by Bruce Wells | Apr 9, 2025 | Petroleum Companies
John Wilkes Booth and his actor friends drilled for Pennsylvania oil in 1864 — and found it.
After forming an oil company and drilling for “black gold” in booming northwestern Pennsylvania, the actor’s dreams of a petroleum fortune collapsed in June 1864. He then sought fame as a martyr to the Confederacy. A failed oilman turned assassin.
As the Civil War approached its bloody conclusion, John Wilkes Booth in January 1864 made the first of several trips to Franklin, Pennsylvania, where he purchased an oil lease on the Fuller farm. Maps reveal the three-acre strip of land on the farm, about one mile south of Franklin and on the east side of the Allegheny River. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Apr 9, 2025 | Petroleum Pioneers
New resource for making kerosene for lamps created the U.S. petroleum industry.
America’s petroleum exploration and production industry began in the mid-19th century when a lumber company sold 105 acres along a creek known for natural oil seeps.
On November 10, 1854, the lumber firm of Brewer, Watson & Company sold a parcel of the company’s land at the junction of the east and west branches of Oil Creek southeast of Titusville, Pennsylvania. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Mar 31, 2025 | This Week in Petroleum History
March 31, 1919 – Oklahoma’s Other First Oil Well –
The Cherokee-Warren Oil and Gas Company incorporated — taking over the remaining assets of the exploration venture that drilled Oklahoma’s “other first oil well” in Indian Territory. That well, drilled in 1889 but abandoned by the United States Oil and Gas Company, was on a 100,000-acre lease in the Cherokee Nation.
Edward Byrd, a Cherokee by marriage, had found oil seeps southwest of Chelsea in 1882. Two years later the Cherokee Nation authorized his United States Oil and Gas Company, “for the purpose of finding petroleum, or rock oil, and thus increasing the revenue of the Cherokee Nation.”
Learn more in Another First Oklahoma Oil Well.
April 1, 1911 – First Gusher of “Pump Jack Capital of Texas”
South of the Red River border with Oklahoma, near Electra, Texas, the Clayco Oil & Pipe Line Company’s Clayco No. 1 well launched an oil boom that would last decades. “As news of the gusher spread through town, people thought it was an April Fools joke and didn’t take it seriously until they saw for themselves the plume of black oil spewing high into the sky,” noted a local historian. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Mar 17, 2025 | Energy Education Resources
Biography of father of U.S. oil industry reaches total depth.
In August 1859, the man who would launch America’s petroleum industry was down to his last pennies — and a letter was on its way to “Colonel” Edwin L. Drake telling him to cease drilling at Titusville, Pennsylvania. Investors in the first oil company wanted him wanted out.
“As far as the company was concerned, the project was finished,” notes historian William Brice, PhD, in his 2009 biography of Drake, a former railroad conductor. “Fortunately that letter was not delivered until after they found oil.” (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Mar 6, 2025 | Petroleum Art
How a red Pegasus soared into Dallas petroleum history.
The Mobil Oil Pegasus perched atop the Magnolia Petroleum building in Dallas from 1934 until 1999, when rust and growing structural issues forced its removal. On the first day of 2000, a carefully crafted duplicate returned to the Dallas skyline.
Thanks to its widespread popularity, Mobil Oil’s high-flying trademark returned to its Texas home with one red Pegasus on each side of a sign painstakingly recreated by the American Porcelain Enamel Company. As the year 1999 drew to a close, the duplicated Pegasus soared again. (more…)
