The venerable William Whitman, familiarly called “Doctor,” over whose grave the snows of twenty-five long years have drifted, often told me how, when a youngster, he carried water to the masons building Colonel Alexander McDowell’s stone house, on Elk street. He hemmed in a pool on the edge of French Creek, soaked up the greasy scum with a piece of flannel, wrung out the cloth and filled several bottles with dark-looking oil. The masons would swallow doses of it, rub it on their bruised hands and declare it a sovereign internal and external remedy. In early manhood Mr. Whitman settled in Canal township, eleven miles northwest of Franklin, cultivated a farm and reared a large family. It was the dream of his old age to see oil taken from his own land. In 1866 two wells were drilled on the Williams tract, across the road from Whitman’s, with encouraging prospects. Depressed prices retarded operations and these wells remained idle. Four years later my uncle, George Buchanan, and myself drilled on the Whitman farm. The patriarch watched the progress of the work with feverish interest, spending hours daily about the rig. A string of driving-pipe, up to that time said to be the longest—153 feet—ever needed in an oil-well, had to be forced down. Three feet farther a vein of sparkling water, tinged with sulphur, spouted above the pipe and it has flowed uninterruptedly since. The heavy tools pierced the rock rapidly and the delight of the “Doctor” was unbounded. He felt confident a paying well would result and waited impatiently for the decisive test. A boy longing for Christmas or his first pair of boots could not be more keenly expectant. His fondest wish was not to be gratified. He took sick and died, after a very short illness, in 1870, four days before the well was through the sand and pumping at the rate of fifty barrels per diem! [Illustration: GEORGE BUCHANAN.]