Oil and Our Oil Creek Ancestors |
As for writing more than I have done, I could not, except I had discanted on the glories of Stewart’s Run or the sprightliness of Pithole City. Of the former you know something, at least, and if I had told you half of the latter, you would think I had lied to you.
—Zerah Coston Monks, 1865, in a letter to his bride–to–be, Hannah Rohrer.986 [See end note #986 for information on “The Zerah Coston Monks papers.”]
Our Fleming–line ancestors, via Flemings, Watsons, Culbertsons and possibly Hendersons, even had connections to the famous and short–lived Pithole oil excitement of 1865. Pithole City was about four miles northeast of Plumer (Map 3); the short–lived city was located mainly on the west side of Big Pithole Creek (also called East or Main Pithole Creek), in Cornplanter Township, but almost at the western boundary of Allegheny Township. In 1864, there were only a handful of farms in what was to become Pithole City and environs. According to Giddens (1938), page 127, “living here in log cabins in a dense forest, isolated and inaccessible, the Copelands, Rookers, and Holmdens spent their time raising buckwheat and hunting deer.”
Thomas Holmden’s farm encompassed Big Pithole Creek; to the west of Thomas’s tract was the Walter Holmden farm; to the east, the Hyner Farm; to the south the John Holmden, or Blackmer, farm and Rooker farm;987 and to the north, the Copeland farm owned by Parcus Tilley Copeland.988 The H. Copeland farm, south of Pithole City, was owned by Harvey Copeland. This Harvey Copeland was a brother of Parcus and Alden Copeland.989 In April 1861, Harvey Copeland and wife Mary [Corbit] sold the farm to Harvey’s son Edwin C. Copeland for $1000.990 The description in the deed leaves no doubt that this was the H. Copeland farm. In 1864 Edwin Charles Copeland and wife Mary leased the land to Emanuel Weiss, an oil entrepreneur.991 One of the witnesses to this transaction was an Ellen Fleming (the other was Jacob Black). I can not place this Ellen Fleming.
The flatlands on the western side of Big Pithole Creek on the Thomas Holmden farm was to become the main part of Pithole City during the oil excitement of 1865,992 but the adjacent farms of his brothers, Walter and John, were in the same general area. From farmland, and not very good farm land at that, in the spring of 1865, to a city of 15,000 in September of 1865, to farmland again by the early 1870s. McLaurin (1902), never lost for an epigraph, gives 13 at the beginning of his chapter, page 173, on Pithole City. Perhaps his “The gourd came up in a night and perished in a night” (John iv: 10), and “Yet golde all is not that doth golden seeme” (Spenser) sum up the brief and fascinating history of Pithole. The Pithole City phenomenon is described in all the history books pertaining to the oil excitement of the 1860s.993 Of concern here is how the phenomenon impacted on the Holmdens and the Copelands who intermarried with our ancestors.
I will treat the events chronologically.1824
According to “The Holmden Family Tree,” Walter Holmden came to America in 1824 with his wife and four of their five children (John, the fifth child, would have been the only child born in North America).994 Walter, born circa 8 June 1788 in England, was a Baptist minister; he had married in 1814 Sarah Terry, born 26 June 1788.995 “The Holmden Family Tree” is a large chart, see end note #1002. .
1837
About 1837 Walter Holmden settled on a tract of land996 that extended across both Big Pithole Creek (the main branch) and Little Pithole Creek (the west branch), encompassing also the confluence of the two streams. “The Holmden Family Tree” states he purchased 640 acres of land (no date). An 1865 deed997 of Thomas Holmden implies that the transaction was a Holland Land Company arrangement, part of tract 122. Dolson (1959), page 180, tells us that the Pithole area was considered such a dud, that the Holland Land Company was offering one hundred extra acres with each purchase as bonus bait. .
