Alt 34-72-2.0-2-^2. FILM & REBIND no. Ao?

Í

DERRICKS AND DITCHES: A CULTURAL - HISTORICAL STUDY

OF AN OIL BOOM ERA

Marie A. Campbell

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

August 1971

Approved by Doctoral Committee

BOWLING GREEN STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ii

ABSTRACT 49�1144

This research was an in-depth study of Wood County, Ohio, during the oil boom era, 1886-1910. It was a case study of area folklore, collected and analyzed, using a cultural-his­ torical approach based on the theory that the American folk­ lorist can approach his discipline most effectively from the vantage points of American culture and history. The study focused on folk narratives and attitudes and on folklore func­ tion and esthetic. Oral transcripts from seventy informants, mostly local retired oil men, provided the field data. Chapters II and III presented field data necessary to an understanding of the cultural milieu out of which the oil boom came. Study of the texts determined two factors responsible for draining the Black Swamp, construction of drainage ditches and deforestation, thus making possible the population influx caused by the oil boom. The texts described the importance of the railroad, street car and improved �oads to the development of the oil industry. Analysis of descriptions of the oil trail from Pennsylvania, the oil towns, the abundance of gas, con­ temporary and tr·aditional leisure activities, and changing social institutions led to the conclusion that the culture of the area was drastically redirected by the oil boom. Chapter IV dealt with the oil industry processes and stereotypes. Raconteurs were found to have two purposes as they delineated the processes of their work: didacticism and a desire to relate their specialized knowledge and stories of the oil era. Raconteurs conveyed their values, behavior, and attitudes toward their labor. Analysis revealed three quali­ ties reflecting the oil men's philosophy of life: the oil men's camaraderie, the ironic genial-brutal position of the frontier braggadocio, and the folk esthetic of weakness com­ pensated with strength. In Chapter V texts of the local oil legends were analyzed and variants compared. Analysis established why changes oc­ curred: individual taste, novelty, memory, conformity to other texts, and the unification of variants from the same locale. Analysis determined that local legend patterns became estab­ lished: the inclusion of the narrator's point of view; the addition or deletion of elements, changes of emphasis, and the imposition of order on a chaotic event., A detailed analysis of folk esthetic was undertaken with the legend of the Gypsy Lane Road Explosion, a tragedy about which variants e.ventually have gravitated toward legend and myth, away from fact. The cultural-historical method, based on the unique historical background of this country, provided an innovative and effective procedure for investigating a perspective of American history and folklore, the oil boom era in Wood County. Ill

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I wish to acknowledge the many people who have made this study possible. Sincere thanks is extended to the committee chairman and thesis director, Dr. Ray B. Browne, for his professional assistance and encouragement through­ out the doctoral program and in the completion of this study. Special appreciation is extended to Professors Alma Payne and J. Robert Bashore for their skillful guidance throughout this study and for their enthusiastic and able direction in many areas of American letters.

I owe a special debt of gratitude to Max Shaffer. His years of interest in the history of oil in Wood County brought to fruition my desire to approach oil folklore using a cultural-historical method. For his resourceful suggestions concerning informants, his field collecting, and his patient guidance I am greatly appreciative.

This study was made possible by the gracious and capable informants who willingly contributed their narrations to the project,.for which I thank them. I am also indebted to the Marathon Oil Company and the North Baltimore Public Library for their contributions of materials.

My deepest gratitude I happily submit to my husband, Harley, for his generous and enthusiastic assistance, par­ ticularly while he cheerfully shouldered parental duties during my sporadic immurement. To Cameron and Eric I gladly announce, "Yes, now it's all finished!" iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. INTRODUCTION...... 1

Statement of the Problem ...... 2 Methodology of the Study...... 6 Review of Related Literature ...... 8

II. MUDDING IT: A STUDY IN GEOGRAPHY ...... 13

Ditches and Roads in the Black Swamp...... 13 The Railroad...... 27 The Coldwater Railroad ...... 32 The Street Car...... 34

III. THE OIL BOOM: NEW COMMUNITIES AND NEW WEALTH . 38

The Oil Trail...... 38 Life in the Oil Towns...... 45 Gas in Wood County ...... 67 Time for Leisure ...... 72 Popular Culture ...... 75 Holidays ...... 80 Traditional Entertainments ...... 86 Social Institutions ...... 91 Courting and Marriage ...... 91 Wakes, Watches, andF unerals ...... 94 Religious Customs ...... 99 The Country School ...... 103

IV. THE OIL MAN AND HIS WORK...... 107

The Oil Man...... 107 The Oil Man's Camaraderie ...... 108 The Frontier Braggart...... 109 Oil Occupation Stereotypes...... 116 The Processes of the Oil Field ...... 128 Locating Oil...... 130 - Drilling a Well...... 134 Shooting a Well ...... 147 The Flowing Well...... 153 Pumping the Wells ...... 156 Pumping Stations ...... 159

V. LOCAL OIL LEGENDS...... 162

Early Wells and Gushers ...... 163 The Potter Well *...... 169 CHAPTER PAGE

Tank Fires...... 178 Glycerin Explosions ...... 185 The Grant Well Explosion ...... 188 The Gypsy Lane Road Explosion...... 200 The Folk Esthetic...... 213

VI. REFLECTIONS ON THE OIL BOOM ...... 221

Suggestionslfor .-Further Study’; . ‘ . . 223 The"Cultural - Historical Method: Conclusions . 225

NOTES ...... 230

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 233

APPENDICES ...... 236

Appendix A: Sample Questionnaire ...... 236 Appendix B: The Informants...... 239 Appendix C: The 1897 Disaster at Cygnet . . . 244 Appendix D: Interview: The Folk Esthetic ... 247 I

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

European folklorists conventionally have based their

study on oral traditions of the peasantry, giving little

note to folklore arising from historical events. In America

folklorists traditionally have conducted studies commencing

with European models and genres of folklore and seeking ex­

amples in a region. Because of America’s historical back­

ground, however, the quality of folklore in the United States

is unique. The American folklorist can approach his disci­

pline more effectively from the vantage points of American

culture, beginning with American conditions and proceeding

to a folkloristic perspective, rather than seeking European

folklore variants in America.

Of necessity, such an approach must concentrate on a

limited number of perspectives or on one region, perhaps

encompassing the study of a particular place at a particular

time, in order that a meaningful analysis of the folklore

and of the history of the American experience be conducted.

Just as the nature of American folklore is exceptional because of the social and cultural history of the United

States, so too is that of any particular region which shares

in varying degrees common national vantage points and which may also be strongly influenced by individual forces quite outside these vantage points. Life in Wood County, Ohio, 2

is not the same as that in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania,

or Brown County, Indiana, or Salinas County, California.

Colonization in each of these locations was different from

that in the others. So were the social history, industri­

alization and immigration. An analysis of any one of these

regions would reflect both the singularity of its cultural- .

historical profile and the common experiences which each

shares with other regions of America.

I. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

This research is an in-depth study of the folk cul­

ture of a carefully defined area, Wood County, as it was

during a particular period, the oil boom era which beganiin

1886.. The-oil boom was probably the single-strongest influence

on^Wood County?development. The next twenty-five years

carried the county rapidly from the era of colonization and

settlement to that of modern developments and technology in

an age of paved roads and the electric railroad. This

study is concernedtewith? the culture of the region prior to,

during, and immediately following the oil era, encompassing

the years from 1880 to 1910. The writer has chosen this

period in order to provide a study of conditions as they

affected the people of a region and of the dramatic changes

caused by the oil boom, the region’s major vantage point of

American life and history. 3

The study concentrates on the oil lore from the field

data and incorporates the lore which is necessary to a cul­

tural analysis of Wood County during these years. A geo-

graphical-historical prelude to the oil boom is presented

in Chapter II. Life in an oil town, as well as traditions

and events typical of the time, many of which were greatly

affected by the oil boom, are discussed in Chapter III.

Lore related to oil processes and stereotypes comprises

Chapter IV. Chapter V presents and analyzes local oil lore. In Chapter VI are some reflections on the oil boom, conclusions and suggestions for further study.

The data contain much information not within the scope of this study. Particularly the data represent the vantage points of colonization, the westward movement, immigration and industrialization. There is a rich body of lore about Indians, fur trappers and pioneers, early mili­ tary action, the Civil War, the depression of the 1930’s and traditional folklore of husbandry and housewifery. The data are deserving of further study, but that is not within the range of this study. The research was undertaken at this time because the data are quickly disappearing as retired oil men grow older and cdie.. Few of the thousands of Wood County oil boomers are still alive. Before the necessary data disap­ peared, the field data had to be collected. Another reason 4

for the study was that there has been no effective folklore

study based primarily on folk_narratives and reflecting the

attitudes and memories of the people who,lived the history

of an era, in this case of an oil boom era.

This study was approached through a cultural-histor­

ical investigation. It is distinguished from the usual

folklore study in that it does not begin with nor is it

primarily concerned with genres. Instead, the basis of

discussion and analysis is local history and tradition, much of which is inseparable from the occupational oil lore

of the area. Some data, of course, can be compared with

European models. However, that is not within the scope of

this paper. Rather the concern is with the folklore as it

exists, embodied in the cultural milieu as evidenced by the

oral texts from people who lived through this important era

in Wood County.

This cultural-historical study is distinguishable

also from the work of historians and others interested pri­

marily in American studies. These writers, unlike the folk­

lorist, gather data from literary sources. In the attempt

to establish patterns and recreate a cultural milieu, oral

traditions and texts are ignored. Studies such as H. N.

Smith’s Virgin Land, in which the author uses symbol and myth in a whole civilization approach, employ a cultural- historical approach based on literary sources. 5 Because the data for this study are derived primarily

from oral texts, the knowledge, techniques, and procedures

of folklore become valuable interpretive tools. Commencing

with the historical forces which have shaped the culture of

a region, the folklorist can use his discipline to illuminate

American life in the same ways that literature, history,

politics and others studies have used predominantly humanis­

tic methods concerned with the realities of life in a cul­

tural setting to study the culture and history of America.

This research should serve as a contribution to folk­

lorists and cultural historians as an example of in-depth

study of cultural changes in a carefully defined region and era. The writer’s aim was to develop a case study of area folklore, collected and analyzed, using the cultural- historical approach. The research is more definitive in nature than the usual regional study which encompasses a larger area and uses little or no time perspective. In essence, the study is a cultural analysis focusing on folk narratives and attitudes, on folklore function and esthetic rather than on folklore form. It is a study of the history and folklore of the oil boom, of the cultural milieu out of which it came, of the changes it fostered, and of the effects of its dissolutinn. The analyses of these facets of the total folk culture are derived primarily from the transcripts of oral narrations of the informants. 6

II. METHODOLOGY OF THE STUDY

The following methods of procedure were used in this study:

1. Review of comparable folklore studies and determina­ tion of their relation to this study. Review of data related to the history and folklore of the oil industry from 1859 through 1940 to formulate a cultural, historical and folkloristic finding list.

2. Selection of the cultural-historical approach for collection and analysis of data.

3. Identification of the historical topics and cultural influences pertinent to the region and to the era under study.

4. Use of Folklore Archives at Bowling Green State University Library for: a) Identification of quantity and quality of collected folklore for the historical period under study. A depth collection project by a team including the writer was conducted using tape recorders in Bowling Green, Ohio, and the surrounding area in 1967. To a great extent, the archive data available to this writer came from the project. \b) Questionnaire developed, based on the cultural- historical approach. Questions were composed with the objective of recreating through informants’ texts the aura of living during the oil boom. Questions differed according to an informant’s background but were corre­ lated by the effort to determine traditions and events of the oil era, the attitudes of informants toward the time, variants on many local legends and informants' opinions on how and why the stories may have changed. Typical questions are presented in the ques­ tionnaire found in Appendix A. c) Sources sought and collection supplemented where necessary. Collection was begun in 1965 by a local historian using a tape recorder Realizing that the sources for this local lore were dwindling each year, he recorded oil boomers who had worked the Wood County oil 7

field, as well as their wives and children, some of whom followed the same vocation, and other residents who lived through the oil boom, though not as oil men. He has recorded well over one hundred informants since that time. About sixty of these texts were avail­ able to the writer at the time the study was being conducted. The data reflect cultural practices, folk beliefs and, more importantly, they often reflect the attitudes of the infor­ mants toward the material they present--data through which folklore function and esthetic are approached. Some of the informants were subsequently reinterviewed by the writer using the methods and techniques of folklore field work. In 1967 the writer, then collecting general folklore from residents of Wood County, began to concentrate on oil lore. The data for this study, therefore, was collected by two field workers from 1965 through 1970. The complete field data, including transcribed texts, has been deposited by the writer in the Folklore Archives of the Bowling Green State University Library. The informants are identi­ fied in Appendix B.

5. Photographic presentation of objects of material culture from pre-oil and oil eras. A large number of oil era pictures were made available by the Marathon Oil Company in Findlay, Ohio. Photographs were also made available by Wood County informants, usually oil boomers themselves; and a local historian and curator of an oil museum in Cygnet, Ohio, was a source for much of the material culture of the oil industry.

6. Analysis of the data in terms of the theory that American folklore is most effectively studied when it presents the cultural milieu of historical periods of a region. Additional methods of analy­ sis were adapted from William Bascom, MacEdward Leach, William Jansen, and Richard Dorson, all of whom stress the importance of thoroughly collecting and carefully analyzing the complete social con­ text of oral lore. This process enabled the writer to determine the functions, the cultural and social context, and the folk esthetic of the folklore process. In recognition of the need to include folk life in the concept of folklore, the writer studied the objects of material culture 8

in correlation with the historical era. Henry Glassie’s ideas and techniques for studying mate­ rial culture were excellent models which the writer adapted to this study.3

III. REVIEW-OF RELATED LITERATURE

A cultural-historical theory was initiated in Ameri­ can Folklore (1959) which Richard Dorson developed using seven perspectives applicable to the background of American history. However, the arbitrary perspectives or vantage points overlap and topics slide elusively from one category to the next. Dorson covered all of American history and folklore, producing a cultural-historical introduction to

American folklore, but also a book necessarily lacking depth. In 1964 Dorson supplemented this book with Buying the Wind, a collection of texts, the documents of oral tradition, from seven distinct regions in the United States.

The data were approached by genres to which some comparative analysis was added. Valuable regional collections have been made by Vance

Randolph in the Ozarks, Richard Chase in Appalachia, Frank

Dobie in Texas, Austin Fife in Utah and others. Analysis in most regional collections, if included, is pursued in the historic-geographic method involving variants and dis­ tribution of a folklore item, that is, the traditional approach which begins with European folklore and proceeds to search out genres and variants present in a region. 9 Occasionally a collection focuses on a raconteur rather

than genres.

None of these excellent collections of regional

folklore by the authors named above proceeds from the same

premises that this writer is using. They emphasize genre

but tend to slight a cultural analysis dealing with history

and with context and function of folklore as it is found in

society. We need studies which evolve from the American

situation and which proceed from this framework, studies

which seek the effects of living in America on the people,

regardless of what comparable European forms may exist. We

need to be concerned with attitudes and life styles and

customs which have evolved from a uniquely American experi­

ence.

More relevant to this writer’s concern for analysis

of the culture of a specific region using the vital informa­

tion which folklore divulges is Deep Down in the Jungle

(1964), Roger Abrahams’ intensive study of Negro culture in

an urban area. Though primarily concerned with a particular

ethnic group, not intercultural influences, Abrahams delves,

into organic analysis of folklore and the cultural life style

of his informants. Abrahams' study evolved from field data

compiled while he lived in Philadelphia--the folklore as he

found it, reflecting little historical perspective. His

study is a model as a cultural approach; however, because of the nature of his purposes, it does not approach folklore 10

historically. This writer's study is intended to deal with

the culture of a people, the effects on them of living in

a particular place in an exciting era--a cultural and his­

torical investigation based primarily on the people’s lore,

memories and attitudes.

Black Swamp Farm (1967) by Howard E. Good, a personal,

subjective book limited to the author’s recollections of his

youth in northwestern Ohio, has the nucleus of some ideas

the writer utilized, applying the scholarly techniques and

tools of folklore and its functions. The book is a concen­

trated look at what living in a specific area much like

Wood County meant to the author. While not rigidly histor­

ical, the book gives a cultural perspective to the years it

represents, the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Few sources are available which deal with folklore

and oil. Mody Boatright’s books Folklore of the Oil Industry

(1963) and Gib Morgan (1945) stand practically alone in this

respect. Boatright’s examples of oil lore served as an ex­

cellent source in*approaching the oil men who served as in­

formants for this study. It is interesting to note also that many topics not initially broached by the writer coin­ cided with Boatright’s oil stories--oil found in cemeteries, lucky accidents, tall tales, and so on. It should be pointed out, however, that while Boatright was an excellent source, he was by no means a model for this study. In Folk­ lore of the Oil Industry Boatright has addressed his main 11

inquiry to the identification of folk material in the oil

lore. He is not concerned with a cultural or historical analysis of the data. In Gib Morgan he is a biographer of an oil boomer and raconteur, recapturing the footloose, tough, humorous nature of the oil worker. He made no attempt to present the texts as they were narrated. No variants were indicated. No data on informants were given.

The tales are composites, not useful in a strictly folk­ loristic cultural study.

Several sources proved interesting as studies of oil booms in particular regions. Boyce House's Oil Boom

(1941), Samuel Tait's The Wildcatters (1946), Herbert As­ bury's The Golden Flood (1942), and several other such sources are personal and/or historical accounts of oil booms from

New York to Texas to California. However, these writers were only incidentally concerned with folklore. Their value is in the personal accounts which reflect cultural attitudes toward people and incidents of the oil boom--the wealth, the oil men, the farmer-landowner, and the excite­ ment of an oil gusher.

Of some use also were contemporary sources of the oil era which reflect attitudes toward the oil boom as it was being lived. The Commemorative Historical and Biograph­ ical Record of Wood County, Ohio (1897) is a local contem­ porary source containing personal accounts and expressing 12 local attitudes toward the oil boom.

Local historians reflected also on the effects of oil on Wood County communities. Most of these sources, such as The First Hundred Years of Bowling Green, are based not on personal accounts but on city records listing the officials elected and the dates of events such as when the electric company began operation or the purchase of a fire engine. Although lacking the personal and cultural attitudes toward life as it was lived in that time, these sources were useful for verification purposes. 13

CHAPTER II

MUDDING IT: A STUDY IN GEOGRAPHY

To understand the nature of this region of Ohio, an understanding of its geography is essential. Wood County was part of the great Black Swamp. The most typical answer to the question- "What was it like, living here then?" was the explosive "Oh my God, it was wet!" This chapter traces the progress of the people as they lived in the area and.,an.I era when transportation was possible only in good weather through the time when they devised methods of making roads passable and making rich farm land tillable. The chapter necessarily overlaps the beginnings of Chapter III which treats the oil boom, since only a great influx of people and wealth could have caused concern enough to create rapid change in these situations. It was during this time that railroads, streetcars, and finally stone roads made travel possible and even tolerably comfortable. The stories of the informants deal with the beginnings of the railroad and streetcar and with the development of stone and paved modern highways from the corduroy, plank and mud roads which served the residents of Wood County for nearly a century.

I. DITCHES AND ROADS IN THE BLACK SWAMP

The area of northwestern Ohio where the oil boom centered had a notable reputation before the new industry 14 brought progress and modern development. The dismal Black

Swamp was avoided by settlers going west as an impassable area. Heavily wooded and water covered for nine months of the year, its only purpose was as refuge to wild animals, the last Indians, and the infamous Simon Girty.1

Unbelievable hardships were suffered by pioneers who chose to settle the Black’Swamp. Local histories contain hundreds of reports of disaster and death, such as the following:

I began work for one Solether April 1, 1843, snow and ice on the ground and sleighing. He gave me a watch. While working there a Jonathan Stull (founder of Jerry City) came in the clearing. He had a bag on his shoulder with a peck of ears of corn, that he got from Daniel Milbourn. Mr. Stull was much depressed and discouraged on account of the terrible hard winter. We talked of Adventism, as the Millerites said the end of the world was at hand. Mr. Stull said he prayed for it every day, as he had seen all the trouble he wanted to see. He said he had eight head of horses, and all had died, twenty-eight head of cattle and 260 head of hogs, and all were dead. I had to pass Mr. Stull’s cabin often. He told me that he had been married twelve years; they had ten children, all of whom were almost nude. Not one of them had a full suit. They hadn’t a bed nor a window in the house. He was the owner of a three-quarter section of good land. ’’There," said Stull, "I have one peck of ears of corn in this sack, and when I take it home and grind it in the hand-mill, and mix it with water, bake and eat it with my wife and ten children, God knows where the next will come from. They must starve." He wept like a child. During my stay with Buisey I had to go to and from Shelia's. I had to pass a number of cabins, forsaken and uninhabited. They looked gloomy enough, surrounded by ice and water and the dismal swamp. One of which had belonged to a John Ford, was new. A number of wild hogs had taken possession. They had piled in on top of each other, and there perished with cold and hunger . . . during that terrible winter, never to be forgotten by the old settlers. Many had to move out of the Black Swamp before spring.2 15 Tales such as this and those of a woman crazed by

living in the harsh land who, failing to run away, killed

her husband, of a lost child returned by an Indian chief,

of a lost girl buried to the neck in mire yet miraculously

saved, and of horse thieves and smugglers hiding in the

almost impenetrable bog of Devil's Hole had their beginnings in incidents which happened from earliest settlement into

the decade of the oil boom's beginning.

A Wood County man told of a horse trading incident

indicating the value of swamp land:

I recall a story that I heard Jim Heath tell. He was riding a horse and rode down the hill there east of Mermill. There was a fellow there on foot who told Jim that he owned eighty acres close to that hill. He pointed out where the eighty was, saying, "I will trade that eighty acres for that horse." But Jim wouldn't trade with him. That was just a swamp down in there. It wasn't much! (43, p. 7)*

Actually two corrective actions were undertaken to

drain the swamp, both of which were begun before the oil

boom and continued through that era.. The oil boom, in fact,

hastened these activities. These were clearing the land of

heavy timber and building drainage ditches. The ditches in Wood County were suggested in 1859:

The First Ditch petition, filed March 24, 1859, was signed by C. W. Simon, Adam Waltman, and W. S. Ferguson. It asked for the construction of a great drain ditch from Section 13, Jackson township, along the course of the Portage, to the confluence of the branches of Pemberville--a distance of thirty-five miles. The petition was granted and the ditch made at a cost of $50,000. It drained 8,000 acres of the prairie basin in Liberty, with large areas in Milton and Jackson and the eastern townships, and must be * Informants are identified in Appendix B. 16 considered the first great ditch excavated in this county.3

The most notable drainage project was the Jackson

Cut-Off which drained in the opposite direction, to the Mau­ mee River on the northwest and then to Lake Erie. Nine miles long, it was finished in 1879 at a cost of $110,000.

