A short distance below the Crescent well William Phillips, who had leased a narrow strip the entire length of the farm, was also urging a “spring-pole” actively. Born in Westmoreland county in 1824, he passed his boyhood on a farm and earned his first money mining coal. Saving his hard-won wages, he bought the keel-boat Orphan Boy and started freighting on the Ohio and Allegheny rivers. The business proving remunerative, he drilled salt-wells at Bull Creek and Wildcat Hollow. On his last trip from Warren to Pittsburg, in September of 1859, he noticed a scum of oil in front of Thomas Downing’s farm, where South Oil City now stands. The story of the Drake well was in everybody’s mouth and it occurred to Phillips that he could increase his growing fortune by drilling on the Downing land. At Pittsburg he consulted Charles Lockhart, William Frew, Captain Kipp and John Vanausdall and with them formed the partnership of Phillips, Frew & Co. Returning at once, he leased from Downing, erected a pole-derrick and proceeded to bore a well on the water’s edge. With no machine-shops, tools or appliances nearer than Pittsburg, a hundred-and-thirty miles off, difficulties of all kinds retarded the work nine months. Finally the job was completed and the Albion well, pumping forty barrels a day, raised a commotion. The Albion brought Phillips to the front as an oil-operator. James Tarr readily leased him part of his farm and he began Phillips No. 1 well in the spring of 1861. The Crescent’s unexpected success spurred him to greater efforts. Hurrying an engine and boiler from Pittsburg, he started his second well on the flat hugging the stream twenty rods north of the Crescent. Steam-power rushed the tools at a boom-de-ay gait. The first sand, from which meanwhile No. 1 was rivaling the Crescent’s yield, had not a pinch of oil. The solid-silver lining of the petroleum-cloud assumed a plated look, but Phillips heeded it not. An expert driller, he hustled the tools and on October nineteenth, at four-hundred-and-eighty feet, pierced the shell above the third sand. At dusk he shut down for the night. The weather was clear and the moon shone brightly. Suddenly a vivid flame illumined the sky. Reuben Painter’s well on the Blood farm, a mile southward, had caught fire and blazed furiously. The rare spectacle of a burning well attracted everybody for miles. Phillips and Janes were among those who hastened to the fire, returning about midnight. An hour later they were summoned from bed by a man yelling at the Ella-Yaw pitch: “The Phillips is bu’sted and runnin’ down the creek!” People ran to the spot on the double-quick, past the Crescent and down the bank. Gas was settling densely upon the flats and into the creek oil was pouring lavishly. Dreading a fire, lights were extinguished on the adjoining tracts and needful precautions taken. For three or four days the flow raged unhindered, then a lull occurred and tubing was inserted. After the