1839
In January 1839 Walter and Sarah (Terry) Holmden’s daughter, Elizabeth Ann Holmden (born 23 February 1819), married William Broadfoot Watson of our Watsons. William was a son of Robert W. and Margaret (Henderson) Watson (see #4 of Watsons in ” Descendants Reports.” for descendants and more information). Other children of Walter and Sarah (Terry) Holmden were Sarah Holmden (born 1815, died 1817); Thomas Holmden (born 1817, died 1870) whose first wife was Sarah Henderson (see below); Walter R. Holmden (born 1822, died 1864, married Philena R. Rooker), and John A. Holmden (born 1825, died 1854, married Betsy E. Rooker998). For a brief genealogy of this family with sources see “Holmdens of Pithole,” pages 397-402, in volume 2 of my book The Oil Creek Flemings and related families.
The Sarah Henderson who married Thomas Holmden possibly was a daughter of our Richard and Violet (Hunter) Henderson (see #3 of Hendersons in the section ”Descendants Reports.” ). If Sarah Henderson Holmden was a daughter of Richard Henderson, she would have been a first cousin of William Broadfoot Watson who married Elizabeth Ann Holmden—see #4 of Watsons and #3 of “Hendersons” in the section “Descendants Reports” for the children of Thomas and Sarah (Henderson) Holmden.
1849
Walter Holmden died in 1849. He was born at Riverhead, Parish of Seven Oaks, England, 8 June 1788,999 died either 15 May or 26 November 1849, 1000 “by the fall of a tree.”1001 He is buried in Memory Acres (Old Pleasantville) Cemetery, Pleasantville, Pennsylvania.1002 Walter died intestate.1003 The farm was then apparently divided amongst the three sons. Most books on the Pithole phenomenon of the mid 1860s mention Thomas Holmden and his brother Walter dividing the farm, but there is no mention of the youngest brother, John A. Holmden. However John also received part of the farm. The 1855 Heydrick map does show his farm—as J. Holmden, and John was enumerated there in 1850 with his wife Betsy [Rooker] Holmden.1004 John’s tract, of 159 acres, was immediately south of Thomas and Walter's land and included the convergence of Big Pithole Creek with Little, or West, Pithole Creek.
1854
Walter and Sarah (Terry) Holmden’s youngest son, John A. Holmden, died intestate 25 May 1854. After John Holmden died, Betsy (Rooker) Holmden married Ephrain Blackmer,1005 and the farm was then known as the Blackmer farm.
1859
In 1859, some six miles from the future Pithole City, Drake brought in his well on Oil Creek. But the poor farmers of the Pithole area were at first untouched by these monumental events so important in influencing the lives of our Oil Creek ancestors. In the early 1860s, developers felt oil was to be had only in the lowlands, in Oil Creek valley and other large valleys. The remote higher country area, away from Oil Creek or the Allegheny River, such as Shamburg and Pithole, were ignored.
Most books on the Pithole phenomenon1006 mention how poor the Pithole settlers were before the events of 1865. But whether they were much worst off than the early Oil Creek settlers is debatable. Leonard (1867), page 5, writing of the Pithole area: “… the few backwoodsmen it sustained, depending more on their rifles and the products of the forest for their living, than their farms.” McLaurin (1902), page 174 says of Walter Holmden: “… he built a log–house on the west bank [of Big Pithole Creek], cleared a few acres, struggled with poverty and died in 1840.” Dolson (1959), page 180, on the Pithole settlers: “… Only a few hardy souls stuck it out, among them a Baptist preacher, Walter Holmden.” Darrah (1972),1007 page 5, on the Pithole area: “ … the soil was uniformly poor … the struggle with poverty a losing one.” For biographical information on the distinguished scientist William Culp Darrah, see end note #1007.
Bell (1890), page 655, gives this poignant comment on Walter Holmden’s struggle with poverty:He was ordained to the ministry of the Baptist Church and was a man of fervent piety. His life here was a continual struggle with the direst poverty, and beyond the base necessities of subsistence, its only material results were a house and barn of small dimensions and poor construction and some fifty acres of cleared land … Such were the antecedents of a city whose marvelous growth astonished the civilized world.
