular saws and 
 steam have done the work in fast time. 
 One set of four men will now make 25,- 
 000 shingles in a day, whereas 1,000 
 were a day's work for one man by hand. 
 No other than sawed shingles can be 
 found now days. The sound of the frow 
 and maul is not heard in the land; 
 neither are many of the wielders of the 
 maul heard in the land. Their homes 
 are the cemeteries in the many parts 
 of the lumber region. Their farms are 
 now generally occupied by their des- 
 cendants, who perhaps but seldom think 
 of the hardships their fathers and 
 mothers endured. They do things so 
 different and everything is so different 
 that thoughts of the absent ones are sel- 
 dom brought to mind. Sometimes an en- 
 tirely useless old spinning wheel or 
 some other old relic is seen tucked away 
 in some old, dusty garret that is a re- 
 minder of times long since gone by. But 
 the sight of an old "little wheel" for 
 spinning flax or a "big wheel" for spin- 
 ning woolen rolls into yarn, to be knit 
 into stockings, has but little effect on a 
 person who has never heard the buzzing 
 or whizzing of them. The writer of this 
 has heard this kind of music so often in 
 his early boyhood that he can now — in 
 his mind's ear — hear it distinctly as his 
 mother sits, turning the "distaff" and 
 feeding the "little wheel," and his eldest 
 sister is making lively steps pulling out 
 the woolen rools and making long yarn 
 preparatory to being sent to that intelli- 
 gent being called the "weaver" of home- 
 made cloths on the big wheel. And 
 added to this instrumental music would 
 be the vocal music from both of those 
 loved relatives. 
 
 And when it comes to the subject of 
 derricks, how familiar they become to 
 one who has lived in sight of them ever 
 since the first derrick was built to be 
 used in producing oil. I'll give a leaf 
 from my own experience. About 15 
 years ago I took a trip into Ohio, or- 
 ganizing fraternal insurance lodges. I 
 was gone from the old Keystone state 
 four months and in that time organized 
 15 lodges. When I had worked about 
 three months, without seeing a derrick 
 or getting a smell of the oleaginous 
 fluid, I landed at Prairie Depot, O. When 
 I got off the train I saw tall derricks all 
 around me and I also inhaled the, to me. 
 delicious smell of "Seneca" oil. The odor 
 was a little stronger than that in Penn- 
 sylvania, but not too strong for me. I 
 will not try to tell the real joy of the 
 moment. I had been deprived of the 
 sight of a derrick for a long three 
 months, the only three months since the 
 striking of the first oil well in this coun- 
 try. I felt really at home among the 
 "yellow hammers," all on account of the 
 
 sight of those derricks and the smell of 
 that Ohio oil. The last month of the 
 four I stuck to the oil country and felt 
 very much like being in old Pennsylva- 
 nia. In fact I was among Pennsylvan- 
 ians. No oil town is complete without 
 Pennsylvanians living in it. And it is a 
 well known fact that all oil towns have 
 new citizens from the old Keystone 
 state, where the oil business was born, 
 and the author feels proud of the fact 
 that he and the oil business were born 
 only nine miles apart. I tarried four 
 days at Prairie Depot, organizing a 
 lodge of 40 members, exactly half "yel- 
 low hammers ' and half "bluejays." the 
 latter name given by the Ohio citizens 
 and the former given by Pennsylvanians, 
 who had taken up their abode among 
 the Ohio oil wells. 
 
 I found a novelty in this town. A na- 
 tive-born citizen in the shape of a young 
 man of 20 years took It into his head 
 that he was a barber. He hired a room, 
 bought a chair and a razor or two and 
 put out a striped pole and commenced 
 shaving men — no, not shaving, but pull- 
 ing out their beard by the roots. His 
 method was to seat a customer in the 
 chair, put a dirty towel around his neck, 
 mix up some lather, dip his brush into 
 it. spread it on the face of his customer, 
 grab his razor and try to cut off the 
 growth. He made an utter failure of 
 getting all the beard from the fact that 
 he made no attempt to soften it. He 
 didn't give one second to the rubbing in 
 of the lather. I stood this kind of tor- 
 ture twice while I was a guest of that 
 town of rich soil, covered with big oil 
 wells and droves of black hogs. I have 
 given this space to the barber free of 
 charge, knowing full well that it will not 
 interest the general reader. Commercial 
 men, who are shaved by many different 
 barbers, will wonder at this, as no doubt 
 nearly all have endured such chairs. 
 As I have been shaved by more than a 
 thousand different barbers and I never 
 found this young man's "double." 
 
 I must not close without giving a 
 winding up word to the reader. Those 
 old pioneers have all gone on to a land 
 where the golden gardens are already 
 cleared and awaiting their arrival. Their 
 descendants are enjoying the improve- 
 ments of the age. The shingle shaving 
 was finished before their fathers left 
 this earthly abode. Now a trolley runs 
 from Youngsville to Sugargrove, also 
 three 'phone lines and a mail delivery 
 route, so you see that these descendants 
 have no need of losing a day occasional- 
 ly going to town on horseback, in a bug- 
 gy or afoot for little errands. The old 
 settlers never dreamed of these conven- 
 iences. These time-savers make wealthy 
 tillers of the soil. The farmer now 
 raises blooded horses and cattle and 
 sells them for double the money that his 
 
64 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 father could get, and chickens, eggs and thing that happens will be the opulent 
 crops of all kinds bring a price unbe- farmer riding in his automobile, and 
 lievable to the "old man," who split and [ some of them do that very thing now, 
 shaved the shingles. The prices on i and others are financially able to do so. 
 farmers' goods now make the farmer So the world moves on at a great pace. 
 smile and the townsman frown. The next | 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 YOUNGSVILLE FOUNDERS AND BUSINESS MEN- 
 
 What will the end be? 
 
 I thought I had "Old Times in Oil- 
 dom" finished when I wrote the last ar- 
 ticle. But since that time I have thought 
 of many things that ought to be said of 
 Youngsville that would show the great 
 changes that have taken place in this 
 one little spot since I made my appear- 
 ance on this earth. 
 
 About 65 years ago Amasa Ransom 
 owned and occupied a farm one mile 
 from Youngsville. He also owned a saw- 
 mill at Garland. Most all owners of 
 sawmills were farmers also at that time. 
 Tliey raised the hay and oats on their 
 farms that kept their teams in good or- 
 der while hauling the logs to the mills. 
 The farm and mill ran in connection, a 
 kind of "a wheel within a wheel." When 
 a farmer would get a little money put 
 away in a stocking — no banks then — he 
 would build a sawmill. It did not cost 
 as much to build a mill in those days as 
 it does now. The farmer and his boys 
 would cut down big trees and make a 
 dam, hew out some square timber and 
 make a frame building, put in a little 
 machinery, consisting of a water wheel, 
 wooden frame or sasli for one saw, set 
 in an upright position, the only saw of 
 any kind in the mill, make a wooden car- 
 riage, and that was about all there was 
 to it. The owner and his farm help 
 would do all the work exce;)t a few days' 
 work bj' a millwright, who made the 
 water wheel and bossed the hanging of 
 the saw in the sash and looked after 
 the "scientific" part of tlie business. A 
 good millwriglit stood as liigli in tlie es- 
 timation of tlie community in general as 
 Edison or Marconi does now. He was 
 paid the magnificent sum of from $2 to 
 $3 a day. It required but a few hun- 
 dred dollars to put a sawmill in running 
 sli^pe. But it took a great deal of hard 
 work to get the money back with the 
 best of pine lumber bringing $4 per 
 thousand feet, or about one-eightli part 
 of the present price at Pittsburg. Per- 
 haps it brought half that amount at the 
 mill. 
 
 Our family lived near Garland. Mr. 
 Ransom, having bouglit the mill and 
 
 lands belonging at Tiona, Warren coun- 
 ty. Pa., afterwards known as the "Joe" 
 Hill property, and still later owned by 
 Clapp, Stone & Co., with 7,000 acres of 
 oil lands, came to Garland and per- 
 suaded my father to rent his farm near 
 Youngsville, as he wanted to remove to 
 his newly-acquired property. My father 
 did not need much coaxing to induce hiin 
 to leave his log house in the woods and 
 come to the "big city" of Youngsville, 
 with one store and two blacksmith 
 shops, one tavern and one church and 
 two little wooden schoolhouses, one on 
 each side of tlie creek, and perhaps some 
 other "big places of business" that have 
 escaped my memory. The first work 
 that I did after being settled on our 
 newly rented farm was to yoke up the 
 oxen, "Buck and Bright," and join a pro- 
 cession of four yoke of oxen and their 
 drivers and travel one mile and a half 
 up Matthews run to the farm now owned 
 and occupied by O. P. Brown, and hitch 
 to one of the largest hickory trees ever 
 seen in tliis section. In a few hours 
 that mammoth tree was lying on the 
 bank of the Brokenstraw creek, in the 
 village of Youngsville. In a day or two 
 the best Democratic carpenters in 
 Youngsville had that big tree peeled and 
 shaped into one of the largest "James 
 K. Polk" liberty poles in Western Penn- 
 sylvania. And in a few days more a 
 great gathering of Democrats took place 
 and with rope and tackle, "a few jugs 
 of that which gave them courage," and 
 spread-eagle oratory and fuss enough to 
 launch a war vessel, and Colonel Will- 
 iam S. Roney for boss, the tallest and 
 straightest Democratic hickory pole, with 
 the largest flag waving from its tip-top, 
 in Warren county, honored the Democrats 
 of Youngsville. My father was always 
 an ardent Democrat. He raised three 
 sons up to his doctrine, but only one re- 
 mains true to his father's teaching. That 
 one still lives on the old homestead 
 where the big "Polk and Dallas" hickory 
 pole was cut. Two of his sons have for 
 many years voted the Prohibition tick- 
 et. 
 
