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 Pure and Applied
Sally
The UNDERGRADUATE TEXTS 35
SERIES

Number Theory
and Geometry
An Introduction to
Arithmetic Geometry

Álvaro Lozano-Robledo
 CONTENTS

Preface xiii

Chapter 1. Introduction 1
1.1. Roots of Polynomials 2
1.2. Lines 5
1.3. Quadratic Equations and Conic Sections 7
1.4. Cubic Equations and Elliptic Curves 11
1.5. Curves of Higher Degree 14
1.6. Diophantine Equations 16
1.7. Hilbert’s Tenth Problem 21
1.8. Exercises 23

Part 1. Integers, Polynomials, Lines, and Congruences

Chapter 2. The Integers 29

2.1. The Axioms of Z 29
2.2. Consequences of the Axioms 31
2.3. The Principle of Mathematical Induction 33
2.4. The Division Theorem 38
2.5. The Greatest Common Divisor 41
2.6. Euclid’s Algorithm to Calculate a GCD 42
2.7. Bezout’s Identity 43
2.8. Integral and Rational Roots of Polynomials 47
2.9. Integral and Rational Points in a Line 48
2.10. The Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic 51
2.11. Exercises 55
vii
viii Contents

Chapter 3. The Prime Numbers 61

3.1. The Sieve of Eratosthenes 62
3.2. The Infinitude of the Primes 63
3.3. Theorems on the Distribution of Primes 67
3.4. Famous Conjectures about Prime Numbers 72
3.5. Exercises 79

Chapter 4. Congruences 83
4.1. The Definition of Congruence 84
4.2. Basic Properties of Congruences 86
4.3. Cancellation Properties of Congruences 89
4.4. Linear Congruences 90
4.5. Systems of Linear Congruences 94
4.6. Applications 102
4.7. Exercises 113

Chapter 5. Groups, Rings, and Fields 119

5.1. Z/mZ 119
5.2. Groups 124
5.3. Rings 130
5.4. Fields 138
5.5. Rings of Polynomials 140
5.6. Exercises 149

Chapter 6. Finite Fields 155

6.1. An Example 155
6.2. Polynomial Congruences 156
6.3. Irreducible Polynomials 159
n
6.4. Fields with p Elements 160
2
6.5. Fields with p Elements 161
6.6. Fields with s Elements 163
6.7. Exercises 164

Chapter 7. The Theorems of Wilson, Fermat, and Euler 167

7.1. Wilson’s Theorem 167
7.2. Fermat’s (Little) Theorem 170
7.3. Euler’s Theorem 176
7.4. Euler’s Phi Function 181
7.5. Applications 184
7.6. Exercises 188
Contents ix

Chapter 8. Primitive Roots 193

8.1. Multiplicative Order 195
8.2. Primitive Roots 200
8.3. Universal Exponents 203
8.4. Existence of Primitive Roots Modulo p 205
8.5. Primitive Roots Modulo pk 210
8.6. Indices 214
8.7. Existence of Primitive Roots Modulo m 220
8.8. The Structure of (Z/pk Z)× 222
8.9. Applications 224
8.10. Exercises 230

Part 2. Quadratic Congruences and Quadratic Equations

Chapter 9. An Introduction to Quadratic Equations 237
9.1. Product of Two Lines 238
9.2. A Classification: Parabolas, Ellipses, and Hyperbolas 248
9.3. Rational Parametrizations of Conics 255
9.4. Integral Points on Quadratic Equations 260
9.5. Exercises 268
Chapter 10. Quadratic Congruences 271
10.1. The Quadratic Formula 272
10.2. Quadratic Residues 275
10.3. The Legendre Symbol 279
10.4. The Law of Quadratic Reciprocity 284
10.5. The Jacobi Symbol 290
10.6. Cipolla’s Algorithm 296
10.7. Applications 298
10.8. Exercises 305
Chapter 11. The Hasse–Minkowski Theorem 309
11.1. Quadratic Forms 309
11.2. The Hasse–Minkowski Theorem 313
11.3. An Example of Hasse–Minkowski 318
11.4. Polynomial Congruences for Prime Powers 324
11.5. The p-Adic Numbers 328
11.6. Hensel’s Lemma 331
11.7. Exercises 333
x Contents

Chapter 12. Circles, Ellipses, and the Sum of Two Squares Problem 337
12.1. Rational and Integral Points on a Circle 337
12.2. Pythagorean Triples 343
12.3. Fermat’s Last Theorem for n = 4 347
12.4. Ellipses 348
12.5. Quadratic Fields and Norms 350
12.6. Integral Points on Ellipses 353
2 2
12.7. Primes of the Form X + BY 353
12.8. Exercises 356

Chapter 13. Continued Fractions 361

13.1. Finite Continued Fractions 363
13.2. Infinite Continued Fractions 370
13.3. Approximations of Irrational Numbers 386
13.4. Exercises 389

Chapter 14. Hyperbolas and Pell’s Equation 393

14.1. Square Hyperbolas 393
14.2. Pell’s Equation x − By = 1
2 2
395
14.3. Generalized Pell’s Equations x − By = N
2 2
401
14.4. Exercises 409

Part 3. Cubic Equations and Elliptic Curves

Chapter 15. An Introduction to Cubic Equations 413

15.1. The Projective Line and Projective Space 415
15.2. Singular Cubic Curves 422
15.3. Weierstrass Equations 425
15.4. Exercises 433

Chapter 16. Elliptic Curves 437

16.1. Definition 438
16.2. Integral Points 441
16.3. The Group Structure on E(Q) 441
16.4. The Torsion Subgroup 447
16.5. Elliptic Curves over Finite Fields 449
16.6. The Rank and the Free Part of E(Q) 455
16.7. Descent and the Weak Mordell–Weil Theorem 459
16.8. Homogeneous Spaces 467
16.9. Application: The Elliptic Curve Diffie–Hellman Key Exchange 471
16.10. Exercises 473
Contents xi

Bibliography 479
Index 483
 PREFACE

Why are numbers beautiful? It’s like asking why is

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony beautiful. If you don’t
see why, someone can’t tell you. I know numbers
are beautiful. If they aren’t beautiful, nothing is.

Paul Erdős

Geometry and the theory of numbers are as old as some of the oldest historical
records of humanity. Since Euclid’s Elements and Diophantus’s Arithmetica, many
excellent geometry and number theory texts have been written, including timeless
classics such as [HW38]. As we shall lay out in more detail in Chapter 1, the
approach of this book is slightly different from more traditional sources, in that
the emphasis is in the interactions of number theory with geometry. The field of
arithmetic geometry, which appears in the subtitle of this book, is indeed the study
of the intersection of number theory (arithmetic) and algebraic geometry. The au-
thor’s reason for this more geometric point of view is the following. Some of the
traditional number theory textbooks may seem (to the student) a list of topics, each
of which may be of important historical value but that do not readily appear to
form a coherent set of topics, well integrated with each other (e.g., prime numbers,
congruences, perfect numbers, quadratic reciprocity, and continued fractions). Of
course, number theorists understand that these topics are deeply interconnected,
and one way to highlight the interwoven nature of number theory is through ge-
ometry. In this text, the goal is to use geometry as the motivation to prove the
main theorems in the book. For example, the fundamental theorem of arithmetic
(the fact that every integer n ≥ 2 has a unique factorization as a product of prime
numbers) is a consequence of the tools we develop in order to find all the integral
points on a line in the plane (i.e., the points (x0 , y0 ) on a line L : ax + by = c with
integer coordinates x0 and y0 ). Similarly, Gauss’s law of quadratic reciprocity and
the theory of continued fractions naturally arise when we attempt to determine the
integral points on a curve in the plane given by a quadratic polynomial equation.
xiii
xiv Preface

In Chapter 1 we give a brief overview of the types of diophantine equations

(i.e., systems of equations given by polynomials) that are the objects of study. The
rest of the book is structured in three acts that correspond to linear, quadratic,
and cubic curves, respectively.
(I) In Part 1 we introduce the basic tools of number theory. In particular, we
discuss the integers and prime numbers and develop the theory of (linear) con-
gruences. We also introduce some basic concepts of abstract algebra (groups,
rings, fields) using congruence classes as a motivating example. These tools
are applied to determine rational solutions of polynomials in one variable and
the integral and rational points on lines in the plane.
(II) In Part 2 we study quadratic equations in one and two variables. We de-
velop the theory of quadratic congruences, we describe the theorem of Hasse
and Minkoswki (without a proof), and we also introduce continued fractions.
The material is then used to find the integral and rational points on conics:
parabolas, ellipses, and hyperbolas.
(III) Part 3 is a brief introduction to the theory of cubic curves. After discussing
the projective line and projective space and learning how to work with singular
cubic curves, we concentrate on non-singular cubics, and we give a summary
of the theory of elliptic curves (projective non-singular cubic curves with at
least one rational point).
A number of chapters end with applications of the theory to other topics and,
in particular, we highlight the cryptographic applications in Sections 4.6.4, 7.5.3,
8.9.1, 10.7.2, and 16.9.
The book contains much more material than can be covered in a one-semester
undergraduate course. For a first course in number theory or arithmetic geometry,
we recommend covering Chapters 1 through 10 (Chapter 6 on finite fields is op-
tional). For a second course in arithmetic (or diophantine) geometry, the instructor
can cover Chapters 9 through 16 (Chapter 11 on the Hasse–Minkowski theorem is
optional). The text assumes that the student has had a sequence of courses in
calculus, up to multivariable calculus (a familiarity with matrices is assumed in
some exercises). It is recommended that the student has seen an introduction to
proofs before reading this book. However, the first few chapters have the secondary
goal of providing practice in proof-writing, and they include a review of proofs by
induction, in particular.
The material in this text ends where [Loz11] begins. There are, of course,
many other undergraduate sources on number theory that are highly recommended:
[AC95], [Bur10], [Chi95], [Con1], [Gou97], [HW38], [HPS14], [Ros10],
[ST92], [Sil12], [Ste08], [Was08], and [Wei17], among many others. At the grad-
uate level, the volumes [DF03], [IR98], [Lor96], [Mil06], [Ser73], and [Sil86] are
excellent introductions to various aspects of algebra, number theory, and arithmetic
geometry.