In addition to these two projects, open ditches were dug

in networks throughout the county on a local basis to aid

drainage. Except along much traveled highways, these deep

ditches are open today, especially along county roads.

The deep ditch on the west side of the Dixie Highway has been tiled and covered. (42, p. 14)

The widespread deforestation was remarked upon by many informants. They recalled living in the "district of the big woods," the last part of the area to be settled, and the large number of industries before and through the oil boom which depended on lumber: saw mills, stave fac­ tories, sucker rod factories, and suppliers of boiler wood for the oil field. At the time shortly before the oil boom, the principal industries in the area were stave fac­ tories and saw mills.

In 1880 less than six years before the oil boom, families still came in covered wagons, settled and cleared the land, as the daughter of a settler recalled:

... it was all wilderness. Woods on both sides of ’ the road clear through these roads, clear through to the Cygnet Road. It was thick woods on both sides. My father helped clear them woods away and cleared 17 that out for houses to be built along there and for the roads to be built. (5, p. 1) At that time the informant’s father worked at a saw mill

near Mungen:

When we first came out from Clermont County, there was a big saw mill right at the corners were Route 281 is now and that employed a good many men. My father worked there for a long time, and they cleared off the woods and hauled--cause it was just thick woods through there--and hauled the logs in there. It was a very busy place. There to make--they built three houses out of the native lumber and course there’s only two of them yet in Ducat, but they have been built over, of course, since then. It was an interesting place, too, but it was a large saw mill with a great, big well they had dug there to run the saw mill and it employed, I can’t tell you just how many men, for I was a young girl then. But I know it employed a lot of men in around this community, and so it has been through the oil field and, of course, the oil field wasn’t in here then. That’s when we first came here. That!s.been about eighty-four years when we first came here from Clermont County. The oil fields, you ..see, didn’t come in here till about ten years later. (5, p. 7)

Fires also accounted for some forest clearings:

My dad cut wood for the oil field. He cut boiler wood in four feet lengths and then he contracted some and he had about a thousand cord north of Jerry City that burned up during a fire. Q: Was this an oil field fire? A: It started that way. It went through miles and miles of woods and burned out everything. (51, p. 1)

f One farmer born in 1891 recalled the importance of clearing the land:

Well, good night, I can remember when there wasn’t a third as much cleared as they is now. Hell, I should say not. If you had forty acres of land and you had ten acres of it cleared, you was right up in the middle of the times. (25, pp. 5-6)

In an area where fires were built beside log cabins 18 to deter wild animals in 1867, where "they used to say that

every train that went out of Cygnet [after 1883], at least once a day, a body, a corpse was taken out of Cygnet. They

died just fast, you know [of milk sickness] ... it just

raged in here" (16, pp. 2-3), where land was not drained or

cleared, like an informant, "you wonder why they wanted to

settle around here in the swamp." (15, p. 9) She went on:

"But it was a terribe, terrible place to bring your family

into--no schools, no churches." (16, p. 3) In another

interview repeating the reference to milk sickness, the

informant expressed the general tenor of the era just before

the oil boom:

When I was a little girl, almost every train carried a body back to Pennsylvania. They called it the milk sickness. Cygnet was a swamp that extended as far as Rudolph. There were no ditches and no tile. There were never tile on our farm until George put them in the ground. The poor Easterners couldn’t take it. My mother lived only three years after we came to Cygnet. She . . . couldn’t stand it and died of a broken heart. (15, p. 3)

The reasons for the late settlement of the Black

Swamp are evident. Settlers and residents battled the mud and water for many.years after the drainage ditches were dug and until stone roads were put in some time after the oil boom had begun.

Before that time, major roads, principally the north- south Dixie Highway which divides the county in half, were improved in various ways. The highway north of Bowling

Green to Perrysburg was a plank road, having been made a 19

pike as soon as the planks had been laid. South of Bowling

Green the highway was a corduroy road made of whole logs.

The corduroy roads, built to keep the road from being

buried in mud, sometimes caused as much trouble as the mire.

The rotted and deteriorating wood combined with mud to make

matters worse. The road in spring was very rough as the

wagons went through mud and hit the logs. Four informants,

involved at different times in road work, described the

size and length of logs in a corduroy road, and two remarked

that the logs when removed were "just as solid as the day

they were put in."'!(25, p. 5; 64, p. 4; 42, p. 14; 46, p. 2)

The corduroy roads often became so covered with mud

that their purpose was defeated. An informant discussed

the contemporary problems of the log turnpike:

They cleaned the ditches out and that dirt was piled on top of those logs and that was the reason the mud was so deep over those logs. It took as much as six horses to pull an empty wagon. The mud was so deep over those logs that the wagons cut all the way down to the logs. (42, p. 14)

In the field data numerous texts, almost all in fact,

deal with the tribulations of living in "Mud Country." Dry

roads were "heaven.” As in the above text, pulling an empty wagon was far worse than a full one. A load would make the wheels cut through. Still, stops had to be made every few

feet to poke the mud from the spokes, of the wheels, hub-deep in mud. "ItV.was nothing to see horses pulling a load belly high in the water and slush." (44, p. 3) Such strain took 20

its toll on horses and wagons:

When I lived on the Digby Road and saw teams of horses that would be stuck in the mud break the double - trees and they would have to leave the buggy or wagon. Digby was a mud road and, of course, it still is. (43, p. 2)

Broken wagon tongues and broken axles, sudden freezes

and the spring thaw were all part of the strain of living

in Wood County at that time, as was indicated by these inci­

dents recreated from an informant's past:

The roads weren't too bad until the spring of the year when the frost went out and the mud rolled on the wheels. People always carried spades or sticks [or used a rail from a fence] to stop every little while to poke out the mud. I remember one time when Father and Mother had been up to the home of Grandfather Fries to butcher. We came home and just as we turned in the lane, the team of horses on the common buggy pulled the tongue out of the buggy. There the buggy set and froze in there that night to stay there for weeks. Once when I was coming to school and like most children I was a little careless, the mud kept rolling up on the wheels of my little pony buggy. I didn't < stop often enough, and it broke the axle. I remember how I cried when I went to tell my dad about it. (60, pp. 5-6)

Farmers might carry, in addition to a spade, several planks and constantly rotate them from back to front of the wagon or buggy to keep the wheels out of the mud. Or they might substitute other means:

... up here what is now the Dixie, I seen the time when every farmer or anybody that done any work in the oil field, they always carried a hammer and a saw and a hatchet and a spade with them. And if they come down and they'd get stuck, they'd go over and cut down a tree or something and lay across there. (64, p. 3)

A rider on horseback often had to hold his feet up to keep them out of the water. The situation was sometimes

I 21

so bad that even a horse would sink to its knees and could not get through. Settlers then had to walk, on steam boxes after the oil boom had begun, and children went to school in rubber boots or barefooted. (4, p. 5; 5, p. 8) The women found this particularly humiliating. Several informants exclaimed indignantly that they had to wear rubber boots, not just rubbers, to church. This female displeasure caused one man to build the only sidewalk in Cygnet, three planks wide, from his house to the main street so that his wife would not need to wear boots to go up town or to church.

(15, p. 1; 16, p. 3)

Stone roads, the contemporary solution to this im­ broglio, came into being after the turn of the century, beginning to be built shortly before 1900. In the interval the oil boom occurred. The teamsters hauling heavy oil boilers and rigs faced impassable roads with orders to deliver equipment. Sheer horsepower was one solution:

I have seen them going through town with a boiler on a wagon with three teams pulling it and they were dragging it to the hubs of the wagon. There was that much clay and mud. (51, p. 2)

And:

There was one time they moved seven boilers through Main Street. There were wooden plank walks that needed to be replaced every time the boilers went through. (44, p. 3)

Another informant referred to another method of traversing the mud, the mudboat:

I can look out of this window and I can visualize i i 22 them going down this front street many years ago. It would be nothing to see six horses [another in­ formant said six to eight teams of horses] going through here with a boiler or a pump of some kind, heading for the oil business. The mud would be up to the axles on the 'mudboats, the wagons. (41, p. 2)

The process of using the . mudboat, which had no

axle, was described by a retired roustabout:

And I've seen 'em move a--put drilling outfits right on what was known as mudboats, in spring if it was muddy. That's a low boat made of--well, some of 'em was eight inch, some of 'em was ten inch runners, same as a bobsled used to be made, and they called them mudboats. They was flat and they had the floor on­ to 'em, bed onto 'em and you'd roll your stuff on that, hitch your horse and pull''em down the field, down the field or on the highway. Q: Easier than wheels? A: Oh, yes, cause they could get up over the mud and they wouldn't go down as quick as the wheels would in these soft places. But they still would. (64, p. 3)

Lacking other means, the ingenious teamster fabri­

cated yet another method:

I've seen where they have had to put blocks and falls on with a luft line, which means two sets, one block and falls pulling the left line on the first one to pull them through the mud. They would pull them a wagon length and stop and rest and run the blocks out. (46, p. 1)

This same lifting process was described by another oil man:

. . . I've seen the time when we'd be taking drilling tools south to Findlay. We'd get to this hill. We'd have four teams of horses on the wagon, and we'd stop and we'd take and put down what was known as a ground line or snatch block up to the top of the hill and put on four more horses to help to get the wagon up. We'd pick it up. . . . The trip ... to Findlay and back . . . took four days. (64, p. 3)

No doubt the problem of transportation during the era was monumental. Shortly after the oil men came to Wood \ 23

A 1907 SCENE OF THE MAIN STREET IN JERRY CITY. Note the street car in the center of the photo. Courtesy of Phyllis Frizzell Smith.

HORSES AND MULES PULLED DRILLING MACHINERY to fields in northwestern Ohio in the 1880's. Here the oil man uses horses to move a steam powered portable drilling rig while the wagon carries the bit and other cable tools. Courtesy of Marathon Oil Company. 24 County, stone roads began to be built. The hindrance to the oil industry, described below, was somewhat alleviated in the early 1890's when the gas engine came into use, thus eliminating the need to haul boilers to each new well being drilled:

Steam was a cumbersome and expensive form of power. It required individual boilers for each well, constant movement of fuel, as well as boilers, with serious and expensive delays if either were hindered. And hindered they were by that ever present adjunct of all oil fields, mud. Considering that the only form of transportation was by teams and wagons, and that mud often reached the bellies of the horses, the possibility of delays may by greatly imagined. In the Cygnet field the mud was often so deep it took from two to three days to move a boiler three miles.4

It was inevitable that stone roads would be built in Wood County. Twenty or twenty-five years later the auto­ mobile came into general use and with it came imp roved roads.

This progress came to some areas of Wood County somewhat sooner because of the oil field. An informant who tended to date' all her anecdotes by the date her father died, the date she married, and the time the oil field came in gave this time perspective in her narration:

It all goes back to the oil field, when the oil field first come in here, and that would be--well, just kinda figure it back. The oil field was coming in here pretty thick when daddy died, and I was eight years old when he died. It just kept on coming until, well, we was married in ’94 and this oil field was just thicker than hops in here through then and it kept on progressing and then, you know, the wells, lots of ’em went dry and they just plugged ’em and that's why the oil field ain't any thicker than it is now. But this oil field when it first come in the derricks stood so close together that you could 25 just lay a pipe from one to the other and walk on it. .... People didn't go like they do now. You wouldn't be on the road enough. But I remember very well when they put the stone road through here. That was right after the oil field come in here. These were all dirt roads. (5, p. 11)

The road improvement projects created two new indus­ tries in Wood County, the stone quarries and the lime kilns.

The stone was hauled from the quarries to the roads by teamsters or, at Hammansburg, "by a narrow gauge railroad aided by a horse. The stone was carried from the stone quar­ ry to the place where it was dumped on the road. Two cars would haul it out and dump it along the track." (44, p. 9)

Another informant recalled stone quarries opening some time before 1900 to furnish stone to make a road bed to Toledo for the street car line to Jerry City. The work of teamsters hauling stone for the roads was described by an informant:

I can remember when the first stone roads came in here before the trucks came. There were men with horses or teams that would haul stone all day. It was like a dump wagon that they used to haul stone and dumped on the road. Oil field work made much more work for the teamsters. Many horses were needed as that was all they would have for hauling. That was a full-time job. (61, p. 3) Many informants recalled the first roads near their homes because they helped build them. Because of the impass­ able conditions of roads during spring and early summer, farmers often petitioned to have roads stoned, for which they paid an assessment in the form of a road tax. Because of the high cost usually only one side of the road was 26 stoned, about a ten foot width.$ Even before stone roads were made, each male citizen was required to pay a road tax or work a designated number of days on the roads. It was easier, of course, for the farmer to work than to pay the tax, as a resident on the Dixie Highway recalled:

I can remember when the old Dixie was called the Findlay Pike and it was mud! I’ve seen as many as six horses on an empty wagon and it was all that they could do to get through the road in the spring. Later as the mud would dry up, the farmers along the road were drafted in to putting their horses on the road scrapers in order to make the road passable for the summer traffic. My father spent day after day on those road projects as it was compulsory and they had no way of getting out of it. They were commanded to take their horses and do this work. Q: How about the cost of these roads as far as taxes? A: The first two or three macadam roads that were built were charged directly to the land and they in­ cluded a mile back from the highway. They made this tax in order to build the road direct to the land. I can remember when our taxes were seven dollars an acre for the road tax per year. That hurt, ’I’ll tell you! When they began to get the gasoline tax, it was a welcome relief to the taxed farmers. The taxes were so high that it was almost impossible to pay them. The first roads were made from stone made at Portage and hauled by electric railroad and unloaded by hand into the wagons. Then they hauled by horses and dropped on the highway, raked out by hand, and rolled down with a steam roller. A far cry from the way that we build roads today. (42, p. 13)

The roads were built, according to local residents, with large three inch rough stone, no screenings or sometimes the loose gravel easily washed away. Because of this and because only half the roadway was paved, some contests en­ sued as to who drove where:

The oil workers would drive on the unpaved road. 27 Most of the roads were stoned for a width of ten feet. If you wanted to pass, you had to take to the mud. Farmers with loads liked to stay on the paved side. When it wasn't muddy, the horses liked the unpaved side. (44, p. 12)

Similar incidents, humorous now, hair-raising then, were told of driving the first automobiles on these one-lane roads where passing a horse and wagon was treacherous.

II. THE RAILROAD

By the time the oil boom had begun in southern Wood

County, the residents were served by several railroad lines.

The 1897 map of Wood County (page 28) shows these lines and the dates when they were opened. All but one had been in existence no more than twelve years before the oil boom.

The Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railroad Company, the first north-south- railroad in Wood County, served the west­ ern edge of the county as it came from Toledo through Ton­ togany, Weston, Milton Center and Custar. The next major railroad built in Wood County was the

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad from Newark, Ohio, to Chicago, opened in 1874. Again the line served only an edge of the area, the southwestern section. However, this railroad served as a major influence on the development of that part of the< county, according to the Record of Wood County:

The main line through Wood County (twenty-four miles in length within this county) was constructed under the charter of 1872. On this division all through trains over the old and new roads run, af­ fording unusual advantage to the southern half of 28

43^ of Wood Coi:vn OHIO

/W3

897 MAP OF WOOD COUNTY SHOWING RAILROADS AND OIL TOWNS 29 the county. The road may be credited with founding the thriving towns of North Baltimore and Bloomdale, and the villages of Welker, Bairdstown, Denver and Hoytville; for without it, enterprising men would scarcely seek, on these sites, safe places for the investment of capital. The exhibit of the Baltimore and Ohio at the World’s Fair was in itself a history of iron and wood, showing the quaint beginning of the road in contrast with its present magnificence in extent and equipment.6

Most of the towns mentioned above received their charters

in 1874 or 1875, after the completion of the railroad.

North Baltimore, often said by infqrmants to be a town built by oil, was platted in 1874, some twelve years before the discovery well was drilled there on the Fulton property.

A local historian wrote:

. . . nothing was done toward town-building until the iron way had been placed, and the whistle of the locomotive had reminded the land owners of their opportunity and their duty.7

An informant recalled the excitement of seeing the first trains run through North Baltimore:

I can remember the first time that I went to North Baltimore. I went out on the sidewalk to see the train go by. It was a sight for me to see the train go by. (44, pp. 10-11)

In 1875 a railroad built from Tontogany to Bowling

Green by local citizens was purchased by the Cincinnati,

Hamilton and Dayton Railroad Company. In 1890, prompted by the opening of the rich oil belt, the company ran the line south to North Baltimore. The following anecdote was told about that construction:

When this railroad went through here, Mr. Underwood 30 came to my mother cause where '.addy had started the house was a frame, just a frame, and he offered .other a hundred dollars for the right of way to put this railroad through here and to move the house to wherever she wanted it and pay her a hundred dollars in money, set it on a solid foundation and that is what he did. And then they finished the home and that was our home. (5, p. 2)

The line was later purchased by the Baltimore and

Ohio. Before that, however, its cumbersome name had been given several more easily pronounced and more interesting nicknames. Most commonly, it was known as the "C, H, and

D." The oil men attached other appellations, among them

"Charges High and Damn Rough Riding" and "Coffee, Ham and

Donuts." The oil men who recalled these nicknames also related stories of the extensive use of the railroad by the oil industry. The transportation of crude oil was a distinct and important industry, carried out by two methods. .

The pipe lines were opened to Chicago in 1888. Both before and after that time oil was transported by railway tank cars.

An informant recalled two more local uses of the railroad-- transportation of coal for the engines at the wells and transportation of oil workers from their lodgings to the wells: I saw the time when a freight train would come out of Tontogany, go into North Baltimore, would have thirty-five cars on it of coal. They’d be set­ ting off coal and then the firemen or the teamsters of the oil company would haul this and put it out in the fields where they was gonna drill the wells with it. And the passenger trains, they'd leave Tontogany about ten thirty, quarter to eleven, and go west to 31 North Baltimore and they’d pick up drillers, like here in Bowling Green and around, and they'd stop and let them off at the crossroads. And they'd be one coming from North Baltimore coming this way. They'd do the same thing. And they was a lot of drillers that would hire livery horses, like from Johnny Avery and Crum and Mercer and they'd drive out and the other, boys would bring 'em [the horses] back. And the same way from North Baltimore. They'd drive out, and back and forth. (64, p. 1)

For the oil men the lines from Tontogany through

Bowling Green to North Baltimore and from Findlay to Toledo

(the Toledo and Ohio Central Railroad, completed 1883, only three years before the oil boom) were the most useful.

These two lines penetrated the heart of the oil field and reached out to areas they might communicate with. Oil men flagged down trains at midnight Saturday at the end of a tour (pronounced tower, the oil man's twelve hour shift) with a rope torch so that they might go to Lima, changing trains at Findlay, to see their girls.(24, pp. 4-5) The trains Jtook the men daily from their boarding houses to the wells, as the trains stopped at every small village and many crossroads at that time. Trains also saved oil men the misery of hauling oil materials, fuel and supplies through the mud.

The trains were used frequently by local residents for trips to nearby towns and for Sunday excursions when a special fare and special trains were available for trips to Lima, Toledo, or as far as Columbus. 32

The Coldwater Railroad

Many informants were knowledgeable about a railroad

which never operated. The line extended through Wood County

from Fostoria, Ohio, to Coldwater, Michigan. Texts vary in

telling just how much work was completed on the railroad.

The informant of the following text recalled the railroad

grading:

Q: Do you remember the old Coldwater Railroad grade that ran through that area? A: Yes, the grade went through the edge of my grandmother’s farm and many, many times we used to go on excursions. Later on, we would walk that old railroad bed from my home in Mungen to take the train to Columbus and different places when the railroad ran excursions. Q: Did the Coldwater have a grade, or a grade and steel laid? A: To my knowledge, some ties but no steel. I never did see steel but I did see the ties scattered along. There was no steel to my knowledge. (33, p. 7)

Perhaps the reason for the railroad never reaching completion was, as one informant stated, a monetary problem:

Q: What happened to the old Coldwater Railroad bridge? I mean the railroad itself? A: I think the financing was short. Q: Did people use it to keep out of the mud? A: Well, people couldn't go through on it as it was fenced off. Every farmer had it shut off from his farm to my recollection. It was never open clear through nor was it graded. For part of the way, there were rails that trains ran over. I am not sure they ever ran through Jerry City. (66, p. 2)

Another informant believed the road had been graded to Michigan, though no rails had been laid, and that cars ran as far as Ducat. (43, p. 2) Two people recalled that one train had run over the track through Mungen and to Jerry 33

City:

My grandfather worked on that grade and they never run but one train. After the work was done with laying the rail, they never run but one freight train with a passenger car and a caboose on the tail of it. Why; they never kept on operating it, I don’t know. (42, p. 10)

Most of the informants felt this same curiosity about

a railroad which never functioned, though the work had been

completed locally:

... it was being built towards Fostoria. They got over about three or four miles beyond the town and ran one work train over the line and then for some unknown reason to the people of the village, they sent in a work train and pulled up track. They took everything but the wooden ties across the bed and left the country. That was the beginning and the end of the railroad. (49, p. 3)

Another informant speculated that the railroad com­ pany never intended to operate the railroad. According to him, the company agreed to run the line through towns which had outbid their rival neighbors with large sums of money paid in anticipation of the benefits to be received from the railroad’s presence. Having collected the money while the workmen constructed a small portion of the line, the company then deliberately swindled the contributors by with­ drawing. (56)

Regardless of the uncertainty of the railroad’s demise, its presence was enough to cause the town of Old

Mungen to be established and settled in 1875 and 1876 by some two hundred people. This was the period of time during which the Coldwater Railroad was being constructed to the 34

southeast corner of Liberty Township, and the town was set­ tled in part by railroad workers.8

III. THE STREET CAR

Another form of transportation became available to local people in 1896 when the street car lines from Toledo to Bowling Green opened, in 1900 when lines were extended through the oil field to Jerry City, and in 1901 when a line was opened south to Findlay. (14, pp. 3-4)

All this followed a false start in June in 1896 north of Bowling Green when the first line was built to within a mile of town and the contractor "was stopped at the point of a gun by the sheriff of Wood County," who was owner of one of three remaining properties to which right of way had not been granted. By September differences had been settled and the road opened. The lines were used by residents and oil men as a form of local transportation to and from any of the small towns along the line. Though some freight was handled by the street cars, they provided little relief to the teamsters who hauled heavy oil field equipment. Local people remembered having ridden from one small town to another for as little as a nickel and to Toledo for thirty-five cents. That it was a popular form of transpor­ tation was evidenced by the enthusiasm respondents felt as they discussed the electric railroad: 35

Oh, yes, that was a real joy! Daddy used to take us down to the Dixie and we would get on at a little shanty there. We would go to Findlay, and maybe come back the same day or maybe stay all night . . . the car ran every day. (9, p. 3)

The street car also brought within reach popular forms of entertainment and relief from hard work, shows such as "Pet of My Heart" in Findlay or Toledo. (3, p. 4)

The street car at county fair time must have looked much like San Francisco’s cable cars during the five o’clock rush: "Sometimes I would have to hang on to the handle and stand on the door step because there were so many people." (29, p. 4)

The line branching off to Jerry City, originally a main line terminal point, became in 1901 a spur line on which the Jerry City Dinky [called a Dixie Cart by one informant], a single small car, ran to serve residents east of the main line. Young men found additional enter­ tainment in riding the Jerry City Dinky:

We’d get on the Dinky coming home at night and we’d all get on the back and start teetering and that would pull the trolley off. The motorman would jump off the front and go around back. We’d do just the opposite and got off the back and go around to the front end. He’d put the trolley back on and go about a hundred yards and we'd knock the trolley off again. It was quite an experience to ride the little old Jerry City Dinky in those days. (41, pp. 4-5) A newspaper account indicated that the Jerry City

Dinky, an early four wheel car, was also the object of

Halloween pranks: 36 The switch at the end of the street car line was opened and two beer kegs were placed on the track. A car came along, knocked the obstruction off the track and came near running into the ditch. Arrests may follow.9

Among the informants was one man who had collected

street car data and pictures since 1930 when the Bowling

Green line went out of business. He had been a conductor

and motorman for twenty years and, as he said, "I thought

that I had a lifetime job there, but it wasn’t long until

they talked about discontinuing." (14, p. 2) The informant

described the first car, made and operated in 1896 :

It was a palace car that had reversible seats with electric stop signals in every window. The car seated seventy-five people. The trip to Perrysburg over the Maumee Valley track on the east side of the river was made in good time. After the sharp curve, leaving Perrysburg (it is a B line of twelve miles on a sixty pound rail), and the car fairly flew. The trip from Toledo to Bowling Green was made in an hour and thir­ teen minutes. (14, p.‘13)

From a rate of two miles in three days with horse

and wagon over mud-mired roads to thirty miles in one hour and thirteen minutes: it is not surprising that it seemed the street car "fairly flew." The much traversed Dixie

Highway remained a stone road until the thirties when it was concreted. The oil man pulling a pump took four days to go to Findlay and return; the street car made the trip daily, as did the railroad. Mud, "the ever present adjunct of all oil fields," was a problem throughout the oil era, but ditches and deforestation, stone roads, railroads, and 37

Street cars made the land habitable and movement from one place to another possible. These improvements also brought new people to prosperous oil country, to rough, new oil towns, in some cases for permanent settlement. 38 CHAPTER III

THE OIL BOOM: NEW COMMUNITIES AND NEW WEALTH

I. THE OIL TRAIL

From Titusville to Texas the oil trail has been called.

