HISTORICAL SUMMARY 621 



and straining through flannel. Although free at the source, the oil sold 

 as high as 50 cents for a small vial in the coast cities in 1833.* 



By this time it had also come to be nsed in lamps in the vicinit}^ of its 

 source, usually after infiltration through charcoal.^ Its use for lighting 

 the City of Pittsburgh had already been advocated in 1828, and its value 

 as a lubricant had been recognized. 



EARLY WELL8 



The first drilled well to obtain oil appears to have been a 2i/2-inch 

 boring put down for brine by the Euffner brothers at Salt Lick, near the 

 Kanawha Eiver of West Virginia, in 1806„ A depth of 58 feet was at- 

 tained by the spring-pole method, a hollow sycamore being used for 

 casing through quicksand to the rock at 17 feet. A large number of brine 

 wells followed in the Kanawha district of West Virginia and on the Mus- 

 kingum and Duck Creek in Ohio, nearly all of which afforded some petro- 

 leum. Although the yield from some of the wells is estimated to have 

 reached from 25 to 50 barrels a day, the oil was of no value at the time, 

 and was allowed to flow away over the top of the brine cisterns into the 

 streams, giving the nickname of ^^01 d Greasy" to the Kanawha. *^' 



The first flowing well, or gusher, of note which the writer has seen 

 mentioned is the so-called '^American Well," on Little Eennox Creek, 

 Cumberland County, Kentucky. While seeking brine in 1829, this well 

 encountered a streak of pure oil giving "incredible" quantities in inter- 

 mittent discharges at two to three-minute intervals. The outflow has been 

 estimated at 1,000 barrels a day; but although it continued to yield oil 

 by flow or to pumps for over 30 years, the well was never utilized except 

 to a negligible extent as a source of medicinal oil."^ 



By 1845 the decline of the whale-oil industry and the rise in price of 

 the sperm oil, which for several generations had supplied the lamps of 

 the country, had centered attention on other means of illumination, and 

 in 1846 Abraham Gesner is reported to have distilled oil from coal. Pat- 

 ents were shortly afterward granted to Gesner and many others, and 

 plants sprang up rapidly, both in America and in Europe, especially in 

 Scotland. Even the sacred precincts of the whale industry at New Bed- 

 ford were invaded, and by 1859 there were about fifty companies engaged 

 in the distillation of oil from coal or shale in the TTnited States. The 

 ])rice commonly ranged from 60 to 70 cents per gallon. 



< Ren.i. Silliman. .7r. : Am. .lour. Sci., vol. i. no. 2'4. IHIVA, p. 07. 

 ■"' S. P. Ilildreth : Am. .Tour. Sci.. vol. i, no. 24. 183:i, p. «.'i. 



^^ .T. P. Halo: "Resoni'ces and Indu.stries of West Virginia," prepared for the State 

 Centennial Board, 1876, chapter xii. 



■^ Niles Register (.3), vol. xiii, p. 4; Burkesville Courier, Oct. 11, 1876. 