I started writing my own notes when I taught elementary number theory courses
at Cornell University (in the fall of 2006 and 2007) and at the University of Con-
necticut (in the fall of 2008 and 2011 and the spring of 2014). This book grew out
Preface xv

of these notes and the lectures of a special topics course (on diophantine geometry)
that I taught at UConn in the fall of 2012. I would like to thank Keith Conrad for
many suggestions and corrections. Also, I would like to thank the UConn under-
graduate students in my class “MATH 3240Q: Introduction to Number Theory” for
carefully reading my notes and providing useful feedback and criticism. In particu-
lar, I would like to thank Lia Bonacci, Heather Clinton, Jeremy Driscoll, Randolph
Forsyth, Carly Gaccione, Taylor Garboski, Tom Jones, Gregory Knight, David
Khondkaryan, Pravesh Mallik, Nicole Raymond, Heather Risley, Antonio Rossini,
and Rachel Tangard for their comments, and special thanks go to Michael Lau and
Byron Sitaras for their many and very detailed comments. Finally, I would like to
thank Jason Dorfman (CSAIL/MIT), the Wikimedia Commons, and the Archives
of the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach for their permission to use
the images from their collections that appear in this book.
 CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

As long as algebra and geometry have been

separated, their progress have been slow and their
uses limited; but when these two sciences have been
united, they have lent each mutual forces, and have
marched together towards perfection.

Joseph-Louis Lagrange, 1795

The main goal of this book is to study N, Z, and Q, i.e., the natural numbers,
the integers, and the rational numbers:

N = {1, 2, 3, . . .},
Z = {. . . , −3, −2, −1, 0, 1, 2, 3, . . .},
m 
Q= : m, n ∈ Z, n = 0 .
n
In the next chapter, we will be much more careful defining these sets using axioms,
but, for now, we appeal to our intuition of the properties that these numbers satisfy.
One can study these sets of numbers from their intrinsic properties, and much can
be gained from such an endeavor, but in this book we study these sets from the
point of view of their interaction with geometric objects (graphs of polynomials,
lines in the plane, conics, elliptic curves, etc.).
Our generic approach will be as follows: we will define a geometric object G
and then we will try to find all the points in the geometric object with coordinates
in N, Z, or Q, which we will denote by G(N), G(Z), and G(Q), respectively. As
we attempt to find the natural, integral, or rational points, we will develop the
theory that is usually called “elementary number theory”. Our approach will use
the problem of finding arithmetic points on a geometric object as the motivation
for the definitions and techniques of elementary number theory. Let us begin with
our first example.
1
2 1. Introduction

1.1. Roots of Polynomials

We begin this section with a discussion about polynomials and, in particular, which
polynomials have roots in a given number system. Roots of polynomials will be
treated in more detail in Part 1, and in particular in Section 2.8. We will also
discuss polynomials (as a ring) in Section 5.5.
A polynomial p(x) is an expression of the form
p(x) = an xn + an−1 xn−1 + · · · + a1 x + a0 ,
where n ≥ 0 is a non-negative integer and a0 , a1 , . . . , an are constants (in Z or Q
or R, for example). By a polynomial equation, we mean an equation that can be
expressed in the form p(x) = 0, for some polynomial p(x). A root of the polynomial
equation p(x) = 0 is a number α such that p(α) = 0.
For humans, it is natural to work with the natural numbers N = {1, 2, 3, . . .}
as we often need to count things in our daily routine. However, as soon as we try
to solve the simplest linear polynomial equations using only natural numbers, we
run into problems. An equation of the form
(1.1) 3+x=5
has a (unique!) solution in N, namely x = 2. But the similar equation
(1.2) 5+x=3
has no solutions in N, since 5 + x > 5 > 3, for any x ∈ N. Indeed, if a and b are
natural numbers, then an equation a + x = b has a solution in N if and only if a < b.
Thus, in order to solve (1.2), we need to augment N to include all numbers of the
form −n, where n ∈ N. Notice that we also need to include 0 to be able to solve an
equation of the form 5 + x = 5. Thus, we define Z = {. . . , −3, −2, −1, 0, 1, 2, 3, . . .}
and every equation of the form
(1.3) a + x = b,
where a, b ∈ Z, has a (unique!) solution x = b − a in Z. The integers, however, are
not enough to solve an equation of the form
(1.4) 5x = 3
as there is no integer n such that 5n = 3 (indeed, the number 3 is prime and its only
positive divisors are 1 and 3). More generally, an equation of the form ax + b = 0,
with a, b ∈ Z and a = 0, has solutions in Z if and only if a is a divisor of b. In
order to be able to solve all equations of the form ax + b = 0, we need to augment
Z to be a number system such that every non-zero number has a multiplicative
inverse. And so, we define Q = { m n : m, n ∈ Z, n = 0}. Now every linear equation
a ∈ Q.
ax + b = c, with a, b, c ∈ Q and a = 0, has a unique solution x = c−b
How about quadratic polynomials? Do they all have roots in Q? Of course not.
√ instance, the polynomial x − 2 = 0 does not have any rational
2
For √ roots because
2 is not a rational number. (In order to rigorously prove that 2 ∈ Q we will
first need to prove the fundamental theorem of arithmetic! See Theorems √ 2.10.2
and 2.10.6 and Section 2.10.1.)
√ We usually represent numbers such as 2 by their
decimal expansion, i.e., 2 = 1.41421356237309 . . . . The decimal expansion of a
1.1. Roots of Polynomials 3

rational number has a period, i.e., the expansion eventually repeats a given pattern
of finitely many digits (why?). For example,
13
= 0.76470588235294117647058823529411 . . . 7647058823529411 . . . .
17
Conversely, any decimal expansion that√ has a period represents a rational number
(see Section √
8.9.2). The expansion of 2 has no period, as we have already men-
tioned that 2 ∈ Q. In order to be able to solve quadratic equations (and other
higher-degree polynomial equations), one can augment Q to include all decimal ex-
pansions and not only those that are periodic. This leads to an informal definition
of the real numbers:
R = {set of all decimal expansions},
with the usual identification of decimals with “trailing nines”; e.g., the expan-
sion 0.9999 . . ., with infinitely many nines, is equal to the decimal expansion 1 =
1.0000 . . . (see Exercise 1.8.1).
Unfortunately, not all quadratic polynomial equations ax2 + bx + c = 0, with
a, b, c ∈ R and a = 0, have a solution in R. In fact, ax2 + bx + c = 0, with
a, b, c ∈ R and a = 0, has a solution in R if and only if b2 − 4ac ≥ 0. Similarly, there
are higher-degree polynomials with no roots in R. For instance, the polynomial
equation x4 + x3 + x2 + x + 1 = 0 has no real roots.
In order to ameliorate the “shortcomings” of R, we would like to augment R
so that, at least, all quadratic polynomials have a root. In order to accomplish
this, it is sufficient to add a square root of −1 to R, which we shall denote by i, an
imaginary number such that i2 = −1. Indeed, a polynomial p(x) = ax2 +bx+c = 0,
with a, b, c ∈ R and a = 0, with b2 − 4ac ≥ 0 has real roots
√
−b ± b2 − 4ac
x= ,
2a
and if b2 − 4ac < 0, then p(x) = 0 has roots

−b ± i |b2 − 4ac|
x= .
2a
Therefore, if we define the complex numbers as
C = {a + bi : a, b ∈ R, i2 = −1},
then all linear and quadratic polynomials with coefficients in C have roots in√C (the
reader needs to verify that every complex number α ∈ C has a square root α also
in C; see Exercise 1.8.6). Perhaps one of the most surprising and beautiful theorems
in algebra is that, in fact, every non-constant polynomial (of arbitrary degree ≥ 1)
with coefficients in C has a root in C. This is known as the fundamental theorem
of algebra.
Theorem 1.1.1 (Fundamental theorem of algebra). Let p(x) be a polynomial of
degree ≥ 1 with coefficients in C. Then, there is α ∈ C such that p(α) = 0.

