Dr. W. P. Book, who started at Plumer, ran big hotels at Parker and Millerstown and punched a hole in the Butler field occasionally, leased nine-hundred acres below Bradford in the summer of 1875. He bored two-hundred wells, sold the whole bundle to Captain J. T. Jones and went to Washington Territory with eight-hundred-thousand dollars to engage in lumbering and banking. Captain Jones landed on Oil Creek after the war, in which he was a brave soldier, and drilled thirteen dry-holes at Rouseville! Repulses of this stripe would wear out most men, but the Captain had enlisted for the campaign and proposed to stand by his guns to the last. His fourteenth attempt—a hundred-barreler on the Shaw farm—recouped former losses and inaugurated thirty years of remarkable prosperity. Fortune smiled upon him in the Clarion field. Pipe-lines, oil-wells, dealings in the exchanges, whatever he touched turned into gold. Not handicapped by timid partners, he paddled his own canoe and became the largest individual operator in the northern region. Acquiring tracts that proved to be the heart of the Sistersville field, he is credited with rejecting an offer last year of five-million dollars for his West-Virginia and Pennsylvania properties! From thirteen wells, good only for post-holes if they could be dug up and retailed by the foot, to five-millions in cash was a pretty stretch onward and upward. He preferred staying in the harness to the obscurity of a mere coupon-clipper. He lives at Buffalo, controls his business, enjoys his money, remembers his legions of old friends and does not put on airs because of marching very near the head of the oleaginous procession. [Illustration: -THEO BARNSDALL- -LEWIS EMERY- DAVID KIRK CAPT. J. T. JONES ]