 At the time I made my debut into 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 65 
 
 Youngsville society by driving our oxen 
 on the occasion mentioned above, 12 
 young- men, the cream of the town, had 
 a society organized named "Tlie Youngs- 
 ville Glee club." They had a wagon box 
 with this name on the outside in large 
 letters. About once a month they would 
 hitch two spans of horses to a wagon and 
 put that box on it, each taking his best 
 girl with him, making 25, counting the 
 driver, and go to some outlying village, 
 take supper — it would be dinner now — 
 and have a good time in general. One 
 of their number, in the course of time, 
 went west to "grow up with the coun- 
 try," and left a Vacancy. At their next 
 meeting the writer of this was duly 
 elected a member to fill the vacancy, the 
 ox-driver, a mile out In the country, the 
 only out-of-town boy in the club. I felt 
 somewhat lonely, but happy. To think 
 that of the many out-of-town boys I was 
 the chosen one was enough to give me 
 the "Big Head." But I put on the 
 brakes and my head kept its normal 
 size. And not to be egotistical, I tried 
 not to dishonor the club and stuck to it 
 until the old wagon box rotted away and 
 is now only a memory. 
 
 I am going to speak of a few of the 
 old settlers that made Youngsville what 
 it was at that time. The first who come 
 to mind are John Mead and William Sig- 
 gins. Judge Siggins lived in Youngs- 
 ville and owned a sawmill and a grist- 
 mill, had a wife and 13 children. The 
 Judge was a very tall man — over six feet 
 — and his wife was a very short woman. 
 Nine of the Judge's children were boys. 
 There were no mowing machines and 
 the hay was all cut with scythes. The 
 Judge would march at the head of the 
 line of sons and when they would reach 
 the meadow the 10 would start in, the 
 Judge leading, and how that timothy did 
 come down at their bidding. When one 
 or more are mowing in the same field 
 they have to "keep stroke." Watching 
 this one family of 10 taking the even 
 swing altogether was a sight not seen 
 every day, even in the day of no mowing 
 machines. And tlien, in a field of ordi- 
 nary length, when thej' came out at the 
 end of the field, an acre of new mown 
 hay was drying in tne sun. The old 
 Judge was a character. Wlien he took 
 hold of anything he generally "got 
 there." At one time lie served as con- 
 stable 12 years. Every year he was 
 elected without much opposition until the 
 twelfth year, when the people thought 
 they would make a change and let some 
 one else have a chance. But they elect- 
 ed the Judge to the office of high con- 
 stable, an office which at that time car- 
 ried but little business with it. A high 
 constable could only do a little borough 
 business. The Judge surprised every- 
 body by getting a special law passed by 
 the legislature giving the high constable 
 
 of Youngsville borough a legal right to 
 do any kind of business that the regular 
 constable could do. And that has been 
 the law to this day. The Judge made 
 an excellent constable under the old law 
 and the business was nearly all put into 
 his liands under the new law, and the 
 income was as great as it was under the 
 old law. The regular constable regard- 
 ed it. as a good joke and took up another 
 business. At SS years of an active, well 
 spent life the Judge said good-bye to 
 all earthly things and passed away. 
 
 And now comes in the coincidence. 
 John Mead's family was a veritable 
 double of the William Siggins family. 
 John Mead had a saw mill and gi-ist mill, 
 a mile up Brokenstraw, and a family of 
 1.3 children. He was as tall as Mr. Sig- 
 gins, and. liis wife was as short as Mrs. 
 Siggins. Seldom, if ever, could such a 
 coincidence be found. The nearest to this 
 case that lias come under my observa- 
 tion is a Mr. Cross and a Mr. Morrison, 
 living at Parthenia, six miles below 
 Irvineton, on the Allegheny river. They 
 were next door neighbors; only a school- 
 house between them, and each had 13 
 cliildren. 
 
 Another of the pioneers in the Broken- 
 straw valley was H. P. Kinnear. He -^vas 
 born and reared in Youngsville, and as 
 lie grew into manhood lie became a 
 leader in the business of the town. 
 Everything pertaining to good of the 
 town he engineered to the best of his 
 ability.. To tell all the benefit that 
 Henry Kinnear was to this town would 
 take more time than I have to spare. But 
 
 I I mention a few of the things that he 
 did to help make Youngsville a nice, 
 i^ell-regulated little place to live in. It 
 w-as by his movements that the little 
 
 ; village became a borough more than 50 
 years ago. There was no other borough 
 in Warren county except Warren. Now 
 there are eight boroughs. He succeeded 
 in organizing Youngsville lodge. No. 500, 
 I. O. O. F., about 60 years ago, and was 
 elected as representative to the grand 
 lod.ge every year while he lived after the 
 organization, 40 years. He, as burgess 
 and councilman, brought about many 
 
 I impro\-ements that will stand as monu- 
 
 I nients to his love for Young:5ville for all 
 time to come. One of the principal land- 
 marks is the Odd Fellows cemetery. The 
 cemetery overlooks the borough from a 
 beautiful eminence about a mile away. 
 This "City of the Dead" was the pride 
 of his life until life ended for him about 
 20 years ago. He gave of his time free- 
 
 i ly in bringing about borough improve- 
 ments of all kinds, one of which was 
 to make a nearly level grade on all 
 
 i streets and sidewalks. If a rise of ground 
 appeared anywhere on the main streets 
 it was plowed and scraped and carted 
 away until the surface was smooth and 
 
 I even. The same with the sidewalks. If 
 
66 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 a bump appeared it was soon leveled, 
 and if a shade tree was an inch or two 
 inside the six-foot limit it had to be 
 shoved out to the proper place or taken 
 av ay entirely. In getting this accom- 
 plished Mr. Kinnear made many enemies, 
 but he went his way unmoved by the 
 grumbling of the tree owners and now 
 when he and a majority of the grumblers 
 have gone to their eternal homes about 
 10 miles of shale brick sidewalks are 
 laid on level foundation, the grading be- 
 ing done years ago under the super- 
 vision of this same H. P. Kinnear. I 
 was not of the grumblers, but I was 
 obliged to lower the ground at one end 
 of my sidewalk and cut nearly half the 
 roots off of some nice hard maple shade 
 trees. And I am one of the inhabitants 
 of the town who have been permitted by 
 the Great Ruler of the Universe to live 
 to see the time that I can walk about 10 
 miles on the different streets on level 
 brick walks and not stub a toe. But 1 
 am not done with Mr. Kinnear yet. He 
 at different times in his rather eventful 
 life filled town offices, being sheriff, 
 member of the state legislature and 
 treasurer, chairman of committee on 
 Grand hotel and superintendent of the 
 grounds of Point Chautauqua. In fact 
 he held all of these offices at one and 
 the same time. And at the time of his 
 death he was president of the Toungs- 
 ville Savings bank. Hon. H. P. Kinnear 
 has left his footprints in Youngsville 
 for all time to come. The borough has 
 the appearance of a park in certain 
 places because of his work. 
 
 Charles Whitney was another old-time 
 citizen who did a great deal to make a 
 beautiful place of Youngsville. He own- 
 ed nearly half the land inside the bor- 
 ough line, nearly all west of the Broken- 
 straw creek. He owned a saw mill about 
 two miles up the creek and was both a 
 farmer and a lumberman. His big farm 
 in Youngsville was covered with pine 
 stumps. He bought a stump machine 
 and summer after summer could be seen 
 from break of day until dark working 
 with his men, not bossing alone, but do- 
 ing as much work as any of his hired 
 men. Mr. Whitney raised four children. 
 All are, however, dead now. His oldest 
 son. Captain George Whitney, did his 
 full share toward putting down the great 
 Rebellion. He got up one company, took 
 it to the front and turned it into Colonel 
 Roy Stone's Bucktail regiment, then 
 came back and raised another company 
 and took it to the front. He stayed with 
 this company until the war closed. 
 
 Another citizen of this place is R. P. 
 Davis, a sweet singer, born and reared 
 in this town. He has been singing tenor 
 in the Methodist Episcopal church for 
 the last EC years. He has missed but 
 few Sundays in this time and consider- 
 ing special occasions would more than 
 
 average twice. But calling it twice each 
 Sunday, it would count 5,200 trips and 
 about the same number of miles of trav- 
 el. Counting three hymns to each ser- 
 vice, this shows that he has sang 15,600 
 hymns. He has, in addition to this, 
 spent about two years' time in the 50 
 years, in singing at funerals. He has 
 done all this free of charge. In the 
 above mentioned time he has worked a 
 farm, has been sexton of the cemetery 
 16 years, has been either burgess or 
 councilman 14 years, and has been su- 
 perintendent of the county farm here 
 three years. All inside this inside 50 
 years. Truly, Reuben has been on the 
 move within the last half century. 
 
 Alden Marsh was one of Youngsville's 
 well wishers and workers for the town's 
 advancement. He was a successful lum- 
 berman and retired with a competency 
 in middle life. He filled the office of 
 county commissioner for three succes- 
 sive terms with great ability. He was 
 a leading Odd Fellow and the I. O. O. F. 
 band turned out and played solemn 
 dirges at his funeral. When he was in 
 busmess and had plenty of money, and I 
 was a young chap, just commencing bus- 
 iness without money, all I had to do was 
 to ask Mr. Marsh for a thousand dollars 
 to use in buying and running lumber to 
 Pittsburg and selling it, and it would be 
 forthcoming. He never refused me, and 
 this borrowing was repeated many 
 times. When he died he left his prop- 
 erty and cash in bank to his wife. He 
 had no children and when his wife died 
 the property and cash all went to Mrs. 
 Marsh's relatives in Minnesota. No pro- 
 vision was made for keeping his lot in 
 the cemetery lawn-mowed and in proper 
 order, but in these long years since Mrs. 
 Marsh's death no weeds or briers have 
 grown on the Marsh lot. For we cannot 
 bear to see a tangle of weeds and briars 
 growing on the grave of such a good old 
 financial friend of the long ago. 
 
