On October 4, 1901, a magnificent monument was unveiled at Woodlawn Cemetery, Titusville, Pa., to the memory of Edwin Laurencine Drake at the expense of the late Henry H. Rogers, of the Standard Oil Company, himself a pioneer of the Pennsylvania oil fields in the boom days of the sixties. The inscription on the monument not only describes Drake as the “Founder of the Petroleum Industry” but gives an explicit review of what his services meant, not only to the people of the United States but to mankind at large. It runs as follows:- Col. E. L. Drake, born at Greenville, N. Y., March 29, 1819; died at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, November 8, 1884, Founder of the Petroleum Industry, The friend of man. Called by circumstances to the solution of a great mining problem, he triumphantly vindicated American skill and near this spot laid the foundation of an industry that has enriched the State, benefited mankind, stimulated mechanic arts, enlarged the pharmacopoeia, and has attained world wide proportions. He sought for himself not wealth nor social distinction. Content to let others follow where he had led, at the threshold of his fame he retired to end his days in quieter pursuits. His highest ambition the successful accomplishment of his task, his noble victory the conquest of the rock, bequeathing to posterity the fruits of his labour and his industry. His last days oppressed by ills--To want, no stranger--He died in obscurity. This monument is erected by Henry Huttleson Rogers, in grateful recognition and remembrance. Drake was in his fortieth year when, through friends in New Haven, he was appointed director and superintendent of the Titusville properties of the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company and the Seneca Oil Company. As a youth he had led a wandering life and his education was such as he could pick up at odd moments. He had worked as a commercial traveller and hotel clerk, and was a railroad conductor at the time he took service with the Bissell syndicate, which had decided to experiment in drilling for oil. He himself was so thorough a believer in the project that he put all his small savings into it. The salary at which he was engaged was a thousand dollars a year, which signified considerably more in the later fifties than it does to-day. On reaching Titusville early in 1859 he soon realized that he was handicapped by lack of practical knowledge of drilling processes, and therefore sent for one William Smith, a man of long experience as a driller of brine wells, who came with his two sons to assist in the work. The method adopted was that of forcing cast iron pipe through the soil at a spot near the “old oil spring,”--well known to the farmers of the locality.