| Rita's ~
VINTAGE READING®
~ Notebook
Since 1947, "Mrs. B" has found and verified countless people, events . . .
and--at times--even figments of imagination. We offer another
example.
FEBRUARY -- MARCH 2008 :: © 2008 Buday Books Vintage Reading ®
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"Like Throwing Money Down a Gopher Hole!"
Adapted from the accounts of J. S. Schooley, E. V. Smalley
Ida Tarbell, and other contemporary sources
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By Rita Buday
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Seems as though Oil--Petroleum Oil--has been our economy's "bull in the china shop" forever!
Not so.
Yes, Petroleum Oil has been
around for a long time. How long is hard to say. American Indians soaked it up
in blankets when it oozed from the ground, and skimmed it off creek waters. They used it as
liniment and mixed colors in it for war-paint.
The first drilled oil well produced some 20 gallons on August
27, 1859. That was only 149 years ago--twenty months before the Civil War began. It wasn't
"forever ago" but the Civil War, Union and Confederate Armies, Lincoln's
assassination--make it seem like a century-and-a-half is a very long time past.
Truth is--if we figure our grandparents were the children
of parents born a generation after that first oil well, that makes Petroleum Oil's influence on our economics and history seem much closer.
Nations and their political leaders have prospered
mightily on Petroleum Oil, (sometimes, a tiny crumb from those feasts
even trickled down to "ordinary citizens.") Fortunes are still being
made--and lost-- because of Oil. Political intrigues and all-out wars
continue
to defend it or to try taking it
away from someone else.
Automobiles, trucks, aircraft carriers, modern
warships; plastics and manufacturing industries; Interstate highways
and world history--the list is endless--all result from Ed Drake's success that day in
August, 1859.
His qualities included being a very conscientious worker, with genuine
enjoyment of dealing with people, and a bulldog determination to do
the job right. On the negative side though, he had recurrent bouts of
ill
health that affected his job tenure, and an odd indifference to--or
fear of--making a lot of money.
He'd been a hotel desk-man in Michigan for two years;
dry-goods clerk at stores in Connecticut and New York for four;
worked five years as express agent for Boston & Albany Railroad,
and most recently was a train conductor since 1850 on the
New York & New Haven Railroad until ill health attacked him again.
He and his wife had some savings and
$200 of Pennsylvania Rock Oil Co. stock. They had no idea he'd soon be part of the world-wide Oil Rush being fought
tooth-and-claw even today.
COMMERCIAL USES OF PETROLEUM OIL IN AMERICA BEFORE 1859
In the late 1840s, Thomas Kier's business in Pennsylvania evaporated brine
pumped from drilled wells to reclaim the salt. He made reasonable money
doing it until crude oil began to seep into the brine. Though he removed it, the cost of doing so became an annoying item.
His son, Samuel M. Kier, turned nuisance into profit by bottling it as Rock Oil. On each bottle he pasted a label that may have overstated its source: "Rock Oil
comes from 400 feet in the earth . . . while boring for salt water." Whatever! It sold well enough at medicine
shows as a liniment and cure-all.
A bottle of Kier's Rock Oil found
its way to
lawyer George
Bissell who saw profit possibilities if the oil supply was
more abundant. He joined fellow-lawyer
Jonathan Eveleth to organize Pennsylvania Rock Oil Co., which
bought
several
hundred acres of oil-seeping land, hired workmen to hand-dig shallow
wells and trenches to collect the oil. That idea was scrapped when
"yield" did not justify "cost."
Next, Bissell sent a sample to the Yale College Chemistry Dept. for
analysis. They said it ought to be very good for
burning in oil lamps, and--if carefully distilled--should also yield
lubricating oil, grease, paraffin, and a clear, volatile solvent (gasoline).
Turned out Rock Oil smoked and had an even more foul odor when burned as a substitute for
camphene or now-getting-scarce whale oil. (Camphene was a mixture of turpentine and alcohol
that burned bright and clean. It could also blow your head off if not
handled just-so. That tended to dampen enthusiasm for the product.)
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THE COLONEL AND THE SOLUTION
There had to be a better, cheaper way!
Meanwhile, corrections to legal papers required
someone to go to Titusville, Pennsylvania. In one of those "sometimes"
coincidences, Ed Drake, between jobs at the time, happened to come by the law office and agreed to go.