The second oil boom along that trail occurred when the Wood

County oil field came in. Many of the informants, as oil boomers or wives of such, had followed this part of the oil trail. They came here to be part of the oil field, arriving as early as 1886 to drill and as late as 1913 to construct pipeline to Canada. A young driller came from Pennsylvania to Lima and was sent to Wood County to drill test wells near

North Baltimore, then all along the railroad as it ran through many small towns in the area. The towns were small then, as they are now, unless they have disappeared. The next five years would witness fabulous growth as Cygnet grew from three or four houses to three thousand inhabitants and thirteen saloons, as well as six sucker rod shops. Land that couldn’t be given away before the boom went for $1,000 an acre. That first driller, then eighteen years old, now over one hundred, described the towns before the oil boom:

In the towns, there was usually a blacksmith shop, a barber shop. ... I drilled in small towns as Trombley, Mungen, Mermill, Rudolph, Ducat. I suppose there would be about twenty houses to a town with a blacksmith shop, a barber shop, and a grocery store, usually a post office. (24, p. 2)

This informant, like many others, came from the oil 39 region in Pennsylvania where Colonel Drake drilled the first oil well in 1859. In his large repertoire of oil stories was one of that initial Pennsylvania well, told to him by

his father:

If you want a story of Pennsylvania and the start of oil, the first oil was found up around Oil Creek up where this Drake Well is with oil up around there for about fifteen miles. Do you know how they found oil there? Well, that’s all mountains, hills, valleys and springs, and every bit of house they built when I was there, they built it for the springs they had for the water. It didn’t make any difference where it was or what kind of a place it was, they built their house there if they had a little piece of land. Before I was born, oil was discovered at a time when even my dad was just a young boy. He could just remem­ ber. I can just remember him telling us boys about it. He had a big family of eight children. Dad used to tell us about drilling the wells with a spring pole and they went all depths for it. Up around Oil Creek, Franklin, and Oil City, and about ten, fifteen miles north of us was where the first oil was ever discovered. The Indians discovered that oil. They saw streams coming out of the hill. Every fourth of a mile there was a little spring coming out of a mountain. The Indians seen the black stuff, a funny black stuff. Mind this is all hearsay to me. This ain’t experience. This was before I was born several years. They went investigating it and they found it was kind of a substance--. Well, oil is lighter than water and it lays on top of water and you can mix it with water. The Indians had lots of wool then. They kept sheep and sheared their sheep for the wool and made everything by hand, and they had lots of blankets and they took the woolen blankets and they tied the four corners together and they walked along the streams, four men to one blanket and one man on a rope on each blanket corner. The streams would be small streams like Sugar Creek, from that to bigger or smaller. And they--two on each side and they drug the blanket on the top of the water and the oil adhered to the blanket and stayed there. The oil was thicker than water and it would stick right in there. They would drag the blanket until they got all the oil that would stick in the blanket. They pulled it to the shore. They had a big pan, I suppose, 40

1852 ADVERTISEMENT FOR OIL, in form of $400 bill, representing 400 foot well.

SHEET MUSIC. At least a half PETROLEUM SOLD IN 1847 in half dozen sheets of music such as pint quantities as remedy for this were published from 1859 any and all ailments. to 1864, dealing with the ex­ Photos courtesy of Marathon citement of oil development. Oil Company. 41

they made themselves and placed the oil in a big pan. The Indians would wring out the blanket and get anywhere from two gallon or more out of it. They would gather this oil and sell it to make their living with it for maybe fifty years or more. They put it into small ounce bottles. Sometimes the bottles were two or three ounce bottles. I don’t know where they got the bottles though. Anyway, the Indians bottled the oil up and went out on the road with the women folks and the crippled Indians or those who weren’t able to do anything else and sold it from five to fifteen cents a bottle for the medicine.

A second account of the Drake Well was also present in the field data, as an informant reflected on oil history since 1859:

Oh, they have come a long ways from the days that Colonel Drake built the first well in Pennsylvania a little over a hundred years ago. Now they drill wells as much as four miles deep in Texas. . . . Q: Did you know that Colonel Drake knew about as much about the oil business as you and I know about the moon? A: That is right. He was nothing more than a retired railroader. He had a bunch of "gas" and "gaff" and he was able to have a few people put their dollars and they drilled. Q: As a matter of fact, he wouldn't have been there if he hadn’t had a pass on the railroad. A: That is right. ... He had only to drill sixty- nine and a half feet for his first oil well. Q: Wasn't that strange? A: At that, he had some good ideas. This screw that we used on the old walking beam was the invention of one of his men. I understand there were several other things that they used then that were still in use when we were using our cable tools here. . . . There was a man who operated the Pemberville Leader, a man by the name of Speck and his wife was the daughter of the blacksmith who dressed the bits for Colonel Drake's tools there. Q: Did they call him Uncle Billy Smith? A: Yes, Uncle Billy Smith. (21, pp. 8-10)

The first oil boomer quoted above followed the oil trail only one more step--to Indiana, though his brothers 42

DRILLING WITH A SPRING POLE. Courtesy of Oil and Gas Journal.

THE DRAKE WELL came in on August 27,1859. Colonel Drake (left) conceived the idea of drilling for oil and proved this theory with the primitive rig in the back­ ground. This picture was taken in 1861 with Peter Wilson, the druggist who encouraged Drake.

CLOSED DERRICKS of the 1870’s in Pennsylvania. Bottom photos courtesy Drake Well Museum. 43

followed the trail to California, Canada, Oklahoma and Texas,

and he had also five or six uncles in the oil business. (24,

pp. 12, 15)

Several Ohio oil men followed the trail to Burkbur­

nett, Texas. There one man met a driller who had boarded

with his family in tiny Hammansburg in Wood County. This

was not an unusual occurrence for men in oil work. In fact,

it became customary for oil boomers to look for former com­

panions on trains arriving in new boom areas. The daughter

of an oil man told of her father’s success as an oil boomer

whose travels took him through the West and finally to Ru­

mania. She claimed "at one time all the oil boats in the

Gulf of Mexico bore his name on the side of the vessel."

(40, p. 5)

One informant was born in Titusville, Pennsylvania,

on Swede Hill among a nationality of people known as treaters

or refiners of oil. She met her husband, not in Titusville where he also was born, but in Cygnet after both families had moved with the oil boom. (15, p. 5) Another man was born on Irish Row in Cygnet after his father had come from

Pennsylvania at the beginning of the boom. He followed the

trail to Burkburnett, Texas, for "the opening of a boom out there and the same conditions existed out there that had existed in Cygnet . . . some thirty years previous." (41, p. 3) 44 Again and again the oil boomer’s story was told by

Wood County informants. They recalled how they came for

oil and how some left to return later, how in their travels

they met many people from home. By the end of the first

decade of the new century oil in Wood County was waning.

Many moved elsewhere. A driller’s wife, recalling the

many moves necessary in her husband's life, stated that he

had moved his tools in 1907 to Bridgeport, Illinois, his

next stop on the oil trail. As the Swede Hill, Titusville

native said, "So many men from Pennsylvania, Cygnet, Town­

line, Rudolph, North Baltimore, Ohio, went on to Illinois,

Oklahoma, and Texas." (15, p. 11) Many boomers moved with

the oil trail farther west. Some returned to Wood County

and told stories of the oil boomer's life. Hundreds of

others did not return who could have added much to the oil

lore of Wood County. They remained residents of western

states where the oil boom had beckoned them on. Other oil

men who came to Ohio must have returned to Pennsylvania,

just as some returned to Ohio from Texas, Wyoming, Okla­

homa, and other states, and that lore also was lost for

this study, though collections were made in Akron, Ohio,

in Pennsylvania, and from an Iowa resident, all originally

Wood County oil boomers. 45 II. LIFE IN THE OIL TOWNS

The oil towns consisted of hastily constructed shacks

built with no permanency in mind. The oil men threw up a

temporary shelter made of whatever material was available.

Houses may have been built of scrap lumber from a torn down

structure, from slabs of unusable lumber scavenged from the

saw mills or may even have been tents such as were used by

pipeline gangs who moved their "Rag Town" with their work.

Three thousand men employed to build a pipeline to Chicago

lived in a tent city, moving the tents as the work progressed.

The oil men’s houses were rough, tumble-down affairs

which served the transient dwellers until they moved to an­

other place working on a different rig. The towns were known

as "shanty towns" or "slab towns." The slab towns were cre­

ated by two forces: timber and oil. The chief industry in

such a community was the saw mill where timber was available

for the oil men to build derricks and where logs were hewn

into walking beams and main sills. (44, p. 3)

Oil men who did not stay in a shack found room and

board at one of the many local boarding houses. For approxi­

mately twenty-five cents a meal or two or three dollars a week board and room, oil men could get all they wanted to

eat and a bed to sleep in, provided they were not too par­

ticular about sharing a bed. The expression "hot beds" came into being because men were willing to share the same bed so 46 that they would have a place to stay. The term was explained

by an oil boomer’s wife whose mother had owned a boarding

house:

You know, one crew of men got up out of the bed and they hardly give you time to get the bed made till the other crew was back in the bed. You know, there was four that would work on a drilling well, and the two go out and two come in. And they generally would board at the same place. (35, p. 7)

The women who ran the boarding houses, though they may have had only a dozen regular guests, were asked to feed as many as twenty-five men who were working in the area. A poor widow or destitute farmer who became a boarding house owner was able to share in the oil riches, to pay all debts and buy a farm because of the profitable nature of and need for such a business. Hearing the oil men talk of the good and ample food, one wonders how much profit was available con­ sidering the amount of food which was consumed daily at a boarding house where men patiently waited their turn at the table but expected it to be fully replenished when they sat for a meal. A pipeline worker replied, when asked if he was hungry at day’s end, ’’Man, we could eat a mule and chase the driver ... we wouldn’t stand for anything that wasn’t good. We would raise heck!” (58, p. 3)

The boarding houses teemed with oil workers. When no hot bed was to be found there, the men found shelter also in the hotels. Cygnet was one of the rougher oil towns. Having no effective prohibitionists to curb the outflow of liquor, 47 the town quickly acquired thirteen saloons and a number of hotels. One of these, though long gone, retains a notorious reputation today:

We were told this story that there was many a man that went into the front door of the hotel that never came out. They were never seen again. We was told that, but we don’t know that! (17, p. 11)

The informant explained the mysterious disappearances by saying .that every type of person was in the oil boom-- floaters and drifters, men of many nationalities--Irish,

Jewish, German, French, Dutch--though there were not many

Negroes living in the area or working the oil fields. In

Cygnet the Irish often settled on Irish Row where as one person said, "I think ninety-nine and nine tenths of the people who lived there was Irish.” (41, p. 1) The Irish became stereotyped in the oil man’s mind as a hard working man who often handled the work requiring the most strength, tank building and rig building. However, one informant's recollection of some of the saloons in Cygnet indicates that Irish were also active in another profession:

We had a number of saloons in our town. Jerry Connelly’s, Dennis Callahan's saloon, Barton's Down- barrel Saloon, Ed Murphy's saloon, as well as small bars and saloons in the hotels. (45, p. 1)

Generally in the field data the Jewish man was represented as a peddler, and the German or Pennsylvania

Dutch were drillers, tool dressers and local landowners.

The French were primarily farmers and landowners. 48 The mud discussed in Chapter II also had an effect

on life in an oil town. Board sidewalks made walking from

place to place possible. Through the towns, particularly

through Cygnet, drainage ditches parallel to the main street

had been dug. In order to cross the street the pedestrian

was forced to cross .over the deep ditch on a board, usually

placed near the entrance to a saloon. Children who walked

in the ditches when dry remember them to have been as high

as their heads. Stories relating to the open ditches are

numerous. People were knocked off, sometimes fell off in

a fight emanating from a saloon:

They had planks from the saloon sidewalk across the ditch so they could get out to their horses and wagons. Of course, they would fall off and all the kids would run and laugh at them. (15, p. 7)

Another account is much the same:

There were bridges across it, and they had drunks fall off of them, but I don^t remember that anyone got drowned. It is a wonder that they didn't. (22, p. 9)

Not all such accidents were directly related to oil men, their fights or their drinking habits. An informant recalled her own trepidation at crossing the ditch and re­ membered also seeing a lady with a baby buggy upset into the ditch, "but that was the way it was done then." (23, p. 2)

The saloons in Cygnet lasted many years beyond those in many of the other small oil towns. In the July 15, 1886 edition of the Sentinel, the county newspaper published in Bowling Green, several temperance articles appeared which, 49 along with some consecutive issues, indicated that small

towns such as Weston were voting themselves dry. The WCTU

was quite active and reacted with irate criticism to the

claim that the small towns needed the saloons to attract

local farming trade. That the farmer needed a place to

imbibe was indignantly denounced as a false defense used

to condone an immoral and unnecessary activity. However,

in Cygnet and Bowling Green and a few of the other oil towns

the saloons and dance halls lived on, according to a former

driller, until just before World War I. (51, p. 18)

An informant describing the village of Welker, later called Galatea, a town which died when the oil boom was over, recalled that the town had seventy-five houses and the fol­ lowing businesses:

There was a barber shop, a grocery, a saloon, and many sights such as men getting drunk as the saloons ran night and day. A man by the name of Michner lived on the north side of the Baltimore and Ohio tracks. The men had to cross in front of his house to go to the other saloon. They kept a path well worn down about ten feet from the porch, Michner’s porch. At that time, the men that you could see were all kinds and characters. Men and women used to come from Findlay down there with cabs and two horses and go to the saloon. (38, p.'.l) Not all towns had successful saloons, as another in­ formant related in the story of the only saloon every built in Mungen:

Some men from Cygnet came and built a saloon across the railroad from the hotel. They opened up the saloon one evening and it burned down before morning. There were no more built. Mungen didn't have a saloon. (23, P-3) 50

The information in this text is interesting in view of the

fact that Mungen was platted by Philander McCrory, born in

the old McCrory Tavern, the only habitation of white settlers

between Findlay and Perrysburg, a long fifty mile trail

through wilderness in the days before any settlement except

Perrysburg existed in Wood County. The tavern had purposes more important than offering stimulants to the traveler, as a Jerry City informant recalled, having heard the story from a great-uncle born at the location of the tavern:

Well, this great-uncle that I mentioned a little while ago was born out here at the junction of the Cygnet Road and the Dixie Highway. It [the tavern] stood on the northeast corner. It was the only stop between Findlay and Perrysburg at the time it was built. Later there was a tavern at Portage and later one at Bowling Green. I can remember this great-uncle telling about the Indians coming and buying tobacco and other things that they needed and that were avail­ able at the time. The stage coach came by. . . . The McCrory Tavern had a large trade in those early days because there was no other place to stop. It was not unusual for people who were driving oxen to put up there for a day or two or more to rest the oxen because there was no road through the woods, only a trail that was muddy and filled with water holes in spring and summer. It never dried up until long in the fall. . . . Mungen was built and laid out by Philander McCrory who was born in the McCrory Tavern. The Dewey Stave Company had a big saw mill at Mungen and the railroad came through because they had an outlet for their prod­ uct. McCrory built a store there and sold especially to the Grange He laid out the village of Mun- gen as it is today, The lots were laid out and recorded by McCrory. (42, pp. 8-10)

The saloons had a thriving business on those towns which had not become prohibitionary, and certainly the oil men wore a path to the doors during their off-tour hours 51 as they, sought recreation from their rough and demanding

occupation. It is interesting to note the present attitude

of informants concerning the saloons of the oil era. Gen­

erally the saloons were considered a natural part of the oil

business and were considered a part of the life of that

era: "That’s the way it was." At that time many of the

town residents avoided the rough oil men’s saloons and

children were taught to stay away from them:

I think they had pretty good law and order there. I can't recall how many saloons because I was kind of small while they were doing their land-office business. We were always sort of taught to stay away from them and pass by but not loiter out in front of them. That was the fetching up we had at that time. (40, p. 7)

Recreation was of several types. The oil men en­

joyed a good fight any time: "Cygnet was a rather rough

place in those days. There used to be a fight there almost

every day but it wasn’t too bad at that." (19, p. 2)

These fights were vicious and brutal, but seldom vindictive.

Rather they were to prove the strength and virility of the better man, and they ended on friendly though bloody terms.

This code was not always followed, however. Stories of local shootings and knifings occur, particularly in towns with the notoriety of Cygnet. (22, p. 9; 57, p. 3) A retired preacher who grew up in Cygnet described the town during the oil boom:

They talk about the wild andwodLly West, and some of the boys went west. I said if the West is any wilder than Cygnet, then I am going east. (22, p. 9)

Another informant was raised in the area, the daughter 52 of a head sawyer in Custar, Ohio. Her family was established

in the area and her father employed in the chief industry

before the oil boom. Her husband had come from Pennsylvania

as an oil worker. She described Cygnet’s reputation as an

oil town:

Cygnet was the toughest place in the country. . . . Cygnet was tough because the oil men came from the East. There were thirteen saloons. Most of the oil men came from Pennsylvania. (23, p. 1)

Thieves were not unknown in oil towns crowded with transients:

When I was a kid Dad would leave me in the buggy to watch the team. While you were blanketing one horse and would try to blanket the other horse, the other horse didn’t have any blanket . . . you had to watch them, you had to be right there! (17, p. 8)

The saloons were not the sole reason for Cygnet's

nor other oil towns’ reputations. Abundant evidence is

available on numerous local bawdy houses frequented by oil

men and other residents. The records of the town council

in Cygnet for the decade of the 1890’s frequently concern

fines for unseemly conduct levied against visitors and the women who occupied the "sporting houses." The problem be­

came so widespread that the council finally proposed to

legalize the business, but quickly changed its proposal when reminded that such an action would be contrary to state

law. The records and the newspapers of the time carry accounts of the bawdy houses such as the following which occurred in the September 1, 1900 issue of the Wood County Democrat: 53 Bertha Buchanan was held to the grand jury on a $1000 bail, on a charge of procuring a female under 18 years to enter a house of ill fame at the Cygnet Club. Miss Foller, in response to an advertisement, called on Mrs. Buchanan. The latter told her of a fine posi­ tion open at the Cygnet Club as a waitress. The girl, who is but sixteen years old, went and told her sister- in-law. Mrs. Foller's suspicions were aroused, and she went to see Mrs. Buchanan, pretending that she wanted a place. She was satisfied that the scheme was to trap innocent girls, but agreed to go, saying she had to go for her clothes. She went with her husband to the police station and told what she had learned. Mrs. Buchanan, after her arrest, said she was employed by a Mrs. Cole to get girls for her Cygnet House, and had taken two girls from Toledo about two weeks ago. She did not deny that they were to be led into evil ways. A Cygnet resident who later lived in one of the

houses described a local incident typical of the oil man’s

horseplay humor:

The property used to be owned and operated as a sporting house. When they were run out of the place, my dad bought the property as we had rented the ad­ joining farm. . . . Q: What was the story about the time the fellows lined up the cannon and shot it through the sporting house? A: I didn’t see any of that but I saw the place the next morning as I walked up the railroad track to work. . . . Q: From what place did they shoot the cannon? A: They had a gun just for making noise. It was a short gun and used for celebrations as the Fourth of July. It belonged to someone around the city. Q: They shot it through the house? A: Yes, it shot a hole about so big! I think about all they had for ammunition was some gravel but that might have crippled a lot of people. They had watered the gravel down because you could see it plastered over the woodwork. (46, p. 3)

Eventually the businesses died of their own accord when the oil population moved on or sometimes were driven out by irate townspeople, though not during the heyday of 54

the oil boom.

Many legitimate businesses thrived in the oil towns.