 John McKinney was another of the 
 moulders of Youngsville. He was one of 
 the first born after the old Scotchman, 
 Matthew Young, drove stakes and 
 marked out the site for the town of 
 Youngsville. He was the oldest of a 
 family of seven boys and a girl. He, 
 like every provident young man of near- 
 ly a century ago, went into the lumber 
 business, and accumulated a large quan- 
 tity of land on the waters of the Broken- 
 straw creek and its branches. Part of it 
 cost him but a few cents per acre, which 
 he bid off at tax sales, as "unseated 
 lands." But the bulk of his land was 
 bought privately. He paid the full 
 value for it. But the full value was not 
 a large amount at that time, when men 
 were working hard cutting, piling up 
 and burning nide pine timber to make 
 room for very scant crops. Land that 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 67 
 
 was groaning under the weight of the 
 very finest pine timber that ever stood 
 out of doors was sold at $1.50 per acre. 
 I have bougnt, at tliat rate, of the 
 Huidelcopers, rather than just talce 
 it." It was "all the go" to cut just 
 where one could find it, but I always 
 felt a little safer cutting my own tim- 
 ber than Huidekoper's. However, I 
 don't feel like bragging because of my 
 honesty. Tlie reader can just call it 
 cowardice, and let it go at that. 
 
 But to return to John McKinney. His 
 pine-covered lands kept rising, rising 
 and rising, and then how they did rise 
 when Drake struck oil at Titusville! Mr. 
 McKinney owned 100 acres near Hosmer 
 run, a mile above Garland. When the.v 
 drilled with a springpole he got a smell 
 of oil and sold it for $20,000. This hun- 
 dred acres was bid in at a tax sale for a 
 few cents an acre. Great is oil. At that 
 time Mr. McKinney could walk from 
 Youngsville to Irvineton — three miles — 
 on his own land, by zigzagging to the 
 sidehill at a couple of places. He sold 
 several hundred acres of his land hold- 
 ings at oil prices. When Mr. McKinney 
 was transacting this business mentioned 
 above his two nephews, John L. and 
 "Curt" McKinney, two miles from 
 Youngsville were helping their father, 
 James McKinney, run a little sawmill, 
 propelled by an old-fashioned wooden 
 water wheel. But when their uncle John 
 died several years later, worth nearly a 
 quarter of a million dollars, these two 
 boys were beginning to lay the founda- 
 tion for their fortunes of millions of dol- 
 lars. 
 
 John McKinney was a man who loved 
 to help those who tried to help them- 
 selves. A case in proof of this: When 
 I was emerging from boyhood to manhood 
 I borrowed $150 of him to pay the Hui- 
 dekopers for 100 acres of pine timber 
 land. Two years later I called with 
 money and interest to pay back the bor- 
 rowed money. When I spoke of interest 
 
 his answer was this: "I don't charge 
 interest to young men who are trying to 
 do something for themselves." He would 
 not and did not take a dollar of interest, 
 although I expected to pay it and came 
 prepared for it. John McKinney was a 
 business man all his lifetime of about 80 
 years. He never bothered himself about 
 office, with the exception of one term of 
 three years as sheriff of Warren county, 
 which the voters forced upon him. When 
 he died he was the richest man on the 
 Brokenstraw creek, from its mouth to 
 the headwaters in the state of New York. 
 His oldest son, Arthur McKinney, now 
 lives in this place and has done much to 
 test the territory between Youngsville 
 and Irvineton for oil and gas. He is 
 more encouraged at the present time than 
 ever before; has faith that we have a 
 paying oil field between Youngsville and 
 Irvineton. The big flood of 1892 swept 
 everything before it, and business had 
 not been resumed until recently. As one 
 well had put 150 barrels into a 250-barrel 
 tank before the flood and oil, tank and 
 all were swept down the Brokenstraw 
 and the well has not been touched since, 
 Mr. McKinney has faith enough to clean 
 out that well and try again. 
 
 Phillip Mead, Esq., was one of the sub- 
 stantial residents for 50 years. He held 
 the office of justice of the peace for 25 
 years without a break. He was one of 
 the leading merchants of this place for 
 40 years. And when it came to church 
 matters, he was an authority. No ser- 
 vice was complete without his presence. 
 He was always to be found at the 
 Thursday evening prayer meeting at the 
 M. E. church, as well as all Sunday ser- 
 vices. He leaves a son, W. J. Mead, who 
 keeps up his father's reputation for bus- 
 iness. He runs the leading hardware 
 store of the town, and a daughter, Cal- 
 lie Mead, now holds the position of as- 
 sistant cashier in the First National 
 bank of Youngsville. 
 
68 
 
 OLD TIMES IN 01 LOOM. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 NEW TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 In a recent article I spoke of the pio- 
 neers who liave made Youngsville what 
 it is. Now I am going to write something 
 which will sound more like "New Times 
 in Oildom.'' Here goes: Sixteen years ago 
 Youngsville was like a majority of tlie 
 small towns of the country, nearly at 
 a standstill. Although the location was 
 far ahead of any town of its size in 
 Warren county, being situated in a beau- 
 tiful valley, averaging a mile wide, ten 
 miles long, underlaid with gravel, where 
 an iron pipe can be driven down 30 or 
 40 feet in a few hours, and the very 
 best of pure, cold, soft water obtained, 
 its growth was slow. It lacked manu- 
 factories. There was considerable money, 
 owned by people who were very conser- 
 vative. They preferred to keep their 
 money in the bankn, at small interest, 
 to risking it in any kind of speculative 
 business. Money makes a poor sliowing 
 in that way. In fact no showing at 
 all. That was about the condition of af- 
 fairs at Youngsville when W. P. Nut- 
 ting, a young oil operator who had for- 
 merly lived in Youngsville, but who for 
 several years had been a very much 
 alive Clarendon oil operator — came to his 
 former home town, and started a bank. 
 Then "Charley" Kay came from Stilson 
 Hill, with a little money but with lots 
 of business energy, and went into the 
 steam sawmill business. From that 
 business he entered the steam grist mill 
 business, with John Sheldon, another 
 Stilson Hill man. as a partner. The big 
 flood of 1893 carried the mill off. leav- 
 ing nothing hnX. a big hole in the ground. 
 The engine was found nearly a quarter 
 of a mile down the cieek, almost hidden 
 by gravel and stones. That ended the 
 mill business for "Charlie," but he had 
 an appetite for business that could not 
 be quenched by the loss of one mill, and 
 a few weeks after the flood found him, 
 together with Peter Turner and Amil 
 Segadahl, starting up a furniture fac- 
 tory in a building reconstructed from a 
 private house. One addition after 
 another was put to this small beginning, 
 until a large and rather commodious 
 furniture factory reared its proud head 
 in the heretofore quiet Youngsville. 
 Then, when "everything was lovely and 
 the goose hung high," one quiet evening 
 the Are bell rang, and Youngsville's 
 pride was soon a heap of smouldering 
 ruins. And Youngsville lay all summer 
 "in sackcloth and ashes." But C. H. 
 Kay, superintendent, and his always to 
 be depended upon secretary and treas- 
 
 urer, M. D. Whitney, were not covered 
 with ashes. They were planning the 
 building of a new factory of triple the 
 capacity, and Ijuilt in a much more con- 
 venient place than ihe old one. And the 
 result is a $250,0.00 factory, which has 
 paid for itself, and is now bringing to 
 its stockholders enormous dividends. 
 But a word of explanation is necessary 
 in this connection. Only $15,000 stock 
 was sold at the beginning. It now pays 
 dividends on a $2.50,000 plant '. No stock 
 is for sale in tliis institution. And this 
 is not all. Both Kay and Whitney are 
 interested in nearly all the improve- 
 ments of the town. This large factory, 
 employing 150 men, is not all. Both the 
 gentlemen named ^bove have done good 
 work for the town, both in erecting of 
 new buildings and in all things per- 
 taining to the advancement of Youngs- 
 ville. Besides the individual efforts of 
 these two gentlemen, their example has 
 been far-reaching. . Two years ago 
 another furniture factory was built, 
 with a capacity for 200 workmen. The 
 main instigators of this factory were 
 Amil Segadahl and E. Swanson — Sega- 
 dahl being superintendent. Then the 
 Gern Mirror Works, of Jamestown, N. 
 Y., came and put up a plant as a result 
 of the influence exerted by these two 
 furniture factories. This shows that in 
 the business line one thin.g follows 
 another. And in building for private 
 families A. F. Swanson takes the lead. 
 This man is an enigma. About 20 years 
 ago lie opened a little grocery store 
 with about $400. To-day he owns a half 
 dozen stores, dwelling houses sheltering 
 20 families, owns a hotel, the Youngs- 
 ville house, owns considerable stock in 
 both furniture factories, in the Gem 
 Mirror works, in the First National 
 bank, of which he is a director, also the 
 Forest Manufacturing Company. He 
 owns an opera liouse, owns stock in the 
 Standard Shale Brick plant, and other 
 properties "too numerous to mention." 
 Mr. Swanson has not made any sensa- 
 tional strikes in the way of speculation. 
 He has conducted a store all these 
 years, and has quietly accumulatea 
 somewhere in the neighborhood of $100.- 
 000. E. C. Swanson, brother of A. F. 
 Swanson. has also done his full shar' 
 of helping Youn.gsville. 
 
 C. A. Hazzard is another man who be- 
 lieves in making homes for new-comers. 
 For several years he erected two first 
 class tenement houses each year. A. H. 
 Peterson is another gentleman who has 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 69 
 
 built a nice row of brick houses along 
 West Main street. Mr. Peterson is the 
 president of the Gem Mirror plant and 
 is one of the foremost capitalists of our 
 town. He owns stock in nearly all the 
 industrial plants in the place. E. A. Mc- 
 Dowell, superintendent and secretary of 
 the Forest Gas Company, is another of 
 our foremost business upbuilders of 
 Youngsville, assisted by his three sons, 
 one of whom, Forest, has gone west, "to 
 grow up with the country." Floyd is 
 one of "Uncle Sam's" mail route agents, 
 and Fred is cashier of the First National 
 Bank of Youngsville. Charles Newgreen 
 is another man who has been active in 
 the work of helping to double the popu- 
 lation of the town in the last five 
 years. 
 
