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If you have been brought up around Titusville you know one thing - Edwin L. Drake drilled the world’s first oil well on the edge of the town on the beautiful shore of the aptly named Oil Creek. The big old houses that still line the streets of the town of Titusville attest to the past affluence, when everyone benefited from the oil industry. In Titusville, everybody’s great grandfather's grandfather drilled for oil. The Gold Rush out west was nothing compared to this “liquid gold” oil rush! The oil came on faster than the technology, and large holes were dug in the ground and lined with logs and cement to try to hold the oil that could not be easily shipped.
The road systems had not been developed to any great extent to and from this remote, mountainous area at the time that oil wells were gushing a few thousand gallons a day; spewing forth a liquid that was totally useless unless it was refined — and there were no refineries built yet! The process to refine the oil was just being invented. Everybody knew that oil could be used for heating -- the settlers had learned from the Native Americans how to put a blanket on top of the creek to soak up the oil floating on the water. This oil was mostly used for medicinal purposes, and somewhat unsuccessfully for lamps that had not been adapted to this new energy source. As a testament to the American spirit, within six years of drilling the first well, there were refineries built that could process three grades of illuminating oil —”prime white,” “standard white,” and “straw white," and the way of the world was changed forever.
Although Edwin L. Drake is credited with being the father of the oil industry -- was he? Over the years there has been a fair amount of debate over this subject. The actual concept of drilling for oil as opposed to just skimming it is credited to George H. Bissell, a struggling young lawyer. As he was walking down a street in New York City, he was attracted to the window of an Apothecary’s shop. In it there was an advertisement for Samuel M. Kier’s “Petroleum or Rock Oil, Celebrated for its Wonderful Curative Powers.” The picture on the ad showed the derricks that were used to bore and pump Kier’s salt brine wells—the “rock oil” was merely a pesky byproduct to the salt, which the creative Kier was trying to get rid of.
Talk about being in the right place at the right time! A few years earlier Bissell had become interested in oil when a professor at his alma mater, Dartmouth College, showed him a bottle of “rock oil” that a chemistry professor said might someday yield a kind of coal-oil illuminant. To this date illumination was primarily supplied by candles and by lamps that burned whale oil. Bissell, obviously a visionary, found out where this sample of “rock oil” came from and talked his former law partner, Jonathan B. Everett into purchasing part of a farm in remote western Pennsylvania, near Titusville.
The partners went to the task of collecting three barrels of seepage oil that they sent for analysis to Benjamin Silliman, Jr., who was a professor of chemistry at Yale. Next they formed a company and named it the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company. This all took place in 1854. Silica's report from his analysis of the oil product was “In short, your company has in their possession a raw material from which, by simple and not expensive process, they may manufacture very valuable products.” This was good news because the pair was broke! Three years of scraping together payments on the land, and the only oil being obtained was by trenching a few barrels out of the seepages. There had to be a better way.
Which brings us back to Bissell's stroll down Broadway and his fateful gaze into that Apothecary’s window! He knew that the oil was beneath the ground, but couldn’t figure out how to get it up! As he looked at the ad for the curative rock oil he was looking at the country’s destiny. He concluded that if the derricks were able to bring up the brine for the salt -- having the oil as a nasty byproduct -- why not just pump the oil?
As excited as Bissell was, the idea didn’t set any fires among the stockholders of the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company. A group of stockholders, headed by James M. Townsend, took over the company leaving Bissell and Evaleth with only royalties.
Townsend lived at a hotel in New Haven where he crossed paths with Edwin Laurentine Drake, who was a widower at 38, taking care of his small son. Drake had recently been forced to give up his conductor job on the railroad due to illness, but still possessed his railroad pass. Townsend talked to Drake about the Titusville oil, and knowing that Drake could travel for free, enlisted him to visit the site. Drake said yes to the proposal and the ingenious Townsend sent letters in advance, introducing “Colonel” E.L. Drake to the area.
He reorganized the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company - changing its name to Seneca Oil Company, much to the disdain of Bissell and Evaleth. Next he made Drake the manager and offered him $1000 a year in wages and fronted him another $1000 to get the ball rolling and begin drilling for oil in Titusville. Drake visited the salt wells in Tarentum and moved his new wife and son to the mountains of Pennsylvania. He also took with him an experienced salt well driller - William A. Smith, know as “Uncle Billy.” Smith brought along his two young sons as helpers and in June of 1859 they began to drill.
They built a very crude derrick, and worked on drilling through the stone using a curious old steam engine. The folks in Titusville snickered about “Drake’s Folly.” After weeks of drilling the iron bit dropped into a crevice. Uncle Billy Smith pulled it out and work was stopped for the day. The next day, when they lowered a rope in the hole to measure the distance, it came back up black! The oil had surfaced to only a few feet from the top of the well. “Drake’s Folly” was a functioning oil well now and the word was spreading. Thousands upon thousands of people began to pour into this small, rugged section of the country. A few miles from Titusville the town of Pithole grew from a few shacks to 30,000 people in under three months.
So who gets the credit? Bissell - whose great idea to convert a salt derrick and use it for petroleum? Drake, whose blood, sweat and tears made it work or Townsend who put up some of the money needed at this critical time? When this question came to light in the 60s and 70s people in Titusville rallied for Drake to be credited with the founding of the oil industry in Pennsylvania. Many of the pioneers could remember the hard time that the citizens had given him when he was drilling the first well. In the words of the Titusville citizenry, “Edwin L. Drake was the man who first bored for oil, and by his genius and indomitable perseverance, produced the cheapest illuminator of the age, multiplying the wealth of the world, adding to the list of human industries, and contributing to the comfort and happiness of mankind.” Although Bissell and Townsend can be praised for their entrepreneurial spirit and visionary contributions, Drake “shook the boughs for others to gather the fruit.”
Misfortune again beset the oil pioneer Edwin Drake. He was confined to an invalid chair because of neuralgic affliction of the spine. His wife took care of him, cared for the children and took in sewing. When an old friend from Titusville met him in New York in 1869, Drake was an invalid with 60 cents to his name. The friend gave Drake $20 and went back to Titusville where a public donation of $5000 was raised. The Pennsylvania State Legislature passed a bill in 1873 that provided Drake with an annual income of $1,500.
Today, at the site of the drilling of the first oil well stands Drake Museum which is a treasure-house of oil industry memento. Also in Titusville is the resting place of Edwin L. Drake located in the Woodlawn Cemetery of Rte.8 north.
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