There is much uncertainty as to the youngest soldier in the civil-war, the oldest Mason, the man who first nominated McKinley for President, and who struck Billie Patterson, but none as to the youngest dealer in oil-well supplies in the oil-region. This distinction belongs to Ralph W. Carroll, a native of Youngstown, Ohio, and son of Hon. Reuben Carroll. Born in 1860, at eighteen he was at the head of a large business at Rock City, in the Four-Mile District, five miles south-west of Olean. Three brothers were associated with him. The firm was the first to open a supply-store at Richburg, with a branch at Allentown, four miles east, and an establishment later at Cherry Grove. In 1883 Ralph W. succeeded the firm, his brothers retiring, and located at Bradford. In 1886 he opened offices and warehouses at Pittsburg and in 1894 removed to New York to engage in placing special investments. The young merchant was secretary of the Producers’ Protective Association, organized at Richburg in 1891, and a member of the executive committee that conducted the fight against the Roberts Torpedo-Company. Hon. David Kirk, Asher W. Milner, J. E. Dusenbury and “Farmer” Dean were his four associates on this important committee. Roscoe Conkling, for the Roberts side, and General Butler, for the Producers’ Association, measured swords in this legal warfare. Mr. Carroll has a warm welcome for his oil-region friends, a class of men the like of whom for geniality, sociability, liberality and enterprise the world can never duplicate. The Beardsleys, Fishers, Dollophs and Fosters were the first inhabitants in the wilds of Northern McKean. Henry Bradford Dolloph, whose house above Sawyer City was shattered by a glycerine-explosion, was the first white child who saw daylight and made infantile music in the Tuna Valley. One of the first two houses where Bradford stands was occupied by the Hart family, parents and twelve children. When the De Golias settled up the East Branch a road had to be cut through the forest from Alton. Hon. Lewis Emery’s No. 1, on the Tibbets farm, the first good well up the Branch, produced oil that paid two or three times the cost of the entire property.