For example, let p(x) = x4 + x3 + x2 + x + 1. As we mentioned above, p(x)

is a polynomial that has no real roots. The number α = cos( 2π 2π
5 ) + i sin( 5 ) is a
4 1. Introduction

complex root of p(x). Indeed, by Euler’s formula

eix = cos x + i · sin x,
we have that α = e2πi/5 . Moreover,
x5 − 1
x4 + x3 + x2 + x + 1 = ,
x−1
and α5 − 1 = (e2πi/5 )5 − 1 = e2πi − 1 = 1 − 1 = 0. Thus, p(α) = 0 as well.
Complex numbers are fascinating in their own right, and there is a whole area
of mathematics dedicated to the study of C and complex-valued functions, namely
the area known as complex analysis. Here, however, we are (mostly) interested in,
and shall concentrate on, the study of N, Z, and Q. Let us try to find out when a
polynomial with integer coefficients has a rational root.
Example 1.1.2. Let p(x) = 3x3 − 44x2 − 257x + 190 be a polynomial. We would
like to find the natural (N), integral (Z), or rational (Q) roots of p(x); i.e., we want
to find those natural, integral, or rational numbers x that satisfy p(x) = 0. Suppose
that the natural number n ∈ N is a root of p(x). Then,
p(n) = 3n3 − 44n2 − 257n + 190 = 0,
and we may rewrite this expression as n(3n2 − 44n − 257) = −190. Since n is a
natural number, the number 3n2 − 44n − 257 is an integer (not necessarily in N)
and we may conclude that n would necessarily be a divisor of −190. The list of
natural divisors of −190 is L = {1, 2, 5, 10, 19, 38, 95, 190}. Thus, we can try to see
whether any of these numbers n ∈ L is a root of p(x) by calculating p(n). After
carrying this out, we find that the only natural number that is a root of p(x) is
n = 19.
Are there any integral roots of p(x) that are not natural numbers? If n ∈ Z
and p(n) = 0, the expression n(3n2 − 44n − 257) = −190 is still valid, and we
may also conclude that n must be a divisor of −190. The integer divisors of −190
are those in the list L = {±1, ±2, ±5, ±10, ±19, ±38, ±95, ±190}. Since we have
already checked that the only natural root is 19, we only need to check whether any
of the negative divisors is a root. In this manner, we find that n = 19 and n = −5
are the only integral roots of p(x).
Finally, we wish to find out whether p(x) has any rational roots. Since we know
that 19 and −5 are roots, we deduce that f (x) = (x + 5)(x − 19) is a factor of p(x)
as polynomials (here we are using the so-called root theorem, Corollary 5.5.15). We
may divide p(x) by f (x) to find a third linear factor, and therefore the value of the
third root of p(x). Instead, we shall approach this using a divisibility method that
works more generally. Suppose m n ∈ Q is a reduced fraction (i.e., m and n share no
common divisors) and it is a root of p(x). Then,
m  m 3  m 2 m
p =3 − 44 − 257 + 190 = 0.
n n n n
3
If we multiply this expression by n , we obtain
3m3 − 44m2 n − 257mn2 + 190n3 = 0.
This expression can be rewritten as m(3m2 − 44mn − 257n2 ) = −190n3 . This is
an equality of integer numbers and we may deduce that m is a divisor of −190n3 .
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decline to furnish points regarding his mystery-well in a good-
natured way that disarmed criticism. He retains his old-time geniality
and prosperity has not compelled him to buy hats three sizes larger
than he wore at Parker and Millerstown “in the days of auld lang-
syne.”
A. B. Walker and T. J. Melvin joined Shannon in his Cooper
venture. A road was cut through the dense forest from the Fox farm-
house up the steep hill to the Mainwaring derrick. An engine and
boiler were dragged to the spot and Captain Haight contracted to
drill the hole. Melvin and Walker, believing the well a failure at
eighteen-hundred feet, went to Cherry Grove on July twenty fifth,
1882. Shannon stayed to urge the drill a trifle farther and it struck
the sand at one o’clock next day. He drove in two pine-plugs, sent a
messenger for his partners and filled the well with water to shut in
the oil. The well wouldn’t consent to be plugged and drowned. The
stream broke loose at three o’clock, hurling the tools and plugs into
the Forest ozone. Shannon and Haight, standing in the derrick,
narrowly escaped death as the tools crashed through the roof and
fell to the floor. More plugs, sediment and old clothes were jammed
down to conceal the true inwardness of the well, news of which was
expected to pulverize the market. Heavy flows following the
expulsion of the tools led the owners to anticipate a big strike.
Outposts were established and guards, each armed with a
Winchester rifle, were changed every six hours. The wildcat-well,
eight miles from a telegraph-wire, became an entrenched camp with
a half-dozen wakeful scouts besieging the citadel. Vicksburg was not
guarded more vigilantly. If a twig cracked or an owl hooted a shower
of bullets whizzed in the direction of the noise. Through August the
well was permitted to slumber, oil that forced a passage in spite of
the obstructions running into pits inside “the dead-line.” The trade
staggered under the adverse fear of the mystery. Bradford operators
formed a syndicate with the owners in lands and speculation and
sold a million barrels of crude short. When everything was ready to
spring the trap some of the parties went to drill out the plugs and
usher in the market-crusher. “We have a jack-pot to open at our
pleasure” remarked one of them, voicing the sentiment of all. None
looked for anything smaller than fifteen-hundred barrels. The four
drillers were discharged and two trusted lieutenants turned the
temper-screw and dressed the bits. Ten plugs and a mass of dirt
must be cleaned out. From a distance the scouts timed every motion
of the walking-beam, gluing their eyes to field-glasses that not a
symptom of a flow might slip their eager gaze, “like stout Cortez
when he stared at the Pacific upon a peak in Darien.” Swift horses
were fastened to convenient trees, saddled and bridled for a race to
the telegraph-office. A slice of bread and a can of beans served for
food. For days the drilling continued. On September fourteenth the
last splinter of the plugs was extracted, the sand was cut deeper and
—the well didn’t respond worth a cent! The faithful scouts, who had
stood manfully between the trade and the manipulators, rushed the
report. It was a bracer to the market. Bears who pinned their hopes
to the Shannon well, the pivot upon which petroleum hinged,
scrambled to cover their shorts at heavy loss. Balltown duplicated
some of the Cooper experiences, mystery-wells on Porcupine Run
agitating the trade in the spring of 1883. The Cherry-Grove, Cooper-
Hill and Balltown pools yielded eight or nine-million barrels.
Operations extended to Sheffield and the cream was soon skimmed
off. The middle field had enjoyed a very lively inning.
 Two miles back of Trunkeyville, on the west side of the Allegheny,
Calvert, Gilchrist & Risley drilled the Venture well in April, 1870, on
the Tuttle farm. Fisher Brothers, of Oil City, and O. D. Harrington, of
Titusville, bought the well for fifteen-thousand dollars when it
touched the third sand. It was eight-hundred feet deep, flowed
three-hundred barrels and started the Fagundas field. The day after
it began flowing the Fishers, Adnah Neyhart, Grandin Brothers and
David Bently paid one-hundred-and-twenty-thousand dollars for the
Fagundas farm of one-hundred-and-sixty acres. Mrs. Fagundas, one
son and one daughter died within three months of the sale. Neyhart
& Grandin bought a half-interest in David Beatty’s farm for ninety-
thousand dollars. The Lady Burns well, on the Wilkins farm, finished
in June, seconded the Venture. A daily production of three-thousand
barrels and a town of twenty-five-hundred population followed
quickly. A mile from Fagundas operations on the Hunter, Pearson,
Guild and Berry farms brought the suburb of Gillespie into being. The
territory lasted and a small yield is obtained to-day. A half-dozen
houses, the Venture derrick, Andrews & Co.’s big store and the office
in which whole-souled M. Compton—he’s in Pittsburg with the Forest
Oil-Company now—labored as secretary of the Producers’ Council,
hold the fort on the site of well-nigh-forgotten Fagundas. William H.
Calvert, who projected the Venture well, died at Sistersville, West
Virginia, on February seventeenth, 1896. He had drilled on Oil Creek
and at Pithole, operated in the southern field and was negotiating for
a block of lands near Sistersville when a clot of blood on the brain
cut short his active life.
David Beatty had drilled on Oil Creek in 1859-60 with John Fertig.
He settled on a farm in Warren county “to get away from the oil.” His
farm was smothered in oil by the Fagundas development. He
removed to the pretty town of Warren, building an elegant home on
the bank of Conewango Creek. Fortune hounded him and insisted
upon heaping up his riches. John Bell drilled a fifty-barrel well eighty
rods above the mansion. Wells surrounding his lot and in his yard
emitted oil. Mr. Beatty resigned himself to the inevitable and lived at
Warren until called to his final rest some years ago. His case
resembled the heroine in Milton Nobles’s Phenix, where “the villain
still pursued her.” The boys used to relate how a negro, the first man
to die at Oil City after the advent of petroleum, was buried in a lot
on the flats. Somebody wanted that precise spot next day to drill a
well and the corpse was planted on the hill-side. The next week that
particular location was selected for a well and the body was again
exhumed. To be sure of getting out of reach of the drill the friends of
the deceased boated his remains down the river to Butler county.
Twelve years later the bones were disinterred—an oil-company
having leased the old graveyard—and put in the garden of the dead
man’s son, to be handy for any further change of base that may be
required.
At East Hickory the Foster well, drilled in 1863, flowed three-
hundred barrels of amber oil. Two-hundred wells were sunk in the
Hickory district, which proved as tough as Old Hickory to nineteen-
twentieths of the operators. Three Hickory Creeks—East Hickory and
Little Hickory on the east and West Hickory—enter the river within
two miles. Near the mouth of West Hickory three Scotchmen named
McKinley bored a well two-hundred-and-thirty feet in 1861. They
found oil and were preparing to tube the well when the war broke
out and they abandoned the field. A well on the flats, drilled in 1865,
flowed two-hundred barrels of lubricating oil, occasioning a furore.
One farm sold for a hundred-thousand dollars and adjacent lands
were snapped up eagerly.
Ninety-five years ago hardy lumbermen settled permanently in
Deerfield township, Warren county, thirty miles above the mouth of
Oil Creek. Twenty years later a few inhabitants, supported by the
lumber trade, had collected near the junction of a small stream with
the Allegheny. Bold hills, grand forests, mountain rills and the
winding river, sprinkled with green islets, invested the spot with
peculiar charms. Upon the creek and hamlet the poetic Indian name
of Tidioute, signifying a cluster of islands, was fittingly bestowed.
Samuel Grandin, who located near Pleasantville, Venango county, in
1822, removed to Tidioute in 1839. He owned large tracts of timber-
lands and increased the mercantile and lumbering operations that
gave him prominence and wealth. Mr. Grandin maintained a high
character and died at a ripe age. His oldest son, John Livingston
Grandin, returned from college in 1857 and engaged in business with
his father, assuming almost entire control when the latter retired
from active pursuits. News of Col. Drake’s well reached the four-
hundred busy residents of the lumber-center in two days. Col.
Robinson, of Titusville, rehearsed the story of the wondrous event to
an admiring group in Samuel Grandin’s store. Young J. L. listened
intently, saddled his horse and in an hour purchased thirty acres of
the Campbell farm, on Gordon Run, below the village, for three-
hundred dollars. An “oil-spring” on the property was the attraction.
Next morning he contracted with H. H. Dennis, a man of mechanical
skill, to drill a well “right in the middle of the spring.” The following
day a derrick—four pieces of scantling—towered twenty feet, a
spring-pole was procured, the “spring” was dug to the rock, and the
“tool” swung at the first oil-well in Warren county and among the
first in Pennsylvania. Dennis hammered a drilling-tool from a bar of
iron three feet long, flattening one end to cut two-and-a-half inches,
the diameter of the hole. In the upper end of the drill he formed a
socket, to hold an inch-bar of round iron, held by a key riveted
though and lengthened as the depth required. Two or three times a
day, when the “tool” was drawn out to sharpen the bit and clean the
hole, the key had to be cut off at each joint! With this rude outfit
drilling began the first week of September, 1859, and the last week
of October the well was down one-hundred-and-thirty-four feet.
Tubing would not go into the hole and it was enlarged to four inches.
The discarded axle of a tram-car, used to carry lumber from Gordon
Run to the river, furnished iron for the reamer. Days, weeks and
months were consumed at this task. At last, when the hole had been
enlarged its full depth, the reamer was let down “to make sure the
job was finished.” It stuck fast, never saw daylight again and the well
sunk with so much labor had not one drop of oil!
Other wells in the locality fared similarly, none finding oil nearer
than Dennis Run, a half-mile distant. There scores of large wells
realized fortunes for their owners. In two years James Parshall was a
half-million ahead. He settled at Titusville and built the Parshall
House—a mammoth hotel and opera-house—which fire destroyed.
The “spring” on the Campell farm is in existence and the gravel is
impregnated with petroleum, supposed to percolate through fissures
in the rocks from Dennis Run.
During the summer of 1860 developments extended across and
down the river a mile from Tidioute. The first producing well in the
district, owned by King & Ferris, of Titusville, started in the fall at
three-hundred barrels and boomed the territory amazingly. It was on
the W. W. Wallace lands—five-hundred acres below town—purchased
in 1860 by the Tidioute & Warren Oil-Company, the third in the
world. Samuel Grandin, Charles Hyde and Jonathan Watson
organized it. J. L. Grandin, treasurer and manager of the company, in
eight years paid the stockholders twelve-hundred-thousand dollars
dividends on a capital of ten-thousand! He leased and sub-leased
farms on both sides of the Allegheny, drilling some dry-holes, many
medium wells and a few large ones. He shipped crude to the
seaboard, built pipe-lines and iron-tanks and became head of the
great firm of Grandins & Neyhart. Elijah Bishop Grandin—named
from the father of C. E. Bishop, founder of the Oil-City Derrick—who
had carried on a store at Hydetown and operated at Petroleum
Centre, resumed his residence at Tidioute in 1867 and associated
with his brother and brother-in-law, Adnah Neyhart, in producing,
buying, storing and transporting petroleum. Mr. Neyhart and Joshua
Pierce, of Philadelphia, had drilled on Cherry Run, on Dennis Run and
at Triumph and engaged largely in shipping oil to the coast. Pierce &
Neyhart—J. L. Grandin was their silent partner—dissolved in 1869.
The firm of Grandins & Neyhart, organized in 1868, was marvelously
successful. Its high standing increased confidence in the stability of
financial and commercial affairs in the oil-regions. The brothers
established the Grandin Bank and Neyhart, besides handling one-
fourth of the crude produced in Pennsylvania, opened a commission-
house in New York to sell refined, under the skilled management of
John D. Archbold, now vice-president of the Standard Oil-Company.
They and the Fisher Brothers owned the Dennis Run and Triumph
pipe-lines and piped the oil from Fagundas, where they drilled a
hundred prolific wells and were the largest operators. They bought
properties in different portions of the oil-fields, extended their pipe-
lines to Titusville and erected tankage at Parker and Miller Farm. The
death of Mr. Neyhart terminated their connection with oil-shipments.
“There is no parley with death.”
 J. L. GRANDIN.
E. B. GRANDIN.

