Desirous of earning more, young Rockefeller after a time asked for eight hundred dollars as wages; and, the firm declining to give over seven hundred dollars a year, the enterprising youth, not yet nineteen, decided to start in business for himself. He had industry and energy; he was saving of both time and money; he had faith in his ability to succeed, and the courage to try. He had managed to save about a thousand dollars; and his father loaned him another thousand, on which he paid ten per cent interest, receiving the principal as a gift when he became twenty-one years of age. This certainly was a modest beginning for one of the founders of the Standard Oil Company. Having formed a partnership with Morris B. Clark, in 1858, in produce commission and forwarding, the firm name became Clark & Rockefeller. The closest attention was given to business. Mr. Rockefeller lived within his means, and worked early and late, finding little or no time for recreation or amusements, but always time for his accustomed work in the church. There was always some person in sickness or sorrow to be visited, some child to be brought into the Sunday-school, or some stranger to be invited to the prayer-meetings. The firm succeeded in business, and was continued with various partners for seven years, until the spring of 1865. During this time some parts of the country, especially Pennsylvania and Ohio, had become enthusiastic over the finding of large quantities of oil through drilling wells. _The Petroleum Age_ for December, 1881, gives a most interesting account of the first oil-well in this country, drilled at Titusville, on Oil Creek, a branch of the Alleghany River, in August, 1859. Petroleum had long been known, both in Europe and America, under various names. The Indians used it as a medicine, mixed it with paint to anoint themselves for war, or set fire at night to the oil that floated upon the surface of their creeks, making the illumination a part of their religious ceremonies. In Ohio, in 1819, when, in boring for salt, springs of petroleum were found, Professor Hildreth of Marietta wrote that the oil was used in lamps in workshops, and believed it would be "a valuable article for lighting the street-lamps in the future cities of Ohio." But forty years went by before the first oil-well was drilled, when men became almost as excited as in the rush to California for gold in 1849. Several refineries were started in Cleveland to prepare the crude oil for illuminating purposes. Mr. Rockefeller, the young commission merchant, like his father a keen observer of men and things, as early as 1860, the year after the first well was drilled, helped to establish an oil-refining business under the firm name of Andrews, Clark, & Co.