 Hon. J. B. White, a former resident of 
 Youngsville, but now a resident of Kan- 
 sas City in the winter, and Chautauqua 
 lake in the summer, has done his share 
 in the educational line. Three years ago 
 he built a High school building costing 
 $25,000 in honor of his son, Fi-ank. In 
 the same year the Currie Memorial In- 
 dustrial school building was erected. J. 
 T. Currie, a wealthy resident, died about 
 19 years ago, leaving money on interest 
 for the purpose of putting up a building 
 where the boys can learn to do carpen- 
 ter work, iron work — work at other 
 trades — thereby educating the hands as 
 well as the head; a place where the 
 girls can also learn the art of cooking 
 and sewing. At the same time the old 
 four-story wooden school building was 
 veneered with No. 1 standard shale 
 brick and overhauled generally. Now 
 we have a row of three brick school 
 buildings, fronting on College street, 
 with a background of three acres for a 
 playground for the children. I have 
 traveled a great deal in New York state, 
 Pennsylvania, Ohio West Virginia and 
 Canada, and I have never seen a town ot 
 2,000 inhabitants have as many nice 
 school buildings as Youngsville has. 
 And we have the living J. B. White and 
 the dead J. T. Currie to thank for two 
 of the finest of the buildings. Both of 
 these magnificent gifts were turned 
 over to the Youngsville school board as 
 free gifts. 
 
 C. S. Mead, the leading dry goods mer- 
 chant of this place, has also been one of 
 our town builders. He owns the old H. P. 
 Kinnear farm, which is situated near 
 the very center of the borough, and has 
 there a little village of his own. 
 
 Among the newcomers is Robert 
 Slater, a man who has made a great 
 deal of money along the Allegheny river 
 
 at the lumber business. He is a good 
 citizen to have lying around loose. He 
 takes stock in all manufactories that 
 are being built. 
 
 This is an answer to the question 
 often asked, "What makes Youngsville 
 grow so fast?" It is the enterprising 
 monied men. And let me add that the 
 town is often helped by the enterprising 
 and "monied ladies." Mrs. Laura Jackson 
 and Mrs. Frank Kay built two of the 
 finest of the many brick houses erected 
 last year. Mrs. McCormick, Miss Callle 
 Mead and other ladies own nice brick 
 houses. Oh, yes, the ladies are doing 
 their full share of the work of making 
 Youngsville what it is to-day; the only 
 town of its size that I know of which 
 has laid about ten miles of shale brick 
 sidewalk within the last fiA e years, and 
 doubled its population in the same 
 length of time, except of course towns 
 that have struck oil or gas, or opened 
 coal mines. 
 
 Another wb.o must not be left out 
 among the helpers in Youngsville, is 
 H. C. Preston, who has been the su- 
 perintendent of the Rouse hospital farm 
 here in Youngsville for the last 12 years. 
 
 John A. Day, a man who was born in 
 Youngsville, about 50 years ago, is 
 counted among one of the most enter- 
 prising citizens of the borough. He, 
 single-handed and alone, promoted the 
 Youngsville & Sugar Grove trolley road. 
 He brought C. H. Smith, G. W. Wood, 
 Mr. Gibson, Mr. Baily and other monied 
 men of Sheffield and William Culbert- 
 son. of Girard, the wealthiest man in 
 Brie county. Pa., into the company which 
 made it a success from the start. The 
 roadbed is cut and filled the whole nine 
 miles, making a road for both passengers 
 and freight. The road will soon be ex- 
 tended from Sugar Grove to Chautau- 
 qua, a distance of about 16 miles, and 
 from Youngsville to Warren, a distance 
 of nine mile?. Then it will be one of 
 the best paying properties of the kind 
 in the country. No roads, either steam 
 or electric, parallel it from Youngsville 
 to Chautauqua. It has a splendid farm- 
 ing country all to itself. Mr. Day has 
 not let this monopolize his mind entire- 
 ly. Just to fill in the time while he has 
 been building the trolley road on his 
 own hook he has built telephone lines 
 nearly all over Warren county. And his 
 onlv son, Archie, "is a chip 'of the old 
 block." Archie has stuck up his poles 
 and strung his wires and does the "hello" 
 business for the wealthy and enterpris- 
 ing town of Sheffield, 22 miles east of 
 Youngsville. 
 
70 
 
 OLD TIMES I N OILDOM. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 'DUNC" KARNS AND 'TOM" KING. 
 
 Noticing the announcement cTf tiie ' 
 death of S. D. Karns brings very 
 forcibly to my mind once again ' 
 "Old Times in Oildom" in Par- 
 ker City. I owned a lumber yard \ 
 in that noted city at its inception, j 
 "Dunk, as he was called by everybody, \ 
 lived in his oil country house, next door ] 
 to my lumber office. He was a lively 
 oil operator, and no mistake. All he ; 
 had to do was to drill a hole in the 
 ground to get a big gusher of five or 
 ten hundred barrels a day. Oil was 
 four dollars a barrel, and his income 
 was simply immense. Everything he 
 took hold of simply melted into great 
 piles of money. He bought, or leased, 
 the McClimens farm, one mile and a 
 half south of Petrolia, and aside from 
 the gusher oil wells, he made a nice lit- 
 tle pile in lots, on which to build "Karns 
 City." The writer of this bought ground 
 for an opera house, a restaurant ana 
 hotel, and a city office, where was lo- 
 cated the lumber business and Western 
 Union Telegraph office, and land on 
 which the lumber yard was situated. 
 All these pieces of land were situated in 
 the western pai't of the town, and when 
 the town burned, a cross street was all 
 that saved my property. My chief loss 
 v/as simply some ornamental cut glass 
 In the "telegraphic" part of the build- 
 ing, worth but a couple of hundred dol- 
 lars. This would have been savfrd if 
 the wild, noisy crowd of men had obeyed 
 my instructions not to carry it out. but 
 to let it take its chances, as there was a 
 cross street between my building and 
 the fire, and as the fire companies from 
 Parker City. Petrolia and Millerstown 
 each had a stream of water on tlio fire. 
 I felt in but little danger. But they paid 
 not the least attention to me. They 
 were crazy, and tliey ruslied past me 
 as I stood in the front door, and a half 
 dozen grabbed the frame work and car- 
 ried the whole business out and into the 
 middle of the street, wliere they dumpei 
 it into tlie mud, and the fire companies 
 soon made mince meat of it. After that 
 fire Karns City was partly rebuilt, but it 
 never fully recovered from the damage. 
 But is to-day far from being a toadstool 
 town. It is a pretty little farming vil- 
 lage, reinforced by many old time wells, 
 and it will be a success as long as good 
 producin.g farms abound in that region. 
 But back to "Dune" Karns. He was 
 "it" in everything pertaining to the 
 business of Parker City and vicinity. 
 Any kind of business that did not have 
 
 Karns attached to one or the other end 
 of the names of it was considered "small 
 potatoes." It was "Parker & Karns 
 City railroad," "Karns bank," "Karns 
 bridge," "Karns City," "Karns pipe 
 line." In fact he was tlie mainspring. 
 "Dune" was not one of those business 
 men who go around with a troubled look 
 on his face. No, indeed! He scattered 
 sunsliine every day. He mixed pleasure 
 with business, and had a good time gen- 
 erally. He was a young man, full of 
 life and energ.v when his great piles of 
 money fell upon him. The weight of 
 his money did not crush him. He never 
 put on money airs, and made himself 
 disagreeable to the average man. He 
 would play a game of billiards witli a 
 respectable oil well worlcer witli as much 
 enjoyment as he would Iiave playing- 
 witli the owner of a thousand barrel 
 well. I recollect one little mark of 
 pride on his part, however. He bought 
 a billiard cue. finished with silver trim- 
 mings. Tlie biiiard man Ivept Mr. Karns' 
 cue in a separate receptacle from the 
 other sticks. Although tliis looked 
 somewhat "uppish" "Dune" bought it for 
 I what it was, a finely wrought plaything. 
 I The first sign of opulence on "Dunk's" 
 part was the building of a fine brick 
 i mansion a few miles below Preeport, Pa. 
 I He graded a lawn all around it, large 
 i enougli for a common sized farm, with 
 a nice setting of evergreens all over it. 
 i This place was on tlie opposite side of 
 j the Allegheny river from his boyhood 
 ' home — Karns eddy. But the old saying 
 is, "It's a long lane that has no turning." 
 ; The lane turned with "Dunk," but turned 
 I the wrong way. He was not the first to 
 ' dip in a little too deep, nor will he be 
 I the last. The oil country is paved with 
 ' men who have made and lost money. 
 The writer speaks from experience, he 
 having earned a small fortune in two 
 years and lost it in one. You see by 
 ithis that you can go down hill twice as 
 fast as you can go up. At a certain 
 j time when the oil business was at its 
 height, there were 30 lumber yards in 
 the lower oil regions. These lumber 
 ' yards were all doing a good business, 
 ' when, lo and behold! oil dropped from 
 I $3 a barrel to 50 cents a barrel. Then 
 the lumbermen "got it in the neck." Oil 
 operators by the score, who had been 
 paying their lumber bills every 30 days, 
 ! went into bankruptcy. One little bit of 
 an example is this: One operator, who 
 had been one of my best customers, 
 i failed for $1,500,000. Then where was 
 
OIL TIMES IN 01 LOOM. 
 
 71 
 
 my $900 lumber bill? This kind of thing 
 was not uncommon. Out of this number, 
 30 yards, only two came off unscathed — 
 28 having found the oil country a slip- 
 pery place to do business in. Money 
 slipped into the dealer's docket easily, 
 but it slipped out again much more 
 easily and quickly than it came. You 
 may ask 28 lumber yard owners if they 
 do not agree with me. One of the sur- 
 viving two is now dead, leaving but one 
 
 itness in favor of the beauties of the 
 lumber business in the "lower oil re- 
 gions." 
 