ADNAH NEYHART.
 Owning thousands of acres in Warren and Forest counties, the
Grandins were heavily interested in developments at Cherry Grove,
Balltown and Cooper. As those sections declined they gradually
withdrew from active oil-operations, sold their pipe-lines and wound
up their bank. J. L. Grandin removed to Boston and E. B. to
Washington, to embark in new enterprises and enjoy, under most
favorable conditions, the fruits of their prosperous career at Tidioute.
Their business for ten years has been chiefly loaning money, farming
and lumbering in the west. They purchased seventy-two-thousand
acres in the Red-River Valley of Dakota—known the world over as
“the Dalrymple Farm”—and in 1895 harvested six-hundred-thousand
bushels of wheat and oats. They employ hundreds of men and
horses, scores of ploughs and reapers and steam-threshers and
illustrate how to farm profitably on the biggest scale. With Hunter &
Cummings, of Tidioute, and J. B. White, of Kansas City, as partners,
they organized the Missouri-Lumber-and-Mining-Company. The
company owns two-hundred-and-forty-thousand acres of timber-land
in Missouri and cut fifty-million feet of lumber last year in its vast
saw-mills at Grandin, Carter county. Far-seeing, clear-headed, of
unblemished repute and liberal culture, such men as J. L. and E. B.
Grandin reflect honor upon humanity and deserve the success an
approving conscience and the popular voice commend heartily.
Above Tidioute a number of “farmers’ wells”—shallow holes sunk
by hand and soon abandoned—flickered and collapsed. On the
islands in the river small wells were drilled, most of which the great
flood of 1865 destroyed. Opposite the town, on the Economite lands,
operations began in 1860. Steam-power was used for the first time
in drilling. The wells ranged from five barrels to eighty, at one-
hundred-and-fifty feet. They belonged to the Economites, a German
society that enforced celibacy and held property in common. About
1820 the association founded the village of Harmony, Butler county,
having an exclusive colony and transacting business with outsiders
through the medium of two trustees. The members wore a plain
garb and were distinguished for morality, simplicity, industry and
strict religious principles. Leaving Harmony, they located in the
Wabash Valley, lost many adherents, returned to Pennsylvania and
built the town of Economy, in Beaver county, fifteen miles below
Pittsburg. They manufactured silks and wine, mined coal and
accumulated millions of dollars. A loan to William Davidson, owner of
eight-thousand acres in Limestone township, Warren county, obliged
them to foreclose the mortgage and bid in the tract. Their notions of
economy applied to the wells, which they numbered alphabetically.
The first, A well, yielded ten barrels, B pumped fifty and C flowed
seventy. The trustees, R. L. Baker and Jacob Henrici, erected a large
boarding-house for the workmen, whose speech and manners were
regulated by printed rules. Pine and oak covered the Davidson lands,
which fronted several miles on the Allegheny and stretched far back
into the township. Of late years the Economite Society has been
disintegrating, until its membership has shrunk to a dozen aged men
and women. Litigation and mismanagement have frittered away
much of its property. It seems odd that an organization holding “all
things in common” should, by the perversity of fate, own some of
the nicest oil-territory in Warren, Butler and Beaver counties. A
recent strike on one of the southern farms flows sixty barrels an
hour. Natural gas lighted and heated Harmony and petroleum
appears bound to stick to the Economites until they have faded into
oblivion.
Below the Economite tract numerous wells strove to impoverish
the first sand. G. I. Stowe’s, drilled in 1860, pumped eight barrels a
day for six years. The Hockenburg, named from a preacher who
wrote an essay on oil, averaged twelve barrels a day in 1861. The
Enterprise Mining-and-Boring-Company of New-York leased fifteen
rods square on the Tipton farm to sink a shaft seven feet by twelve.
Bed-rock was reached at thirty feet, followed by ten feet of shale,
ten of gray sand, forty of slate and soap-rock and twenty of first
sand. The shaft, cribbed with six-inch plank to the bottom of the first
sand, tightly caulked to keep out water, was abandoned at one-
hundred-and-sixty feet, a gas-explosion killing the superintendent
and wrecking the timbers. Of forty wells on the Tipton farm in 1860-
61 not a fragment remained in 1866.
 Tidioute’s laurel wreath was Triumph Hill, the highest elevation in
the neighborhood. Wells nine-hundred feet deep pierced sixty feet of
oil-bearing sand, which produced steadily for years. Grandins, Fisher
Brothers, M. G. Cushing, E. E. Clapp, John M. Clapp and other
leading operators landed bounteous pumpers. The east side of the
hill was a forest of derricks, crowded like trees in a grove. Over the
summit and down the west side the sand and the development
extended. For five years Triumph was busy and prosperous, yielding
hundreds-of-thousands of barrels of oil and advancing Tidioute to a
town of five-thousand population. Five churches, the finest school-
buildings in the county, handsome houses, brick blocks, superior
hotels and large stores greeted the eye of the visitor. The Grandin
Block, the first brick structure, built of the first brick made in
Deerfield township, contained an elegant opera-house. Three banks,
three planing-mills, two foundries and three machine-shops
flourished. A dozen refineries turned out merchantable kerosene.
Water-works were provided and an iron bridge spanned the river.
Good order was maintained and Tidioute—still a tidy village—played
second fiddle to no town in Oildom for intelligence, enterprise and
all-round attractiveness.

