East of Petroleum Centre three miles, on the bank of a pellucid stream, John E. McLaughlin drilled a well in 1868 that flowed fourteen-hundred barrels. The sand was coarse, the oil dark and the magnitude of the strike a surprise equal to the answer of the dying sinner who, asked by the minister if he wasn’t afraid to meet an angry God, unexpectedly replied: “Not a bit; it’s the other chap I’m afraid of!” Excepting the half-dozen mastodons on Oil Creek, the McLaughlin was the biggest well in the business up to that date. Wide-awake operators struck a bee-line for leases. A town was floated in two weeks, a Pithole grocer erecting the first building and labeling the place “Cash-Up” as a gentle hint to patrons not to let their accounts get musty with age. The name fitted the town, which a twelvemonth sufficed to sponge off the slate. Small wells and dry-holes ruled the roost, even those nudging “the big ’un” missing the pay-streak. The McLaughlin—a decided freak—declined gradually and pumped seven years, having the reservoir all to itself. Located ten rods away in any direction, it would have been a duster and Cash-Up would not have existed! A hundred surrounding it did not cash-up the outlay for drilling. [Illustration: WELLS IN THE PLEASANTVILLE FIELD IN 1871.] Attracted by the quality of the soil and the beauty of the location—six-hundred feet above the level of Oil Creek and abundantly watered—in 1820 Abraham Lovell forsook his New York farm to settle in Allegheny township, six miles east by south of Titusville. Aaron Benedict and Austin Merrick came in 1821. John Brown, the first merchant, opened a store in 1833. A pottery, tannery, ashery, store and shops formed the nucleus of a village, organized in 1850 as the borough of Pleasantville. Three wells on the outskirts of town, bored in 1865-6, produced a trifling amount of oil. Late in the fall of 1867 Abram James, an ardent spiritualist, was driving from Pithole to Titusville with three friends. A mile south of Pleasantville his “spirit-guide” assumed control of Mr. James and humped him over the fence into a field on the William Porter farm. Powerless to resist, the subject was hurried to the northern end of the field, contorted violently, jerked through a species of “couchee-couchee dance” and pitched to the ground! He marked the spot with his finger, thrust a penny into the dirt and fell back pale and rigid. Restored to consciousness, he told his astonished companions it had been revealed to him that streams of oil lay beneath and extended several miles in a certain direction. Putting no faith in “spirits” not amenable to flasks, they listened incredulously and resumed their journey. James negotiated a lease, borrowed money—the “spirit-guide” neglected to furnish cash—and planted a derrick where he had planted the penny. On February twelfth, 1868, at eight-hundred-and-fifty feet, the Harmonial Well No. 1 pumped one-hundred-and-thirty barrels!