A contemporary account of Cygnet as an oil town recreates the

aura of life at that time:

Cygnet, Ohio, can truly claim to be a typical oil town. It is the only place where the Pennsylvania "born and bred" oil regionite, adrift in the Buckeye State, can find anything that looks like home. The town is built after the latest style of "oil country architecture" with its rough board houses lining both sides of a business street and ornamented with promi­ nently lettered signs bearing such legends as the "Keystone Restaurant," "Oil Well Supply Store," "Hotel," "Billboard Hall," "Saloon," etc., forming a varied collection, in which the last named place, by the way, takes a conspicuous part. Cygnet is the most important town in the oil field. It was laid out two years ago, upon the beginning of oil development, but when it came to establishing a post office, it was found that the name which had been decided upon belonged to a town in another part of the state. The name Cygnet was cho­ sen because in the Black Swamp Country there were swans. A Cygnet is a baby swan. It is an enterprising little place. It supports a weekly paper, the Cygnet Gusher, an opera house is being built.1

Cygnet, Jerry City, Galatea, Portage, Bloom Center,

Ducat, Rudolph, Hammansburg, Mungen, Wayne, Bradner, North

Baltimore, Trombley and still more oil towns were established at every crossroad and railroad crossing. The smaller villages may have contained only a post office and general store with a scattering of houses. Slightly larger towns had a hotel, saloon, churches, barber shop, oil business to supply the derricks with materials, or the huge Galatea

Refinery to treat and ship the oil, general stores, glass factories in Galatea and North Baltimore, schools, wagon shops, grist mills/blacksmith shops, pool hall, perhaps a 55 bank, undertaker and furniture store, harness shop, opera house, and always a livery stable because horses were essen­ tial to life in that era. The following story begins with a description of the social importance of the livery stable and then continues by emphasizing the philosophy of many men living then, particularly oil men, concerning the admi­ ration for physical strength and application of a direct approach to any problem:

The old livery stable used to be a Sunday gathering place for everybody. On Saturday night, that is where all the fights started and that is where they terminated. It was nothing unusual on Saturday night to see a fight or two there. They had good horses in those days and there were good horsemen in those days, such as John Klingensmith and Billy Stubbins. All those old men of those days knew horse flesh and they knew how to handle it. I remember one time they brought a horse here that no one could master. They had him in a box stall in the livery barn there and they got Billy Stubbins to come down there to put a bridle on that horse and get him out of the stall. He crawled over the top of the stall and the horse just reared up right after him. Billy had about half a ball bat in his hand and he came down on that horse’s head with that bat that just about put him down on his knees. He reared up again and Billy gave him another one and he did put him down on his knees that time and Billy jumped right on his head. Billy got the bridle on him and gave him another crack on the head and in ten or fifteen minutes he led the horse out docile as a kitten. I can remember that very well. That is just a little illustration as to what went on in those days as far as horsemen were concerned. (41, p. 7)

In this anecdote and others the expert horse trainer was remembered both by name and by his manner and method of horse training. Houses in oil towns were built quickly and cheaply. 56

Surprisingly some were substantial enough to be used yet today. An informant from Cygnet told of her father’s five room house, built for $150 in three days, and still standing

The description of another house built before the oil boom in Hammansburg by the town’s founder and the informant’s father is a vivid contrast to the hasty construction of the oil era:

... he went into the forest and selected the trees that he wanted cut up into lumber for this house for my mother. It was all forest as this was part of the Black Swamp. It was a four gable house. For years it was the biggest house in town. It isn't particularly big. I think it had eleven rooms in it, but eleven rooms was a pretty good sized house in those days. It is so well built. You see, my father put in a solid walnut trim, black walnut with maple wainscoting. The upstairs isn't a full story. The ceilings are • all like this and that means closets. They opened into closets on both sides of each of the four rooms like that. In the closets you could see how the house was built. You open up the door and the beams which are now two by fours were big beams like this. Q: . Were the beams twelve inches? A: Big solid beams, don't you see, and that is the way the house was built. (4, pp. 3-4)

An oil man, recalling the town of Rudolph as a crude mail drop for oil workers, described some early architecture, the first post office building: Rudolph to me was a rail fence corner where we got out the mail. Rudolph was only a crossroads where the teams would come up through to go this way and thataway at the crossroads. When I left there they was just beginning to build a few little shacks down through there. They'd already started to build quite a godd post office. But the post office they had there us tool dressers helped to build that. Do you know the kind of roof it had on? It had a roof made out of basswood bark. Basswood is a timber that grows in the 57 woods and you can peel the bark off. It’s kinda tough bark. That was the kind of roof that we put on it, out of basswood bark. And it was just big enough so that two or three people could stand in it if it was raining when theydd go down after the mail. It was never locked. There was a door with an old shoe sole on it for hinges. We would open it up, swing it shut, set a stick agin it, to hold it shut, and then when the mailman would come along, he would put our mail in there. Our names was on it. Later, whatever went out our direction, we'd take it along with us. We took the mail out and went on about our business. A man who picked up the mail after the mailman came would get the mail for that district or place. That was the size of Rudolph. Rudolph has built up. You probably remember forty-five years of it, quite a little town built up there, but, you see, I was out of there for several years before that; a long time before that I was away from there. (24, pp. 14-15)

The oil boom brought a greatly increased population to Wood County, thus creating many new post offices and eventually rural mail delivery, considered a great improve­ ment by both oil men and local landowners and farmers.

Many unusual stories came out of this early mail delivery.

The oil men gave the mail carrier an added chore:

The man picked up the mail at this little store at Digby. He carried it around that angling road. As he did that, the mailman used to carry people’s washings, so he would bring the mail and the washings. There had begun to be oil wells at that time and there would be many washings as well as mail. Sometimes he came just in a two wheel sulky when the roads were bad. (33, p. 3)

Oil men also received mail in haphazard fashion as they moved from well to well, working the area:

I'll tell you how we got our mail. I was drilling a well not far from Rudolph where there was a picket fence. When the mail carrier came through with his 58 bag, he would raise the corner of the picket fence, put the mail under it, and lay the corner in place. When we got around to it, the mail came over to where we were working. (24, p. 1)

The mail carrier depended on horse and wagon or i buggy for his occupation, as well as on foot travel. Mail

was delivered in fair weather often on foot along an

eighteen or twenty mile route, a long day’s walk. A Rudolph-

Digby area mail carrier used a two wheel cart and a pair of

mules. Winter delivery caused additional discomfort which

was eased by a heated buggy:

... he had a rough time! In the summer he didn't have it too bad but through the winter he had a rough time. He had a little stove in his enclosed buggy. . . . That was the only way that he could keep warm. There were many days that he wouldn’t get in until four or five o’clock at night. (42, pp. 10-11)

Horses also suffered discomfort carrying the mail.

A woman who began her career as mail carrier at age fourteen

around 1900 described the horse's attitude toward the newly

opened street car line:

Well, it was an old horse that would jog along pretty good but when we got to the street car track in Mermill, there had been a street car that had passed only a short time before. I allowed the horse to step on the rail, and the horse jumped completely across. So every time we again got to that certain spot, the horse would start to run and you couldn’t hold her. She would run and jump clear across that place on the track. The horse had had an electrical shock from it! (62, p. 1)

Other women also became mail carriers, usually ob­ taining the position from a man who needed to be on the farm doing seasonal work or from a man who had found employment elsewhere. Spring planting demanded hours of work from the • 59 farmer while his wife or daughter carried the mail.

Eventually the oil population moved on and post

offices were consolidated as towns disappeared. Routes

lengthened when the early automobile came into use carrying

the mail. Most post offices were moved out of the general

store into separate facilities. At that time, however, stone

roads were only beginning to be constructed, and muddy roads

caused the mail carrier to return to the use of horse and

buggy for much of the year. Dependable automobiles and

good roads were part of the era which followed the oil boom

in Wood County.

Because travel was difficult, three or four miles

to a general store was a long distance for rural residents.

Instead of depending entirely on trips to these stores

in the oil towns, residents often relied on the peddlers’

packs and wagons.

There were several types of peddlers: the tin peddler,

the Jewish pack peddler, and the huckster and butcher wagons. The tin peddlers’ wagon was a high wagon with tin dippers and pans hanging on the sides. The method of trade was described

in this manner:

Tin peddlers came and gathered up produce and rags, but not papers, and traded their wares for what they wanted. That was their business. The tin wasn’t worth carrying home. (66, p. 5)

The pack peddler usually came out of the city of Toledo carrying two or three large grips or cases of merchandise 60 on his back. A well remembered pack peddler was-Peddling

Mary, described by a Cygnet informant:

Oh, well, she came out of Toledo. And she used to stay overnight with my grandmother. And we would see her coming and we would say to my grandma, "Well, Grandma, if you don’t buy anything, let' her show her things." She’d have a couple of great big grips, those kind that stretch up and up, you know. They're made of canvas. . . . And she was nice and clean. Grand­ mother wouldn’t have kept her if she hadn’t been. And she peddled from house to house with that pack on her back. Q: What did she sell? A: Oh, she would have table clothes and towels and handkerchiefs and combs and buttons and thread and all kind of stuff like that. (35, p. 7)

The huckster wagon brought groceries: "He would

stock his wagon with coffee and sugar and prunes and raisins

and crackers and everything you could think of. And peddle

them through the country." (35, p. 8) The huckster wagon might also sell meat, but usually the butcher wagon special­

ized in that trade, supplying the family larder during the

seasons when home butchering was not practiced.

The little oil towns were all flourishing, busy places during the height of the oil boom. An informant raised in

Bloom Center philosophized about the effect of oil on the towns: "Oil brought much money into the area, oil made it bloom for a while, and eventually oil made it die out." (11, p. 4). On almost every town lot was an oil derrick. Resi­ dents spoke often of climbing a derrick and counting over a hundred producing wells in a square mile, of "wells so thick you could almost stomp from one derrick to another, 61

Above: CYGNET IN THE 1890’S. White clouds are wisps of steam from boilers. People lived in any kind of house that could be erected quickly. As one old timer said,"The far­ ther south you went, the rougher it got and I lived in the last house. Above: CYGNET MACHINE SHOP. Oil tools were fabri­ cated and repaired here. 1912.

Right: HAMMANSBURG, 1904. A typical oil town of shanties and derricks. 62

right in this community," of continuous board walks connec­

ting communities for miles, so closely were the derricks

clustered in the oil field. Jerry City, Cygnet, and North

Baltimore had hundreds of producing wells within their

villages. Derricks were left in-.place after the well came

in to pull the tubing out to clean it of paraffin or to

remove the tubing from a spent well.

Throughout the length and breadth of an oil field, the rank fumes of oil and gas constantly assailed the resi­ dents. The odor was so prevalent, in fact, that a resident raised in oil country thought the air smelled peculiar in agricultural Huron County, Ohio, where his family moved when he was a' boy. Later he discovered that the peculiar odor was that of oil and gas in his native county. A resi­ dent with an eighty-five year perspective of oil field work succinctly described the fumes: "It smelled as a real oil field would." (53, p. 5) Some families found the fumes so offensive that they moved to other parts of Ohio.

Particularly memorable to residents of local towns were several innovations which occurred in the oil days.

Among these were the first ice houses, banks, and electric power plants. The ice was delivered along established routes by horse and wagon. It was dug from a pond or quarry. Huge chunks were stored in a building packed and layered with sawdust and served the ice box owner throughout the summer season. (4, p. 6; 66, pp. 1-2) 63 Few banks were established in the small oil towns

before World War I. In fact, the barber at Mermill served

as a local money lender:

That fellow always had a bushel of, money. If I were short of money and wanted to buy something but didn’t have the money to pay for it, we could go in there and borrow money from him. He would charge us six per cent interest. That was over eighty years ago. (24, p. 4)

In addition, the barber charged the "awful price" of a

quarter for a haircut and a shave.

Once established, banks were not always successful.

In both North Baltimore and Jerry City the local banks were

robbed and thus caused to flounder or to consolidate with

a larger bank. (66)

Both Cygnet and North Baltimore were communities

which had power plants early in the twentieth century.

In each case the plants were individually owned by a local

person particularly interested in community progress and welfare. In Cygnet the plant was owned by R. A. Hughes,

the banker. A former oil worker had a part in its operation:

We had a few street lights. Hughes had a little power plant. I ran it, the power plant, for about three months. It was located back of where the bank is now and about the middle of the block where the railroad has side tracks. They had a few lights on the street, and there were several dwellings there that were lighted. I don’t know just how many. About all they had was about a twenty-five volt at that time. The generator was about--not more than fifty kilowatts. Q: They would run the light plant just at night? A: Yes, from dark to daylight. That’s the way it started and stopped. They took the time when the sun set. (46, p. 6)

I 64 In North Baltimore the power plant was owned by Dr.

Henry, who also built the local opera house. As in Cygnet

the electricity was available only at night. A housewife

recalled the early electric light fixtures in her home:

When I came here as a bride, we had a string down here in this front room with a bulb on the end of it, also in the dining room and the living room and in the parlor, if you please! (4, p. 8)

The informant of the above text told an amusing anecdote

which began with a reference to the available electricity’

and early automobile driving:

I was wanting to drive but my husband said, "You will hurt yourself." I said, "I don’t think so." I had my baby at the time. He said, "If you want to drive, you can drive but I don’t want to take Mary out!" I thought that if I would go I would want to take my baby with me. So something funny happened. There was no electricity in North Baltimore in the day time, just at night. I didn't want to wash or iron at night and I wanted to use the electricity. Dr. Henry had built the plant and electricity was available just at night. So my husband said, "We will get a washing machine and we will have a gas engine." So he started the gas engine always and went to the office and I would do the washing. Then, so he said one day that he couldn’t see why you can’t run this gas engine. And I said, "I think I could and if I could run this engine, then I could run the car engine, can’t I?" He never asked me to run the engine again. (4, PP- 1-2) The informant said that she became the third lady driver in

North Baltimore, regardless of her husband’s objections.

The modern innovations in ice plants, banks, and electric plants, coupled with a civic pride which created opera houses as cultural centers, were brought forth by 65 residents’ conviction that oil had brought permanent wealth

and modern technology to the oil communities. The glass

factories in North Baltimore which made window glass, bot­

tles and pitchers of blown glass, lantern globes and chim­

neys; the brick refinery at Galatea; the stave companies;

match companies; lime kilns; car factories; sucker rod

factories; street car barns; and oil refineries were prom­

ises of a solid financial future for the area. It was

expected that dozens of small oil towns would eventually

combine to form a huge city, larger and more important than

Toledo, Cleveland or Columbus. The people felt they were pioneers in a great new era in America. Oil royalties, usually paid at one sixth of the gross production on the

land, brought riches to landowners, enabling them to build beautiful homes and educate their children in colleges.

The labor and struggle of eeking out an existence on the rich but wet Black Swamp land was supplanted by a monthly royalty check which greatly increased general prosperity.

As a local resident said, 'There were many people here at one time. I think we had a town that reached from Bairdstown to Rudolph and from Six Points to North Baltimore. It was really all town. There were little settlements here and there and boarding houses. If it had been a time when people could travel, could have leveled off the ground and drained it, it would have made a fabulous city, wouldn’t it? (40, pp. 18-19)

It might have been a fabulous city if it had retained the large population of the oil boom. But the industries which 66

WOOD COUNTY. OHIO LOCATION OF DISCONTINUED POST OFFICES

LEGEND

______POLITICAL BOUtlOAPILS

• POST OFFICE LOCATION 8 NAMES

MU 7O«*S»» UM »«•• wo tr *CL*'N rutr,,» UTte rU|Tc^(), *4» COu’t’ *'i7C*rC*L • ocicrr

THE CENTER OF THE WOOD COUNTY OIL FIELD was located in the cluster of towns in the lower center of the map. 67

would have made the city disappeared one by one with the

decline of the oil era. Struck by lightning or dismantled

or simply abandoned, they have been supplanted by stone

quarries, farm-related businesses, and in some cases whole

towns have been returned to the farmer’s plow. Oil is

pumped in small quantities;^a reminder of what was the

richest oil field in Ohio.

III. GAS IN WOOD COUNTY

Gas was plentiful in Wood County during the oil boom,.

Many wells came in only as gas wells, others as "gassers"

which became oil producing. Unfortunately, the enormous

amount of gas produced in this oil field was largely wasted

or allowed tob.low in the air or burn in six to ten foot

flames at a distance from the well. Industrial uses were

not fully developed, though "free gas" became a slogan to

entire industries first in Findlay, Ohio, and then in Wood

County. As one resident commented, there was no economic need for gasoline, a by-product- at that time: Without automobiles, gasoline was only a by-product which was used for anything, as to wash overalls, clean up the station [oil gathering station], and to clean up tools. There was plenty; just go and get it by the pail­ ful. (58, p. 2) The enormous quantity of gas and oil in Wood County greatly affected the market value. Even the price of oil, then used for kerosene, lubricating oil, grease and wax, fell from over three dollars a barrel to fifteen cents a 68 barrel at one time and the oil companies refused to accept more for a period of time.

Because no profit from gas was possible, gas was easily available to every family for lighting and heating purposes. It was either free or cost a nominal fee of one dollar a year. Most farmers had at least one lighted gas pipe which threw a huge flame into the air. Such an amount of light discouraged the many chicken thieves and other untrustworthy people from entering the farm property at night. A North Baltimore lady told of an incident involving her grandmother in which robbers were deterred by gas lights in the farm yard:

The incident occurred one time in the 1890’s when there was much oil and money. Bob Smith, who owned one of the saloons in Welker, went down to Bowling Green to the court house. While he was down there, he went - over to the jail to look around. The sheriff told him that a couple of men in the jail had received a letter that day which said that three men were going to hold up a rich widow lady northeast of North Baltimore on a certain night. Bob Smith came out and told my grandmother about this. They began to get ready for the robbers. My uncle came home and got guns, revolvers, barring the doors and the windows with shutters on them. The robbers came that night! There was a well and boiler house down west of the house. My uncle lit up a big gas light there that threw the lights all over my grandmother’s buildings, both barn and house, so they could see the robbers as they came. The robbers came at three o’clock in the morning. A man who pumped the wells was up on the oil tank and was looking at the rob­ bers but he was afraid that they might corner him in the boiler house and do something rash to him, so he moved to another well. The robbers found out that they couldn’t gain anything so they went away. .(38, pp. 2-3)

The huge gas lights burned day and night, filling the 69 air with more fumes in addition to those from raw gas and

oil in the. ditches. Houses were equipped and lit with gas

lights using gas mantels which burned with a clearer, bright­

er light than the kerosene lamp. There was some danger of

dirt and oil coming through the line occasionally which

caused some trouble. There was particular danger, too, of

fire:

They would put the gas lights up here and everyone made their ceilings of muslin. Of course, if the gas was turned too high, it would set the house on fire. The old ceilings were made of muslin and papered over them. Houses burned and new houses were built, fur­ nished, and away they would go. (16, p. 2)

Gas in Wood County had one peculiar characteristic which was described in the following account:

The southern end of Wood County had a lot of gas. The eastern side didn’t have gas when the wind was from the northeast. For some reason the gas had left them. Q: That’s one of the mysteries that I’ve been wishing for someone to answer. Here we have a well say eleven hundred feet in the ground, all caged in, and you say maybe twenty or thirty or forty pounds of gas pressure and you get.a northeast wind and your gas pressure ceases. A: It never affected us west of Cygnet. Q: Now there are some wells the northeast wind affects and some the northwest wind affects. When the wind would change, you would lose gas, even a vacuum in some of their wells. A: That was true of some wells, but we were never bothered with that. It’s always been a mystery. That’s one I have never figured out. We always had so much gas--much more than we needed. We really carried a surplus. I don’t know why thht it never affected.us. (26, p. 3)

This phenomenon still is a mystery to Wood Countians. Na­ turally with gas pumped directly from well to home, the loss of gas and creation of vacuum under peculiar conditions must 70 have created some problems for the person depending on gas for heat and light. The above informant, for example, used gas for five outside lights, to heat three homes, and to run three gas engines. Though no serious accidents caused by gas explosions in homes were reported in the field data, the danger was recognized.

The gas engine to pump oil replaced the steam engine in the latter part of the 1890’s. Once the gas engine was understood and mastered by the pumper and other workmen, it was recognized as more efficient than the steam engine, a cumbersome and expensive form of power which required indi­ vidual boilers for each well and constant movement of engine and boilers by teamsters through the mud. However, it took some years to perfect the gas engine and to educate men on how to operate and repair it. One trying but humorous situ­ ation reportedly resulted from experimenting with this new invention:

Determined to overcome the obstinancy of this in­ animate object, an oil man in Bowling Green hit upon an ingenious device. His observations showed him that the greatest difficulty lay in starting. To overcome this he turned to the lowly mule. Drilling a hole in each fly wheel, he attached a mule by lines and then instead of starting the engine he started the mule. The first part of the device worked according to plan, but disaster followed swiftly. In his excitement he forgot to unhitch the mule. Slowly, and then with increasing momentum, the wheels turned, drawing the mule in with each evolution [sic]. Frantically the owner took the other end, and frantically pulled in the opposite direction, which is probably one of the few historic records of a tug-of-war between man and machine in which the mule was merely the pawn in the game. The struggle was soon over--the machine won. The FINDLAY’S FIRST ANNIVERSARY of the application of natural gas to the mechanical arts. View of natural gas illumina­ tion arches, June 8, 1887. KARG GAS WELL, Findlay. Informants claimed the illumination from the piped and lit well could be seen nine to twenty miles.

THE AUTOMOBILE brought the first large scale demand for gasoline. This was the first ser­ vice station in the area, c. 1913.

EARLY SERVICE STATION

Photos courtesy Marathon Oil Co 72

gas engine was here to stay.2

The gas engine, once established, provided some use

for the huge amount of gas produced, most of which was

extravagantly wasted before a market was established.

Wood County, following the example set in Findlay during

the 1887 celebration of the discovery of gas, had hundreds

of gas lights over the countryside burning for no other

reason than the interest and amusement of residents. In

Findlay the entire city had been lit with a series of huge

arches, each holding a banner proclaiming slogans of the

city's potential and progress. In Wood County plans were

made to light the Findlay Pike from Findlay to Toledo.

Apparently this plan never materialized. Another innovative

feature for using gas did materialize in the form of a

lighted race track. Horse racing was a popular sport of

the day, probably equalled only by the fame of local base­

ball teams. Normally, outdoor recreation and entertainment

ended with the sunset. Small wonder that the new nighttime

sport caused a great deal of excitement and interest.