VIEW ON WEST SIDE OF TRIUMPH HILL IN 1874.

The tidal wave effervesced at intervals clear to the Colorado

district. Perched on a hill in the hemlock woods, Babylon was the
rendezvous of sports, strumpets and plug-uglies, who stole,
gambled, caroused and did their best to break all the
commandments at once. Could it have spoken, what tales of horror
that board-house under the evergreen tree might recount! Hapless
wretches were driven to desperation and fitted for the infernal
regions. Lust and liquor goaded men to frenzy, resulting sometimes
in homicide or suicide. In an affray one night four men were shot,
one dying in an hour and another in six weeks. Ben. Hogan, who
laughed at the feeble efforts of the township-constable to suppress
his resort, was arrested, tried for murder and acquitted on the plea
of self-defence. The shot that killed the first victim was supposed to
have been fired by “French Kate,” Hogan’s mistress. She had led the
demi-monde in Washington and led susceptible congressmen astray.
Ben met her at Pithole, where he landed in the summer of 1865 and
ran a variety-show that would make the vilest on the Bowery blush
to the roots of its hair. He had been a prize-fighter on land, a pirate
at sea, a bounty-jumper and blockade-runner, and prided himself on
his title of the “Wickedest Man in the World.” Sentenced to death for
his crimes against the government, President Lincoln pardoned him
and he joined the myriad reckless spirits that sought fresh
adventures in the Pennsylvania oil-fields. In a few months the
Scripture legend—“Babylon has fallen”—applied to the malodorous
Warren town. The tiger can “change his spots”—by moving from one
spot to another—and so could Hogan. He was of medium height,
square-shouldered, stout-limbed, exceedingly muscular and trained
to use his fists. He fought Tom Allen at Omaha, sported at Saratoga
and in 1872 ran “The Floating Palace”—a boat laden with harlots and
whiskey—at Parker. The weather growing too cold and the law too
hot for comfort, he opened a den and built an opera-house at
Petrolia. In “Hogan’s Castle” many a clever young man learned the
short-cut to disgrace and perdition. Now and then a frail girl met a
sad fate, but the carnival of debauchery went on without
interruption. Hogan put on airs, dressed in the loudest style and
would have been the burgess had not the election-board counted
him out! A fearless newspaper forcing him to leave Petrolia, Hogan
went east to engage in “the sawdust swindle,” returned to the oil-
regions in 1875, built an opera-house at Elk City, decamped from
Bullion, rooted at Tarport and Bradford and departed by night for
New York. Surfeited with revelry and about to start for Paris to open
a joint, he heard music at a hall on Broadway and sat down to wait
for the show to begin. Charles Sawyer, “the converted soak,”
appeared shortly, read a chapter from the Bible and told of his
rescue from the gutter. Ben was deeply impressed, signed the pledge
at the close of the service, agonized in his room until morning and
on his knees implored forgiveness. How surprised the angels must
have been at the spectacle of the prodigal in this attitude! After a
fierce struggle, to quote his own words, “peace filled my soul chock-
full and I felt awful happy.” He claimed to be converted and set to
work earnestly to learn the alphabet, that he might read the
Scriptures and be an evangelist. He married “French Kate,” who also
professed religion, but it didn’t strike in very deep and she eloped
with a tough. Mr. Moody welcomed Hogan and advised him to
traverse the country to offset as far as possible his former misdeeds.
Amid the scenes of his grossest offenses his reception varied. High-
toned Christians, who would not touch a down-trodden wretch with
a ten-foot pole, turned up their delicate noses and refused to
countenance “the low impostor.” They forgot that he sold his jewelry
and most of his clothes, lived on bread and water and endured
manifold privations to become a bearer of the gospel-message. Even
ministers who proclaimed that “the blood of Christ cleanses from all
sin” doubted Hogan’s salvation and showed him the cold shoulder in
the chilliest orthodox fashion. He stuck manfully and for eighteen
years has labored zealously in the vineyard. Judging from his
struggles and triumphs, is it too much to believe that a front seat
and a golden crown are reserved for the reformed pugilist, felon,
robber, assassin of virtue and right bower of Old Nick? Unlike
straddlers in politics and piety, who want to go to Heaven on velvet-
cushions and pneumatic tires,
“He doesn’t stand on one foot fust,
An’ then stand on the other,
An’ on which one he feels the wust
He couldn’t tell you nuther.”
 The expectation of an extension of the
belt northward was not fulfilled
immediately. Wells at Irvineton, on the
Brokenstraw and tributary runs, failed to
find the coveted fluid. Captain Dingley
drilled two wells on Sell’s Run, three miles
east of Irvineton, in 1873, without slitting
the jugular. A test well at Warren, near the
mouth of Conewango Creek, bored in
1864 and burned as pumping was about
to begin, had fair sand and a mite of oil.
John Bell’s operations in 1875 opened an
amber pool up the creek that for a season
LEWIS F. WATSON.
crowded the hotels three deep with
visitors. They bored dozens of wells, yet
the production never reached one-thousand barrels and in four
months the patch was cordoned by dry holes and as quiet as a
cemetery. The crowds exhaled like morning dew. Warren is a pretty
town of four-thousand population, its location and natural
advantages offering rare inducements to people of refinement and
enterprise. Its site was surveyed in 1795 and the first shipment of
lumber to Pittsburg was made in 1801. Incorporated as a borough in
1832, railroad communication with Erie was secured in 1859, with Oil
City in 1867 and with Bradford in 1881. Many of the private
residences are models of good taste. Massive brick-blocks, solvent
banks, churches, stores, high-grade schools, shaded streets and
modern conveniences evidence its substantial prosperity. Hon.
Thomas Struthers—he built sections of the Philadelphia & Erie and
the Oil-Creek railroads and established big iron-works—donated a
splendid brick building for a library, opera-house and post-office. His
grandson, who inherited his millions and died in February, 1896, was
a mild edition of “Coal-Oil Johnnie” in scattering money. Lumbering,
the principal industry for three generations, enriched the community.
Col. Lewis F. Watson represented the district twice in Congress and
left an estate of four-millions, amassed in lumber and oil. He owned
most of the township bearing his name. Hon. Charles W. Stone, his
successor, ranks with the foremost members of the House in ability
and influence. A Massachusetts boy, he set out in life as a teacher,
came to Warren to take charge of the academy, was county-
superintendent, studied law and rose to eminence at the bar. He was
elected Lieutenant-Governor of the State, served as Secretary of the
Commonwealth and would be Governor of Pennsylvania to-day had
“the foresight of the Republicans been as good as their hindsight.”
He has profitable oil-interests, is serving his fourth term in Congress
and may be nominated the fifth time. Alike fortunate in his political
and professional career, his social relations, his business connections
and his personal friendships, Charles W. Stone holds a place in public
esteem few men are privileged to attain.
At Clarendon and Stoneham hundreds
of snug wells yielded three-thousand
barrels a day from a regular sand that did
not exhaust readily. Southward the
Garfield district held on fairly and a
narrow-gauge railroad was built to
Farnsworth. The Wardwell pool, at Glade,
four miles east of Warren, fizzed after the
manner of Cherry Grove, rich in buried
hopes and dissipated greenbacks. P. M.
Smith and Peter Grace drilled the first well
—a sixty-barreler—close to the ferry in
July of 1873. Dry-holes and small wells CHARLES W. STONE.
alternated with provoking uncertainty until
J. A. Gartland’s twelve-hundred-barrel
gusher on the Clark farm, in May of 1885, inaugurated a panic in the
market that sent crude down to fifty cents. The same day the Union
Oil-Company finished a four-hundred-barrel spouter and May ended
with fifty-six wells producing and a score of dusters. June and July
continued the refrain, values see-sawing as reports of dry-holes or
fifteen-hundred-barrel-strikes, some of them worked as “mysteries,”
bamboozled the trade. Wardwell’s production ascended to twelve-
thousand barrels and fell by the dizziest jumps to as many hundred,
the porous rock draining with the speed of a lightning-calculator.
Tiona developed a lasting deposit of superior oil. Kane has a
tempting streak, in which Thomas B. Simpson and other Oil-City
parties are interested. Gas has been found at Wilcox, Johnsonburg
and Ridgway, Elk county, taking a slick hand in the game. Kinzua,
four miles north-east of Wardwell, revealed no particular cause why
the spirit of mortal ought to be proud. Although Forest and Warren,
with a slice of Elk thrown in, were demoralizing factors in 1882-3-4,
their aggregate output would only be a light luncheon for the polar
bear in McKean county.
The Tidioute belt, varying in narrowness from a few rods to a half-
mile, was one of the most satisfactory ever discovered. When lessees
fully occupied the flats Captain A. J. Thompson drilled a two-
hundred-barrel well on the point, at the junction of Dingley and
Dennis Runs. Quickly the summit was scaled and amid drilling wells,
pumping wells, oil-tanks and engine-houses the town of Triumph was
created. Triumph Hill turned out as much money to the acre as any
spot in Oildom. The sand was the thickest—often ninety to one-
hundred-and-ten feet—and the purest the oil-region afforded. Some
of the wells pumped twenty years. Salt-water was too plentiful for
comfort, but half-acre plots were grabbed at one-half royalty and
five-hundred dollars bonus. Wells jammed so closely that a man
could walk from Triumph to New London and Babylon on the steam-
boxes connecting them. Percy Shaw—he built the Shaw House—had
a “royal flush” on Dennis Run that netted two-hundred-thousand
dollars. From an investment of fifteen-thousand dollars E. E. and J.
M. Clapp cleared a half-million.
“Spirits” located the first well at Stoneham and Cornen Brothers’
gasser at Clarendon furnished the key that unlocked Cherry Grove.
Gas was piped from the Cornen well to Warren and Jamestown.
Walter Horton was the moving spirit in the Sheffield field, holding
interests in the Darling and Blue Jay wells and owning forty-
thousand acres of land in Forest county. McGrew Brothers, of
Pittsburg, spent many thousands seeking a pool at Garland. Grandin
& Kelly’s operations below Balltown exploded the theory that oil
would not be found on the south side of Tionesta Creek. Cherry
Grove was at its apex when, in July of 1884, with Farnsworth and
Garfield boiling over, two wells on the Thomas farm, a mile south-
east of Richburg, flowed six-hundred barrels apiece. They were
among the largest in the Allegany district, but a three-line mention in
the Bradford Era was all the notice given the pair.
To the owner of a tract near “646,” who offered to sell it for fifty-
thousand dollars, a Bradford operator replied: “I would take it at
your figure if I thought my check would be paid, but I’ll take it at
forty-five-thousand whether the check is paid or not!” The check was
not accepted.
Tack Brothers drilled a dry-hole twenty-six-hundred feet in
Millstone township, Elk county. Grandin & Kelly drilled four-thousand
feet in Forest county and got lots of geological information, but no
oil.
Get off the train at Trunkeyville—a station-house and water-tank—
and climb up the hill towards Fagundas. After walking through the
woods a mile an opening appears. A man is plowing. The soil looks
too poor to raise grasshoppers, yet that man during the oil-
excitement refused an offer of sixty-thousand dollars for this farm.
His principal reason was that he feared a suitable house into which
to move his family could not be obtained! On a little farther a pair of
old bull-wheels, lying unused, tells that the once productive
Fagundas pool has been reached. A short distance ahead on an
eminence is a church. This is South Fagundas. No sound save the
crowing of a chanticleer from a distant farm-yard breaks the silence.
The merry voices heard in the seventies are no longer audible, the
drill and pump are not at work, the dwellings, stores and hotels have
disappeared. The deserted church stands alone. A few landmarks
linger at Fagundas proper. There is one store and no place where the
weary traveler can quench his thirst. The nearest resemblance to a
drinking-place is a boy leaning over a barrel drinking rain-water while
another lad holds him by the feet. Fagundas is certainly “dry.” The
stranger is always taken to the Venture well. Its appearance differs
little from that of hundreds of other abandoned wells. The conductor
and the casing have not been removed. Robert W. Pimm, who built
the rig, still lives at Fagundas. He will be remembered by many, for
he is a jovial fellow and was “one of the boys.” The McQuade—the
biggest in the field—the Bird and the Red Walking-beam were noted
wells. If Dr. Stillson were to hunt up the office where he extracted
teeth “without pain” he would find the building used as a poultry-
house. Men went to Fagundas poor and departed with sufficient
wealth to live in luxury the rest of their lives; others went wealthy
and lost everything in a vain search for the greasy fluid. Passing
through what was known as Gillespie and traversing three miles of a
lonely section, covered with scrub-oak and small pine, Triumph is
reached. It is not the Triumph oil-men knew twenty-five years ago,
when it had four-thousand population, four good hotels, two drug-
stores, four hardware-stores, a half-dozen groceries and many other
places of business. No other oil-field ever held so many derricks
upon the same area. The Clapp farm has a production of twelve
barrels per day. Traces of the town are almost completely blotted
out. The pilgrim traveling over the hill would never suspect that a
rousing oil-town occupied the farm on which an industrious Swede
has a crop of oats. Along Babylon hill, once dotted with derricks
thickly as trees in the forest, nothing remains to indicate the spot
where stood the ephemeral town.
“We are such stuff as dreams are made of.”

