138 
We are all aware that the discovery and use of crude oil is 
nothing new. It was known to the ancients, and found in many 
eastern countries. In America it was produced to a certain extent 
by a pre-historic race. On Oil creek, French creek and on the Alle- 
gany river in Pennsylvania, are pits that were dug for the collec- 
tion of oil. Some of them are still cribbed with timbers down to 
the rock, which is about twenty feet below the surface, and they 
contain ladders made of a small tree, with the trunk thick set with 
branches. ‘These were cut off four of five inches from the trunk, 
and thus formed steps by which the well owner could go down 
and collect the oil that accumulated on the surface of the water; 
just as was done by the old oil producers on the banks of the 
Caspian and the Irrawaddy. These tree-ladders are similar in 
every way to those commonly found in the ancient copper mines 
of Lake Superior, and perhaps the oil and copper industries were 
both carried on by the same people. Some of these old oil pits 
are over-grown by trees four feet in diameter, proving that the © 
pits have been abandoned for at least five hundred years. It 
remained for Yankee ingenuity to discover and produce oil, 
which has now grown to be an industry second to none, and with 
a history whose every page teems with dramatic interest. 
Crude oil is carbon and hydrogen in various combinations, 
and is formed by the subterranean decomposition of organic mat- 
ter. 
About 1849, Samuel M. Kier, a druggist of Pittsburg, 
began to bottle and sell crude petroleum extensively as a “ cure 
all.” It was called “ Seneca oil” and was obtained from his 
father’s salt wells on the Allegany River. The labels on the bot- 
tles contained a cut of a derrick used in sinking salt wells, which 
picture of a derrick suggested to Colonel Drake the idea of drill- 
ing for oil. 
In 1853, J. D. Angier made the first oil lease, with Brewer, 
Watson & Co., lumbermen, to gather oil on shares from their 
spring near Oil Creek, Pennsylvania. The next year Dr. F. B. 
Brewer, son of the senior member of the firm, went to Hanover, 
New Hampshire, on a visit, taking with him a bottle of oil, 
which his solicitous mother probably packed into his grip, think- 