 The Parker City of to-day, In a busi- 
 ness point of view, is not a shadow of 
 its former self. I feel inclined to give 
 one incident of many that could be given 
 to show the strenuous way the Alle- 
 gheny Valley railroad had of doing busi- 
 ness. The railroad being on the oppo- 
 site side of the river from Parker City, 
 with only a wire cable to guide a ferry 
 boat across the stream, made it anything 
 but easy to do business in the new and 
 hustling town. Everything was "hurlj- 
 burly." The short side track at the "Phil- 
 lips House" could not hold half the cars 
 sent to the new oil town, and the cars 
 would be "switched" off at Foxburg, 
 three miles above, or at Bear Creek, one 
 mile below, and they would lie there un- 
 til a small opening on the switch at the 
 Phillips house could make room for one 
 or two cars. Then the cars destined for 
 Parker City would be "switched in." 
 One day the freight train men put two 
 carloads of lumber for my yard, lumber 
 needed at once for oil well purposes, on 
 the Bear Creek end of the side track. 
 No room was made for cars for nearly 
 a week, and no team could get near the 
 cars to unload the lumber. As "gondolas" 
 were in great demand about that time 
 the railroad could not well spare its 
 cars a week at a time lying idle on a 
 side track. Consequently "Tom" King, 
 assistant superintendent of the road, 
 came up from Pittsburg and ordered his 
 track workers to pitch my lumber down 
 the steep bank onto the gravelly stony 
 beach. There it was, partly in the water 
 and partly out of the ^- ater, before I 
 was even aware of the "King's" decree. 
 Well, my customers were in a great 
 hurry for the lumber and I put 
 my own team and a couple of other 
 teams at work hauling that lumber near- 
 ly a half mile up that river beach over 
 gravel and rocks and up a steep bank. 
 A team could haul but about one-quarter 
 of a load at a trip, and it was fully $100 
 damage to me considering the breakage 
 and extra teaming, lost time and every- 
 thing. I had not time to sue the rail- 
 road company. "Tom" King had not time 
 to lose with a lawsuit, and the most im- 
 portant of all the reasons for not suing 
 the railroad was that I had a free pass 
 over the road from year to year, and If 
 
 I had resented "Tom's mean action it 
 would have, in all probability, had a 
 bad effect on that pass. And as the pass 
 covered the Allegheny Valley road and 
 its brandies, and I v. as over the road 
 very often, I figured that it would not 
 take a great while to "deadhead" $100 
 worth of transportation in my kind of 
 business. So "Tom" King was not put in- 
 to the sheriff's hands to answer for his 
 un-hearu-of-way of doing unheard-of 
 things. I hear that "Tom" King, with a 
 big "K," is still railroading somewhere in 
 the western country. If he takes such lib- 
 erties with some of those cowboys as 
 he did with me he would have to "excuse 
 himself" at the point of one of their 
 playthings, a revolver. But what is the 
 use of being named King if you can't be 
 a King? 
 
 It was uphill and downhill busi- 
 ness those days to run a lumber yard 
 in the new Eldorado even when the 
 hard-worked yard master could get a car 
 on that little short side track at the 
 Phillips house wnere wagons could reach 
 it. It was no picnic to get the lumber 
 to the yard on the other side of the 
 river. When the teamster was lucky 
 enough to get his team in 'hrough the 
 cro^^ d of teams it required two men to 
 load the wagon, one on the railroad car 
 and another on the wagon. Then the 
 brakes had to be put on good and hard 
 to get down the steep river bank and on- 
 to Fullerton & McGlaulen's chain ferry 
 boat. Then upon reaching the Parker 
 side of the river a steep bank had to be 
 ascended before reaching the yard. It 
 cost something to get lumber from that 
 little crowded side track to the yard, 
 the wages of two men and team and the 
 tremendous ferry toll of Fullerton & Mc- 
 Glaulen on small loads. And now I will 
 give the other side for there were two 
 sides to the business: I bought a raft of 
 100.000 feet of boards from the Weston 
 mills, three miles above Olean, N. Y., on 
 Monday morning, paying $10 per thou- 
 sand feet for it in the water. Saturday 
 evening it was all gone at $19 per thou- 
 sand feet. This was -^ ithout cost to me. 
 The oil operators would drive their teams 
 into the water beside the raft and load 
 their wagons from the raft. I cleared 
 $900 on that raft in one week without 
 touching a board. Another $900 easy 
 transaction took place a short time after 
 the last mentioned. A bridge was built 
 across the river and the contractor gave 
 me the contract of furnishing the square 
 hard maple timber to put under the bot- 
 tom of the stone piers. I gave the con- 
 tract to a Springcreek mill owner at his 
 own price and cleared about $900 with- 
 out touching a piece of the timber. This 
 looks like making money easily. But the 
 old saying is: "Come easy, go easy." As 
 stated heretofore in these articles there 
 is no trouble about the reader seeing 
 
72 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 where the "go easy" came in. All the , branches of business were in a state of 
 old operators will remember the method, , chaos until the Standard Oil Company, 
 if there was any method in it, of do- j through maivelous management, gradu- 
 ing business. It was up and down and ; ally brought things in the oil country 
 up and doXn again and again and all \ into understandable shape. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 WARREN'S BIG MEN. 
 
 At this time there comes to my mind 
 many of the old business men of 'W'ar- 
 ren. Pa. There were among the 
 members of the bar Judge 3. P. 
 Johnson, Judge Rasselas Brown, Judge 
 Glenn W. Schofield, Thomas Struth- 
 ers, Judge L. D. Wetmore, Wil- 
 liam Parmlee. J. D. James and Judge W. 
 D. Brown. Of those named all are dead 
 but the last named, who has good health 
 and the prospect of enjoying the w^ll 
 earned fruu* of his former efforts for 
 many years, to come. Judge Johnson was 
 noted for his stern visage and plain talk. 
 During his long and successful legal life 
 he never spoke but he said something in 
 a manner to be plainly understood. Many 
 were offended at his plain speaking, but 
 those who knew him best knew well that 
 underlying his stern outward appearance 
 was a warm and tender heart. The 
 writer had business relations with him 
 and nevtr was more kindly treated. The 
 last interview was just before the open- 
 ing of the World's Fair at Chicago. I 
 found him in the consulting room of 
 Thomas Struther's law office, writing 
 that philanthropist's last will and testa- 
 ment. It was a somewhat sad sight to 
 meet those two substantial old lawyers 
 trembling on the very edge of eternity, 
 making a disposition of their very large 
 inheritance. The Judge dropped the will 
 writing and accompanied me to the court 
 house. On the way he, the Judge, in- 
 formed me that he had been at Chicago 
 to see the "White City." He said he was 
 well paid for his trip. Said he, "I am 
 S4 years of age, but I am in good health 
 and active for a man of my years. I can 
 walk nearly as nimble as ever." He then 
 proceeded to give me an example of his 
 nimbleness. "And," he said, "I hope 
 to live long enough to make the 
 second visit to the World's Fair, after 
 those buildings are filled with the best 
 products of the world." But, alas, for 
 the uncertainty of all things mortal. The 
 Judge was seized with sickness and died 
 before those buildings were filled. These 
 old lawyers were an honor to Warren. 
 At the time of which I write Warren and 
 Erie counties were one congressional dis- 
 
 trict. Warren furnished the member of 
 congress for both counties for many 
 year?, Erie being left out of the race. 
 The large county and city of Erie seemed 
 to be content to help elect Warren coun- 
 ty men to represent them on the floor of 
 congress. G. W. Schofield was elected and 
 re-elected several terms. Then Colonel 
 L. F. Watson followed him a couple of 
 terms, and when Erie did put forward a 
 man and elect him, Mr. Schofield was 
 chosen a congressman-at-large. The con- 
 gressman elected in Erie was C. B. Cur- 
 tis, a former lawyer of Warren. Then 
 came a genuine Erie county man, Mr. 
 Brainard. All those named above were 
 Republicans, but then a Democrat — Erie's 
 pride — walked over the 4,000 Republican 
 majority a couple of times, and repre- 
 resented his — the "wildcat district" — 
 with much credit to himself and his con- 
 stituents. Colonel Scott was as smart as 
 he was rich. He was an honor to the 
 Democratic party, but the old saying is 
 "the good die young," and years ago 
 Erie's lamented citizen, W. L. Scott, 
 passed away. 
 
 But let us return to Warren. 
 All the old set of lawyers wer* full of 
 legal lore and an honor to the legal pro- 
 fession. One of the recent deaths of the 
 Warren judges was that of Hon. L. D. 
 Wetmore. His 10 years on the bench as 
 president judge was a pleasant term for 
 both himself and the people. He did not 
 seem to grow old under the pressure of 
 that responsible office, but rather ap- 
 peared happy, but he, too, had to obey 
 the call of the Great Judge of the 
 World. 
 
 Another of the president judges was 
 "Charlie Noyes, as he was familiarly 
 called by his innumerable friends. Al- 
 though a Democrat, in a strong Republi- 
 can county, he was elected to the high 
 office of president judge by a good ma- 
 jority. Judge Noyes was a man of many 
 parts. He was connected with all good 
 societies and everything tending to 
 make Warren one of the finest and best 
 towns of its size in the country. When 
 he died the newspapers were filled with 
 eulog.es. He was Indeed missed. He 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 73 
 
 was a young man at the time of his 
 death, but was old in the knowledge of 
 the laws of this country. 
 
 I will now make mention of the 
 younger and at present active lawyers 
 at the Warren county bar: These are D. 
 I. Ball, D. U. Aired, Hon. O. C. Allen 
 and his son, Samuel Bordwell, W. 
 W. Wilber, W. M. Lindsey, who 
 has just completed a 10-year term as 
 president judge with honor to himself 
 and his constituents, and Charles W. 
 Stone and son Ralph. C. W. Stone has 
 filled about all the offices worth having 
 in the state of Pennsylvania. From prin- 
 cipal of the Warren schools he has 
 passed through the state assembly, state 
 senate, lieutenant governor and three or 
 four terms of congress. Mr. Stone stood 
 second best of the hundreds of congress- 
 men at v'^ashington. When "Tom" B. 
 Keid, the then speaker of the house, 
 was absent for a week at a time he 
 chose the Hon. Charles W. Stone to take 
 his place. 
 