John Henderson, a tall, handsome man, came from the east during
the oil-excitement in Warren county and located at Garfield. In a
fight at a gambling-house one night George Harkness was thrown
out of an upstairs-window and his neck broken. Foul play was
suspected, although the evidence implicated no one, and the
coroner’s jury returned a verdict of accidental death. Harkness had
left a young bride in Philadelphia and was out to seek his fortune.
Henderson, feeling in a degree responsible for his death, began
sending anonymous letters to the bereaved wife, each containing
fifty to a hundred dollars. The letters were first mailed every month
from Garfield, then from Bradford, then from Chicago and for three
years from Montana. In 1893 she received from the writer of these
letters a request for an interview. This was granted, the
acquaintance ripened into love and the pair were married!
Henderson is a wealthy stockman in Montana. In 1867 an English
vessel went to pieces in a terrible storm on the coast of Maine. The
captain and many passengers were drowned. Among the saved were
two children, the captain’s daughters. One was adopted by a
merchant of Dover, N. H. He gave her a good education, she grew
up a beautiful woman and it was she who married George Harkness
and John Henderson.
Balltown was the chief pet of T. J.
Vandergrift, now head and front of the
Woodland Oil-Company, and he harvested
bushels of money from the middle-field.
“Op” Vandergrift is not an apprentice in
petroleum. He added to his reputation in
the middle-field leading the opposition to
the mystery-dodge. Napoleon or Grant
was not a finer tactician. His clever plans
were executed without a hitch or a
Waterloo. He neither lost his temper nor
wasted his powder. The man who “fights
the devil with fire” is apt to run short of
T. J. VANDERGRIFT.
ammunition, but Vandergrift knew the
ropes, kept his own counsel, was “cool as
a cucumber” and won in an easy canter. He is obliging, social,
manfully independent and a zealous worker in the Producers’
Association. It is narrated that he went to New York three years ago
to close a big deal for Ohio territory he had been asked to sell. He
named the price and was told a sub-boss at Oil City must pass upon
the matter. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I am not going to Oil City on any
such errand. I came prepared to transfer the property and, if you
want it, I shall be in the city until noon to-morrow to receive the
money!” The cash—three-hundred-thousand dollars—was paid at
eleven o’clock. Mr. Vandergrift has interests in Pennsylvania, Ohio,
West-Virginia and Kentucky. He knows a good horse, a good story, a
good lease or a good fellow at sight and a wildcat-well does not
frighten him off the track. His home is at Jamestown and his office at
Pittsburg.
 The Anchor Oil-Company’s No. 1, the first well finished near “646,”
in Warren county, flowed two-thousand barrels a day on the ground
until tanks could be provided. It burned when flowing a thousand
barrels and for ten days could not be extinguished. One man wanted
to steam it to death, another to drown it, another to squeeze its life
out, another to smother it with straw, another to dig a hole and cut
off the flow, another to roll a big log over it, another to blow out its
brains with dynamite, another to blind it with carbolic acid, another
to throw up earth-works and so on until the pestered owners wished
five-hundred cranks were in the asylum at North Warren. Pipes were
finally attached in such a way as to draw off the oil and the flame
died out.
The first funeral at Fagundas was a novelty. A soap-peddler,
stopping at the Rooling House one night, died of delirium-tremens.
He was put into a rough coffin and a small party set off to inter the
corpse. Somebody thought it mean to bury a fellow-creature without
some signs of respect. The party returned to the hotel with the body,
a large crowd assembled in the evening, flowers decorated the
casket, services were conducted and at dead of night two-hundred
oil-men followed the friendless stranger to his grave.
This year, at a drilling well near Tiona, the workmen of Contractor
Meeley were surprised to strike oil three feet from the surface. A
stream of the real stuff flowed over the top of the derrick, scattering
seven men who happened to be standing on the floor. Fortunately no
fire was about the structure, hence a thorough soaking with seventy-
cent crude was the chief damage to the crew and the spectators.
Visions of a new sand close to the grass-roots filled the minds of all
beholders. At that rate every man, woman, boy, girl and baby who
could burrow a yard into the earth might have a paying well. The
cool-headed foreman, R. G. Thompson, decided to investigate before
ordering tankage and taking down the tools. He discovered that the
derrick had been set directly above a six-inch pipe-line, which the bit
had punctured, thus letting the oil escape under the heavy pressure
of a fifty-ton pump. Word was sent to the pump-station to shut off
the flow, a new joint of pipe was put in and drilling proceeded to the
third sand without further disturbance.
 One bright day in the summer
of 1873 an active youth,
beardless and boyish in
appearance, dropped into
Fagundas. With little cash, but
no end of energy and pluck, he
soon picked up a lease. Fortune
smiled upon him and he
followed the surging tide to the
different pastures as they came
into line. He operated at
Bradford, Tiona, Clarendon, in
Clarion county, in Ohio and
Indiana. West Virginia has been
his best hold for some years,
and the boys all know W. H.
Staley as a live oilman, who has
W. H. STALEY. stayed with the procession two-
dozen years.
Stories of the late E. E.
Clapp’s rare humor and rare goodness of heart might be recited by
the score. He never grew weary helping the poor and the
unfortunate. Once a zealous Methodist minister, whose meagre
salary was not half-paid, thought of leaving his mission from lack of
support. Clapp heard the tale and handed the good man a sealed
envelope, telling him not to open it until he reached home and gave
it to his wife. It contained a check for five-hundred-dollars. Like
thousands of producers, Clapp was sued by the torpedo-monopoly
for alleged infringement of the Roberts patent. Meeting Col. E. A. L.
Roberts at Titusville while the suit was pending, he was invited to go
through the great building Roberts Brothers were completing. The
delegate from President peered into the corners of the first room as
though looking for something. The Colonel’s curiosity was aroused
and he inquired what the visitor meant. “Oh,” came the quick
rejoinder, “I’m only trying to find where the twenty-thousand-dollars
I’ve paid you for torpedoes may be built in these walls!” A laugh
followed and Roberts proposed to square the suit, which was done
forthwith. At a country-fair E. Harvey, the Oil-City music-dealer,
played and sang one of Gerald Massey’s sublime compositions with
thrilling effect. Among the eager listeners was E. E. Clapp, beside
whom stood a farmer’s wife. The woman shouted to Harvey: “Tech it
off agin, stranger, but don’t make so much noise yerself!” Poor
Harvey—dead long ago—subsided and Clapp took up the expression,
which he often quoted at the expense of loquacious acquaintances.
Humanity lost a friend when Edwin Emmett Clapp left the smooth
roads of President to walk the golden streets of the New Jerusalem.
Up the winding river proved in not a few instances the straight
path to a handsome fortune, while some found only shoals and
quicksands.
 THE AMEN CORNER.
Better a kink in the hair than a kink in the character.
Good creeds are all right, but good deeds are the stuff that won’t
shrink in the washing.
Domestic infidelity does more harm than unbelieving infidelity and
hearsay knocks heresy galley-west as a mischief-maker.
Stick to the right with iron nerve,
Nor from the path of duty swerve,
Then your reward you will deserve.