IV. TIME FOR LEISURE

Several racing tracks existed in Wood County. A half-mile track on the McIntire farm in Rudolph and another

track in Cygnet were two of these. And if no track were nearby when two contestants vied to see who had the faster horse, the riders resorted to a more easily available medium: 73 "right down the middle of the road," as one informant

replied when asked if there were many tracks. The sport

became so popular, in fact, that men began to buy horses

solely for racing purposes. These were kept in the local

livery stable in Cygnet where they raced. Purchasing a horse for this purpose was considered an extravagance unless

some other use was also found for the horse, as a Rudolph

lady indicated:

They used to be a race track right over here on the McIntire farm. We moved back there, we lived there, but course they wasn't a racing that then. But there was a race track right here on the McIntire and Wes McIntire owned it and he had race horses. And then Franny McIntire, brother to Wes', took it over and he had wonderful race horses there. And there was a race track there for a good many years and it was yet when we lived back there after I was married. I was the mother of, let me see, one, two three, four children when we moved there, and that race track was still there. Course they didn't have no races on it then any more. But they used to have regular races there. People'd come in from there, and Franny McIntire had the race'.’horses and they would race there. We bought a race horse of him once. She was a lovely buggy horse, too, and so finally McIntire was a justice of peace and he married us. It will be seventy years this December. And when we bought this horse, I didn’t want Truman to buy it. I didn't think we could afford it, you know. I believe he got him for fifty dollars. It was a lovely horse, though, but I thought that was a big price. So when we rented the house then and moved into his house, he owned it when we lived back there, and I said now when he talked Truman into buying the horse, I said, "You married us and you might part us," I said, "I don't know." But he surely didn't. We had a happy home. We were happy there. That’s all the amusements that people had around here. (5, p. 13)

Horse races and Sunday pleasure drives, both activi­ ties dependent on the large horse population which existed 74 eighty years ago, were very popular during the oil era.

So, too, were baseball games. Each of the small oil towns

had its own team: "Every one of these, whistle stops had

one. This was their recreation that they had." (44, p. 10)

Players and spectators alike approached the game with great

enthusiasm and loyalty. As one resident said, "People would get all excited just as they do now--whoop and go at

it, fight. They had quite a time!" (51, p. 3) Reputations

of particular teams and famous local players are retained

in the texts of several informants. Six Points, a small lumber town bordering the oil field, had an outstanding team whose chief rival was the Jerry City team. As with oil lore in which Jim Jeffries, world champion prize fight­ er, was remembered as a tank builder from Hammansburg, a local baseball player was remembered for his later fame in the big leagues: "We had one of the great outfielders of all times from Cygnet that played with New York. He was

Dusty Miller. He was one of the great outfielders of all time!" (46, p. 7) In a text which indicates the popularity of baseball and its importance as a recreational activity, an informant recalled also an unfortunate accident on a Sunday game years ago:

We had a big league baseball team in our town at one time. At least we called them a league team. The baseball diamond was directly across from my father’s livery stable. We rarely lost a game although the team used to play teams from Toledo and other parts of the 75 country. One incident that I recall was one in which a player, Joe Martin, hit a colored fellow on the head and killed him. When Joe hit the fellow, the ball game stopped that Sunday! Usually there would be a game every day of the week and Sundays, too. (46, p. 1)

In much of the lore, the spectacular incident was z especially memorable and the narration of the incident re­

called also the general context of the topic under dis­

cussion, in this case, the baseball game. Though not so

spectacular an event, another informant recalled the out­

standing ball games of the era and the humorous image of

a traveling girls' team which came to play dressed in

bloomers.

A. Popular Culture

Popular culture in a Wood County oil town took many forms. The social backbone for most organizations and the site of most organized entertainment was the opera house.

In Cygnet and North Baltimore, two of the larger oil towns, completion of the local opera houses was a proud day for residents. At this center of community activity clam bakes, oyster suppers, home talent plays, graduation exercises,

Christmas programs, socials, and dances were held. The opera house also served traveling troups of players and road shows which stayed for a week at a time, living in a local hotel: "There was one troup called LeMonde Jennelle.

We had many good shows there. We paid ten cents for l - -s-'.- 76 admission. We went early to a matinee to see the show.”

(54, p. 4)

Another lady recalled her desire to see a play,

"Peck’s Bad Boy":

The weather was so bad, and sometimes the horses couldn’t get out. Then my brother took me on his back, and we went over in the field where there was sod. Wearing boots, he took his shoes with him and carried me on his back for three quarters of a mile from our house to the train so I could come up to see "Peck’s Bad Boy." . . . The show that I saw up at Henry’s Opera House was a legitimate show on the stage. I wanted to see it so badly that my brother saw that I got to see it. My, that was a long time ago! (4, pp. 7-8)

Every summer a dozen of these shows came to town.

Particularly exciting was the day the Kinsey Komedy Kompany

arrived with its main comedienne, Madge Kinsey, because,

as residents related, they always gave a good performance.

Summer also brought traveling tent shows, medicine

shows, street fairs, and circuses. Medicine shows provided

entertainment by singers or comedians in a nightly show

given in the local opera house, a hall or a tent. While admission was free, the business became profitable when the performers began selling the medicine, elixir or tonic.

Some informants believe strongly in the good quality of remedies and cordials for children which were sold by these men. The medicine guaranteed to cure anything sold easily to people who today vouch for its curative powers. One such show was described in this way: There used to be a medicine show in Bairdstown. It 77 was located up overhead of the drug store in a hall. With the show there were colored boys selling medicine reputed to take care of corns. The boys would shout, "Get the medicine to take corn off the cob!" Q: Were the shows free? A: Those shows were free but the medicine that the people would buy of them would be a dollar and a half a pint. That’s all there was to it! (19, p. 1)

The procedure was for the medicine man to attract a crowd

by putting on a show, telling jokes or singing. Once peo­

ple had gathered, the showman would jump in and sell medicine

as he went through the crowd.

Circuses were another form of tent show which came

every summer to the small towns in the oil field. The

exotic animals and enticing side shows drew the attention

and interest of many people. Often the admission fee for

the circus found its way too soon into the hands of the

swindling side show barkers:

One of the things that I remember as a kid perhaps . . . eleven years old was a fellow out in front of a tent that said, "Come in, boy. This is very educa­ tional! Something you’ll see but once in a lifetime. It’s the nature of the show!" Our curiosity got the best of us and we paid a dime to go in and when we got in there, there was a fellow sitting on a nail keg whittling a white pine stick. He would say, "Always whittle from you, boys, and you’ll never get yourself cut!" It wasn't what we thought it would be. (42, pp. 12- 13)

A few years later the tent shows came offering new

fare, a moving picture, definitively described by an infor­ mant :

I saw a moving picture in a tent that came to Hammansburg. It was in a tent show that used to come to Hammansburg every year. That was the first 78 moving picture and a forerunner to the movie. They showed a girl that looked like she was lying on a ceiling. Pretty soon she started rolling, and she just started rolling down the wall to the floor in order to show the picture was moving. In the picture there was a fire department, a hook and ladder company with two lovely white horses. It showed the horses running. That was a thrill, don’t you see, to see the horses running. Then they would show different things that looked like it was ¿.coming out to hit you. That was the first moving picture that we ever had. There were moving pictures, but no moving picture houses at that time. (4, pp. 7-8)

Apparently, the early moving pictures were .not too successful, for according to another man who invested $700, his hard earned savings from oil field work, as half interest in a moving picture business in Bowling Green, the venture was not successful. (11, p. 2)

Another regular, though illegal, recreation of the oil field men was the cock fights held near the Galatea

Refinery:

Well, those was held down here at Galatea where the tower is in the southwest corner. There was a ball diamond in there with a board fence around. They would run a special street car from North Baltimore to Gala- tea. I. mind when the street car was built and they had a bunch of buildings there. Of course, they got raided a few times. That finally put them out of commission. I sneaked in on a couple of them. Q: Were the fights illegal? A: Oh, my, yes. Q: Did they charge admission for that? A: I mind of them charging the adults a dollar. Well, a dollar was quite a bit those days. I sneaked in and got put out several times. (7, pp. 2-3)

Several other events brought regular summer enter­ tainment to local residents. The county fair was anticipated all summer, especially for the exciting horse races. Families 79 arrived by wagon, tied the horses aside it and fed them

grain, brought a picnic to have in the grove, and went off

to "have the best time in the world." (17, p. 12)

Every summer the county was the scene of a Negro

camp meeting held near Rudolph in a grove along the rail­

road. People from Toledo as well as many Wood County peo­

ple attended the revival. A singer memorably impressed

a Rudolph informant who gave the following reminiscence:

I remember as a child that I fell in love with one of the Negro singers who was a beautiful young woman, and I was impressed with her singing. I know that my folks used to laugh and kid me a lot about falling in love with a little Negro girl. They had good attendances and were faithful to what they were doing . . . whites and everybody came. (39, p. 14)

The informant stressed the importance of sincerity in this revival camp meeting which was attended by most of the neighborhood people.

The Negro in Wood County has always been a distinct minority. So few were they in number during the oil era, even as oil workers, that anecdotes including references to Negro are few. Raconteurs were often unsure of the propriety of their terms for Negro. The woman informant above was the only person to use the term "Negro." "Col­ ored" was far more prevalent. Mentinn was made of a Negro barber who worked in several of the oil towns. An oil story involved a Negro who as landowner became rich from oil. The informant hesitantly addressed the man as "Nigger 80

Carter," to which he appended the parenthetical "I don’t

know if I should call him that. He was a colored gentleman."

Though some shows used men in blackface, at least one

medicine show employed "colored boys" to sell the remedy.

The visiting ball teams occasionally had Negro players,

though no local Negro players were mentioned. In this rural

Ohio county few Negroes reside even today. The largest

city in the county, Bowling Green, has only a small number.

As during the oil boom, there are many minority groups in the

urban Toledo area, twenty-five miles north of Bowling Green.

Since the time of the oil boom, in fact, in the past twenty years another minority-group has begun to make permanent residence in the county. These are the Mexican Americans who are employed primarily in agricultural work, caring for and harvesting crops. Some families have left the transient employment to find more stable positions having made their homes in the area. Their degree of acceptance in the com­ munity is varied, as is the acculturation process of differ­ ent families.

B. Holidays

Three holidays were quite memorable to informants: the Fourth of July, Halloween and Christmas. By far the most important, according to attitudes represented in the field data, was the Fourth of July which was celebrated in a more enthusiastic and patriotic way than it is today. 81 Fireworks, though not as elaborate as today’s exhibitions,

were collected as a bonus with store-boughten bread and

hoarded until the awaited day:

. . . they would get firecrackers. The bakers used to give tickets for them with the bread. The kids would save the tickets to buy firecrackers with them. They would hide them under the bed or somewhere else until the Fourth of July. Then we would have our celebration. (37, p. 8)

On the holiday a parade was held with the local band playing. Following a pattern which became established in

local lore, claim was made by an informant of having known a local man who became nationally famous. Hammansburg claimed a world champion prize fighter, Cygnet a great ball player and, as a member of the local band, a famous clarinet player:

We had a pretty good band in Cygnet at one time. We had one of the best clarinet players in America. His name was Zwivel, whose familyyran a bakery shop. This fellow had the reputation of being one of the greatest! (46, p. 16)

Just as Memorial Day was noted for its parade to the cemetery and speakers who gave the Gettysburg Address, the Fourth of July was noted for honoring the country’s patriots, at that time, the Civil War veterans, who turned out in large numbers. Following the parade crowd-pleasing exhibitions were given as part of the celebration. Cygnet at one time was known for its Fourth of July balloon ascen­ sion. Jerry City traditionally had a greased pig contest.

It also had a greased pole contest described below in an 82

WAGON DRESSED UP for the Memorial Day Parade, 1902.

Right: An 1896 photo of a ladies ’ literary organization.

Below: INTERIOR OF A general store, early 1900’s. Photos cour­ tesy Marathon Oil Co. 83

anecdote which recreates the aura of a celebration in an oil

boom town:

Back in the old days if you came into Jerry City on the Fourth of July, you'd find on the north side of the street a pole about fifty feet high cut of green timber from the woods found almost any place around the town. The pole would have the bark peeled off. On the south side of the street, there would be a similar pole. On the top side of each pole would be a ten dollar bill. The bill became the owner of anyone that climbed the pole. As. they celebrated the Fourth, all kinds of skin games would be going on throughout the town at different times and dancing would last all night long. Of course, there were many heavy drinks consumed as the town's population on the Fourth of July often ran as high as a thousand people. (46, p. 6)

The informant appended his own attitude toward the

Fourth of July and Memorial Day celebrations of that time:

"People were really patriotic in those days." The zest and enthusiasm for these holidays diminished as the population dwindled until today few of the small oil towns hold organ­ ized observances of these holidays.

Halloween chicanery traditionally has involved tipped outhouses and other'pranks. In the oil days, outhouses found their way.‘to :the main street in front of the bank. In addi­ tion, anything portable from gates to buggies found its way up the flag pole. The local schoolmaster in Cygnet served as the butt of some trickery, when his cow disappeared. She was later found upstairs in the school house where, as the teacher stated, "She didn't help the janitor any. . . . That was my cow!" (27, p. 3) 84

At Halloween parties Blind Man’s Bluff .was played, taffy pulls were held, and apples and popcorn served as the traditional treats. Jack o’lanterns were carved and lit with a lard candle:

Oh, I made a pumpkin face or two with lard candles. ... I thought it was an exciting time. We threw corn and yelled. People threatened to shoot us. We thought it was exciting but actually we didn’t do much damage. Q: What do you mean by a lard candle? A: Well, take a can lid and put lard in it with a rag in it and make a candle--just sort of an oil light. (60, p. 9)

From these accounts it would seem that the spirit of

Halloween has not changed greatly over the years.

Most of the people interviewed noted a great change in the spirit and celebration of .Christmas over the past eighty to ninety years. The celebration then was much simpler. Tree decorations, if a Christmas tree was part of the family tradition, were homemade, usually popcorn and cranberries strung. Some people decorated the tree with colored candles which were lit only when company came.

Many families did not exchange gifts, but looked forward instead to receiving oranges which they had only once a year.

Generally the attitude of the older people was that children received much less and were happier than they are now in to­ day’s more bountiful tradition. The adults also felt that the less elaborate decorations were as enjoyable or more so than today's commercially prepared splendor. 85

There were noted differences in the traditions of

Christmas during and before the oil era. Most of these

differences are accounted for by the ethnic background of

the informants, as an informant indicated in the following

description of Christmas as celebrated by Pennsylvania Dutch

and by Germans. The description began with the informant’s

recounting of his mother’s story of Christmas in her youth:

. . . she told me about their Christmas Day. They had < school on Christmas Day as any other day, but their dinner was roast quail, and what a dinner Mrs. Bailey put up for that Christmas Day. How much more we make of Christmas now. They even went to school on Christ­ mas Day! Q: Did Christmas amount to much when you were a small boy? A: Well, we always had a nice Christmas. Our folks never had a Christmas tree, but Grandfather Slotterbeck did. A tree lighted with candles to decorate it, a beautiful thing that was just about as explosive as an atom bomb, too. I marveled at the beauty of it. It was something for my eye. It seemed to me that the German side of the family rather than the Pennsylvania Dutch side had Christmas trees. The Fries never had a Christmas tree. They gave gifts and things of that sort, but they didn’t seem to run into the Santa Claus business. We hung up our stockings and got gifts and all that. Q: Did you ever use the name of St. Nicholas instead of Santa Claus? A: It had always been easier for me to say Santa Claus. I guess that I grew up with that and St. Nicholas was probably more for the eastern Germans than for us. (60, pp. 7-8)

With the passage of time most of these different traditions have disappeared, and Christmas is celebrated in like manner by the descendants of the oil boomers and original settlers. 86 C. Traditional Entertainments

When seasonal and holiday entertainment or traveling

companies were not available as a source of amusement, there were many local festivities which functioned as the basis for local social life.

In the winter people gathered for a sleigh ride and went from home to home, stopping to play the organ or piano and sing. The following discussion of sleigh riding was initiated by a reference to covered bridges in Wood County:

At that time at Rochester there was a covered bridge. Covered bridge at Scotch Ridge. . . . Course at that time the water was up, currents ran so much more that they had to make 'em so much longer. I've crossed them there at Rochester and Scotch Ridge many a time. Go out sled riding in the wintertime. Have to get out of the sled to go across cause them floors just as dry then in the wintertime as they was in the summer­ time . Q: No snow? A: Had to walk across and get in and ride. That's happened. (25, p. 5)

As happened with many informants, any activity in­ volving horses led at some time to remarks about the beauti­ ful teams. This was also true of bob sledding and sleigh riding, in which reminiscences centered around piling in a sleigh, traveling from house to house, and being pulled by a beautiful team.

Several gatherings were held in the fall--for making apple butter and saurkraut and for husking corn. The elderly people made the saurkraut while the young people popped corn 87 and ate apples, pulled taffy or danced. A favorite amuse­

ment for young men was the corn husking bee: "With the

first red ear they would find, they would get to kiss the

girls if they were any there! That was the way that we

amused ourselves. We wouldn't have known what a automobile

looked like to us then." (5, pp. 8-9)

Church ice cream and box socials were popular during

the summer months. Often the local band would play at a picnic or box social. One informant remembered an ice

cream social at which another form of music was available, produced by a new invention, the Gramophone:

The ice cream social was held in the yard of the school house. I don't recall who was giving it, but they had a graphophone [sic] there. Dave Blair had that. For five cents you could stick a hearing aid in your ear to hear a record being played . . . people gathered around there and listened to that talking machine. (60, p. 7)

Box socials were held throughout the year by various charitable organizations. A Valentine social was held annually for the benefit of the church or the school. The procedure was described as follows:

Well, the girls brought boxes. There was an auc­ tioneer who auctioned the boxes off to the boys. The boy who had the highest bid got to eat with the girl. Many times a boy would know whose box he was buying as the girl would let him know. (7, p. 4)

In addition to these entertainments gatherings were held for many other "bees" such as the quilting bee. Often women of the lodges or women's associations gathered to make quilts or perform other charitable tasks throughout 88 the community. According to one informant, these women’s groups, such as the Maccabees Lodge, were very active and performed many necessary tasks during the oil boom, but the membership and activity of the lodges declined when the oil population moved away.

Another activity encouraged by the women of the community was the literary society which held public debates and drew large crowds.

Country dances held in the home were a regular social function in Wood County. A few families in a neighborhood gathered together and danced to the music of a fiddle and a piano, sometimes joined by a banjo. At that time the dances were all square dances; later round dances were added. An informant who had been a square dance caller and was the son of a caller described the dances:

When we square danced at that time, we square danced right in the home. We had where we lived out there and the neighbors right there aside of us, about three, four families. . . .My brother he played the banjo and the Forrests down there they had the violin and guitar. We had the organ. We just came in to the end of our room. . . . Q: What were some of the square.dances? A: Well, most anything that ever came down the line--"Turkey in the Straw" .... Q: Some of the same ones now? A: Yeah, practically the same. Well, they changed. You get a little different set up on the music as we had at that time. . . . Q: Did you have things like "Bully of the Town"? A: Yes. Q: "Red River Valley"? A: Yeah. "Virginia Reel." (25, pp. 2-3) 89 As the informant described some of the dances, he mentioned also another entertainment, the play party, held

sometimes as a church function where dancing was prohibited

After recalling that fifty-seven years ago "a couple of us

sneaked down in the basement to learn to dance . . . the

two step and the fox trot," the informant rather obliquely

explained the reason;, for the play party. The text began

with a response to a question about "The Old Brass Wagon,"

a play party:

That might have been in some of them gosh darn parties that they had down there at--see, we used to go over here to Scotch Ridge Church. And, boy, if you danced, they were there. You was . . I No doubt about it. Yes, sir, and that's the reason that--. Course, I've danced many a dance down here in town hall. Fact of the matter, there ain't many places within twenty-five miles of here than I haven't danced. (25, p. 3) The church influenced some people not to dance at all, though they might, as one informant's mother did, attend the dances "to keep the rest of us straight."

Others would not dance at a church function, but danced freely at country dances held in the home. These country dances were, according to informants, wonderful family fun. They were conducted decorously. The dances prided themselves on their skill in dancing and in following the caller's most complicated directions, issued occasionally as challenges. The informant quoted above talked at length concerning the changing esthetic of square dancing and about the reasons for its diminished popularity: 90

Well, I'll tell you, this square dancing you see right now ain’t like it used to be. I’ll tell you that right, now. Cause ninety per cent of your crowd don’t pay no attention to the music. Go out and use it more for a hog wallow than--when we danced, every one of 'em made the same move. When you finished up, you finished up right to your spot. And you better cause some of those old callers, my dad especially, by God, you getter be there. Cause if you wasn’t, you was gonna get told right there. . . . Now same way with your round dancing. There ain’t no such a dance any more. Q: Pretty hard to find, isn’t it? A: Yes sir. When you went to a round dance around here, every one of 'em was going right with the music. Wasn't fooling around. You went out on the floor to dance. Didn't go out to--. Now-- Q: I don't imagine you'd appreciate being the man on the floor as much now. A: Well, they'd be a crowd get told if they's goin' wrong. I ain't tongue-tied. Q: I suppose if there's one who's not going to do it right, then you can’t enjoy it, too. A: You can't do it. And if you're doing it and doing it right, you've got every move that you make and put you right in your place when you're done. You ain't maybe on the other side of the floor when you're supposed to be back home. (25, pp. 3-4)

The reasons for the decreasing number of traditional country square dances are varied. Often the young people prefer not to dance with the older dancers. The young people are generally more interested in the popular but ephemeral music of the modern media--radio, television, and the recording industry. There are, however, an increasing number of western square dance clubs in the area whose mem­ bership is both young adults and older people. The calls, music, and techniques vary somewhat from the traditional square dance. The dancers also dress in western garb. Dances are limited to the club members, which limits participation 91 in the activity.

To residents who are not attracted to the square

dance club, there is a traditional Saturday night square

dance held in Portage, once a rough oil town boasting

several saloons and a barber shop. The square dance which

in the oil days was held in the home flourished later in many community centers but now has diminished in popularity

as people seek entertainment elsewhere.

V. SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS

Many of the social institutions of the Wood County area have changed greatly in the eighty and more years since the oil boom began. Some which were capably described and explained in the texts were not directly related to the oil boom but were part of the cultural milieu of the era. The traditions of courting, marriage, bellings, church-going, and funerals have felt the effects of a faster paced world.

Religious sects have evolved and dissolved. The educational institution begun in the one room school house so ably described by informants has struggled into becoming the consolidated districts evident in the county today. The texts below included in the analysis indicate how great the changes have been.

A. Courtship and Marriage

Saturday night dances and Sunday afternoon walks or 92 rides were traditional courting times in the oil boom days.

Courting was carried on while on sleigh rides, very often while on foot, and occasionally .in a horse and buggy rented from the livery stable. The livery stable and the black­ smith shop were vital to life in rural Ohio at the time.

