brick-blocks, established a bank, held thousands of acres of lands and in 1884 left a very large inheritance to his sons and daughters. Mr. Raymond developed the Raymilton district—it was named from him—in which hundreds of fair wells have rewarded Franklin operators, and at eighty-nine was exceedingly quick in his movements. Mr. Brashear, a civil engineer and exemplary citizen, has been in the grave twenty years. Mr. Hanna operated heavily in oil, acquired numerous farms and erected the biggest block—it contained the first opera-house—in the city. He is handling real-estate, but his former partner, John Duffield, slumbers in the cemetery. Mr. Hoge, an influential politician, elected to the Legislature two terms and Mayor one term, has also joined the silent majority. In February, 1860, Caldwell & Co., a block southeast of Evans, finished a paying well at two-hundred feet. The Farmers and Mechanics’ Company, Levi Dodd, president, drilled a medium producer at the foot of High street, on the bank of the creek. Mr. Dodd was an old settler, originator of the first Sabbath-school in Franklin and a ruling-elder for over fifty years. Numerous companies and individuals pushed work in the spring. Holes were sunk in front yards, gardens and water-wells. Derricks dotted the landscape thickly. Franklin was the objective point of immense crowds of people. The earliest wells were shallow, seldom exceeding two-hundred feet. The Mammoth, near a huge walnut tree back of the Evans lot, began flowing on May fifteenth to the tune of a hundred barrels. This was the first “spouter” in the district and it quadrupled the big excitement. Four-hundred barrels of oil were shipped to Pittsburg, by the steamboat Venango, on April twenty-seventh. Twenty-two wells were drilling and twenty producing on July first. Farms for miles up French Creek had been bought at high prices and the noise of the drill permeated the summer ozone. Four miles west of Franklin, zig-zag Sugar Creek shared in the activity. Then the prices “came down like a thousand of brick.” Pumping was expensive, lands were scarce and dear, hauling the oil to a railroad cost half its value and hosts of small wells were abandoned. On November first, within the borough limits, fifteen were yielding one-hundred-and-forty barrels. Curtz & Strain had bored five-hundred feet in October, the deepest well in the neighborhood, without finding additional oil-bearing rock. The Presidential election foreboded trouble, war-clouds loomed up and the year closed gloomily. [Illustration] LEVI DODD. COL. BLEAKLEY. J. LINDSAY HANNA. AARON W. RAYMOND.