And such then were the lives of the Pithole settlers. A witch hazel stick, Appomatox, and the tenacity to tough it out until the “sixth sand [sic]” would change all this. The buckwheat raising, deer hunting ways were coming to an end.
1863
On 18 July 1863, Isaiah N. Frazier, who was “an ex–refiner turned wildcatter,”1008 along with William Reed did the unthinkable, they brought in the Reed well two miles upstream on Cherry Run, a tributary of Oil Creek, demonstrating that productive oil areas are not restricted to the Oil Creek valley.1009 The well was on land owned by John Rynd [Jr].
1864
On 4 February 1864, Lucy Ann Holmden, a daughter of Thomas and Sarah Henderson Holmden, married Abraham Prather.1010 One would suspect that this marriage impacted, at least indirectly, on the events that were soon to take place. Probably this Abraham Prather was the Abraham S. Prather, born circa 1841, brother of the Pithole oil developer George C. Prather,1011 born 16 May 1835, died 24 November 1871 circa 1835,1012 buried in Plumer Cemetery, Cornplanter Township, Venango County, Pennsylvania. The Prathers were an old Venango County family, with George and Abraham’s father, Abraham and Sarah (McCalmont) Prather, being the founders in Cornplanter Township.1013
1864
On 9 March 1864 James Faulkner of King County, New York, leased part of Walter [Jr.] Holmden’s farm for $1.00 and covenant.1014 If similar to the covenant with his brother Thomas, see below, this would be one–fourth of the oil produced. This agreement was about two months after Isaiah Frazier made the first oil contract in the Pithole area, with Walter McKinney.1015
1864
On 16 March 1864, James Faulkner leased part of the Thomas Holmden farm for $1.00 and one–fourth of the oil produced.1016 The witnesses were Walter Holmden and Thomas Brown. Could this Thomas Brown be the Thomas H. Brown “diviner,” who with his witch hazel stick was soon to make history on the Holmden farm?1017 Shortly after these agreement with the Holmdens were made,1018 Faulkner, Frazier, Frederick W. Jones and J. Nelson Tappan formed the United States Petroleum Company.
1864
In June, the “diviner” Thomas H. Brown,1019 in the presence of both Faulkner and Frazier,1020 took his witch hazel stick and chose “the most god forsaken spot of all”1021 to drill the well that would make the area famous. This was on the southern limits of the Thomas Holmden farm, a few yards west of Big Pithole Creek and a few yards north of the Rooker farm. The site would subsequently be known as the southeast corner of sublease Number 4, in the scheme of Duncan and Prather,1022 see later. Drilling commenced soon after on the well that was first called the United States well and later the Frazier well.1023 One of Thomas Holmden’s sons (probably either Elbridge Holmden, born 1844, or Henry Holmden, born 1847), along with William Lyons put down the well.1024
1864
On 18 October 1864, Thomas Holmden purchased 416 acres of land in Cornplanter Township from Frederick U. James of New York City.1025 Thomas paid $20,000 for the land, which, if the description is interpreted correctly, was a few miles south of his original tract, but still on Pithole Creek, near land of Luther Wood. I do not know if the Holmden family moved to this tract. This transaction is puzzling since it took place two months before the Frazier well came in, and two and half months before court records show that the original farm was sold to Duncan and Prather. Perhaps this demonstrates that there were written agreements and there were unwritten, at least unrecorded, agreements. Undoubtedly Thomas Holmden received the money from Duncan and Prather, see later.
1864
On 7 November 1864. Walter Holmden [Jr.] died and thereafter the farm in oil circles was referred to as the Widow Holmden’s place.1026
1865
On 7 January 1865, a date that almost all sources1027 agree on, at six–hundred–feet, the “sixth sand—generally called that at Pithole—was punctured,”1028 and the United States or Frazier well came in. The well started flowing at 650 barrels/day; it ceased flowing 10 November 1865. Other large producing wells on the Thomas Holmden farm were the Twin well, as high as 800 barrels/day, the Grant well, as high as 450 barrels/day, and the Eureka well, as high as 800 barrels/day.1029 Neither the Walter Holmden farm nor the John Holmden (Blackmer) farm were productive areas, even though the “basin–like Blackmer farm” was at first thought to be choice territory.1030
1865
On 20 January 1865, Thomas Holmden and wife Sarah sold their 159 acre farm, including the buildings, on what was to become Pithole City, to Thomas G. Duncan and George C. Prather of Cornplanter Township for $25,000.1031 The deed stated the land was part of a larger tract designated as Holland Land Company tract 122; and reported the transaction was subject to a lease by the United States Petroleum Company, bearing date 16 March 1864. The deed also stated that Duncan and Prather were each to pay half the consideration and each were to receive one–half the benefits.