 But let me now tell of the old, old 
 lumbermen. There were Orris Hall, "Joe" 
 Hall, Chapin Hall and Judge Hall, Boon 
 Mead, Guy Irvine, A. H. Ludlow, S. H. 
 and S. V. Davis, James Eddy, "Zack" 
 Eddy, Judge L. D. Wetmore, Judge Sid- 
 ney Wetmore, Hon. L. F. Watson, An- 
 drew Hertzel and a host of others, who 
 made fortunes in the lumber business, 
 when nearly the whole county and the 
 adjoining county of Forest were literal- 
 ly green with as fine pine trees as were 
 ever found anywhere. Many of the old 
 settlers of M^^arren made their fortunes 
 by "bidding off" unseated wild land. I'll 
 take Colonel Watson as an example. He 
 came to Warren from Titusville when a 
 mere boy, with 25 cents in his pocket, 
 but full of energy, business and in- 
 tegrity. He commenced work in a store 
 on a very small salary, but he, unlike 
 many young men, saved his money. 
 "When the day came for the selling of 
 unseated lands — unseated lands means 
 that many owners of wild land thought 
 it not worth while to pay their taxes in 
 the wilderness of Forest and Warren 
 counties, and let the assessors place 
 them on the unseated list — young Wat- 
 son was possessed of a keen vision and 
 he could look into the future and use 
 good common sense. He expected and 
 knew that this country would grow and 
 this isolated timber would come into 
 the market sometime in the future. Con- 
 sequently he bought large lots of this 
 wild land. It cost but a few cents an 
 acre and a small amount of his savings 
 would buy large tracts of land. 
 
 I'll give a conversation that I had with 
 Mr. Watson a few years ago in the di- 
 rectors' room of the Warren Savings 
 bank. I was seated in an easy chair 
 when Mr. Watson entered the room. 
 After a cordial shake of my hand, and 
 
 a warm hand was always extended to 
 his friends by that genial gentleman, he 
 said: "I have just got back from quite 
 an extended trip over in Forest county. 
 Yesterday I saw for the first time a 
 thousand acre lot that I bought at a tax 
 sale 50 years ago. I paid a few cents an 
 acre for it. It is completely covered with 
 pine all over, except about 20 acres in 
 one corner, and that 20 acres is covered 
 with the best of hemlock timber. I had 
 heard that it was a good pine lot, but 
 there are about 8,000,000 feet more pine 
 than I expected." I made this remark: 
 "The surplus, or the timber that you did 
 not know that you owned, is worth more 
 than your whole bank here." 
 
 Since the interview above mentioned 
 all timber has raised more than one-half 
 in price. Mr. Watson became several 
 times a millionaire. This certain piece 
 was one of many pieces of his early pur- 
 chases of wild lands at unseated sales 
 on the court house steps. Many other 
 old settlers, the late Hon. L. D. Wet- 
 more among the number, became im- 
 mensely wealthy by the same fair meth- 
 ods. And no wonder that Warren Is one 
 of the wealthiest cities of its size to be 
 found anywhere. 
 
 The late Hon. Henry Brace helped Mr. 
 Watson with some of his land sales and 
 afterwards went to California and be- 
 came wealthy himself in timber and 
 other transactions. He was buried in the 
 Odd Fellow s cemetery at Youngsville 
 only a short time ago. Mr. Brace was 
 by Mr. Watson's side when he (Watson) 
 dropped dead in Washington, D. C. and 
 like a coincidence death came to Mr. Brace 
 at his California home instantaneously. 
 All of the above named old-time lumber- 
 men have sent their last rafts down the 
 Allegheny, except the last named, An- 
 drew Hertzel, and it is to be hoped that 
 he will live to be 100 years old to super- 
 intend the beautiful Odd Fellows ceme- 
 tery at Warren as he has managed it for 
 the last 40 years without one dollar of 
 cost to the society. Can Mr. Hertzel's 
 equal in this respect be found In this or 
 any other country? Nearly every day 
 finds him driving "over the river" to the 
 beautiful city of the dead, where he 
 keeps his eyes on all the workmen and 
 gives them "friendly instructions. There 
 is only one Andrew Hertzel. Two other 
 gentlemen, S. V. and S. H. Davis, twin 
 brothers, were helpers of Mr. Hertzel In 
 his laudable work while they were busy 
 citizens of Warren. Their twlnship has 
 ended here on this earth and has com- 
 menced again in the unknown country 
 beyond. A word about these two that 
 were nearly always seen together here 
 while alive on this earth will not be 
 ami's: They were both Democrats liv- 
 ing in a county with 1,500 Republican 
 maioritv. S. V. received the Democratic 
 nomination for sheriff of Warren county 
 
74 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 and was elected over his Republican op- 
 ponent by a majority of 85. When S. V.'s 
 time expired his twin brother, S. H. 
 Davis, repeated the performance of his 
 twin brother, S. V. Davis, the only dif- 
 ference being- that the former had a 
 trifle more of a majority than the lat- 
 ter named. Those three workers for the 
 cemetery were also three good work- 
 ers in the I. O. O. F. lodge at Warren 
 which controls the cemetery. The two 
 last named are missed in the councils of 
 both the lodge and cemetery. 
 
 Away back, 60 years ago, Guy Irvine 
 was the king lumberman of the Alle- 
 gheny river. He owned many saw mills, 
 all propelled by water, and it required 
 many mills those days of single sash, 
 upright saws, to manufacture his dozens 
 of "Allegheny fleets." On the spring 
 freshet Mr. Irvine would float to Pitts- 
 burg fleet after fleet, and tie them up 
 to both shores of the river for miles 
 above the city. He would pay off his 
 army of "hands," leaving one to each 
 raft, to keep it afloat as the water would 
 recede. After each man had received 
 his nine to twelve dollars, about the 
 amount paid in those early days for a 
 down the river trip. Mr. Irvine would 
 take them to the Red Lion hotel, on the 
 Pittsburg side of the river, or to "Old 
 Tom Gardner's hotel, on the Allegheny 
 side of the river, and treat them to a 
 "cityfied meal." And let me say right 
 here that no landlord ever got rich from 
 those men's meals. After a week on the 
 raft, subsisting on bread, meat and pota- 
 toes, prepared by some man who wa» 
 taking his first lessons in cooking, those 
 hungry up-tlie-river men got away with 
 all the apple butter, apple sauce, stewed 
 peaches, stewed cherries, etc., that came 
 before them. No newfangled side dishes 
 were used at those eirly-day taverns. 
 The victuals were heaped up on single 
 plates, and each fel'ow pitched in and 
 helped himself. If the "tavern keeper- 
 got full pay for the raw material of one 
 of those meals — the cooking thrown in — 
 he came off lucky. When those Pennsylva- 
 nians and York State Yankees had more 
 than satisfied "the inner man," a large 
 majority of them 'ndulged in something 
 stronger than rivtr water, and then 
 would coiTimence the footsore march 
 toward their homes up the Allegheny. 
 
 Those raftsmen were a lively set, both 
 floating southward on an easy-going 
 
 raft or trudging northward over hard, 
 stony roads. The denizens of the scat- 
 tered farms along the way generally let 
 those raftsmen run things in their own 
 way. And let it be said to the credit of 
 those pioneer raftsmen, whom I have ac- 
 companied many times, that their wild 
 deeds were few and far between. 
 
 But let me return once again to Guy 
 Irvine. He, with all his riches, had not 
 the enjoyment of his northern home 
 only a small part of the summer months. 
 He could not, as now, slip up home in a 
 day or in a night and visit his family 
 and back again in the same length of 
 time, but he had to stay away a long 
 time to sell and deliver his vast amount 
 of lumber. And when he did get away, 
 some times nearing the fall of the year, 
 he would come home on horseback, 
 loaded down with money. And he was 
 bold enough to ride along through farms 
 and woodland without a companion. One 
 of the great wonders is that no high- 
 wayman ever "interviewed" him. 
 
 A story was rife at one time that one 
 robber stationed himself in a dense piece 
 of woods, with a gun, and awaited the 
 passing of Mr. Irvine. But in vain, as 
 Mr. Irvine had happened to take another 
 route and thereby spoiled the robber's 
 fun. 
 
 Let us look at the great strides in 
 the manner of doing business now, com- 
 pared with 60 or 70 years ago. Instead 
 of running the risk of being robbed, if 
 Mr. Irvine was selling lumber now at 
 Pittsburg, he would only have to drop 
 his pile of money into a Pittsburg bank, 
 take a certificate of deposit and drop It 
 into a Warren bank when he got home, 
 ask for a blank check book, and draw 
 his money at his pleasure. And instead 
 of that tiresome ride on horseback, he 
 could step into a Pullman car and sleep 
 until he reached his home. 
 
 I would like to speak of more of the 
 old time business men of Warren, but to 
 do the beautiful inland town full jus- 
 tice I would have to write a whole book. 
 I can, with my mind's eye, look back 
 and see Judges Galbraith, Vincent, John- 
 son, Brown, Noyes, Lindsey and Wet- 
 more. The reader, who was acquainted 
 with those legal lights, will see that five 
 out of the seven have presided at their 
 last suit. Judge Vincent having only re- 
 cently passed away. 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 75 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 WEST VIRGINIA EXPERIENCES. 
 