The Baptists of Franklin offered Rev. Dr. Lorimer, the eminent

Chicago divine, a residence and eight-thousand dollars a year to
become their pastor. How was that for a church in a town of six-
thousand population?
“Pray—pray—pray for—” The good minister bent down to catch the
whisper of the dying operator, whom he had asked whether he
should petition the throne of grace—“pray for five-dollar oil!”
St. Joseph’s church, Oil City, is the finest in the oil-region and has
the finest altar in the state. Father Carroll, for twenty years in charge
of the parish, is a priest whose praises all denominations carol.
You “want to be an angel?”
Well, no need to look solemn;
If you haven’t got what you desire,
Put an ad. in the want column.

The Presbyterian church at Rouseville, torn down years ago, was

built, paid for, furnished handsomely and run nine months before
having a settled pastor. Not a lottery, fair, bazaar or grab-bag scheme
was resorted to in order to raise the funds.
The Salvation Army once scored a sensational hit in the oil-
regions. A lieutenant struck a can of nitro-glycerine with his little
tambourine and every house in the settlement entertained more or
less Salvation-Army soldier for a month after the blow-up.
 “Like a sawyer’s work is life—
The present makes the flaw,
And the only field for strife
Is the inch before the saw.”

“What are the wages of sin?” asked the teacher of Ah Sin, the first
Chinese laundryman at Bradford, who was an attentive member of a
class in the Sunday-school. Promptly came the answer: “Sebenty-
flive cente a dozen; no checkee, no washee!”
The first sound of a church-bell at Pithole was heard on Saturday
evening, March 24, 1866, from the Methodist-Episcopal belfry. The
first church-bell at Oil City was hung in a derrick by the side of the
Methodist church, on the site of a grocery opposite the Blizzard
office. At first Sunday was not observed. Flowing-wells flowed and
owners of pumping wells pumped as usual. Work went right along
seven days in the week, even by people who believed the highest
type of church was not an engine-house, with a derrick for its tower,
a well for its Bible and a tube spouting oil for its preacher.
“If you have gentle words and looks, my friends,
To spare for me—if you have tears to shed
That I have suffered—keep them not I pray
Until I hear not, see not, being dead.”

Many people regard religion as they do small-pox; they desire to

have it as light as possible and are very careful that it does not mark
them. Most people when they perform an act of charity prefer to
have it like the measles—on the outside where it can be seen. Oil-
region folks are not built that way.
 UP THE ALLEGHENY RIVER.

-RICHBURG, N.Y. 1879- -TARPORT AND TUNA VALLEY-

GENERAL VIEW OF BRADFORD.
ECONOMITE WELLS OPPOSITE TIDIOUTE
A GLIMPSE OF WARREN
-BABYLON-
EXCHANGE HOTEL TIDIOUTE 1863
TIDIOUTE 1876
 XI.
A BEE-LINE FOR THE NORTH.

The Great Bradford Region Looms Up—Miles of First-Class Territory—Leading

Operators—John McKeown’s Millions—Many Lively Towns—Over the New-York
Border—All Aboard for Richburg—Crossing into Canada—Shaw’s Strike—The
Polar Region Plays a Strong Hand in the Game of Tapping Nature’s Laboratory.

“Like youthful steers unyoked, they take their courses north.”—Shakespeare.

“Be sure you’re right, then go ahead.”—Davy Crockett.
“Jes foller de no’th star an’ yu’ll come out right, shuah.”—Joel Chandler Harris.
“Better a year of Bradford than a cycle of Cathay.”—L. M. Morton.
“He did it with all his heart, and prospered.”—II Chronicles xxxi: 21.
“The Temple of Fame has, you see, many departments.”—Walter Besant.
“Bid the devil take the hindmost.”—Butler.
“When Greeks joined Greeks then was the tug of war.”—Lee.
“Nature must give way to art.”—Dean Swift.
“The wise and active conquer by daring to attempt.”—Rowe.
“God helps them that help themselves.”—Franklin.
“The north breathes steadily beneath the stars.”—Shelley.

il Creek and its varied branches, Pithole and its suburbs, Forest and
Warren had figured creditably in oil-developments, but the Mastodon
of the North was yet to come. “The goal of yesterday shall be the
starting point of to-morrow” is especially true of oil-operations. At

O
times men have supposed the limits of juicy territory had been
 O reached, only to be
startled by the
unexpected opening of a
larger, grander field than
any that preceded it.
Guessing the weather a
month ahead is child’s
play in comparison with
guessing where oil may
be found in paying
quantity. Geology is
liable to shoot wide of
M’KEAN COUNTY, PA. the mark, so that the
drill is the one
indisputable test, from
which there is no appeal for an injunction or a reversal of the verdict.
Years of waiting sharpened the appetite of the polar bear for the
feast to be spread in McKean county and across the New-York
border. Tempting tidbits prepared the hungry animal to digest the
rich courses that were to follow in close succession, until the whole
world was cloyed and gorged, and surfeited with petroleum. It could
not hold another mouthful, and the surplus had to be stored in huge
tanks ready for the demand certain to come some day and empty
the vast receptacles of their last drop.
“Still linger, in our northern clime,
Some remnants of the good old time.”

