Patrick Johnson had a bevy of patrician wells at the summit of the tallest hill in the valley. The curtain has been rung down, the lights are out, the players have dispersed and none can hint of “Too Much Johnson." The farm of sixty acres adjacent to the Curtin and the Criswell nook Hamilton McClintock traded to Daniel Smith in 1858 for a yoke of oxen. Smith sold it in 1860 for five-hundred dollars and sank the cash in a dry-hole on Oil Creek. C. J. Cornen and Henry I. Beers, the mainstay of the Cherry Run Petroleum-Company, bought the farm in 1863 for sixty-five-hundred dollars, clearing two-millions from the investment. Cornen served as State Senator in Connecticut and died in the eighties. His sons operate in Warren county and down the Allegheny. Mr. Beers, who settled at McClintockville, for thirty years has been prominent in business and politics. The Yankee well, erratic as George Francis Train, was the first glory of the Smith tract. The Reed caused a rush for one-acre leases at four-thousand-dollars bonus and half the oil. Picking up gold-dollars at every step would have been less lucrative. The wells were stayers and Daniel Smith was not "a Daniel come to judgment" in his estimate of the farm he implored J. W. Sherman to buy for two-hundred-and-fifty dollars.

Queerly enough, the farms above the Smith were failures. Hundreds of wells clear up to Plumer never paid the expense of recording the leases. The territory was a roast for scores of stock-companies. Below Plumer a mile Bruns & Ludovici, of New York, built the Humboldt Refinery in 1862. Money was lavished on palatial quarters for the managers, enclosed grounds, cut-stone walls, a pipe-line to Tarr Farm and the largest refining capacity in America. Inconvenient location and improved methods of competitors forced the Humboldt to retire. Part of the machinery was removed, the structures crumbled and some of the dressed stone forms the foundations of the National Transit Building at Oil City. Plumer, which had a grist-mill, store, blacksmith-shop and tavern in 1840 and four-thousand population in 1866, is quiet as its briargrown graveyard. The Brevoort Oil-Company, Murray & Fawcett and John P. Zane raked in shekels on Moody Run, which emptied into Cherry Run a halfmile south-west of the Reed well. Zane, whole-souled, resolute and manly, operated in the northern district and died at Bradford in 1894. A "forty-niner,” he supported John W. Geary for Mayor of San Francisco, built street-railways and worked gold-mines in California. He wrote on finance and petroleum, hated selfishness and stood firmly on the platform laid down in the beatitudes. Seventy-five wells were drilled on Hamilton McClintock's four-hundred acres in 1860-1. Here was Cary's "oil-spring" and expectations of big wells soared high. The best yielded from one-hundred to three-hundred barrels a day. Low prices and the war led to the abandonment of the smaller brood. A company bought the farm in 1864. McClintockville, a promising village on the flat, boasted two refineries, stores, a hotel and the customary accessories, of which the bridge over Oil Creek is the sole reminder. Near the upper boundary of the farm the Reno Railroad crossed the valley on a giddy center-trestle and timber abutments, not a splinter of which remains. General Burnside, the distinguished commander, superintended the construction of this mountain-line, designed to connect Reno and Pithole and never completed. Occasionally the dignified general would be hailed by a soldier who had served under him. It was amusing to behold a greasy pumper, driller or teamster step up, clap Burnside on the shoulder, grasp his hand and exclaim: "Hello, General! Deuced glad to see you! I was with you at Fredericksburg! Come and have a drink!” The Clapp farm of five-hundred acres had a fair allotment of long-lived

wells. George H. Bissell and Arnold Plumer bought the lower half, in the closing days of 1859, from Ralph Clapp. The Cornplanter Oil Company purchased the upper half. The Hemlock, Cuba, Cornwall-a thousand-barreler— and Cornplanter, on the latter section, were notably productive. The Williams, Stanton, McKee, Elizabeth and Star whooped it up on the Bissell-Plumer division. Much of the oil in 1862-3 was from the second sand. Four refineries flourished and the tract coined money for its owners. A mile east was the prolific Shaw farm, which put two-hundred-thousand dollars into Foster W. Mitchell's purse. Graff & Hasson's one-thousand acres, part of the land granted Cornplanter in 1796, had a multitude of medium wells that produced year after year. In 1818 the Indian chief, who loved fire-water dearly, sold his reservation to William Connely, of Franklin, and William Kinnear, of Centre county, for twenty-one-hundred-and-twenty-one dollars. Matthias Stockberger bought Connely's half in 1824 and, with Kinnear and Reuben Noyes, erected the OilCreek furnace, a foundry, mill, warehouses and steamboat-landing at the east side of the mouth of the stream. William and Frederick Crary acquired the business in 1825 and ran it ten years. William and Samuel Bell bought it in 1835 and shut down the furnace in 1849. The Bell heirs sold it to Graff, Hasson & Co. in 1856 for seven-thousand dollars. James Hasson located on the property with his family and farmed five years. Graff & Hasson sold three-hundred acres in 1864 to the United Petroleum Farms Association for seven-hundred-andfifty-thousand dollars. James Halyday settled on the east side in 1803. His son James, the first white baby in the neighborhood, was born in 1809. The Bannon family came in the forties, Thomas Moran built the Moran House-it still lingers-in 1845 and died in 1857. Dr. John Nevins arrived in 1850 and in the fall of 1852 John P. Hopewell started a general store. Hiram Gordon opened the "Red Lion Inn," Samuel Thomas shod horses and three or four families occupied small habitations. And this was the place, when 1860 dawned, that was to become the petroleum-metropolis and be known wherever men have heard a word of "English as she is spoke."