Bissell's letter introduced him as "Colonel" Drake for the impression
it might create, and suggested he go by way of Pittsburgh and
Syracuse to see how salt wells were drilled.
Drake returned from his trip so fired up about drilling,
he was ready to start tomorrow. Bissell and Eveleth organized Seneca
Oil Co. with Drake as president and chief in charge of drilling; its cash assets were miserly.
Pennsylvania Rock Oil leased its lands to Seneca
for twelve-cents royalty on every gallon of oil produced.
It took months to find the tools, engine, supplies, etc. The driller
Drake hired backed out. By then it was Winter. Come Spring,
he drove a horse and wagon 100 miles to bring back a driller who knew
his business.
They built a derrick and started drilling but loose mud and
quicksand fell into the hole as fast as they drilled.
People said it
just proved drilling for oil was like throwing money down a
gopher-hole.
Ed solved that problem by rigging up a sort of pile-driver
in the derrick to hammer cast iron pipe through the ground until it touched
solid rock, then drilling inside the pipe. That's how it's still
done today. He never did patent that idea; it would have brought him a
fortune.
~
The
nearest blacksmith who knew how to sharpen drilling tools was fifty
miles away. That killed a lot of time coming and going until a
blacksmith set up shop nearby.
The rope fastened to the string of
tools broke. It took a week to invent a way for
fishing them out of the hole.
Seneca Oil Co.'s treasury ran dry. Ed and
his wife kept things going with their own money and donations
from friends.
Finally, it was August 27, 1859. At 69 feet, 6 inches, the drill
suddenly broke through solid rock into what they thought was an
underground cavern. When they came to resume drilling the next
morning, the pipe was full of oil. That started the Petroleum Oil Rush
that accounts for today's Oil Power And Wealth.
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"SURE BEATS FARMING FOR A LIVING!"
Jim Tarr had a 200-acre farm on Oil Creek that was worth, on a good
day, maybe $1,000 to someone who didn't know any better. Jim's
first well, drilled in 1861, flowed 300 barrels a day for thirteen
months. His second well flowed 4,000 barrels a day and produced
near 1,000,000 barrels before it was done.
Jim cleared over $3,000,000 altogether, bought another place in the next county, and lived like a gentleman.
Bill Barnsdale, a young Englishman, came to do
shoemaking. That August day when Drake first struck oil, Bill
scraped together every dollar he had and could borrow; put the whole
$3,000 into drilling for three months until he hit oil--starting twenty-five
barrels a day, selling at eighteen dollars a barrel!
John Benninghoff was another one. His 300 acres had
drilling derricks all over, producing from twenty-five to 300 barrels a
day--steady. He didn't know what to do with all his money; didn't trust
banks, so he kept it at home; got robbed in 1868 of nearly $300,000 in
cash . . . didn't make much of a dent in his pile.
Then there was Wes Chambers who came in 1861 after eight
years of no-luck prospecting for gold in California. He put every
dollar he could borrow toward buying horses and wagons to
transport drilled oil to wholesale buyers. When the pipeline and
railroad came, he drilled for oil; did very well for himself.
Wes was considered an odd duck because he said if you made
money off a place, you owed using some of the money--sort of like
tithing--to make things a little better for everyone. Wes put his
money where his mouth was, quietly improving social conditions in the
Oil Region.
~
When it
came to making money, Ed Drake was something else. The bank and people
wise about money offered advice that would have made him at least as
rich as the rest; he settled for being an oil commission merchant and
Justice of the Peace for the next four years.
He and his wife saved $16,000; took it to Wall
Street in 1863; were swindled by speculators. Ed's
health broke down again. He and his family moved first to Vermont, then
to New Jersey, living in the worst poverty you can imagine. People in
Titusville heard about the Drakes' condition in 1870. They passed the
hat; it overflowed several times; Wes Chambers would have been proud.
Some who knew how to be heard at the State capital in
Harrisburg carried the case to the Legislature. In 1873,
Pennsylvania awarded Ed Drake $1,500 a year pension until he died in
1880. It continued as a salvation for Ed's family after he died, but
when you figure how much Petroleum Oil has paid in taxes and the
prosperity it brought . . .
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