HAWORTH. | Discoveries of Oil and Gas. ee 
company was formed and arrangements were made to sink a 
well on Oil creek, in Pennsylvania. It is reported that this 
idea was brought to his mind by examining a large label on a 
bottle of crude oil placed on the market for medicinal purposes 
in a drug-store window in New York city. The label, in- 
genuously devised and skilfully engraved, had on it pictures 
of derricks and tanks, with a statement that the oil was “dis- 
covered in boring for salt water near the banks of the Alle- 
gheny river.” Mr. Bissell glanced at it and then in some way 
stopped to meditate. The inscription “400 feet deep’? made an 
impression on his mind, and the thought flashed upon him, 
“Bore artesian wells for oil.”’ The final outcome was that a 
company was formed and the now famous “Colonel”? Edwin 
L. Drake was employed to go to Pennsylvania and take charge 
of operations. McLaurin describes matters as follows: 
“Provided with a fund of $1000 as a starter, Drake was en- 
gaged at $1000 a year to begin operations. Early in May, 
1858, he and his family arrived in Titusville and were quar- 
tered at the American Hotel, which boarded the colonel, Mrs. 
Drake, two children and a horse for six dollars and a half 
per week. Money was scarce, provisions were cheap, and the 
quiet village put on no extravagant airs. Nota pick or shovel 
was to be had in any store short of Meadville, whither Drake 
was obliged to send for these useful tools. Behold, then, ‘the 
man who was to revolutionize the light of the world,’ his mind 
full of a grand purpose and his pockets full of cash, snugly 
ensconced in the comfortable hostelry. Surely the curtain 
would soon rise and the drama of ‘A Petroleum Hunt’ proceed 
without further vexatious delays. 5 
“Drake’s first step was to repair and start up Angier’s sys- 
tem of trenches, troughs and skimmers. By the end of June 
he had dug a shallow well on the island and was saving ten 
gallons of oil a day. He found it difficult to get a practical 
‘borer’ to sink an artesian well. In August he shipped two 
barrels of oil to New Haven and bargained for a steam-engine 
to furnish power for drilling. The engine was not furnished 
as agreed; the ‘borer’ Doctor Brewer hired at Pittsburg had 
another contract and operations were suspended for the win- 
ter. In February, 1859, Drake went to Tarentum and en- 
gaged a driller to come in March. The driller failed to ma- 
terialize and Drake drove to Tarentum in a sleigh to lasso 
another. F. N. Humes, who was cleaning out salt-wells for 
Peterson, informed him that the tools were made by William 
A. Smith, whom he might be able to secure for the job. Smith 
accepted the offer to manufacture tools and bore the well. 
Kim Hibbard, favorably known in Franklin, was despatched 
with his team, when the tools were completed, for Smith, his 
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