The United States Land-Company, holding a quarter-million acres

in McKean and adjoining counties, in 1837 sent Col. Levitt C. Little
from New Hampshire to look after its interests. He located on Tuna
Creek, eight miles from the southern border of New-York state. The
Websters arrived in 1838, journeying by canoe from Olean. Other
families settled in the valley, founding the hamlet of Littleton, which
in 1858 adopted the name of Bradford and became a borough in
1872, with Peter T. Kennedy as burgess. The vast forests were
divided into huge blocks, such as the Bingham, Borden, Clark &
Babcock, Kingsbury and Quintuple tracts. Lumber was rafted to
distant points and thousands of hardy woodmen “shantied” in rough
huts each winter. They beguiled the long evenings singing coarse
songs, playing cards, imbibing the vintage of Kentucky or New
England from a black jug and telling stories so bald the mules
drooped their ears to hide their blushes. But they were open-
hearted, sternly honest, sticklers for fair-play, hard-working and
admirable forerunners of the approaching civilization. To the sturdy
blows of the rugged chopper and raftsman all classes are indebted
for fuel, shelter and innumerable comforts. Like the rafts they
steered to Pittsburg and the wild beasts they hunted, most of these
brave fellows have drifted away never to return.
Six-hundred inhabitants dwelt peacefully
at Bradford ten years after the Pithole
bubble had been blown and pricked. The
locomotive and track of a branch of the
Erie Railroad had supplanted A. W.
Newell’s rude engine, which transported
small loads to and from Carrollton. An
ancient coach, weather-beaten and worm-
eaten, sufficed for the scanty passenger-
traffic and the quiet borough bade fair to
stay in the old rut indefinitely. The
collection of frames labeled Tarport—a suit
FREDERICK CROCKER. of tar and feathers presented to a frisky
denizen begot the name—snuggled on a
muddy road a mile northward. Seven
miles farther, at Limestone, the “spirits” directed Job Moses to buy
ten-thousand acres of land. He bored a half-dozen shallow wells in
1864, getting some oil and gas. Jonathan Watson skirmished two
miles east of Limestone, finding slight tinges of greasiness. A mile
south-west of Moses the Crosby well was dry. Another mile south the
Olmsted well, on the Crooks farm, struck a vein of oil at nine-
hundred feet and flowed twenty barrels on July fourteenth, 1875.
The sand was poor and dry-holes south and west augured ill for the
territory. Frederick Crocker drilled a duster early in 1875 on the
Kingsbury lands, east side of Tuna Creek. He had grit and experience
and leased an angular piece of ground formed by a bend of the
creek for his second venture. It was part of the Watkins farm, a mile
above Tarport. A half-mile south-west, on the Hinchey farm, the
Foster Oil-Company had sunk a twenty-barrel well in 1872, which
somehow passed unnoticed. On September twenty-sixth, 1875, from
a shale and slate at nine-hundred feet, the Crocker well flowed one-
hundred-and-seventy barrels. This opened the gay ball which was to
transmute the Tuna Valley from its arcadian simplicity to the intense
bustle of the grandest petroleum-region the world has ever known.
The valley soon echoed and re-echoed the music of the tool-dresser
and rig-builder and the click of the drill as well as the vigorous
profanity of the imported teamster. Frederick Crocker, who drilled on
Oil Creek in 1860 and devised the valve which kept the Empire well
alive, had won another victory and the great Bradford field was born.
He lived at Titusville fifteen years, erected the home afterwards
occupied by Dr. W. B. Roberts, sold his Bradford property, operated in
the Washington district and died at Idlewild on February twenty-
second, 1895. Mr. Crocker possessed real genius, decision and the
qualities which “from the nettle danger pluck the flower success.”
Active to the close of his long and useful eighty-three years, he met
death calmly and was laid to rest in the cemetery at Titusville.
Scarcely had the Crocker well tanked its initial spurt ere “the fun
grew fast and furious.” Rigs multiplied like rabbits in Australia. Train-
loads of lively delegates from every nook and cranny of Oildom
crowded the streets, overran the hotels and taxed the commissary of
the village to the utmost. Town-lots sold at New-York prices and
buildings spread into the fields. At B. C. Mitchell’s Bradford House,
headquarters of the oil-fraternity, operators and land-holders met
and drillers “off tour” solaced their craving for “the good things of
this life” playing billiards and practising at the hotel-bar. Hundreds of
big contracts were closed in the second-story room where Lewis
Emery, “Judge” Johnson, Dr. Book and the advance-guard of the
invading hosts assembled. Main street blazed at night with the light
of dram-shops and the gaieties incidental to a full-fledged frontier-
town. Noisy bands appealed to lovers of varieties to patronize
barnlike-theatres, strains of syren music floated from beer-gardens,
dance-halls of dubious complexion were thronged and gambling-
dens ran unmolested. The free-and-easy air of the community, too
intent chasing oil and cash to bother about morality, captivated the
ordinary stranger and gained “Bad Bradford” notoriety as a
combination of Pithole and Petroleum Centre, with a dash of Sodom
and Pandemonium, condensed into a single package. In February of
1879 a city-charter was granted and James Broder was elected
mayor. Radical reforms were not instituted with undue haste, to jar
the sensitive feelings of the incongruous masses gathered from far
and near. Their accommodating nature at last adapted itself to a new
state of affairs and accepted gracefully the restrictions imposed for
the general welfare. Checked temporarily by the Bullion spasm in
1876-7, the influx redoubled as the lower country waned. Fires
merely consumed frame-structures to hasten the advent of costly
brick-blocks. Ten churches, schools, five banks, stores, hotels, three
newspapers, street-cars, miles of residences and fifteen-thousand of
the liveliest people on earth attested the permanency of Bradford’s
boom. Narrow-gauge railroads circled the hills, traversed spider-web
trestles and brought tribute to the city from the outlying districts.
The area of oil-territory seemed interminable. It reached in every
direction, until from sixteen-thousand mouths seventy-five thousand
acres poured their liquid treasure. The daily production waltzed to
one-hundred-thousand barrels! Iron-tanks were built by the
thousand to store the surplus crude. Two, three or four-thousand-
barrel gushers were lacking, but wells that yielded twenty-five to
two-hundred littered the slopes and valleys. The field was a marvel,
a phenomenon, a revelation. Bradford passed the mushroom-stage
safely and was not snuffed out when developments receded and the
floaters wandered south in quest of fresh excitement. To-day it is a
thriving railroad and manufacturing centre, the home of ten-
thousand intelligent, independent, go-ahead citizens, proud of its
past, pleased with its present and confident of its future.
To trace operations minutely would be an endless task. Crocker
sold a half-interest in his well and drilled on an adjacent farm.
Gillespie, Buchanan & Kelly came from Fagundas in 1874 and sank
the two Fagundas wells—twenty and twenty-five barrels—a half-mile
west of Crocker, in the fall and winter. Butts No. 1, a short distance
north, actually flowed sixty barrels in November of 1874. Jackson &
Walker’s No. 1, on the Kennedy farm, north edge of town, on July
seventeenth, 1875, flowed twenty barrels at eleven-hundred feet.
The dark, pebbly sand, the best tapped in McKean up to that date,
encouraged the belief of better strata down the Tuna. On December
first, two months after Crocker’s strike, the yield of the Bradford
district was two-hundred-and-ten barrels. The Crocker was doing
fifty, the Olmsted twenty-five, the Butts fifteen, the Jackson & Walker
twenty and all others from one to six apiece. The oil, dark-colored
and forty-five gravity, was loaded on Erie cars direct from the wells,
most of which were beside the tracks. The Union Company finished
the first pipe-line and pumped oil to Olean the last week of
November. Prentice, Barbour & Co. were laying a line through the
district and 1875 closed with everything ripe for the millenium these
glimmerings foreshadowed.
Lewis Emery, richly dowered with Oil-Creek experience and the
get-up-and-get quality that forges to the front, was an early arrival
at Bradford. He secured the Quintuple tract of five-thousand acres
and drilled a test well on the Tibbets farm, three miles south of
town. Its success confirmed his judgment of the territory and began
the wonderful Quintuple development. The Quintuple rained staying
wells on the lucky, plucky graduate from Pioneer, quickly placing him
in the millionaire-class. He built blocks and refineries, opened an
immense hardware-store, constructed pipe-lines, established a daily-
paper, served two terms in the Senate and opposed the Standard
“tooth and toe-nail.” Thoroughly earnest, he champions a cause with
unflinching tenacity. He owns a big ranche in Dakota, big lumber-
tracts and saw-mills in Kentucky, a big oil-production and a big share
in the United-States Pipe-Line. He has traveled over Europe,
inspected the Russian oil-fields and gathered in his private museum
the rarest collection of curiosities and objects of interests in the
state. Senator Emery is a staunch friend, a fighter who “doesn’t
know when he is whipped,” liberal, progressive, fluent in
conversation and firm in his convictions.
 “A prince can mak’ a belted knight,
A marquis, duke and a’ that;
But an honest man’s aboon his might—
Guid faith, he maunna fa’ that.”

Hon. David Kirk sticks faithfully to Emery in his hard-sledding to

array petroleumites against the Standard. He manages the
McCalmont Oil-Company, which operated briskly in the Forest pools,
at Bradford and Richburg. Mr. Kirk is a rattling speaker, positive in his
sentiments and frank in expressing his views. He extols Pennsylvania
petroleum, backs the outside pipe-lines and is an influential leader of
the Producers’ Association.
Dr. W. P. Book, who started at Plumer, ran big hotels at Parker and
Millerstown and punched a hole in the Butler field occasionally,
leased nine-hundred acres below Bradford in the summer of 1875.
He bored two-hundred wells, sold the whole bundle to Captain J. T.
Jones and went to Washington Territory with eight-hundred-
thousand dollars to engage in lumbering and banking. Captain Jones
landed on Oil Creek after the war, in which he was a brave soldier,
and drilled thirteen dry-holes at Rouseville! Repulses of this stripe
would wear out most men, but the Captain had enlisted for the
campaign and proposed to stand by his guns to the last. His
fourteenth attempt—a hundred-barreler on the Shaw farm—
recouped former losses and inaugurated thirty years of remarkable
prosperity. Fortune smiled upon him in the Clarion field. Pipe-lines,
oil-wells, dealings in the exchanges, whatever he touched turned
into gold. Not handicapped by timid partners, he paddled his own
canoe and became the largest individual operator in the northern
region. Acquiring tracts that proved to be the heart of the Sistersville
field, he is credited with rejecting an offer last year of five-million
dollars for his West-Virginia and Pennsylvania properties! From
thirteen wells, good only for post-holes if they could be dug up and
retailed by the foot, to five-millions in cash was a pretty stretch
onward and upward. He preferred staying in the harness to the
obscurity of a mere coupon-clipper. He lives at Buffalo, controls his
business, enjoys his money, remembers his legions of old friends and
does not put on airs because of marching very near the head of the
oleaginous procession.

-THEO BARNSDALL-
-LEWIS EMERY-
DAVID KIRK CAPT. J. T. JONES

Theodore Barnsdall has never lagged behind since he entered the

arena in 1860. He operated on Oil Creek and has been a factor in
every important district. Marcus Hulings, reasoning that a paying belt
intersected it diagonally, secured the Clark & Babcock tract of six-
thousand acres on Foster Brook, north-east of Bradford. Hundreds of