Crawford County, Pennsylvania

1869-70 DIRECTORY OF THE OIL REGIONS

TITUSVILLE
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did business under the firm name of Philpot, Sherman & Co. The business transactions of this firm during the last four years have amounted to many millions of dollars, and is still vigorously prosecuted by Mr. Sherman. This firm succeeded in laying a double line of pipes from Pithole City to Titusville, over an elevation of three hunched feet, for conducting oil underground to Titusville. The project met with great opposition from the army of teamsters, who tore up the pipes, burnt their tanks, &c. This, however, was soon remedied, the work completed, and it is now used by the Empire Transportation Line. It has a capacity for conducting 2,000 bbls per day.

THE OIL TRADE.
The following statistics of the Petroleum trade of this region we extract from the Morning Herald’s Annual Petroleum Report :

PRODUCTION SINCE 1859.

The producing of Petroleum by means of artesian wells, which has become one of the leading branches of industry in the State, first began in America in 1859. For several years previous small quantities had been collected from salt wells in the south-western part of the State, and from vats and trenches sunk a few feet in the earth on Oil Creek, near Titusville. But the amounts obtained in this way were so inconsiderable as to attract little attention from the public; but yet they were sufficient to afford the material for numerous tests, by which the great illuminating power of Petroleum was made apparent to a number of scientific men, and to the few connected with it as producers, refiners or merchants, and thus the way was opened for its later general introduction as one of the world’s cheapest lights.

The value of the article induced a company that had been organized to work the vats, &c., to sink a well about one mile south of this place, in the hope that it would penetrate deposits of it in the underlying sand rocks. This well was completed in August, 1859, and produced about ten barrels per day. Late in the same year one or two others were struck in its immediate vicinity, and afterwards another well was struck at the present site of next page