Most sources report that Duncan and Prather purchased the farm for $25,000 before the well came in. The fact that Thomas Holmden had $20,000 to purchased land in another part of the Pithole area in October 1864 gives credence to this; nevertheless the transaction was instituted 20 January 1865, two weeks after the well came in. Also, Duncan and Prather apparently attempted to sell the well in Philadelphia before it had come in, but after the well came in they withdrew the sell order and offered Thomas Holmden $100,000, instead of $25,000, and the royalty for one week.1032 I have not seen the deed so stating.
The Prather of Duncan and Prather was George C. Prather of an early Cornplanter Township Prather family, see 4 February 1864, above, re the Lucy Ann Holmden–Abraham Prather marriage. But the Duncan of Duncan and Prather has been reported variously as Thomas G. Duncan1033 or Colonel A. P. Duncan.1034 Cone and Johns (1870), Henry (1873), and Dolson (1959) describe events of Duncan and Prather, but never do mention their given names. The deed of 20 January 1865 clearly states his name was Thomas G. Duncan.1035
1865
On 28 January 1865 Thomas Holmden, the guardian of John and Betsy (Rooker) Holmden's two children (Edwin and Lydia), petitioned the Venango County Orphan Court held in Franklin for permission to sell at private auction the land of his deceased brother, John, his widow having “remarried with Ephrain Blackmer.”1036 On 30 January 1865, Thomas sold the 101 tract to Herman James of Erie, Pennsylvania, for $75,000.1037 On 27 April 1865, Thomas Holmden reported to the court he sold real estate for $75,000, of which $25,000 has already been paid; and he petitioned the Court for permission to invest the money for Edwin and Lydia in United States bonds, called “seven thirty bonds.” Same day permission was granted.1038
1865
On 1 February 1865 Ephrain Blackmer and Betsy his wife, for $1.00, quit claimed to Herman James their rights to the land.1039
1865
On 9 April 1865, exactly two months and two days after the Frazier well came in, Lee surrendered at Appomatox Court. How big a factor the consequences of the war’s end was in the meteoric rise (and fall) of Pithole City is arguable. Most sources have something to say on this: “everything conspired to favor the growth of Pithole … end of the war … an inflated currency … energetic men now on their own.”1040 “The Civil War had just closed bringing peace and leaving the country flooded with an inflated currency; capitalists were eager to invest their greenbacks and make more money; thousands of soldiers, constituting a potential supply of labor, had been discharged for the army . . .1041 Perhaps Burgchardt (1989), page 78, is closest to the mark when he writes that the Pithole phenomenon and hence “the personality of Pithole” was “the essence of the American character, and that is why it lives on and is celebrated in story and legend.”
