CHAPTER III

DAWN OF AMERICA’S PETROLEUM INDUSTRY

The words of Washington show that long before the actual birth of the petroleum industry in the United States, discerning minds were at work on the best means of turning the bituminous or petrolific deposits of this continent to practical commercial uses. In passing it may be said of Washington that he was the father of his country in a wider sense than that of having been the victorious general who made the Republic possible, and its first executive head. He was its earliest influential prophet of the power that was to be born of the unlimited natural resources of what was then the “hinterland” of the original commonwealth. During the first five decades of the nineteenth century there were a considerable number of Americans, less eminent than he--explorers, scientists and business men of imagination who looked to petroleum as a potential resource of national wealth. And speculations of this kind were not confined to the United States. In Great Britain and other countries processes were patented for the refining of mineral oils. The main purpose in view was the development of a substitute for sperm oils in anticipation of the decline of the whaling industry, which had become the main source of illuminants and lubricants. In America, also, petroleum had its recognized medicinal uses, the traditions of which had been acquired from the Indians. Thus, in the thirties, “Seneca Oil” produced at Lake Seneca, New York; and “American Medicinal Oil,” a Kentucky preparation, were familiar household remedies, especially as embrocations for burns, sores and rheumatic affections.

The casual use of petroleum as a basis for proprietary medicines had, as will be seen, an interesting bearing on the future development of the industry; but the great factor which led to the production and utilization of petroleum on a large scale was a natural phenomenon already alluded to--its alliance with salt or brine deposits. Had not the growing American population been compelled to secure adequate quantities of salt by boring and establishing brine wells, it is possible that the Pennsylvania oil discoveries, with which the real history of the modern petroleum industry begins, might have been indefinitely delayed. During the first half of the nineteenth century five different states had salt industries based on the boring process--Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. In connection with most of these wells petroleum occasionally appeared, usually to the annoyance and embarrassment of the operators. In the light of future events it is interesting to note that sometimes the presence of the dark and evil-smelling liquid led to the abandonment and condemnation of a salt property. Nevertheless, it was the machinery devised for the purpose of boring for brine that enabled men like Drake and other petroleum pioneers to achieve their revolutionary discoveries.

The first American salt well of which there is any official record was begun in 1806 and completed in January, 1808, on the Great Kanawha River in what is now West Virginia. Charlestown, Va., was then the nearest town, and in the vicinity of this brine well the first burning gas spring had been discovered in 1773. At Tarentum, on the Allegheny River, Pennsylvania, salt wells were started in 1810 which also yielded petroleum in considerable quantities, and such pioneers as Col. Ferris and Samuel M. Kier endeavoured later to turn this by-product to commercial account. The first flowing oil well was drilled unintentionally in 1818 at the mouth of Troublesome Creek, on the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River, twenty-eight miles south-east of Monticello, Va., by one Martin Beatty, who was seeking brine. “The Devil’s Tar” as he called it, was allowed to flow into the Cumberland River and covered its surface for a distance of thirty-five miles. The oil became ignited and an enormous conflagration ensued, which destroyed trees along the banks of the river, and also the salt works. What would to-day be regarded as a piece of stupendous good fortune was then accounted a disaster; though this particular well later supplied the chief ingredient for “American Medical Oil” a remunerative compound bottled at Burkeville, Kentucky.

The most enterprising man in utilizing this unwelcome by-product of his salt wells was Samuel M. Kier. Originally a chemist and druggist, he resolved in the later forties to ascertain its uses both as a medicine and as an illuminant. Experiments at distillation to secure a burning fluid for lighting purposes were a success, and his product attained some vogue in rivalry to a kerosene which was being extracted from oil shales in the province of New Brunswick, Canada. But Mr. Kier’s chief business was that of the sale of petroleum for medicinal purposes--a compound he named “Kier’s Rock Oil.” He advertised it by imitations of an American greenback, which bore a vignette showing the plant at Tarentum with the derricks used in boring and pumping the brine wells--for it must be remembered that Kier was primarily a salt merchant who treated petroleum as a side-issue.

This imitation greenback was destined to influence the course of history. A prominent New Haven business man of the day was Mr. George H. Bissell, who had become interested in the possibilities of petroleum through his acquaintanceship with Prof. Crosby of Dartmouth College. The latter had received from a physician at Titusville, Pa., a historical city in connection with the coming industry, a bottle of petroleum, sent as a curiosity. Bissell was so interested that he, in company with friends, purchased for $5,000 a tract of one hundred acres at Titusville, with an oil spring on it. A company was founded, known as the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company, with a nominal capital of $500,000 and a tentative start made at collecting the surface oil by digging and trenching. Prof. B. Silliman, of New Haven, made a favourable report on the fluid as an illuminant but the cost of production rendered the project commercially impracticable. Mr. Bissell was, therefore, left with the Titusville property on his hands. The story runs that one day in the summer of 1857 while in New York he saw in the window of a Broadway drug store one of Kier’s imitation greenbacks, showing the picture of the derricks at Tarentum, Pa. The idea suddenly came to him of developing the Titusville property just as salt properties were developed by boring and pumping. Though short of capital, he set about obtaining backing for the attempt, and the final outcome was that a small syndicate was formed in New Haven, Conn., to work the Titusville oil lands. This syndicate engaged Edwin Laurencine Drake, the most historic figure in connection with the beginning of the American industry, to carry out the work. How he set about his task, and how he succeeded will be the subject of a subsequent chapter.

It is necessary to point out that unless the foundations had already been laid for refining and marketing the crude petroleum, Drake’s discovery would have been almost as valueless as that in 1818, which resulted in the conflagration on the Cumberland River. Science, however, had been grappling with the problem of extracting from the crude a safe burning oil and eliminating the offensive odour. This latter was a very important consideration, and for years after petroleum began to assume the proportions of a large industry it encountered prejudice on this account. By the later ’fifties so much progress had been made that the possibilities had been created not merely for a large domestic trade in oil, but also for the development of an export market. Drake’s discoveries at Titusville in August, 1859, may, therefore, be said to have come at the psychological moment.