Sistersville daily oil review. [volume] (Sistersville, W. Va.) 1902-1905, 1904-11-16
Oil Wells Are
Not TennY-
son Brooks
Few Die of Old Age and None
Go On Forever.
SOME RARE PATRIARCHS
Longevity Not the Long Suit OF
the Holes That Supply Crude
Petroleum.

The dog will have his day
Shakespeare.
Whom the gods favor dies
young.-Platus.
Such stuff as dreams are made
of.-Shakespeare.
Franklin, Pa, Nov. 16.-Every
dog and every oil well have their
day, for neither is immortal and
most of them die young. Occas-
ionally a canine enters his teens,
but the great majority lose their
bark and their breath much ear
lier. w. j. Dewoody's faithful
black and tan, verging on 10
summers and full of snap as a
fire cracker is probably the Mes
tor of the tribe in this neck of
the woods. A well that scores
80 years is a Methuselah Of its
kind. The first pair on the Mil
ton farm started Bredinsburg in
1871 and they still yield morsel
of $1.56 crude. The sturdy Gov.
Johnston pumper, about where
Fry's furniture store holds the
fort in the Third ward of Oil
City, rounded out nearly three
decades. Some wells in Frank
Inns lubricating district have
produced continuously since the
dawn of the seventies. Daniel
Grimm boasts one that has had
SO birthdays. Several second
sanders at Cochran date back a
generation. Many of the orig
inal strikes in the Bradford re-
gion keep doing business at the
old stand, the system of pumping
dozens with one gas engine max
ing it possible to operate the lit
tie fellows at a profit. These are
exceptions, however, to the gen.
eral run. During the career of
the veterans tens of thousands
more have come and gone, drop
ping out of the game in a year
or two. The giant spouters
which doomed Oil Creek in the
infancy Of developments passed
away at a tender age. The his
toric Fountain well on the Nell
henney tract, the first put down
to the third sand and the first in
Pennsylvania to flow steadily
from any sand, paraffine stran-
gled to death in it's fifteenth
month.
The famous Buckeye, on the
Espy lands. from which j. T.
Briggs in 1862 shipped the first
cargo of petroleum ever sent
across the Atlantic, for months
forced 1000 barrels of oil daily
into tanks 200 feet up the hill,
then tired of the task and quit
the job permanently. Longevity
was not the long suit of Bennett
& Hatch's lordly Empire. the
Sherman. the Croker, the Noble,
the Craft, the Coquette, the Ma
pie Shade, the Phillips, the Cres-
cent. the Densmore, the Titus
Twins, the Ladies'. the Crawford
and a legion of minor note that
gave birth to Fernville, Pioneer,
Petroleum Center, Tarr Farm,
! Columbia and Rynd. Who re-
members the tidy wells that Gre
ated Meredith and can point out
the location of the mushroom
town. Windsor's No. l and the
Mclaughlin gusher evolved Red
! Hot and Cash Up, names rarely
! Wells, derricks and balloon
houses have vanished as COM
pletely as the dodo or the Ten
Tribes Of Israel, Ezekiel's valley
of dry bones was not drier than
is Cherry Dun, once the home of
the renowned Reed, Mountain,
Criswell. Vampire, Wade, Baker
and Yankee bonanzas. The Mer-
rick, which launched Housewife
and blOtted out 10 human lives
by its furious blaze. flowed TO-
600 barrels and "stopped short,
never to 60 again" Pithole,
Balltown, Dawson Center, Tip
Top, Fasundas, Sawyer, Gillmor,
Red Rock, Rixford. Gas City,
Alamagooseaulm, Antwerp, Elk
City, Richmond. Fern City, Bea-
Yer. Pickvick. Triangle, Argyle,
Buena Vista, Modoc, Troutman.
st. Joe and Greece City are men,
cries only. Triumph Hills, its
o1,,e4 o,e &c lo,r,o1-. ,,,,.o,-- ho.