The livery stable, often a gathering place, was a necessity to the courting young men:

I enjoyed the livery stable. They would curry these beautiful horses. When I was little, the young men came on Sunday to rent a horse and buggy. The buggies were very elaborate, some a stick seat, a stick seat surrey or something, and they would rent these teams or horses. Sometimes they would take a pair of horses, and they would take their girls, and all of them go riding. The surrey, of course, would hold four or five. They would crowd in and drive the country around or go see some of their^relatives. (40, p. 11)

Many of the local girls were attracted to oil men, as was the informant of the following text:

We had the original run of boy friends but I took up with a stranger that came from the East. It hap­ pened that I met him when he was dressing tools on the Corey farm, across from my grandmother's. The first time that he came to my grandmother’s home he borrowed a looking glass on the pretext that he had a cinder in his eye. The next time that .he came he wanted to borrow an ax. My grandmother said that began to look suspicious because she said they had tool chests with all those tools in them so he could have used an ax from that tool chest. That is the way I met my future husband. Q: Where did your husband come from, since you said that he was a stranger? A: He came from Bradford,Pennsylvania. . . . When my husband came here, he was seventeen years old and got off the train at Portage. He ran the seven boilers just north of Portage where he worked for the first time in the area. Q: Was he one of the old oil boomers? A: Yes, because he didn't work at anything else. (33, p. 8) 93 Generally engagements were brief and weddings simple.

For example, though the wedding of the above-quoted informant

was elaborately planned by the standards of that day to take

place in the county seat, followed by a wedding dinner at the

Ross Hotel and a surprise dinner held by relatives, only a week before the event, few people knew of the informant’s

approaching marriage:

Just a week before we were married, I went to Custar in a sleigh load. We went to an oyster supper, and I went with a young man by the name of Sam Garno. He knew about the approaching wedding because his cousin was making my wedding clothes. We had a dressmaking shop at Bays and my wedding clothes were all made. The group was laughing and kidding Sam Garno and me about my new boy friend. Very few knew I was getting married on the next Saturday. ... On the next Saturday, I was married! (33, pp. 9-10)

Most weddings were far more simple than that described above. Not many young women could have wedding clothes made or have a wedding dinner at a hotel. A visit to the justice of peace followed perhaps by a family dinner and the trip to the bride’s new home were more conventional. Honeymoons were not part of the wedding tradition for most brides in

Wood County at that time.

In another interview the same informant described her mother’s wedding:

After you leave Portage . . . there's an old stone house. . . . That was where my mother was married and the justice of peace lived there, and he said (he al­ ways called her Molly), and he said, "Molly, if you’ll learn me to square dance like you square dance," he said, "when you get married, I'll marry you for nothing." They didn’t have, as a rule, poor people didn’t have 94 big weddings like they have now. But anyway, well, she went to him and she was married in that old stone house. (35, p. 3)

A wedding tradition which has nearly disappeared is

the belling or chivaree. Some night in the first weeks of

marriage the couple was courted and tormented with noise

and occasionally with a wild ride through the countryside,

perhaps confined in a crate, following which the couple

hosted their uninvited guests to refreshments. Though bells

may have been part of the tradition at one time, tin pans

were more commonly used: "They would make a lot of^noise

and carry on with tin pans and everything else to bell the

new married couple." (59, p. 3)

B. Wakes, Watches and Funerals

A tradition which has undergone great changes in

the past eighty years is the funeral. Funerals were held

in the home, the deceased usually attended to by neighbors.

The body was laid out on a large board kept specially for

the purpose, large pennies (minted through 1857) were wrapped, wet in salt peter water, and laid on the eyes to keep them

closed. Neighbors came in and "watched" or held a wake.

(56, pp. 4-5) There is some confusion over the term wake because some informants restrict the term to a Catholic tradition while others use wake and watch interchangeably

for Protestant and Catholic traditions. 95 A century-old informant who greatly admired the

French settlers of the area described the French customs

of burial and the rural social gathering, the wake:

My God, my God, I lost my life by not taking more time off out away from my work and going out to Rudolph among the French. I liked the people so well and how I got along with them, my God, my God. Them French people when they had an old man living with them would die in the cold weather, they'd just set up, lay them in a room, something, they'd keep 'em for a week, grandfather or daddy or anybody. It'd freeze up and get stiff as a board and then they'd take 'em out and bury 'em. The French people them days right there in that country was nearly all French, they never was any nicer people than the French because they was good to you. By God, they'd have a dead man in the house where you boarded, they'd have a big family. And that family-- you'd be boarding there. And that family, you's a kid yet, and that family was gonna play a trick on you when you come home at midnight at night. They'd go and play a trick on you. Well, the old woman there, mother, she'd slip around and tell you, "Now before you go on tour, now if you see any ghosts you, why, don't you pay no attention. They're gonna gang up on you, the boys is." She'd want to tell that to us, on her own boys. But that was a kind of job they had. Why, they'd get a dead man out on the porch and get him to dance. They'd have a dance there. They used to call 'em wakes. Well, they don't have them any more. Well, that's the way they had. They called them wakes then. People'd go there for a big time to dance, where they had a dead man at the house. They never thought nothing of that. My God, I never thought I could talk so much. (24, pp. 20-21)

The wake was described also by a second informant:

You would have a wake, and somebody stayed up all night. And they would have a lunch long about midnight, and you never let the dead alone. It seemed to be sort of compulsory that as long as the corpse was there that you had to sit up nights with him. (40, p. 11)

Another informant distinguished emphatically a wake from watching: 96 Both my grandfather and my grandmother was taken care of by the neighbors. They ..came in and they would always sit up all night, you know. The neighbors would come in and sit up all night. Q: Was that called watching? A: Yes. Now my people, they weren’t Catholic. They didn't have any wake or anything like that, but they always would, the neighbors would come in and they were real quiet and sit up with the family. And the family went to bed. (35, pp. 4-5)

Several local legends exist which refer to pranks played in relation to the wake or watching. Probably this did not occur often, but such stories serve well as fodder for the repertoire of an active raconteur. The informant whose text is quoted above was the source for the following humorous story of watching which serves also to develop a description of the duties involved in the tradition.

Well, there was a very wicked old man and he had, he had hung himself on a bridge. It would be west, I suppose, five or six miles west of Rudolph. And I don’t know, there was my father and a couple of his brother-in-laws and a couple more neighbors. And their wives were sitting up with ’em, and they had to go in every so often and wet these clothes. They wrung the clothes out in this water that had salt peter in to keep the body from turning black, you know, and so when it came the men’s turn to go in, they sit, they propped this old man sitting up and they put an old corncob pipe in his mouth and when the women went in, when it came their turn to go in, why, it just frightened the lives out of them to see him sitting up there. Wasn't that a terrible thing to do? Q: It is funny now. A: It's funny. It seemed, didn't seem kinda re­ spectable to me. Q: These were neighbor people who were watching? A: Yeah, the neighbor people, just neighbor people. Q: Did you ever hear of that happening to anyone else A: No, I never did. This man was never any good. But he had someone of his family they'd thought a lot of, and they went in and did what they could for them, yes, in time of need. (35, p. 6) 97 As her remarks indicate, the informant found the story

humorous but she was reluctant to endorse it wholeheartedly.

After all, her father and other relatives had been involved

in the prank. In the end, however, she repeated the premise

on which the event was originally executed, the old man’s-

wickedness, and emphasized also the neighbors’ willingness

to help "in time of need," despite their opinions of the

dead man’s worthiness.

The traditions of the watch or wake were not confined

to any one area of America, as is evident in Mark Twain's

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In Chapters 25 and 26 the

watch and funeral of Peter Wilkes are described; the customs

are much the same as those practiced in Wood County. In

fact, the Irish wake practiced today as a social tradition

retains the same characteristics, including the ghoulish

pranks played with the corpse.

The informant mentioned above gave several other de­

tails which were general funeral customs in the neighborhood,

not related to ethnic traditions. Among these were the cus­

toms of covering the looking glass and clock with crepe.

The informant had no idea why these acts were done, though

she did say they were general customs practiced by many people

in the neighborhood. Crepe was also used by all mourners, who wore long veils covering their faces and body. The

image of such a funeral procession differs greatly with that scene in Wood County today. 98

Funerals were most often held in the home, occasional­

ly in a church, never in a funeral home. Undertakers were

among the residents of most of the small towns. However,

business was never very demanding because the undertaker in

the oil town normally had a second occupation such as wood­

worker or furniture store owner. His primary service seems

to have been to furnish a coffin and a hearse. The hearse

was described by the granddaughter of a livery stable owner

in one of the oil towns:

I as a child would go down there [to the undertaker’s home] and they had this big black hearse, and I'd stand and look at this hearse. My grandfather, who had the livery stable, he furnished the horses to pull this ve­ hicle. And if it was a youngster the horses were white, and then for older people they were black. And they were very beautiful horses. Of course, to me looking at this hearse was sort of spooky, but it was a very beautiful hearse. I wouldn't know the actual cost, but it was very ornamental. The driver rode away up at the top. Then Mr. Goodwin had this furniture store, too, as a side line, and he was just a grand old man. (40, p. 10)

The use of white for a child's or young woman's funeral was described by other informants and in local historical sources

One man described the funeral of a young lady whose family lived in Jerry City:

The girl got what you call quick tuberculosis and died about the sixth day. We had an undertaker in town by the name of Wally Jones, who had a nice outfit and the folks went to him for the burial. The girl had a snow-white coffin trimmed up to the top of the notch, and the complete price for that was a hundred ten dollars. (49, p. 8)

Several stories in the field data relate to the fear of being buried alive. One informant told and believed a 99 a story of a girl whose fear led her to demand an air tube

in her coffin should she die. Later, the informant said,

the girl was buried and her fears justified for she was not

dead and so her life was saved. The same informant told of

the grave of a woman being opened and the corpse found pulling

her hair. Another informant told of a method used to deter­

mine if a person was dead which was applied before the under­

taker was called. A match was held under the great toe of

the body; the formation of a water blister indicated life,

of a dry skin bubble, death. The acceptance of the practice of embalming was attributed by some informants to the assur­ ance that live burial was definitely eliminated.

C. Religious Customs

The churches described by informants were often referred to not by denomination but by the name of the settlers who built them--the McCrory and Whitacre church near Rudolph, for example. An eighty-four year old infor­ mant recalled attending church in a surrey and described the inside of the church:

It seemed that I always sat on the east side of the church and there is where I like to sit now. They used to say the young people used to like to sit over there. The church people called them the cross-eyed seats be­ cause they were just a little crooked and the girls could see their boy friends when they would come into church. (33, p. 5)

Some religious customs and rituals have disappeared over the passage of time. The woman also described the rite 100

of baptism as it was practiced in the 1880's:

My mother and grandfather were baptized in the creek at the rear of the Dan Mercer house. . . . After they were baptized, the group went to Mercer’s' home for dinner where the Mercer twins waited on table for the guests. There was .a long table. The group changed their clothes there as they were having a long, protracted meeting. (35, p. 4)

Formal preparation for the ministry was quite differ­

ent in those days. A retired minister, born in 1883, told of

the home study course which served in 1908 as an addendum to

his sixth grade education to prepare him for life as a minis­

ter. His style is evident in the following comment which he made: "I did say that one time that I was a self-made man,

and a fellow said, 'I’m glad to hear you say that because it relieves the Lord of a lot of responsibility.'" (22, p. 10)

The informant had begun his working life as an oil man-- a rig builder and tank builder, two very demanding oil occu­ pations.

Religion in America has always been characterized by large numbers of differing sects. Some of these sects set­ tled, though temporarily, in the area. Many such sects eventually disbanded or moved on since unusual practices or beliefs were not welcomed. For example, the teachings of

Joseph Smith were frowned upon, particularly his claim of finding the golden tablets. Equally ridiculed for the prac­ tice of polygamy were Brigham Young and his followers. An informant told of neighborhood pranks practiced on the Mor­ mon settlers, and of his uncle with many girl friends who 101

was considered quite a rake and was called "Brigham,” an

appellation which he carried for life.

The same informant remembered the annual love feast

of the Dunkards, a pacifist group who in their rites prac­

ticed love and fellowship. Another informant remarked about

the Dunkard tradition of using a winding sheet or cloth to

wrap the body for burial. This sect, like several others,

has disappeared from the area.

The House of David was an Israelite sect which, ac­

cording to oral tradition, originated in the area, in either

Cygnet or Bloomdale. The members of the sect, who wore long hair, eagerly awaited the Judgment Day, which they believed was forthcoming. The group left Cygnet for Texas itfhen a mem­ ber had a vision that they were to be taken up to heaven from a town in that state.

One informant suggested that the methods of the leader

King Ben, were questionable. The procedure for joining the sect, according to this source, was to confess one’s greatest sin, which was then recorded, signed and filed, and to donate all one's possessions. Eventually, the member who became disillusioned and requested to withdraw was confronted with his confession and the prospect of pennilessness outside the sect. (56)

A former Cygnet resident told the following anecdote about King Ben, for whom she expressed respect and friendship 102

One day Ben, his name was Ben. In the early part of the oil business, as I told you, it was a swamp. . . . I can remember when one well would be here, one well would be here and then between these two wells would be a steam box, a pipe with steam in it. I presume from one oil well run the other but I couldn’t tell you truthfully about it. But, however, they covered that pipe. You could walk on it. In fact, there was a square box made. And Mr. Shinabarger was on that one there right in front of our house where we lived, and Mr. Shinabarger’s wife had joined them [the House of David]. And so Ben said to him, "Mr. Shinabarger," he said, "I had a--a vision last night." I presume they were hard up for money or something. And Mr. Shinabarger I don't think was pleased. Now I'm assuming that, but I don't think that he was pleased because his wife was a member of it. Her son, her oldest son, come to think about it, was a member of it. And he said, Mr. Shinabarger asked him, "Well, how about it?" And he said the Lord--no, I think it was, yeah--a bunch of angels told him to go to Mr. Shinabarger and tell him that he needed three thousand dollars. And Mr. Shinabarger said to him, after he thought it over, he said, "How were those angels dressed?" And he said, "They had blue overalls on." Mr. Shinabarger thought a minute. "No," he said, "you didn't have any vision because no angel would wear blue overalls!" That's a true story. (16, p. 2)

According to a retired minister not of this sect, the

House of David was one tribe of a religious organization originated in Michigan called the New House of Israel. The members rejected Christ as Savior and worshipped "back under the law as the Jews do." (22, pp. 6-7) While the members were well liked and respected by some members of the community like other sects with beliefs different from the majority of settlers, they moved elsewhere within a few years. 103

D. The Country School

A study of the traditions extant at the time of the oil boom would not be complete without a recreation of the aura of the country school. Many of the numerous informants were people who completed the course offered in the one room school house, passed their Boxwell Examination and a Teacher's

Examination and began teaching as a vocation. Passing the

Boxwell Examination qualified the student to a tuition-free high school education. The high schools were located in

North Baltimore and Bowling Green. Teachers' wages were about $40 a month with from twenty to forty pupils in a one room school house who progressed from the primer or First

Reader to the Fifth Reader in the McGuffey series, equiva­ lent to the eighth grade. The school served as church and

V Sunday school as well.

Most of the students either completed their educations with the Fifth Reader at about age thirteen or expressed a wish that they might have done so, though they had been pre­ vented by circumstances making their presence at home neces­ sary. In fact, school terms were not held during the busy autumn harvest season when every member of the family was needed on the farm, as an informant noted in describing the Stony Battery School:

There was a winter, summer, and spring term. As this was the only school at that time people came from Welker down here. Sometimes there would be as many as three in a seat, it was so crowded. The school building was heated by a long wooden stove 104

which held long pieces of wood. Pupils also carried their drinking water in pails from the farms of the Handwork family and also from the Simons family. Two of the pupils would be assigned to go with a pail of water and bring it to school for to drink. (38, p. 1)

Most pupils walked to school. The pattern which be­

came established was for a school to be located on every

two mile section of road. Walking in winter was sometimes

a hardship:

I remember that the pupils had what they called "fascinators" with which they used to wrap the youngster’s heads. Sometimes by the time that they would reach school, the fascinator would be frozen stiff over their mouths and noses. (44, p. 8)

When spring came, walking to school was equally as

difficult in the mud which required boots be worn, even by

the unwilling girls. At the time there were no stone roads yet built in the county, and according to one informant,

"You couldn’t wade the mud unless you were barefooted."

(5, p. 8). Riding horses was impossible in the knee-deep mud. When road conditions became impassable even to pedes­ trians, school was not held. The furnishings of the one room school house of the era were ably described by a North Baltimore informant:

. . . there was a log cabin where my mother went to school. The seats were a log split, and they put in pegs to hold it up. That was the kind of seats that they used and they would hold six or eight pupils. They would have a table along the seat and that is where the kids sat to study their lessons. Imagine doing that now! (4, pp. 5-6)

Carrying water was.!considered a privilege; piling wood and building the morning fire in the long stove was a 105 chore assigned to the pupils of the school. Just as the

above text compared today’s schools to these, so did the

informant of the following text think in terms of modern

health practices when she described the common drinking cup:

We had no water at the school so we carried our water from the Bradshaw farm. Two pupils had the privilege of going to get the water. When we came back, there would be two others to pass this water. The pupils would all drink from the big tin cup. All drank from the same cup. What do you think of that for being sanitary? (33, p. 2)

Another informant, a retired oil man and farmer,

idyllically represented the work and life of a school boy:

Q: What was used for heating the school? A: Wood, that is twenty-eight inch wood. We went to school in the morning and ranked wood until the bell rang. Then after school, we ranked wood until dark. My dad furnished the wood for the school house. The men would haul it in during the daytime. I was the only brother; it was my job to rank it up. I worked in the quarry in the summertime. I worked in the wood in the .wintertime and between times I farmed. It was much pleasure. We walked over here to work all day and walked home to do the chores. We would eat supper and walk to Hammansburg and return home to sleep. There was nothing else to do but fish! (44, p. 9)

As the man indicated, walking to school and everywhere was the commonest method of getting from one place to another

Few of these pupils rode to school, even in severe weather.

Chapters II and III have presented the cultural-his­ torical background on which the oil boom was laid and the conditions preceding the oil boom. Chapter III concentrated on the milieu and traditions of life, both in oil towns and 106 in rural settings, on the experiences of original settlers and on the effects of the arrival of the oil boomers. The changes are characterized by the analysis of texts presented in Chapter III concerning Cygnet, a typical oil town where the population rose quickly from three houses to three thou­ sand people. The culture of the area was drastically redi­ rected by the oil boom. What part the oil boomers had in the culture and history of the area is best perceived through a study of the oil man and his work, as well as his leisure, and of the memorable local legends derived from this his­ torical period, the subjects covered in Chapters IV and V. 107

CHAPTER IV

THE OIL MAN AND HIS WORK

I. THE OIL MAN

What was life like for the oil man? What kind of

man chose to work the oil fields? And what are the memorable

facets of oil work for the men who took part in the oil boom?

Through the style and content, the attitudes and cultural

context of the narrations, the folklorist studying the cul­

ture and history of the era can determine fundamental and

revealing truths about the folk and the culture. Among these

are the functions this lore has for the informants--perhaps

didacticism, admonition, or entertainment; and the folk es­

thetic- -a set of artistic values evident in the lore, which when carefully scrutinized is not casual, naive, accidental conversation.

The above questions, which serve as an introduction to a discussion of the men and the processes of oil work, are dealt with by the oil raconteurs in their narrations of the oil boom. "Rough" and "tough" are two prevalent descrip­ tions used by the raconteurs of this life and work. As one oil man said when asked about oil field work, I don’t think there is anything to equal it, as it was always cold and wet and wind and rain. It was a- bout the worst job that a man could have. ... I helped to pull tubing one day at fourteen below zero at noon. [The tubing was pulled or removed by two men, one on the derrick floor and one high in the derrick 108 on the tubing board.] We stood the tubing in the derrick, too. I had to stand up there on the tubing board at fourteen below zero at noon. (44, p. 5)

Another informant, a seventy-four year old retired

oil man, stressed the discomfort of winter work:

Of course, with the oil worker, if the winter was cold with lots of snow, that's when he had to be out the most, out in all weather. They must keep the rod lines running [from gas engines to the wells from which oil was pumped], rod lines running across the farm, maybe a quarter of a mile long with snow drifting over it. They wouldn't drop right; he had to get out and shovel them out. (26, p. 12)

A. The Oil Men's Camaraderie

These attitudes concerning the nature of the oil

worker's life may seem to be complaints against the harsh­

ness of the occupation. Using as a perspective the body of

collected lore, however, the writer determined that these

attitudes are boasts made by the men who withstood the hard­

ships of oil life because of their pride in themselves, the

toughest men who worked the toughest job. This common qual­

ity bred in the oil men a lifelong camaraderie. An informant who worked the oil fields in his boyhood and who still

pumped oil in 1966 from one of the area's longest producing wells, Old Calamity, stated his belief in the oil men's

fraternal relationship:

When one gets it in their blood, it is difficult to get it out. I have known some of these old men, older than I am, that still cling to it. When they were drilling a well near here In the past few weeks, there were men here from miles around. There were 109 old oil men in their seventies and some in their eighties. Q: It is odd as the oil business was cold, dirty, and everything else that went with it. A: Yes, but there seemed to be a fraternity that sprang up among those oil men, whatever you might call it. It wasn’t a Mason’s order, an Odd Fellow, or anything of that kind; it was just a bond between them. If a man was out of tools, he would go over and borrow the other contractor’s. Tools or whatever might be needed. (21, pp. 6-7)

B. The Frontier Braggart

The occupational brotherhood of the oil men is

carefully balanced by the intensive pride each man had in his own worth and manly fortitude. According to texts from the oil men, fights were rarely in defense of the fraternity.

Rather they were to determine who was the better man. Care was necessary not to provoke a fight with the brawny, some­ times quarrelsome men. When asked to tell about the fights in those days, one oil man replied:

Listen, mister, just two words. When I was a kid and when I started to drive a team in the oil field at around fifteen or sixteen, there were just two words and they had a fight. You never wanted to call a man a name that they used so frequently because you was in for it, right now. They wouldn’t take it. Q: Must have been a rough bunch, wasn’t it? A: Yes, sir, it was, and they was also sociable, friendly, but now I'm telling you. Be careful how you spoke to that man. Because now my father was a man, every inch of him. He weighed about a hundred-ninety and he was left handed. And he’d look at you, and he’d just begin to smile. If you’d been arguing about any­ thing at all, you wanted to get to going and get to going quick. Because I seen him knock a big driller clear out of the derrick, clear out into the sand dumpings and then he went out and picked him up out of there and set him on the walk out in there. (17, p. 12) 110

There are three traits in the above narration which

recurred in the oil lore. Each of them is discussed at

greater length later in the chapter. For now, identifica­

tion of these traits is sufficient. The hero, here the in­

formant’s father, had great strength, in addition to which

he possessed an unusual characteristic. Each strong man in

oil lore is also noted for some other quality, in this case,

lefthandedness. The second trait is the frequency with

which the victim landed on the sand dumpings. Whether he

was knocked from the derrick floor or its top, the victim

was usually remarkably unharmed, having landed on the rela­

tively soft bed of slush and leavings extracted from the

well as it was drilled. A third trait essential to any

honorable oil man's fight was the reconciliation after the

fight, for instance, "and then he went out and picked him up

out of there. ..."

