occurred in the report of the commander of Fort Duquesne, 1750, when he witnessed the ceremonies of the Seneca Indians on Oil Creek. A prominent feature of the ceremonies was the burning of the oil as it oozed from the ground.
The oil-spring of Cuba, Alleghany County, New York, called the Seneca Oil-Spring, was described by Prof. Silliman, in 1833, as a dirty pool, about eighteen feet in diameter, covered with a film of oil, which was skimmed off from time to time for medicinal purposes. The so-called Seneca-oil was not from this spring, but from Oil Creek. Hildreth, in 1833, gave an account of the salt-wells of the Little Kanawha Valley, West Virginia, which he says yielded a little oil. In 1840 a well at Burkesville, Kentucky, was described as spouting oil at the estimated rate of seventy-five gallons a minute for a few days, but it then failed entirely (Dana, "Mineralogy," fifth edition, 1869). In 1844 Mr. Murray mentioned the petroleum of Enniskillen, Canada.
About twenty years ago the manufacture of oil from coal and bituminous shales, having been widely extended through the labors of Abraham Gesner and James Young, of Glasgow, began to excite interest in this country, and, according to S. D. Hayes, the first coal-oil offered for sale in this country was made by Philbrick & Atwood, in 1852, at the works of the United States Chemical Manufacturing Company, Waltham, Massachusetts. It was called coup-oil, after the recent coup d'état of Louis Napoleon, and was used as a lubricator.
In 1856 the first illuminating oil was made by Mr. Joshua Merrill, from Trinidad bitumen, according to the same authority. According to H. E. Wrigley, however, a refinery was started as early as 1850 by Mr. Samuel Kier, of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, for the treatment of crude petroleum ("Report on Petroleum of Pennsylvania" for the "Second Geological Survey of Pennsylvania, 1874"). Success being limited only by the small amount available, search for the oil was naturally directed to Oil Creek, and in 1858 Messrs. J. G. Eveleth and George H. Bissell, of New York City, leased one hundred acres of land near Titusville, on the northern border of Venango County, Pennsylvania, and engaged Colonel E. L. Drake, of New Haven, Connecticut, to bore a well. On the 28th of August, 1859, he struck oil at a depth of seventy-one feet (according to some authorities sixty-nine and a half feet), and a pump was adjusted which produced twenty-five barrels a day.
In 1861 the first flowing well was struck by Mr. Funk, on the M'Elhenny Farm, Oil Creek, at a depth of 400 feet. Soon after two more wells were sunk (the Phillips and Empire), flowing 3,000 barrels each daily. Since 1858, in round numbers, 10,500 wells have been bored in Pennsylvania, and oil-wells also exist in West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, and elsewhere, with results that will be stated hereafter.
It would not be proper to leave the history of petroleum without