1865
In early May, Duncan and Prather planned the town that was to be named Pithole City,1042 although some wanted to call it Holmdenville.1043 The town was on the flats on the west side of Pithole Creek, almost entirely on the Thomas Holmden farm,1044 but with some town development on Walter Holmden’s farm.1045 But apparently the lots laid out on Walter Holmden’s farm were, with a few exceptions, never occupied by buildings.1046 Before development started, Thomas Holmden’s farm was still covered in dense forest, except for the flats on the west side, the site of the future town, which was pasture land.1047 Apparently there were only three homes in the vicinity of the future town: the widow Lyon’s log cabin, Thomas Holmden’s “plain, unpretentious frame building” (at the upper end of the future Holmden Street), and a building “at the foot of [the future] Main Street occupied at the time by Walter Holmden [in fact by his heirs, since Walter died in November 1864].”1048 Duncan and Prather divided the farm into 152 half–acre leases; and on 24 May 1865, they started offering lots for lease, for three years.1049
As the population started skyrocketing, simply finding shelter and something to eat must have been an unpleasant task for many of the newcomers. And of course, this impacted on the Holmdens and other farmers of the area. According to Darrah (1972), Pithole, the vanished city, page 26 and 28 (with permission of the heirs of William Culp Darrah:
“Around their modest house [Thomas Holmden’s] anywhere from 50–150 strangers gathered at noontime begging for something to eat … The Holmdens were earning more money in one day than they had seen in a life time. They could have charged outrageous prices, but those who experienced the shortcomings and inconveniences at the Holmdens during service long remember the honesty and good intentions of this simple family.”
On page 156 of Venango County Panorama (1983) there is a photograph of part of Thomas Holmden’s house with several unidentified people standing outside the house. I would like to think that the elderly bearded man at the far left and the two women next to him in the door frame were Thomas Holmden and two of his daughters.
By the summer of 1865, Coston Monks (see end note #986), a carpenter, recently discharged from the Union’s army, was in Pithole City building a house he hoped to sell at a good profit. The cost of the lot (rent) and house was $3000 and he hoped to sell it for $5000.1050 Coston Monks was to marry Hannah Rohrer in September of 1865.
By the middle of July, Pithole City had a population of about 2000.1051 On 27 July 1865, the United States government opened a post office in Pithole City.1052 The post office would shortly be the third largest post office in Pennsylvania after Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.1053
1865
15 July 1865. James Rooker (he was probably the James Rooker, brother of Betsy Rooker Holmden and Philena Rooker Holmden ), guardian of minor children of Walter Holmden [Jr.], petitioned the Court to lease Walter’s 114 acres, “with 50 of them improved” because a town has been laid out, and Walter’s land should be leased for building purposes “on land called Pithole City,” and [the leases] be divided into lots. James Rooker, joined with Philena Holmden [Walter’s widow] (now Babcock), wanted authority to sell lots for up to ten years.1054, 1055 Same day, permission was granted.
1865
On 24 July 1865, Duncan and Prather sold the Thomas Holmden farm to three entrepreneurs from Titusville for $1,300,000.1056 But Messrs. George Sherman, Henry E. Picket, and Brian Philpot could not make payment and Duncan and Prather took back the farm. This set off frantic negotiations between financiers and entrepreneurs of New York City, Chicago and Cincinnati. These complicated transactions are described in most of the history books on Pithole.1057 When the dust cleared in early September 1865, the Thomas Holmden farm was owned by S. G. Wright of Cincinnati and George R. Chittenden of Chicago,1058 purchased for over two million dollars.1059 But that was apparently too much, and in March 1866, Wright and Chittenden defaulted on their payments, Duncan and Prather regaining full ownership.1060 By 1873, probably as early as 1867,1061 the Copeland farm and seven–eighths of the Thomas Holmden farm were owned by the real estate mogul, Samuel J. Walker of Chicago.1062.
1865
The purchase of the farm in early September was about 3 weeks before Thomas and Sarah (Henderson) Holmden’s oldest son, Elbridge (called Eb in family circles) Holmden, married Ellen Rohrer (on 21 September 1865). Ellen Rohrer Holmden’s sister Lyde (Nancy) Rohrer married James Harvey Copeland (see #85 of “Flemings”). This would also appear to be one of the few associations between the Holmdens and their neighbor Parcus T. Copeland. James Harvey Copeland was a nephew of Parcus T. Copeland.
1865
In September, the population of Pithole City probably peaked at about 15,000.1063 By October 1865, oil production fell off.1064On 10 November 1865 the Frazier well stopped flowing.1065 The Homestead, another productive well of the area (on the Hyner farm), had stopped flowing in August.1066 In December, Pithole City was organized into a borough,1067 but the newly created borough was now living on borrowed time. By the end of the year, oil production in the Pithole area was declining rapidly and people were leaving. “After a short but brilliant career, the bright prospects of Pithole waned, and has left but a sorry–looking wreck to remind us of its former glory.”1068.
