Sketches in Crude-oil: Some accidents and incidents of the petroleum development in all parts of the globeMcLaurin, John J. (John James)
History
Sketches in Crude-oil: Some accidents and incidents of the petroleum development in all parts of the globe
McLaurin, John J. (John James)
Petroleum -- History; Petroleum industry and trade -- North America -- History
Eight miles east of Titusville, at Enterprise, John L. and Foster W.
Mitchell, sons of a pioneer settler of Allegheny township, were
lumbering and merchandising in 1859. They had worked on the farm and
learned blacksmithing from their father. The report of Col. Drake’s
well stirred the little hamlet. John L. Mitchell mounted a horse and
rode at a John-Gilpin gallop to lease Archibald Buchanan’s big farm,
on both sides of Oil Creek and Cherry Run. The old man agreed to his
terms, a lease was executed, the rosy-cheeked mistress and all the
pupils in the log school-house who could write witnessed the
signatures and Mitchell rode back with the document in his pocket. He
also leased John Buchanan’s two hundred acres, south of Archibald
Buchanan’s three-hundred on the same terms—one-fourth the oil for
ninety years. Forming a partnership with Henry R. Rouse and Samuel Q.
Brown, he “kicked down” the first well in 1860 to the first sand. It
pumped ten barrels a day and was bought by A. Potter, who sank it and
another to the third sand in 1861. A three-hundred-barreler for
months, No. 1 changed hands four times, was bought in 1865 by Gould &
Stowell and produced oil—it pumped for fifteen years—that sold for
two-hundred-and-ninety-thousand dollars! This veteran was the third or
fourth producing well in the region. The Curtis, usually considered
“the first flowing-well,” in July of 1860 spouted freely at
two-hundred feet. It was not tubed and surface-water soon mastered the
flow of oil. The Brawley—sixty-thousand barrels in eight months—Goble
& Flower, Shaft and Sherman were moguls of 1861-2. Beech & Gillett,
Alfred Willoughby, Taylor & Rockwell, Shreve & Glass, Allen Wright,
Wesley Chambers—his infectious laugh could be heard five squares—and a
host of companies operated in 1861-2-3. Franklin S. Tarbell, E. M.
Hukell, E. C. Bradley, Harmon Camp, George Long and J. T. Jones
arrived later. The territory was singularly profitable. Mitchell &
Brown erected a refinery, divided the tracts into hundreds of
acre-plots for leases and laid out the town of Buchanan Farm. Allen
Wright, president of a local oil-company, in February of 1861 printed
his letter-heads “Rouseville” and the name was adopted unanimously.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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