These brawling yet genial men were living in a wilder

country than we know now. They were of the tradition of the

frontier braggart, such as Mike Fink, who brutally mauled and kicked an opponent, who fought with no rules nor limits to

the bitter end. All this was without bitterness or malice but

simply to prove the oil men's virility. It was a poor loser who did not then shake hands with his opponent and resume friendly relations. A hundred-year-old informant described the oil men's boasts and subsequent fights with clarity and Ill

color:

Oh, the country then was more on the wilder order, and the people in the oil country, was, I don't know, they was kind of a quarrelsome lot, a quarrelsome kind of people. They had more fights fought then for who was the best man. They didn't fight because they didn't like a man. If you and I would meet here and you would be bragging about the kind of a man you was and I thought that I was a pretty good man, I'd think I could handle you pretty well, well the first thing we would be at it to find out which one was the best man. That was the kind of fights that was fought them days. They wasn't fought because "I hate you and I owe it to you." They'd get in there and they'd knock themselves-- they'd fight what they call as much as twenty or thirty rounds now. They fought until one give up and he was licked. Then they'd go some place right close by where there was a well drilled and one would pump water for the other to wipe the blood off his face. That was kinda the history then. Maybe not so bad as that sounds, the way I say it. Now you hardly ever hear of a fight, a country fight. You don't hardly ever hear of a country fight. People has got more civilized. You know that there used to be lots of rooster fights and people made lots of money at it. Now there is a law against rooster fighting and a law against dog fighting, too, but they still do that some. They still do prize fighting, but they're only allowed to go fifteen rounds. In a prize fight the law is that they daren't go over fifteen rounds. In them days they didn't know what a round was. They just went it and fought till one give up. Today you dasn't; hit a man after he is knocked down until he gets up on his feet. Back in the oil field days, the fighters tore right into a man when he was down. They kicked him in the head and jumped them in the face with heavy boots with big soles .on, cut their face up and kicked 'em in the head till they give up. Whenever they give up, why, they's good friends again. (24, pp. 15-16)

The same informant analyzed the changing attitudes toward fighting:

Of course, they were rougher people then than they are now. Because the laws are so much stricter now. Oh, my yes. There was lots of fights and people would get in fighting. If you was to get in and give a man a hell of a good licking and spoil his face so he 112

wouldn’t look natural for a year or two, why, you thought that was an honor; now you call it a dog fight. There used to be lots of scrapping and fighting for who would be the best man in the neighborhood. (24, p. 19)

There are several strong-men, frontier braggart

stories which occurred in the data for this study. Among them was the following story of the braggart in the saloon.

Though this floating story has been widely circulated, the

difference here is that it has become local legend and oil

lore. The protagonist is a local oil man, a driller who

was a "good scout," as the informant afterward stated.

Fellow by the name of--Jim Palmador. He lived over here at Jerry City. He went over to a Cygnet bar over there and he was in there a'drinkin’ and he said, "I can lick any son of a B in Jerry City." Nobody said anything. Then he took in Cygnet and nobody said anything. And then he said, "I can lick any son of a B in Wood County." About that time a fellow hit him over the head with a beer bottle and knocked him down and he got up. And, of course, this fellow stuttered a little bit. And he said, "Wh-wh*who dxd-d- h-hit-hit m-m- me?" The little fellow got up and he said, "Well, I did. I hit you over the head with a beer bottle." He says, "I live in Wood County," and he says, "I’m no son of a B!" And this fellow answered. He said, "I gu-guess I-I t-took in t-too damn much t-t-territory. Let's have a drink!". (65, p. 7) In every story collected among the oil men concerning

strong men, the hero had some unusual physical characteris­

tic, sometimes a definite handicap. In this case the pro­ tagonist "stuttered a little bit." In the first story about oil men's fights, the hero "weighed about a hundred ninety 113 pounds and he was left handed." In the following story with its frontier braggart-threat punch line, the genial hero was "the largest man I ever saw in my life":

. . . this company that Sandy McDonald worked for. He was what was called a field man, the man that handled this field. The company sent him out here , when the first oil field was discovered out here in Ohio around Lima. When I came up here, I got ac­ quainted with him about the first or second year. I drilled a lot of wells for him. He was one of the largest men that I ever saw in my life. He was a big rough Irishman. He was a nice fellow. I was only a boy; they called me a boy. He liked to play poker, and they'd play poker at night. And one of the men was sick one night and he couldn't go out at midnight to start up on the well where we was drilling right close to Old Danny Mercer's. It was right close there, and they was playing and Sandy was winning right along on the game. They was setting in at that place at Portage. Had a big gambling hole there, a saloon, a gambling hole. That was eighty years ago, yes, eighty years ago, about seventy-nine or eighty years. Sandy was a man as old as my dad, I suppose, a great big stout Irish­ man, and he was my boss, he was my boss. He was working for the company that I was drilling for. I says, "Sandy, we got to get out there and get fired up and get started or we won't make no hole up to noon." Sandy said, "Yes, right along, right along," and kept putting me off. I was standing and he was sitting at the table playing but he was winning. A fellow by the name of John--Tom. They were two brothers. Tom--one was Tom, another was John, but what the hell was their other name? I can't think of it. Well, they was Irishmen, too, and they went to work together down at Woodville. Sandy was winning from them right along and taking their money. They was two great big Irish fellows some ten years older than I was. And one of them says to me, he says, "You go and mind your damn busi­ ness," he says,""and keep your mouth off this fellow here," he says, "or I will slap you." Old Sandy got up off his chair and said, "God damn you," he says, "you lay your hand on that boy and," he says, "I will part your hair where it was never parted ] 114

before, you lay your hand on that boy." That was old Sandy, Sandy MacDonald! (24, pp. 17-18)

Another man, upon mention of Jim Jeffries, the prize

fighter-oil worker from the Hammansburg area, replied with

this anecdote of a strong man:

The only man that I can recall of such a man as that, that is, that kind of a title was--I don’t know if I can give you his given name. He was a McCurry. I've seen him put his two hands together and pick up the end of one stem on the rear wheels, the rear end of a wagon and side step, and set it over so as it would go in on the bridge. Now that'd be the only man that I would recall of that type of man. He was a big, powerful man. . . . He was a man that stuttered. (17, p.. 8)

In this anecdote, as in one given earlier, the hero stut­

tered. The final two texts, both about deaf mutes who were noted for their strength, were given by the same infor­ mant.

We had a mute. His father was an undertaker. . . . He was a very brilliant fellow and he was tough! Well educated . . . mentally equal.to anybody. But he'd hang around the saloons. . . . Well, anyway, this mute come out of the saloon and I was standing across the street there by the bank. . . . The mute came out of the liquor place and started down toward home. His father's undertaking establishment was down in the end of town in the building every lodge has used for meeting hall for years. It's on the opposite side of the street from where the saloons were, only a long block down the street. But here come another fellow running out of the saloon, all fouled up or something, and he kept howling at--we always called him Dummy . . . Dummy Goodwin, that was his hame. And he liked kids; I was a kid at that time. And he talked to 'em and he'd tell us--I used to talk to him and could talk that fluently at one time. . • • Dummy was going down the street and this fellow was hollering at him. Well, naturally he couldn't hear him. He couldn't hear it thunder. He got across the street 115 about ten or fifteen steps and this fellow come running up after him and run across the railroad track and he was on a plank walk and he started pounding his feet on the walk and the dummy turned around and he come running back and he knocked the fellow cold with one punch. He picked him up and smashed his head down until about twenty men pulled him off and they should a let him alone cause the man was a bum hanging around there. But he didn’t go running after the dummy any more. (46, pp. 4-5)

In the above text the hero is a "brilliant fellow and he was tough," actually two assets which in the folk attitude compensate for the handicap of being a deaf mute.

Directly following the above text was this narration:

I knew another mute there [Sandusky]. We were standing at the bar, and all at once the mute goes crazy. He grabbed a fellow standing over behind a couple of guys next to me. It took about six of us to stop him, and we tried to find out’ why he took after this fellow. We got him loose, and I went back and asked this fellow, the mute, what happened. The mute said that he called me a son of a B. Well, he had probably raised his glass of beer up, making in sign language son of a B. I asked the man that had been attacked if he understood the mute, and he said that he had never seen anyone like him before. He wasn’t capable of fighting the mute anyway. Several of us circled the mute and I told him that the fellow didn't know what he was saying. It ended the fight! I have never seen a mute that wasn't strong enough to lick any man that came along. It seems that if you have one weakness you develop more in other places. (46, p. 5)

These texts were concluded by a folk analysis which had been implied in all the strong man stories: "It seems that if you have one weakness you develop more in other places." The folk esthetic was often suggested rather than stated but was always present in these stories of exception­ ally strong people. The novel quality may be a somewhat ; ii6

unusual characteristic, such as lefthandedness or excep­

tional size or intelligence; more often it is in nature a

handicap--such as stuttering or deafness. The informants

had this quality in common: in every story of unusual

strength told, the hero had some novel trait, the folk im­

plication for which was that for every strength there is

a weakness, for every weakness a compensating strength.

The informants represented above skillfully delineated

the oil man’s philosophy about his life. He worked hard, he

was proud of and was admired for his labor, his competency,

and particularly his strength. Opportunities to prove him­

self the better man were not scarce, and no such opportunity

was ignored. That life was rough was a source of pride to

men who looked for occasions to prove their virility and

earn local fame. In fact, some men by their strength gained

more widespread fame. The Cygnet and Hammansburg oil men

remember well Jim Jeffries, title-holding prize fighter

from 1899 to 1905. He worked the Hammansburg oil field and was known as the man no one could whip. (14, p. 8; 44, p. 4)

II. OIL OCCUPATION STEREOTYPES

In a typical reaction, one informant remembered Jim

Jeffries not simply as a tough fighter who worked the oil field, but rather by his occupation in the oil field. The camaraderie among oil workers is most strongly evidenced by 117

pride in brotherhood of shared skill. Seldom is a man de­

scribed as an oil worker. He is a tank builder, pipeliner,

boiler maker, teamster, pumper, rig builder, driller, or

tool dresser. Each gang prided itself for its own stereo­

typed qualities: "For a tough gang, a man should have

joined the boiler makers. Jim Jeffries . . . was supposed

to have worked with a gang of boiler makers in the Hammans­

burg field, but he didn't stay long." (44, p. 4)

Stereotypes of each gang, regardless of skill, began with a reputation for toughness. The pipeliners and tank builders were said to be

. . . the coarse people in those days. The tank builders were a group of fighting people. . . . Well, they had good men there. If the men didn't like the work, if they couldn't stand it, they didn't want a job. They was a kind of tough, rough class of people, was the tank builders mostly. They were about the wildest people and the most reckless that came into that country. There were not many natives but men that came in from Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and other states. They came in urged by the excitement of getting a good well. (24, pp. 16-17)

Tank:.building "took men that had both the experience and the nerve. They had to be real stayers to stick to it." (17, p.

9) One pipeline worker referred to the Cygnet pipeline gang of sixty-five men as "a murdering outfit." His opinion of the pipeline workers reflects the same tough image as that of the tank builders: "I don't think that they came any tougher. They would go into town and take charge of it! We decided where we wanted to drink and just take charge of it!" 118

BUILDING A PIPELINE. Here a tong gang screws together joints of pipe, laying a line in northwestern Ohio during the 1890's

TANK BUILDING, 1905 r~

A REFINERY in northwestern Ohio 119

(58, p. 3) This "bunch of rough necks" was, in the infor­ mant's opinion, the toughest oil gang in existence. It is

important to note that the informant was himself a member of

the pipeline gang. Recalling the pride in occupation and the desire to establish and maintain an image of superior skill and strength, the reader will notice that any oil occupation was the most demanding if the informant was of that occupation.

In pipeline work there were really two'/occupations.

First, the pipeline builders or tong gang, whose goal was to lay a mile of pipe a day and who "kept on going through rain or snow or what have you; it made no difference, we went on anyway." (58, p. 3) The work was described by a former tong gang member:

Well, that was a bunch of men who screwed the pipe together. When we worked, we used- six pair of tongs with five men on a pair of tongs. The stabber would line up his joint of pipes, and we would rope it in as far as we could with a rope. Then two pair of tongs would get on the joint followed by the next two pairs, which in turn would be followed by the third two pairs, would get on it .and wind the joint until you could not see any more thread. We would take our tongs off and move to the next joints. The stabber would stick another joint and do the same thing over. We kept that up for ten long hours a day just bouncing up and down on the tongs. . . . They would start out in the morning and lay the pipe. At night time they would come back and get dinner in the old tent where the cooks fixed up our hash for us. At night time, they would sleep on a cot in an old tent. Then they got up in the morning and go back at it again. (58, pp. 2-3)

S e’.condly, there was the pipeline walker who patrolled the lines for breaks and repairs and who also worked under all 120

weather conditions.

The pumpers were men whose reputations were built

on the station fires they fought and on their pride in Sta­

tion 8, once the largest pump station, according to the in­

formants, in the world, a "wonderful station" which pumped

oil from Texas and Oklahoma through Ohio and to Canada.

The stereotype of the teamsters centers on the animals

rather than the men. The most common element in this occu­

pational group was pride in the animals, in the most beau­

tiful team of mules or horses, or perhaps oxen. Many teams

were needed in the oil fields, from the time of earliest

drilling when all oil was hauled in barrels by teams. One

informant remembered that fourteen teams were needed to

pull a well, move the derrick, tools and everything at one

time. Several informants told of using two or three teams

to pull a boiler out when the ground was muddy. Mules

reportedly worked better in mud than horses because of the

shape of their hoofs. Oxen were popular for the same reason

and because they could be butchered, a value shared by

neither horses nor mules.

The animal intelligence as well as the beauty of a

team served as qualities to be envied by teamsters. One in­

formant told of a friend who had trained his horses "to come

back in the mud to the well to get the rod out. The boss

caught him one day and fired him because he didn’t wade the mud with his horses. The boss thought that he wasn’t earning 121

PULLING RODS AND TUBING. Hamman PULLING THE CASING, 1908. farm, Hammansburg, 1904.

\ 122 his money." (44, p. 13) The informant credited his friend's

horses, apparently more intelligent than the employer. Just

as wading the mud was a problem, so too was wading through

oil a trial for men and horses. An informant recalled helping his father team for the Buckeye Pipe Line:

Once, we had driven through oil that was knee-deep to a team of horses to take a pump to the Hartigan Farm. It took every bit of hair off of the horses' legs from the knees down just as deep as they waded that fresh oil, and I had to ride the pump. My father went ahead and picked out the way at two o'clock in the morning and told me "Gee, Haw," so that'I would follow him. (17, p. 1)

In the oil boom era, stereotypes of oil men developed from the work and the lore. A stereotype of the local men, the farmer-1andowners, was also created by the era. To de­ termine the traits of this stereotype an analysis of the attitudes of the farmer toward the oil era was made. When the analysis of texts to determine the farmers' position in the oil boom was made, the farmers of Wood County were easily divided into.tx^o groups: those who gained financially from oil and those who did not or who did not gain much. Those who did not gain monetarily retain some disparaging attitudes toward the oil boom. Generally, they staunchly maintain that their occupation was farming, not oil, though they may have had at one;, time some income from oil wells. One infor­ mant, having mentioned his father's "rather good wells,” emphasized the importance of land, not oil, to the farmer:

My father owned some seven hundred acres of land 123

when he died. Q: Was your dad considered a wealthy man, as an oil man? A: Well, he was a farmer rather than an oil man. He never had much cash, but much land--whatever that was worth, he was worth. (61, p. 2)

By this informant’s standards, land is the key factor in determining a man's financial worth.

A farmer's daughter indicated by her attitude of disinterest in oil wealth that her primary concern was for the farmer's natural source of income, his crops:

. . . the oil was just a derrick out there that spouted some black stuff, you know. Maybe oil brought you some money and maybe oil didn’t. Maybe oil was spewed over the fields and you didn't have any crops. (4, pp. 2-3)

The same attitude was indicated by another informant who claimed his parents received no income from oil drilled on their land. Evidently his parents purchased the farm without the mineral rights, as he explained:

Yes, it was somewhat ironical that in those days that it was customary for the seller to reserve the oil rights when the land was sold. My folks never got any income but they still had to give the right-of way and put up with the salt water and the grief that went with the production of oil. (42, p. 5)

The farmers' attitude toward oil men who were ruining fields and destroying crops led in some instances to hos­ tilities, sometimes only suggested, sometimes openly physical.

A farmer's wife expressed the attitude of the farmer whose hostilities remained inert:

They [rod lines] were across your farm in every direction. Of course, the farmers didn't dare say anything as the oil men ran the lines where they wanted'. (5, p. 15) 124 The narration of an oil man reflects the attitude of farmers who were‘far more open in their hostilities. Note that in both texts, that above and that below, the stereotype of

the oil man as authority is maintained. The oil man related

the following text concerning the repair of a pipeline leak:

We shut down and sent a man out to cover the line. When we found the leak, we would dig it up, fix it, put a clamp on it, and go ahead. The farmers would get angry. I have had them threaten to shoot me and everything else. They would try to run me out, but I didn't run! (58, p. 4)

The second attitude of farmers has grown in oral tradition through stories about the excitement, the dreams of wealth, and the stories of the farmer who struck it rich.

These are characterized, not by images of hardship and hostility typical of the farmer who did not gain lasting benefit from the oil boom, but by traits of easy money, of wealth quickly gained and sometimes quickly lost, and of the effects of wealth on the activities and personalities of the farmers who fortunately hit it big.

The ease with which the farmer could reputedly attain wealth is a trait present in several local legends. In one anecdote the suspicious landowner is represented in a well known oil story:

It was so easy for the farmer to make his wealth-- just reach out and get it. We had one fellow, Charlie Redfern. Yes, it was Charlie Redfern. When they wanted to lease his farm, why he objected. He said, "Oh, no." He said, "You ain’t giving me--" They usually--it was a eighth, they give the farmer an eighth. No, no, a sixth. And he said, "Oh, no, you ain’t, oh, no." He said, "You 125 can't rent my farm unless you give me an eighth, and that’s the way that they leased Charlie Redfern's farm at that time. (17, p. 17)

This typical story of the duped farmer contains a trait,

the wealth within easy reach, present also in the following

story of the changing attitude and behavior of the newly

rich:

. . . Nigger Carter (if I should say this, he was a colored gentleman), a mighty nice fellow, and got a wonderful well on him. There we ran up against a snag. He asked my father. He was up on the tank and it flowed. Oh, it flowed with two lead lines just steady all the time. "Say, Mr. Gribben," he said, "will that thing hold me? For me to come up there and see that thing?" "Why, sure, Mr. Carter. Come ahead," said my father. "That will hold you." He came up to see it and my father said when he came down, "Well, Mr. Carter, what do you think of it?" "Oh," he said, "that’s wonderful--just pouring out two horns." Well, now then he, when they got this well, he wouldn't let nobody come on his farm. We was stopped at the line fence, with lines to take care of his oil and the tanks were about full. Well, I unharnessed one of my horses out of my team, jumped onto that horse's back. I went to Station 43 and I called I. F.' June at Cygnet. ... He talked with this gentleman Carter quite a little while before he persuaded him. • • • All he had to do was just reach out. He moved to Fostoria. He had a pink-skinned horse, mighty nice animal. And he moved to Fostoria and bought himself a ten gallon hat. He bought a gold-headed cane. The knob was about that big. If he'd meet my father or I then on the road after he got oil, he never seen us. And before that, why, oh, land, he was as sociable as anybody could be. But he didn't need us. All he had to do was just reach his hand out and he got the money. Now that was the way with a good many of 'em. (17, PP- 3-4)

The same trait is represented in a text told by an oil boomer of a penniless boy, brought to riches by an oil 126 well, then killed, therefore obtaining no lasting benefit

from his fortune:

That man that hit a big well up at Rudolph was killed by a street car in New York. He was kind of a poor boy that came in here from the East. He never had any money nor a dollar to spend. A lot of us fellows had money because we made good wages so we kept him in the boarding house and bought him a meal ticket, too. When he got out of money, we passed the hat around as the fellows would throw in a quarter. We would go to the landlady to buy him a meal ticket for the week. When we wanted to go to see our girl friends in Lima or finishing up a well or drilling another well, we kept him around to run the tour for us so we could leave but not shut down the well. (24, pp. 6-7)

The excitement of the big well coming in is felt

in the attitudes of the informants even today, as they recall

the gushers and dreams of fortune. "We were just thrilled

with it, of course. If it would keep on forever, we would

be rich!" (3, p. 5) Reflecting on the old oil days, another

informant also recalled this attitude toward oil as eternal

wealth:

I would say that oil did much for many of the people that lived in the area. If they didn’t have oil, many people would have starved to death. Q: Did the people tend to waste their money? A: Some of them did, while others didn’t. Many of them were careless when they found oil as though there was no end to it. (47, p. 2)

In regard.to his fields and crops, the farmer who made money from oil revealed an attitude different from the

enmity of farmers mentioned in the first group: "All the

fields had oil spread over them, and many people got lots

of money from the oil fields." (38, pp. 3-4) 127

A legend often repeated in oil lore is that of the

immediate effect on the landowner and his family,who, having

attained oil wealth, changed their living habits at once.

Boatright mentioned the girl who suddenly announced to her suitor, "I don’t have to marry you now; Dad's struck ile."^

A parallel in Wood County lore was told of the milkman's son.

The informant narrated the text below, beginning with a

comment about the farm on which oil was found.

