I4I 
of smoke, and more smell than either, and which sputtered and 
exploded. 
Yankee ingenuity is a great thing. It took hold of this prob- 
lem with a right good will, and worked at it, and experimented 
with it, analyzed and refined the oil, separating it into its com- 
ponent parts, and again combining them in various ways, until 
to-day we have one hundred and fifty useful and beautiful sub- 
stances of value in science, mechanics, medicine, domestic econo- 
my, and the arts, that are produced from crude oil. Lamps were 
made that were perfectly adapted to the burning of refined oil, 
and from the little spark that Colonel Drake made when he struck 
the first oil well, has grown the flame that has practically lighted 
the world for nearly half a century. 
It has been truthfully said, that “ Facts are stranger than 
fiction,” and the history of the oil industry abundantly proves it. 
In 1860, James Farrell, a teamster, bought thirty acres of stony 
land on the east side of Oil Creek for two hundred dollars, in the 
southwest corner of what is now Oil Creek township. Orange 
Noble leased sixteen acres of this tract for six hundred dollars 
and one-fourth royalty. In five months, with a “ spring pole,” 
the primitive method of putting down wells, a well of one hun- 
dred and thirty feet deep had been drilled without finding any 
signs of oil. For three years the hole was abandoned, but in the 
spring of 1863, Noble associated with George B. Delamater, 
(who was defeated by Robert FE. Pattison for Governor of Penn- 
sylvania,) and L. L. Lamb, made a contract with a man by the 
name of Fertig, to sink the well down to five hundred feet, hop- 
ing to find the third sand, which had been successfully drilled to, 
in other sections of the Oil Creek territory. Fertig’s agreement 
was to take one-sixteenth working interest as part payment. At 
a depth of four hundred and fifty feet, a crevice was encountered, 
and Fertig fearing the loss of his tools, consulted with the own- 
ers, and it was decided to go ahead with the drilling, and on the 
27th day of May, drilling was again resumed. ‘Two of the part- 
ners, Noble and Delamater had received an offer of one hundred 
thousand dollars for one-half of the well, which they refused. In 
less than an hour after the drill was started, oil was struck, and 