Epilogue
Ten years after the Frazier well came in on the Holmden farm, Pithole City had all but vanished. One wag said it was carted away piece–meal. Fire helped do–in what was not hauled away. One of the worst fires occurred 2 August 1866 on the Pithole City flats; it destroyed over 25 derricks and engine houses and thousands of barrels of oil.1069 Oil got in the ground water, and dousing a fire with this concoction usually resulted in a still larger conflagration. Drinking water became more precious than oil, one patron of a local establishment being heard to say “at least the whiskey isn’t cut in Pithole, there’s no water.” But Pithole did not disappear overnight. There was still hope for Pithole City in 1867.
Here is what Charles C. Leonard had to say in the preface of his 1867 book The History of Pithole:
… Take a glance at our “flats” any night: the glare of a hundred gas lights, the sound of escaping steam, the countless walking–beams in motion, the bellowing of ungreased “bull” wheels, combined with a variety of other sights and sounds, ought to convince the most obstinate that the glory of Pithole “has not departed,” and the only “mourners who go about the streets” are the few strangers who are visiting the graves of their departed–fortunes, buried in 1865.
For more information on Charles C. Leonard and his book The History of Pithole, see end note #1001.
Asbury (1942), page 200, states Pithole City was too small to be included as a town in the federal census of 1870. This is not correct. In 1870, there were 52 dwellings and 48 families enumerated in Pithole Borough,1070 with, from a quick count, a population of 277. The last family listed in the enumeration of Pithole Borough in the federal census of 1870 was Charles Duncan (age 40) of the Burgess Oil Company, and Sarah Duncan, age 25 in dwelling #52, family #45. There was no Pithole Borough in the 1880 federal census. In 1878, the Venango County Commissioners purchased the Holmden farm for $4.37.1071 In 1883, the Venango County Commissioners put up for public sale the Holmden tract in Cornplanter Township. The sole bid was $175 by Edward Twitchell, “an old Pitholean,” with the intentions of settling on it; and this he did, clearing the debris, planting crops, and living there until 1934.1072
On 9 April, 1866, fire destroyed the old Holmden house.1073 Sarah (Henderson) Holmden, Thomas’s wife, died 8 November 1870. Probably about this time, perhaps before, Thomas moved to Ohio. This is inferred from “The Holmden Family Tree.” In 1871 Thomas married in Ohio Jerusha Mackey of Trumbull County, Ohio (or they were married in Trumbull County). It is known that son Elbridge lived in Cleveland, Ohio.1074
Zerah Coston Monks apparently never did sell the house he built, and subsequently lived in, in Pithole City. Here is what his granddaughter, Caroline Monks had to say:1075Although grandmother [Hannah (Rohrer) Monks], her parents [Jacob and Nancy Richardson Rohrer], and grandparents were right on the spot when oil was discovered, aside from the money earned as wages in the oil fields and a better price for their farms than they would otherwise have obtained, they made no fortunes in oil. And grandmother and grandfather, who was a carpenter by trade, and who were living in Pithole at the height of the boom, had a difficult time financially.
Coston and Hannah (Rohrer) Monks and family eventually moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he became a respected contractor and carpenter. He died 25 May 1909. Hannah Rohrer Monks died 31 January 1912. Both are buried in Riverside Cemetery, Cleveland, Ohio.10761076
Isaiah N. Frazier died of a heart attack.1077 The connotation in Darrah (1972) would be before the well that was named after him came in, but McLaurin (1902), page 174, shows a photograph of the Frazier well in the spring of 1865 and identifies Frazier and his horse in the picture. In November 1871, George C. Prather died at his brother’s, Abraham S. Prather [location not given].1078 In March 1872, the will of Thomas G. Duncan was recorded in Venango County, Thomas having died in Europe.1079