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genious person. He got a lot of bricks, broke each one in two, put the half bricks in the stove so that they looked like big coals, turned on the gas and chuckled to see how, as he expressed it, he had "fooled the stove into thinking he had returned to the old-fashioned way of getting heat." It fooled me also, for when the gas had been lighted in the stove for a few minutes the bricks became red-hot and looked precisely like coals.

A. R. BAKER.

E. M. HUKILL.

In casting about for a typical representative of the large oil and gas producing class of western Pennsylvania, attention is at once arrested by E. M. Hukill, esq., of Pittsburgh, who was and is a pioneer in both fields of production and a perfect cyclopedia of information upon every point concerning both of those wonderful gifts of nature to the favored people of this region. Mr. Hukill was one of the original producers in the once famous Oil Creek field away back in the days of '64, and has always kept in the van in developing new territory, until, to-day, like Alexander of old, he is sighing for new worlds to conquer, although fresh from the conquest of that hitherto terra incognito, the Green county (Pennsylvania) oil field covering a strip of territory many miles in extent. But of this achievement more later on.

The subject of this sketch was one of ten children of Gideon E. Hukill and Susanna McMurphy, and was born in New Castle county, Delaware, in 1840. Until the age of twenty-four he remained at home, during the last eight years of which time he, as the head of the family, his father having died in 1856, directed the operations of a large

farm, improving himself meanwhile in such intervals of leisure as he could find with the limited advantages afforded by the common school system of that period, supplemented by a laudable ambition and determination to acquire an education.

In the spring of 1864, however, the innate activity of his nature asserted itself, and the yearning for a wider career than the narrow limits of a farm afforded led him to abandon the home farm and to remove his mother and her family to the neighboring village of Odessa, while the lover of agricultural pursuits started out into the world to carve out fame and fortune for himself. Naturally he drifted to Philadelphia, the metropolis of the little world of which he had hitherto been a part, where he soon found employment in a clerical capacity. But the routine character of his new-found occupation was no more compatible with his active temperament, fired as he was at this period with ambition to make a fortune, than was the farm life so recently left behind, and accordingly, in the fall of the same year the oil craze attracted him to the new field in western Pennsylvania, from which time his career may be said to have begun.

Mr. Hukill went to Oil creek, Venango county, the then seat of actual operations in oil, early in November, 1864, reaching there with but seven dollars and fifty cents. But with the demands for labor that then obtained, the young man speedily found employment, working at first as a day laborer

and then as an attache of a surveyor's corps, employing his leisure time in outside ventures, so that within a month of his arrival in the new country he had established himself as a dealer in lumber and oil in a small way, gradually increasing his ventures until he soon became known as one of the largest and boldest operators in the region. From dealing to production was but a step for a man possessing the pluck, enterprise and energy of Mr. Hukill; and the transition completed, it was not long before he ranked as one of the most adventurous and successful producers of the entire region, which reputation he has always maintained and does to-day in all his operations.

In 1869 Mr. Hukill was married, in Jasper county, Iowa, to Mattie E. Lyday, a native of Washington county, Maryland, by whom he has had four children-Edwin M., junior, Lyday May, Ralph Vincent and Grace Watkins. During the ensuing two years Mr. Hukill continued his producing operations, but, removing to Oil City in 1871, he formed a partnership with J. B. Reynolds and S. H. Lamberton, and established the banking house of Reynolds, Hukill & Company, in which he continued an active partner until 1876, when the old spirit of activity, so long held in subjection within him by the demands of the more staid and conservative calling of a financier, asserted itself once more and he retired from banking operations to resume again the more congenial pursuit of prospecting for and producing oil, the ensuing five

years being so spent, the last three, 1879, '80, '81, in the McKean country, or Bradford field. And this brings us to another epoch in the eventful life of Mr. Hukill, viz.: his abandonment, for the time being, of the oil interest and removal from the producing fields to Pittsburgh, where he became the pioneer in the production and utilization of that other and equally great boon to mankind—natural gas.

Since the discovery of petroleum, the oil men had not failed to appreciate the value of natural gas as a fuel, and it was continually utilized by them in their developing and production of oil, as also for domestic and general use in the towns and sections of country where it was produced; but as gas wells obtained contiguous to oil wells were subject to the same law of rapid decline and short life as the oil wells, it deterred capital from any attempt to pipe it to larger markets.

The Haymaker Brothers, with the aid of others, after an arduous task drilling in search of oil at Murraysville, in Franklin township, Westmoreland county, obtained, instead of oil, a monster gas well, in November, 1878; this well was allowed to flow into the air and waste for years, until the public became impressed that that was peculiarly a gas district and of permanence to warrant piping it a distance of eighteen (18) miles, to the great fuel mart of Pittsburgh; but it required the adventurous oil man to carry the belief into practice.

In the month of November, 1881, while sitting in the office of a friend in

Evidently the move on the part of Mr. Hukill and his associates had aroused the dormant spirits of Pittsburgh, for notwithstanding the intense desire for natural gas fuel and the immense waste from the Haymaker well, Pittsburgh capital could not be induced to aid in bringing it in; and with the exception of a small pipe line-for gas

laid by several manufacturers in 1874, from the Saxonburg gas well, in Butler county, to the Spang, Chalfont & Company Iron Works at Sharpsburg, nothing had been done in all these years to forward the great enterprise which has since become the boom and boast of the great manufacturing city.

the city of Bradford, perusing the report of the late geological survey of Pennsylvania, Mr. Hukill discovered a chart representing Pittsburgh as the centre of a series of anticlinals. Coupling the theory, then slightly prevalent among oil producers, that territory covering anticlinals was more likely to produce gas than oil, with the fact that gas existed in immense quantities eighteen miles from Pittsburgh, the result was a faith in the possibility of finding gas nearer the city and the conception of a scheme to prospect by drilling these anticlinals with such purpose in view. Pursuantly he, with others, made publication in December of that year of their intention to apply to the governor Howbeit, the sequel proved the folly (Hoyt) on the twenty-first day of Janu- of the strategy which resulted in the ary, 1882, or as soon thereafter as the grant at Harrisburg, on January 21, department would hear them, for a and the charter found its level with charter to engage in the business of similar grants subsequently obtained, supplying gas-either manufactured or for the doctrine then held by some natural-for fuel in the city of Pitts- leading lawyers, of exclusive rights unburgh, the first regularly legal publica- der priority of grant, was exploded by tion for such a purpose made by any- the higher courts. one, a copy of which was sent to the department of state.

But Mr. Hukill was surprised by an announcement in the Pittsburgh papers of the twenty-second of January that a charter had been granted the day previous to other parties for the purpose of supplying natural gas for fuel in the city of Pittsburgh; how a rusty publication made for another purpose some six months anterior could be modified and polished up to meet the requirements of the granting power, has never been ex. plained to Mr. Hukill, but remains the patent of shrewd manipulators.

The charter applied for by Mr. Hukill and his associates was obtained within reasonable time, but was never used by them and expired by limitation owing to the indisposition on the part of the associates to cooperate in carrying out the proposed scheme.

Most of the year 1882 was consumed by Mr. Hukill in an effort to introduce the "Strong process" of manufacturing gas for fuel into the iron manufactories of Pittsburgh, on the proposition that the capital requisite for piping the gas from a distance would much more than build the Strong plants, lo

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