Cornplanter was the handle of the humble settlement, towards which a stampede began with the first glimmer of spring. To trace the uprising of dwellings, stores, wharves and boarding-houses would be as difficult as perpetual motion. People huddled in shanties and lived on barges moored to the bank. Derricks peered up behind the houses, thronged the marshy flats, congregated on the slopes, climbed the precipitous bluffs and established a foothold on every ledge of rock. Pumping-wells and flowing-wells scented the atmosphere with gas and the smell of crude. Smoke from hundreds of engine-houses, black, sooty and defiling, discolored the grass and foliage. Mud was everywhere, deep, unlimited, universal-yellow mud from the newer territory-dark, repulsive, oily mud around the wells-sticky, tricky, spattering mud on the streets and in the yards. J. B. Reynolds, of Clarion county, and Calvin and William J. McComb, of Pittsburg, opened the first store under the new order of things in March of 1860. T. H. and William M. Williams joined the firm. They withdrew to open the Pittsburg store next door. Robson's hardware-store was farther up the main street, on the east side, which ended abruptly at Cottage Hill. William P. Baillee-he lives in Detroit-and William Janes built the first refinery, on the same street, in 1861, a year of unexampled activity. The plant, which attracted people from all parts of the country-Mr. Baillee called it a "pocket-still"-was enlarged into a refinery of five stills, with an output of twohundred barrels of refined oil every twenty-four hours. Fire destroyed it and

the firm built another on the flats near by. On the west side, at the foot of a steep cliff, Dr. S. S. Christy opened a drug-store. Houses, shops, offices, hotels and saloons hung against the side of the hill or sat loosely on heaps of earth by

MAIN STREET, EAST SIDE OF OIL CREEK, OIL CITY, IN 1861.

the creek and river. One evening a half-dozen congenial spirits met in Williams & Brother's store. J. B. Reynolds, afterwards a banker, who died several years since, thought Cornplanter ought to be discarded and a new name given the growing town. He suggested one which was heartily approved. Liquid refreshments were ordered and the infant was appropriately baptized OIL CITY.

Peter Graff was laid to rest years ago. The venerable James Hasson sleeps in the Franklin cemetery. His son, Captain William Hasson, is an honored resident of the city that owes much to his enterprise and liberality. Capable, broad-minded and trustworthy, he has been earnest in promoting the best interests of the community, the region and the state. A recent benefaction was his splendid gift of a public park-forty acres-on Cottage Hill. He was the first burgess and served with conspicuous ability in the council and the legislature. Alike as a producer, banker, citizen, municipal officer and lawgiver, Captain Hasson has shown himself "every inch a manly man.”

When you talk of any better town than Oil City, of any better section than the oil-regions, of any better people than the oilmen, of any better state than Pennsylvania, "every potato winks its eye, every cabbage shakes its head, every beet grows red in the face, every onion gets stronger, every sheaf of grain is shocked, every staik of rye strokes its beard, every hill of corn pricks up its ears, every foot of ground kicks" and every tree barks in indignant dissent.

Such was the narrow ravine, nowhere sixty rods in width, that figured so grandly as the Valley of Petroleum.

A SPLASH ON OIL CREEK.

The dark mud of Oil Creek! Unbeautiful mud,
That couldn't and wouldn't be nipped in the bud!
Quite irreclaimable,

Wholly untamable;

There it was, not a doubt of it,
People couldn't keep out of it;

On all sides they found it,
So deep none dare sound it-
No way to get 'round it.

To their necks babies crept in it,
To their chins big men stept in it;
Ladies-bless the sweet martyrs!
Plung'd far over their garters;
Girls had no exemption,
Boys sank past redemption;
To their manes horses stall'd in it,
To their ear-tips mules sprawl'd in it!
It couldn't be chain'd off,
It wouldn't be drain'd off;
It couldn't be tied up,
It wouldn't be dried up;

It couldn't be shut down,

It wouldn't be cut down.

Riders gladly abroad would have shipp'd it,
Walkers gladly at home would have skipp'd it.

Frost bak'd it,

Heat cak'd it;

To batter wheels churned it,

To splashes rains turned it,

Bad teamsters gol-durned it!

Each snow-flake and dew-drop, each shower and flood Just seem'd to infuse it with lots of fresh blood,

Increasing production,

Increasing the ruction,
Increasing the suction!
Ev'ry flat had its fill of it,
Ev'ry slope was a hill of it,

Ev'ry brook was a rill of it;

Ev'ry yard had three feet of it,

Ev'ry road was a sheet of it;
Ev'ry farm had a field of it,
Ev'ry town had a yield of it.

No use to glare at it,
No use to swear at it;
No use to get mad about it,

No use to feel sad about it;
No use to sit up all night scheming
Some intricate form of blaspheming;

No use in upbraiding

You had to go wading,

Till wearied humanity,

Run out of profanity,

Found rest in insanity;

Or winged its bright way-unless dropp'd with a thud--To the land of gold pavements and no Oil-Creek mud!