 I think a few words about West Vir- 
 ginia will be interesting. The writer of 
 this spent the largest part of two years 
 in the "Mountain State," organizing in- 
 surance lodges. It was easy work to get a 
 list of names of men and women and or- 
 ganize a lodge, but when it came to paying 
 dues and assessments, in some of the 20 
 towns where I organized they were "not 
 in it." I organized five lodges in Wheel- 
 ing, the largest city in West Virginia. 
 The members were always on hand at 
 the meetings of the order, but when it 
 came to paying their assessments and 
 keeping their protection safe, they were 
 not as good as the Pennsylvania people. 
 In the way' of entertainments they were 
 the bt St in the world. I made an ap- 
 pointment with 10 lodges for a visit 
 from the supreme president of the order. 
 I notified each lodge of the time of his 
 appearance. The meetings were for all 
 members of the order and non-members. 
 Well, those 10 meetings were 10 big pic- 
 nics. They had entertainments galore. 
 We had brass bands, mandolin clubs, 
 quartets, duets, solos, recitations, ora- : 
 tory. and everything that would add to 
 the entertainment of a crowd. At Wheel- 
 ing the entertainment was far in ad- ! 
 vance of anything ever witnessed before, j 
 or .since, by such a "jiner" as I, and I 
 belong to nine different secret societies, i 
 I'll not try to describe this entertain- 
 ment, but I'll give a few pointers that 
 will give the readers a chance to guess | 
 at the magnificence of the performance. | 
 The Grand opera house was the place of i 
 meeting. The orchestra belonging to the ! 
 building made splendid music. The best 
 performers of the city gave their best 
 efforts on all parts of the varied pro- j 
 gram. The members of the order were I 
 all dressed up to their special parts in 
 the program at great cost to themselves. 
 In fact, this could hardly be called an 
 amateur performance. The performers 
 — many of them — were professionals. 
 This is one of the "unguessable" things. 
 To think of men and women attending 
 so faithfully to the frivolous parts at 
 great cost and neglecting the important 
 parts at light cost. 
 
 Let me make a little correction. 
 I said I had organized five lodges 
 at Wheeling One was at Benwood 
 and another at McMechen, but all 
 were on the trolley lines. Of the 20 
 lodges organized in West Virginia, they 
 were nearly all in oil towns. Many, in 
 fact a majority of my members, w'ere 
 
 Pennsylvania oil men and women. The 
 inhabitants of West Virginia are large- 
 ly made up of Pennsylvania and Ohio 
 neople. The Pennsylvania people are a 
 little more appreciated than the Ohio 
 people. Senator Stephen B. Elkins in- 
 formed me, in the town named after 
 him, that the Pennsylvania people took 
 much more kindly to West Virginia than 
 the Ohio people. The former are accus- 
 tomed to a mountainous country and the 
 latter to a level country. The Senator 
 says it makes more difference than one 
 would suppose at first thought. 
 
 There is but one difference between 
 the two states of Pennsylvania and West 
 Vir,gini.T.. The sidehills are very much 
 more precipitous in West Virginia than 
 in Pennsylvania. When I first saw 
 Wheeling it was a black little village, 
 not much thought of by the raftsmen 
 who rode lazily past it from the Penn- 
 sylvania and 'York state lumber woods. 
 Black coal smoke rose in several places 
 as a nest pgg to Wheeling's future great- 
 ness in the iron business of the country. 
 Parkersburg was the next largest town 
 on the Virginia side of the Ohio river — 
 it was old Virginia at that time, as no 
 division had been made. Parkersburg 
 was a little huddle of old-fashioned 
 houses. Just make the comparison now, 
 and then. Now it is a city of nearly 
 20,000 inhabitants. All the recent build- 
 ings are up to date — built in the latest 
 fashion. Oil has been largely instru- 
 mental in making Parkersburg what it 
 is to-day. Many of the inhabitants of 
 the city came there full-fiedged oil op- 
 erators, as they generally came from the 
 Pennsylvania oil fields up the river. I 
 spent four months within the confines 
 of the old-time city and found a very 
 social and intelligent lot of citizens, f 
 for the first time since railroads were 
 built, did not ride one rod in a railroad 
 coach in four months. I organized a 
 lodge of over 200 members before i Irift 
 the town, and, unlike Wheeling, all ti.e 
 insured members paid their assessments 
 promptly each month. It was the best 
 lodge of the 475 that I have organized 
 within the last 32 years. 
 
 I stopped at the Palace hotel tliat 
 winter, and one peculiarity of the 
 situation was that nearly all the 
 young couples who came across the 
 river from the state of Ohio to 
 be joined in wedlock put up at the 
 Palace hotel. The proprietor of this ho- 
 tel had a preacher within easy call al- 
 
76 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 ways when one of these matrimonially 
 inclined couples were ready to put on 
 the yoke, and he had a standing witness 
 in the person of your humble servant. I 
 became regular in my attendance at wed- 
 dings. The name of that landlord and 
 my own decorated the marriage certifl- 
 cates of dozens of new beginners as 
 .sailors on the matrimonial sea. 
 
 I found myself in a rather noted 
 crowd at dinner one day. There were 
 seven Hatfields and one Brown at the 
 table. The McCoys stopped at another 
 hotel. The relationship did not seem ex- 
 actly cordial between the two families, 
 although they were both making a visit 
 to Parkerstaurg at the same time. A 
 word of explanation is due here. A great 
 land suit was on in the United States 
 court, then being held at Parkersburg, 
 and the Hatfields and McCoys were there 
 as witnesses. But they demonstrated 
 their good sense by not mixing up the 
 names of the two families on the same 
 hotel register. AVell, I had the honor of 
 dining at a table full of Hatfields, with 
 "Devil Anse" as one of the number. As 
 they had been stopping at the "Palace" 
 and boarding quietly, with people that 
 were not murderers, for nearly a week, 
 we all got used to them and it was no 
 great feat to be one of eight who was 
 not a Hatfield, at the same table at the 
 same time. In fact, I became somewhat 
 intimate with the family. I was as- 
 sured that if I behaved myself I would 
 be in no danger of bodily harm. I'll give 
 a little conversation that one of the' 
 crowd and I indulged in one evening 
 while we sat quietly in the hotel ofllce. 
 I said, "People up your way say that you 
 fellows are not a very bad lot in gen- 
 eral." He replied, "Oh, we are not the 
 worst men in the world, but a little 
 fiery." I told him that I "would write 
 them up" for the Parkersburg Journal 
 and that I would hand him a copy of the 
 paper. He said, "All right. I would like 
 to have it." The next day I went to the 
 railroad depot and just as the train 
 moved off toward the mountain home of 
 the Hatfields I handed him a copy of the 
 Journal. I will explain why I held the 
 paper until the departure of the train. I 
 thought that if he should take offense 
 at any part of my remarks I would 
 rather he would take offense on a train 
 speeding away from Parkersburg than 
 before he left the city. Now, to show 
 plainly how we can be deceived in ap- 
 pearances, one of those Hatfields had ev- 
 ery appearance of being a perfect gen- 
 tleman, both in dress and actions. I said 
 to myself there is no danger of that man 
 ever murdering anyone. But in less than 
 two years from that time I read an ac- 
 count in the papers of a man being mur- 
 dered by this same quiet-looking Hat- 
 field. But time mellows all things. I 
 
 have since read of the two noted fami- 
 lies intermarrying and thereby modify- 
 ing the feud between the world re- 
 nowned Hatfields and McCoys. 
 
 I never in my 32 years of organizing 
 lodges met but two editors of newspa- 
 pers who refused to publish the list of 
 officers of my newly organized lodges. 
 The first was a Pennsylvania editor, a 
 U. P. preacher, by the way. Secret so- 
 cieties were not to his liking. The other 
 was a McCoy, of West Virginia. He was 
 a lawyer, editor, owner of a big oil farm 
 and a trustee of the Presbyterian church. 
 It was not because of religious scruples 
 that he refused the publication of the 
 list of officers, but he felt that it was 
 "paid matter." He did not seem to know 
 that editors in general are very much 
 pleased to have items of local news of 
 that character. Often the managers of 
 daily papers in large cities have sent 
 their newsgatherers to the ante room of 
 the lodge rooms with orders to stay un- 
 til the list of officers could be obtained. 
 I have had them wait two hours before 
 the installation of officers was finished. 
 
 The first locomotive that I saw run- 
 ning along a track was in the state of 
 Ohio. I was on a lumber raft, lazily 
 floating down the Ohio river, when we 
 met an engine, with no coaches attached, 
 coming up the river, on the Ohio side. 
 It was a sight for our up-the-AUegheny 
 river eyes, and I also actually had my 
 first ride on steam propelled cars on the 
 same side of that same river. After 
 landing our "Ohio fleet" at Cincinnati, 
 and staying as a watchman on the raft 
 until my employer, the late Eben G. 
 Mead, than whom no better man ran 
 lumber to the lower markets, sold and 
 delivered his raft, I got into a coach and 
 took my first railroad ride to Cleveland, 
 O., then on a lake boat to Dunkirk, N. Y., 
 then in a stage coach to Jamestown, N. 
 Y., and "footed it" across the line into 
 the Keystone state, 18 miles, to my home 
 in Youngsville, Pa. Was not that going 
 around the bush some, if not more? 
 
 I have mentioned the down-the-river 
 people learning how to land a raft with 
 a long rope. Let me just mention the 
 beauties of this long rope business on 
 the rafting trip just described. After 
 we landed this big Ohio raft, I took up 
 my abode in the raft shanty until the 
 raft was sold. One nice warm day dur- 
 ing the first half of the month of May, 
 I laid my sleepy head on the straw pil- 
 low in the raft shanty and was soon in 
 the land of dreams. The river was very 
 high, over its banks in many places. 
 My dreams came to an end very sud- 
 denly when four Clarion timber rafts, 
 owned by Mr. Ford, of Ridgway, Pa., 
 broke their cables and came down against 
 my raft with a crash that broke my 
 cables and sent me down towards Cin- 
 
OLD TIMES IN 01 LOOM. 
 
