The production of this marvelous gusher—over seven-hundred-thousand barrels—netted upwards of four-million dollars! One-fourth of this lordly sum went to the children of James Farrell—he did not live to see his land developed—James, John, Nelson and their sister, now Mrs. William B. Sterrett, of Titusville. Noble and Delamater owned one-half the working-interest, less the sixteenth assigned to S. S. Fertig, who bought another sixteenth from John Farrell while drilling the well and sold both to William H. Abbott for twenty-seven-thousand dollars. Ten persons—L. L. Lamb, Solomon and W. H. Noble, Rev. L. Reed, James and L. H. Hall, Charles and Thomas Delamater, G. T. Churchhill and Rollin Thompson—held almost one-quarter. Even this fractional claim gave each a splendid income. The total outlay for the lease and well—not quite four-thousand dollars—was repaid one-thousand times in twenty months! Is it surprising that men plunged into speculations which completely eclipsed the South-Sea Bubble and Law’s Mississippi-Scheme? Is it any wonder that multitudes were eager to stake their last dollar, their health, their lives, their very souls on the chance of such winnings? Thirteen wells were drilled on the Farrell strip. The Craft had yielded a hundred-thousand barrels and was doing two-hundred a day when the seed-bag burst, flooding the well with water and driving the oil away. The Mulligan and the Commercial did their share towards making the territory the finest property in Oildom, with third sand on the flats and in the ravine of Bull Run forty feet thick. Not a fragment of tanks or derricks is left to indicate that twenty fortunes were acquired on the desolate spot, once the scene of tremendous activity, more coveted than Naboth’s vineyard or Jason’s Golden Fleece. On the Caldwell farm of two-hundred acres, south of the Farrell, twenty-five or thirty wells yielded largely. The Caldwell, finished in March of 1863, at the north-west corner of the tract, flowed twelve-hundred barrels a day for six weeks. Evidently deriving its supply from the same pool, the Noble well cut this down to four-hundred barrels. A demand for one-fourth the output of the Noble, enforced by a threat to pull the tubing and destroy the two, was settled by paying one-hundred-and-forty-five-thousand dollars for the Caldwell well and an acre of ground. “Growing smaller by degrees and beautifully less,” within a month of the transfer the Caldwell quit forever, drained as dry as the bones in Ezekiel’s vision!