 77 
 
 cinnati. I was "monarch of all I sur- 
 . veyed," sailing down into the heart of 
 the city on a very large "Ohio fleet," 
 •with no one to boss me and thousands 
 of feet of square timber floating after 
 me. Now comes in the long rope busi- 
 ness. Wlien the raft had made about 
 two miles toward Poriiopolis, I saw two 
 men jump into a skiff and row towards 
 me. I first thought that they intended 
 to take me to shore. But I soon found 
 that they had a better object in view. 
 They rowed vigorously until they reached 
 the side of my runaway raft. They then 
 asked me for the privilege of landing 
 the raft. The reader may guess that 
 the privilege was instantly granted. 
 They then, with my help, lifted a coil 
 of rope, 900 feet long, one and one half 
 inches in diameter, and carried it onto 
 the raft. Next one of the men took hold 
 of one end of the rope and got into the 
 skift: and the other rowed him to shore, 
 and while the man with the rope took a 
 half-hitch around a big plum tree, the 
 other man rowed back to the raft and 
 took a hitch on the raft snubbing post, 
 and played out the 900 feet of rope, 
 bringing the big raft to shore, safe and 
 sound. I felt like the passengers who 
 offered prayers and thanked Marconi 
 when the big vessel went down recently, 
 when the wireless telegraphy saved 1,650 
 lives. These two men will always have 
 my best wishes. Their act, thr next day, 
 when Mr. Mead called to pay them for 
 the job, proved them to be fair-minded 
 indeed. Their charge was only $10. Mr. 
 Mead expected to pay about $100, as 
 their work saved him over $1,000. If 
 not for getting that raft landed above 
 Cincinnati, where it was sold, it would 
 have gone below the city, and would 
 have been sold for a much less price 
 than it was already sold for at Cincin- 
 na... Mr. Ford's timber went on below 
 the city and he afterwards informed me 
 that he lost $6,000 by the breaking of 
 his ropes. His rafts were towed ashore 
 by tugboats after they had passed the 
 city, where they were sold. 
 
 This rafting w-as a peculiar business. 
 One instance is worth mentioning on this 
 trip. On the Ohio river we ran night and 
 day. Not so on the Allegheny river. 
 There were too many island- and bars 
 and crooks. It required daylight to navi- 
 gate it safely. Sometimes when the water 
 was falling or when the pilot failed to 
 make a landing in a safe eddy he was 
 obliged to run all night and it was re- 
 markable the small number of mishaps 
 that did take place. When we take into 
 consideration the large number of rafts 
 that passed Oil City every rise of the 
 vrater it fills one with wonder that so 
 few raft? were wrecked. AVhy, the old 
 inhabitants of Oil City can recollect the 
 time that they could stand on the bank 
 of the river all day and never be out of 
 
 .sight of rafts either opposite or up or 
 down the stream. 
 
 The description in the Derrick recently 
 of the lights of Oil City at night re- 
 minaed me of tlie Pan-American show at 
 Buffalo a few years ago. And it also re- 
 minded me of Oil City many years ago. 
 Then, instead of tlie glorious blaze of 
 light of the present, about all that could 
 be seen in the way of illumination was 
 a tin lantern, witli holes cut in the sides, 
 and a "tallow dip" standing in the bot- 
 tom. Tliere was l)ut little difference be- 
 tween those old-fashioned lanterns and 
 a common sized lightning bug. Why, did 
 you ever think that we are 2,000 years 
 behind the times? The Bible tells us 
 that in A. D. 70, Antioch had street 
 lamps, water running in tlie streets and 
 into the houses. Once or twice Oil City 
 has had water running in tlie streets and 
 into the houses, too, and Antioch was 
 not "in it" in regard to fire, but Oil City 
 was "in it" to a sorrowful degree. Many 
 of your old citizens and some younger 
 ones will agree with me in this. It is to 
 be hoped that the fire fiend will never 
 again make such disastrous visits as it 
 has done when your beautiful city was 
 first springing into its wonderful growth. 
 The Derrick recently spoke of John 
 Holliday being a pioneer In the ferry 
 bu-iness in Oil City.. My next door 
 neighbor is John Holliday's son, Thomas, 
 and he is a "chip of the old block," in- 
 terested at present in the oil business 
 between Oil City and Pleasantville. 
 
 Speaking of Pleasantville, reminds mo 
 of a little lumber transaction when 
 thines were running wild. Very late in 
 the fall of that exciting year, when 
 Plumer was the terminus of the only 
 railroad in sight of Oil City, I landed a 
 raft of hemlock derrick lumber at 
 Oleopolis, or at the mouth of Pithole 
 I creek. I sold the raft to a New York 
 j city man who was operating quite ex- 
 tensively in the rather prolific Plumer 
 oil territory. This man gave me $15 per 
 i thousand feet for this lumber. He drew 
 ! a part of it for his own use and sold part 
 ' of it to other parties for $60 per thous- 
 ! and feet, and nearly half of jt floated 
 1 off down the river in the great fiood of 
 ! 1865. I was the only man who did not 
 j lose on that raft, and taking out the cost 
 j of one day's run. I made one-third on 
 my investment. I mention this to show 
 I the uncertainties of the lumber business, 
 ! as well as the oil business. And while 
 : talking of lumber, let me make the rc- 
 I mark that something like dreariness 
 ! comes over me when my mind wanders 
 ' back to rafting times, when water float- 
 ed tht- lumber to market instead of 
 ! steam pulling it on wheels. Tlie beau- 
 i tiful green pines have been cut down 
 i and are gone, and nearly all the sturdy 
 1 axe-men who cut tlie trees have been 
 
78 
 
 OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 overtaken by Old Time and cut down as 
 ruthlessly as were the thrifty green 
 trees. The places that knew them both 
 will know them no more forever. But 
 in time the places of the trees will be 
 
 filled with a new growth of flourishing 
 trees and the work of these pioneers — • 
 good men and true — will live long after 
 them. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 INTERESTING LETTERS TO THE AUTHOR. 
 
 When I wrote the preceding article of 
 "Old Times in Oildom" I thought I had 
 finished. But since the publication of 
 the first of the articles in "The Der- 
 rick" I have received many let- 
 ters from the readers of that 
 paper, a few of which I would like to 
 have printed. One is from a brother of 
 the late Charles Dinsmoor, of Warren, 
 and who is now an expert botanist, of St. 
 Marys, W. Va. The letter explains it- 
 self. It does more X\.An explain itself. 
 It gives a little insight into the size of 
 my feet that might otherwise have re- 
 mained a secret, so far as those who 
 never saw me are concerned: 
 
 St. Marys, W. Va., June 29, 1909. 
 Hon. G. W. Brown, Youngsville, Pa. 
 
 Dear Sir: — Your "Old Times in Oil- 
 dom," now running in the Oil City Semi- 
 Weekly Derrick, is most intensely inter- 
 esting to me. It is barely possible you 
 can remember me. I was "head" saw- 
 yer at Tiona and cut lots of tank plank 
 for you along about 1871, '72 and '73, 
 and remember you quite distinctly. You 
 frequently gave me directions of the 
 kind you wanted. You were then quite 
 grey, somewhat stooping and had feet 
 nearly as large or larger than President 
 Lincoln's. One instance I can recall. 
 You were standing near the "edger" in a 
 slightly dangerous place. I motioned to 
 a young fellow of Irish extraction, di- 
 recting him to have you stand in another 
 place, as you might get injured. He re- 
 plied, "Be jabbers, he Is long enough for 
 this wourld," meaning that you were 
 "very tall timber," as we denominated 
 six-footers. I regret not having had the 
 pleasure of "hoeing it down" after your 
 "scraping" the "fiddle" and keeping time 
 with your No. 10s. 
 
 Many pleasures have come my way in 
 the last half hundred years; none that 
 surpassed the old-time dances of the 
 mill and woods men and women of "Old 
 Lang Syne." As you recalled the names 
 of leading lumbermen of Warren county, 
 a sweet, sad remembrance stole over me 
 that I can scarcely shake off yet. I was 
 personally acquainted with nearly every- 
 one of them. Guess I did my share in 
 tearing up the noble wilderness that once 
 covered so much of Warren county; per- 
 
 haps sawed as many logs as any young 
 man of that period; every piece that 
 went into Pleasant bridge at Warren in 
 '72; also the timber in Dunkirk, Warren 
 & Pittsburg railroad; hundreds of walk- 
 ing beams: also stuff that went as far as 
 Boston. Came near being a resident of 
 Youngsville, with L. B. Wood, but com- 
 menced to roam; have since spent 20 
 years in the west; have taken the Der- 
 rick for 25 years ai, least; have had, and 
 still have splendid health; am on "Easy 
 street;" have fine children. Was born on 
 the very summit of Quaker hill, 
 1.900 feet above the Allegheny river; 
 was the youngest of 15 chil- 
 dren; one only settled in War- 
 ren, Charles Dinsmoor, all having crossed 
 over except three. Am now living one 
 and a quarter miles from the Ohio river, 
 550 feet above the same. On my next 
 visit to Warren county will make it a 
 point to see Youngsville and the "15 
 miles of sidewalk." Should you come 
 down the Ohio be sure to stop at St. 
 Marys. You will have no trouble in find- 
 ing Dinsmoors in plenty. 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 G. W. Dinsmoor. 
 
 Another letter from the secretary and 
 treasurer of the Oil Men's Association of 
 Western Pennsylvania is as follows: 
 
 Butler, Pa.. April 16, 1909. 
 Mr. G. W. Brown, 
 
 Youngsville, Pa. 
 
 Dear Sir: — I have been reading your 
 reminiscences in the "Derrick" with in- 
 terest. These old stories bring up mem- 
 ories of the past and are worthy of be- 
 ing preserved. 
 
 The Oil Men's association meets this 
 year at Conneaut Lake, August 5th, and 
 would be glad to entertain you there for 
 a couple of days. 
 
 I don't know whether you recall me 
 or not, but I remember meeting you 
 here several years ago, and like your- 
 self, I have been on the Derrick staff for 
 a decade or more. 
 
 I remain, with best wishes, 
 Your respectfully, 
 
 C. R. Wattson. 
 The Oil Men's Association of Western 
 
 Pennsylvania. 
 
OLD TIMES IN OILDOM. 
 
 79 
 
 Another letter is as follows: 
 
 Butler, Pa., May 8, 1909. 
 Hon. G. W. Brown, 
 
 Youngsville, Pa. 
 Dear Sir: — It is these reminiscences 
 that the oil people like to go over again. 
 Will you kindly send me a photo of 
 
 yourself?. Thanking you for your kind- 
 ness in this matter and with best wishes, 
 I am. 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 C. R. Wattson, 
 National Transit Company, United Pipe 
 Lines Division. 
 
DEC 10 1909