A. J. Steele came from Pennsylvania and drilled some wells on the farm. The son, who delivered the milk, came one day and said, "This is the last time I'm going to bring milk." I said, "Why?" "Because they struck a big well on our farm!" They became very wealthy. They built a large white house near Van Buren and lived there several years. (15, p. 6)

The story of the Wood County farmer who struck it rich is also told by C. S. VanTassel. He emphasizes the poverty which preceded the man's rise to riches, poverty which was typical in the swampy, mosquito-infested Black

Swamp before the opening of the oil field:

Wherever the oil fraternity has found it profitable to remain, there you will find evidence of thrift and prosperity, beginning with the humble tiller of the soil. The Black Swamp of Wood County is in evidence on this line. Scores of farmers who had managed to subsist on cold lunches of corn bread, pork and beans, bad water and worse milk, and no whiskey at all, sud­ denly found themselves surrounded with all the luxuries that large incomes could afford. Many of them lived in log huts, whose numerous "air holes" had rag stuf­ fings and whose apartments upstairs consisted of a single room. In some cases they seemed to appreciate the changes and take delight in exhibiting their finan­ cial ability. A single instance will, perhaps, be suffi­ cient, but scores might be given from a personal knowledge 128 of the writer. A farmer of Liberty Township, Wood County, dwelt in a small log house and cultivated a portion of a 40 acre tract, the greater part of which was entirely too low and wet to be of any use. At the first opportunity he leased the land for oil purposes. The first well was a success, flowing 4,000 barrels a day. The morning that it was drilled in, the farmer happened to stand in front of his abode, south of which about 400 feet, the well was located. Lifting his eyes he saw the column of oil suddenly rise far above the top of the derrick, and remain there, a great black geyser. An ax which he held flew from his hand and he exclaimed, "no more corn bread." This is the way this man felt, and he gave expression accordingly. In less than five months he possessed fine equipages in the way of horses and carriages, and above all a palatial home, nicely adorned and appointed with all the modern appliances.2

The folk opinion of oil wealth well spent often centers on material culture--on the homes built by oil money, many of which were named by informants, the original owners or builders described, and the location given. The inhabi­ tants may have changed many times since the house was built, but it is referred to and remembered as the house "built by so-and-so when he struck oil."

III. THE PROCESSES OF THE OIL FIELD

In the oil men’s repertoires of stories of the boom days the descriptive and precise explanations of the processes are an essential element. To many of these raconteurs, the explanations have special meaning in that these men feel that they are making a considerable contribution to the education of their audience. They feel that the finest heritage they can give their progeny and the younger generation in general 129

is a knowledge of what they have experienced. As one infor­ mant said, tape recording the narrations of the oil boomers is "a fine thing to keep the younger generation in contact, knowing why and how this country developed.” (26, p. 4)

Most of the raconteurs clearly have two purposes in mind as they delineate the processes of their work in the oil era. The first is that just mentioned, education, par­ ticularly as it denotes a sense of culture and history. The raconteur recreates an aura of the past by explaining what the nature of life was during that era. To do this he has often given in minutest detail descriptions of daily tasks-- from thawing pipelines to relating the price of a bed and meal at the many boarding houses. The oil man who has gone through the operations of drilling, shooting, or casing a well, or any of the other necessary chores of operating a derrick feels that an essential part of his repertoire is a precise description of how the well was drilled and operated.

In a short while a novice listener experiences vicari­ ously the rigors of working a twelve hour tour on a sixty-eight foot derrick in the windiest, coldest weather. Or he feels the thrill of the ten year old who climbed from his bedroom window onto a derrick to "see the town" by transferring from derrick to derrick. No doubt there are elements of exaggera­ tion in that text and perhaps in the boast of an oil man who as a lad was quite proud of his ability to throw a stone over a derrick. More in line with the above-named purpose is a 130 precise delineation of every step of drilling a well, from

marking the location to shooting the go-devil and casing

a gusher.

Though more purposes become explicit as individual

texts are considered, the second common purpose of these

texts for the raconteurs is that of entertainment. There­

fore the careful delineation of a working well is often

followed by narrations of spectacular events--great gushers

or fires or explosions. The raconteurs sense an obligation

to be as informative as possible concerning the daily exper­

iences of the oil worker, as well as to be an interesting

and entertaining narrator. Because of this twofold purpose

in the repertoires of most informants and because of the

importance of establishing a background on the oil era, the processes of oil work are presented as the raconteurs gave

them and are expanded and analyzed where necessary.

A. Locating Oil

The literature of oil folklore abounds with pseudo scientific and superstitious methods of locating oil. The oil smeller and douser, dreams and doodlebugs were strongly believed in by some people at the time of oil booms in New

York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio, Texas, and elsewhere.

Unfortunately most informants have become so science con­ scious in the twentieth century that they have forgotten or 131

would rather not acknowledge any previous belief in these

methods of locating oil. Neither do they place their faith

with the modern geologist. The only true test, in their

opinion, is Mr. Drill.

When asked about the geological location of oil,

one informant’s reply was "I didn’t think it was in pools

then, but I do now." (26, p. 3) Just what he believed in

1890 is not determined. Rather his interest is in the

fact that, having now accepted the geologists’ theories of oil lying in pools, he expressed his belief in the riches

still available in oil in Wood County: "If a fellow can

drill down and contact with one of those pooh, you're going

to get a lot of oil yet." (26, p. 3) The secret, he went

on to say, is simply to drill from thirteen hundred to

fifteen hundred feet, rather than to the eleven to thirteen

hundred fifty feet of previous wells.

Location of the wells was regulated by law some time after the oil boom began in Wood County. Before laws requir­ ing wells to be four hundred feet apart were passed, wells were drilled as close as fifty feet, causing many legal com­ plications and drilling problems. Another informant, acknow­ ledging this fact, went on to express his opinion on how to locate a well. He supported neither the scientific nor the superstitious methods for making a location. In fact, he disparaged both methods and would depend entirely on happen­ stance : 132 How did people find the oil? How did they know where to drill? They just took a chance on it. They wasn't no way of telling as far as I’m concerned. Cause, well, at that time when they was drilling in here, you had to stay two hundred feet. Now if I had a well here, you had to stay over here two hundred feet or over there two hundred feet. Maybe you had a good well right here. Go over here and drill and not get a darn thing. Seen that happen many a time. . . . Tear down and move over, set up and go right after another one. Q: Did you ever hear of looking for water by dousing, water witching, divining? A: Yeah. You can find--well, our water system around here with a peach limb. Q: That doesn't work with anything like oil? A: No, cause it's down there too deep. They claim they have instruments that they can go down in and tell, but I-'ve never seen one of them work, so I don't know what the hell you'd call it. Whether they-- A lot of times they'll go out and what they'd call a wildcat well. They'd just go out and set up and drill on down in there and take a chance on finding something. Some­ times they do and sometimes-- (25, p. 7)

In one section of the Wood County oil field oil was

found to lie in a direct line, and wells were drilled like­

wise. This was known as a sucker rod field:

It followed a line from Bowling Green across toward Waterville, straight through all the way. Q: I believe that is called a sucker rod field. How wide was the field? A: About a mile and a half. (67, p. 1)

The Record of Wood County also gave an account of the field:

The Haskins or "Sucker Rod" field, modern in its development, has shown some wonderful staying qualities. The field presents some strange phenomena, its direct line, as if following a river of oil, being not the least remarkable.3

Though no informant stated a definite belief in finding oil in cemeteries, an established oil practice, certainly at one time in Wood County this belief existed. Evidence of 133 this is present in several accounts of cemetery upheaval:

Q: What happened to the cemetery on the same side of the school? A: It was on the same side of the road located just south of the Stony Battery school house. Later ' they dug up the people that were buried there. There were not too many buried there. The land was used to drill water wells and oil wells. (38, pp. 1-2) It is doubtful that the cemetery was moved to drill only for water. Water wells were drilled, however, along side the oil well to provide water for "spudding in" or beginning the oil well. Folk belief often led drillers to locate in a cemetery. Another informant recalled the well drilled in the cemetery:

I don’t recall when that was, but I mind when they drilled a well there. Some bones came up from that. Q: Did you know that they had a cemetery there? A: Yes. Q: I wonder if they moved it so they could drill there? A: I understood that they moved some bodies, but they left some. (7, p. 4)

A third informant, a retired farmer and teacher, lived through the Wood County oil boom but was never an oil man himself. Perhaps that is why his.account of moving the cemetery omitted the reference to drilling for oil?:.

Q: Why did they move that Stony Battery Cemetery? A: I don’t know why they moved it. Part of the bodies were claimed by the relatives and moved away. A number of them were moved over to the Weaver Cemetery. There is one lot up there ten and a half feet by nine feet that harbors nineteen unclaimed bodies in it. That was about 1896 when the bodies were moved [actually 1897 according to township records]. (12, p. 3)

This text has a characteristic typical of narratives of the raconteurs, particularly of local legends. It is doubtful 134

that a person would remember so exactly the size of the

grave lot, though its precise measurements are given, as is

the exact number of unclaimed bodies. To add credence, the

raconteur often includes a reference to his own part in an

incident or gives very specific details, as is true of this

text.

Though belief in folk methods of locating oil are not

now found widely in oral tradition in Wood County, such texts

as those given above indicate that such beliefs have been

present in tradition.

B. Drilling a Well

Once the well location was made, the next step was to build a derrick, following which the contractor would commence

to move his drilling tools in. An oil man who recalled the

final stages of building a derrick described his duties:

Land, I used to go up and put the sand line in the pulley on top of the derrick, a seventy-four foot der­ rick, and work up there .pulling on top on two joints of tubing on the gangplanks up there. Why, I wouldn’t go up there now if they would give me the whole outfit. I never thought anything about it at that time. Them was the real days. Course you didn’t get no money, no wages like they’re paying today. (17, p. 9)

The first derricks were sixty-eight feet in Wood County; later derricks were as high as eighty-five feet.

A former roustabout told the reason for the height of the derrick:

If they use stem and bit, they’s about forty-five to fifty feet long. And they have to have at least ten feet, 135

ten. to fifteen feet above that so’s to raise it up and set it over. Same way with your pulling your tubing. Two joints of tubing'll go between forty--anywheres from forty to fifty feet on account of they vary. Some of 'em's twenty-two foot long, some twenty, the joints. And they have to have it so's to get those lines and blocks up high enough. Have to have the derrick high enough so's they can take them up. Q: They'd have to be about sixty feet anyway though? A: Anyways from sixty to seventy-five feet. But I have seen 'em where they's on a three inch [tubing]. Now that's a two inch. You take now what they call a three inch tubing. That will run from twenty to thirty feet for a joint so they have to go higher than them for to get this stuff up. There's where they go up to eighty- five feet. (65, p. 9)

The height of the derrick, often exaggerated, is the topic of several tall tales found in oral tradition among oil workers. While many of the oil workers who served as informants were aware of the tall tale, most remembered only vaguely the tales, "lies," and "big stories" that were told by oil men. The folklorist can recognize fragments of tall tales in the data, however. For example, one tale began "A fellow liked to:.tell big stories but he was working.'

This is a widely used method of opening a whopper disguised as '.truth. The narrator is too busy to be bothered with telling a tale or more likely he sorrowfully regrets that he cannot entertain his audience; some calamity has occurred, perhaps his mother just died. Mody Boatright gave an example in Gib Morgan:

As he [Gib Morgan] was passing one day on his way to tour, someone stopped him and said, "Gib, tell us a lie." With a show of deep emotion, Gib said, "I can't tell you a lie now. I've just got word that the cable 136

clamps have slipped and killed my brother at the well." Deeply humbled the man expressed his regrets and Gib went on. Not many minutes behind him came a crowd seeking information about the accident. They found Gib calmly at work. "You told us your brother had been killed," they accused. "You asked for a lie, didn’t you?" Gib replied.

The informant, having opened with the line given above

which is suggestive of the tall tale told in the guise of

truth, proceeded to relate a tale which he called "To the

Moon":

A fellow liked to tell big stories but he was working. And a fellow says, "Where you been?" He says, "Oh, down there building a derrick." He says, "How high up did you build this one?" "Well," he says, " I built it up, and it was getting pretty well up to the top and we had to lean a litte bit so's the moon could go over." (65, p. 6)

This is a variant of the tall tale attributed to Gib

Morgan, in which the derrick, built in Texas, covered an

acre of ground and was so high it was hinged in two places so that it could be folded back to allow the moon to pass.^

One colorful oil figure who lived in the area was

Gid Gordon (1869-1930), whose name is by coincidence similar

to Gib Morgan's. Gid had a reputation as a story teller and

man of congenial humor, a reputation which has today a strong

oral tradition. However, efforts to record some of his stories met with little success. The typical reaction to queries about Gid Gordon was "Oh, Gid. Yes, I remember Gid; he was

a great story teller," or "He pulled some good ones in his

day." When asked precisely what stories Gid told, the informant 137

NO. 1 WELL, HUGH McMURRAY FARM. At one time the largest well in the world, drilled in VanBuren in 1891, with a daily pro­ duction of 40,000 barrels. Courtesy Marathon Oil Company.

THREE OIL COMRADES who worked many wells together. In the foreground is Gid Gordon. Courtesy of Mrs. C. H. Gonyer. 138 usually answered he did not remember but would reaffirm the fact that Gid was "a real story teller."

One incident in which Gid was involved made him the victim of his own style of humor. It seems that he and his fellow workers were having a chicken supper. When Gid re­ marked to the cook that the chicken was the best he had ever eaten, he was met with the reply, "Well, it ought to be, Gid.

It’s yours." Gid was informed that his own chicken house had been raided for the feast. The joke was doubly humorous because, as the informant, indicated, Gid had not been above such chicanery himself. Chicken thievery was, after all, an established custom during that era.

Gid by reputation was a teller of tale tales and often played the role of a practical joker. The tall tales which were recorded were attributed to neither Gid Gordon nor Gib

Morgan, however. Gib Morgan drilled oil in North Baltimore,

Ohio, ten miles from Cygnet, both Wood County oil field centers, in the 1890's but left no oral tradition about him- £ self or about his stories which this writer could locate.

Another oil related tall tale was reported in an anniversary edition of the Cygnet Review, July 24-31, 1960.

No source was given, though other articles in the paper were quoted from contemporary oil era newspapers. The tale is , titled "Blue’s Cow":

Curt Blue of Bairdstown told the story about his cow that was so tall he had to;.stand on a derrick to 139 milk it. He milked this cow in a 250 barrel tank. The only trouble it never had a calf and neither did its mother.

Few tall tales were collected from oil men in Wood

County. It would seem that the hoax, the practical joke, was much more in the realm of the oil man’s humor than the exaggeration and imagination of the tall tale.

< When the derrick had been completed, the work of drilling or "spudding in" began. Two men worked each tour, a driller and tool dresser. The drilling continued twenty- four hours a day for six days each week, from midnight Sun­ day through midnight the following Saturday. Some wells were drilled continuously from the time drilling began until the well came in. One informant recalled his day off in the following manner:

When we were working, we used to go down that Baltimore and Ohio Railroad as Lima was our head­ quarters. We would shut down the well at midnight on Saturday night. Then we would go down there by the tracks, take some old newspapers or soft rope, soak it in oil, carry it down the tracks, set it on fire, and wait for the train. When we heard the whistle, we waved the torch and the train would come down and stop for us. That was the railroad that ran to Lima where we had to go to see our girls. (24, pp. 4-5)

The driller was noted for his intelligence, his strength, and his wit. The wit included the ability to tell a good story as well as to engage in tomfoolery such as the practical joke. Following the "Let's have a drink" story mentioned earlier under a discussion of the oil man as frontier 140

braggart, the informant gave his analysis of the character

of the driller on whom the story centered:

That man when he was sober would give you the shirt off'n his back if you needed it. . . . He was a good scout. He went out to Oklahoma from here and he died out there. Now what I say, he liked his whiskey and you wouldn’t ask for a better man to work. If he started on--he was a driller and if he started on that well, he'd never--he'd take a drink but he wouldn’t get tight till he got his well finished. And then he'd let loose. (65, p. 7) The driller was considered the authority on the rig.

He was a hard-working man who also devoted full energies to his recreational life, particularly when the well had been completed.

The actual drilling process was described by a retired tool dresser. He discussed also the etiquette and responsi­ bilities of the tool dresser.

Well, in starting, you started with an eight inch hole and when you got down through the limestone and hit the slate, then you'd put in casing, either five and five eighths or six and one quarter. Now they use layer casing. And that would case off all fresh water. It usually took about four hundred feet of casing. From then on, we called it the dry hole. In fact, it was the dry hole until we got into the Trenton and hit salt water or oil. Q: Now you reduced the size of your hole down there. That gave you an opportunity for the casing to set on it. Was that the purpose of the smaller hole? A: Yes, that was where the casing was set. There was an offset there, dropping down in size from eight to six and one quarter or five and five eighths. There was a shoulder there and from there on you would use a smaller bit. You had to use the smaller tools to get down the casings. Q: Those tool dressers had quite a job to keep the tools in commission? A: When we would get into the Trenton, it was so hard that they'd usually have to change bits twice in 141

A CABLE TOOL DRILLING EARLY OIL TANKS AND DERRICK in RIG. "Mud Country."

CABLE TOOL DRILLING. A view from the derrick floor. WOOD COUNTY, 1905.

DERRICKS AND STORAGE TANKS, 1908.

Photos courtesy Marathon Oil Co 142 a twelve hour tour. It was not customary for that tool dresser to leave that bit for the next tool dresser to heat up and sharpen. So they had to heat up and sharp­ en two bits on a tour. (26, p. 11)

The importance of casing the well was emphasized

repeatedly by the oil workers. In fact, at the time of the

oil boom, fresh water allowed to seep in a well was reportedly

illegal, because it would chase the oil away. Since then,

according to one informant, water has been used in Ohio to

flush oil out, in lieu of gas pressure which naturally forced the oil up. Not only did oil workers blame the failure of individual wells on the presence of water, but one man even blamed the ruin of the oil field on water entering uncased and improperly plugged wells.

An oil boomer who had been a driller gave this excel­ lent description of the process of drilling a well:

Q: How deep were the wells? A: Oh, they was all the same as they are here, about twelve hundred feet on an average to strike the sand, finish up thirteen-fourteen hundred feet. That's when they finish up. Some of 'em would go different depths according to the hill you was on, whether your ground was level or high where you started, or the rock below; however, the rock was pretty level all through this country. Q: How far is it down to the break? A: Well, you first start in here some places here all stone and rock, some places around here for.about, a forty-fifty miles, down some thirty-forty feet to the rock beyond the limestone rock. You see then you have approximately four hundred feet of limestone. That is what they built these lime plants for? but you only take about forty feet of it. Have to drill through that', then when you drill through that you strike what they called the break. It is slate and a break from the lime­ stone. That's very soft and muddy. When you are drilling it, if you go out of that hard limestone and you ain't 143 paying pretty close to your business, you will stick the tools and sometimes you’ve lost your hole. You get your tools stuck in that mud. You can't get them out. That don't happen only maybe once in two or three years. When some thirty-forty feet of that break, some case right in the top of that. You drill a dry hole into the rock, and then you case. Some case it all on top of that break and sometimes it caves and spoils your well. It'll cave in; that mud's quite soft and after you drill by it lots of times it will stick your tools and fall in the top of your rope socket and stick you. But that's not very often. That's called the break. They call the bottom of it the little break and the top, the big break. They lay close, lay right agin the other 'nr the two together's only about fifty feet long and we have to drill through that all through this country--called the break. Q: Did you hear of the red rock? A: There is a streak of red rock anywheres from seventy-eighty-ninety feet. Q: Is it red in color? A: Yes. Did you ever see keel? It is just like keel or chalk; it is red. Some of it's a dark red and some of it's a lighter red. It's a kind of pretty color. It's the nicest thing to drill in. I have drilled a hundred feet down in that red rock. There is about a hundred seventy to two hundred feet of it. After you get through these breaks and put the casing down, but mind you this is a dry hole and the water cased off from it. Q: How far through the break? A: Oh, there are two of them, the little break is the bottom and the big break is the top. The two lay together; it's really the same one. They vary some. The average I'd say about between forty to fifty feet, the break was. Then you went into what we called the Clinton rock. Don't get it mixed with the Trenton. The Trenton rock was rock where we got the oil all through the Ohio oil field, in the Trenton hock. All the oil that was ever got that I ever knew of was in the Trenton ’rock. Now the Clinton rock lays right under the red rock; in some places it's seventy-eighty-ninety feet of red rock. Then you go out of that, you go into what they call the blue slate. That's muddy, very bad drilling. Sticky stuff to drill through. That is all dry hole, no water at all. After you case in, you put the casing in to shut the water off. You can't let the water in on the oil. You wouldn't have no oil as it would chase the oil back so far you never would get it. I have drilled a good many wells and I know it as well as any 144

man living. And if I- didn’t they ain’t any living no more. (24, pp. 12-14)

Drilling for oil in Wood County sometimes caused

bewilderment to owners and drillers alike. For example,

in 1888 a well began producing red oil, worthless on an

already full market:

A phenomena of the field was noticed in August, 1888, when the old Stockwell hole, drilled in August, 1887, was producing 125 barrels of red oil. It was purchased by Laney, who plugged the hole with iron siftings and next day found a clear crude, free from the red substance.7

The danger of losing his tools posed a threat to

the driller. A landowner recalled the recurrence of this

problem on his parents’ farm:

Our farm had a peculiar formation and a lot of tools were lost in drilling when they got into the sand [Trenton]. The oil-bearing rock seemed to be a loose formation and lots of times the stones would fall in and bind their drilling tools and they couldn't get them out. They would have to cut the cable and leave them in the hole. (42, p. 4)

More often, however, the lost tools were retrieved by means of a fishing job. This required the driller to

attach a horn socket to his tools, a rachet-like device which gripped the tools and brought them up again. Sometimes

the tools had to be jarred loose first. And if the driller’s efforts failed a professional fisherman might be called on the job. One bit of practical jokery remembered by an informant centered on a professional fisherman in the Indiana oil field: 145

While working on some wells east of Muncie, Indiana, I had a wonderful boarding house. One day a six foot two or four inch man came looking for a place to board. The lady had rooms. He asked me if I knew where so-and- so's tools were working. I pointed out the rig to him and he went upstairs and changed clothes. As he came down, he looked a sight as his pants were about four inches above his shoe tops. He started out pretending that he knew nothing about the oil field. He told us that he went to the rear of the derrick where he got his shoes all smeared up with shale sand pumpings. He said that he started to cross saying, "Damn that dirty stuff!" He explained that he had finally got on the derrick walk. As he walked in, he acted as if he was half scared of the walking beam. Well, he said that he wanted to learn so he climbed up. The driller gave him a little extra ride. He said as he crawled down, "None of that for me!" Well, when he came back, he was just laughing heartily. We all had a good laugh with him. He turned out to be one of the best drillers and tool fisherman in the busi­ ness. He was a professional fisherman in the Muncie, Indiana field. (31, p. 3)

The new worker was traditionally initiated with a jouncing ride on the walking beam. An inexperienced fellow, the greenhorn, was often the butt of such humor. In this tale, the Trickster, the driller-fisherman, reversed the joke, taking a role which created humor for himself and his peers. A story of more typical greenhorn trickery was told by an oil man concerning a young man who received his initiation to the oil field from a pipeline gang: Some fellows was working putting in a pipeline. He went on the job and they said, "Did you ever work on a pipeline? He said, "Yes, sir, lots of 'em." He worked a half hour bucking them pipe and they was all set and he said, "They damn near broke my back," and he says, "and I quit!" Broke his back--you know, they get you set with the tongs and then the old timers give you a good jerk and that snaps your back. He didn't stay long. 146 Fellow says to the boy, "You’re not a pipe bucker. You’re just a dubber." (65, pp. 6-7)

The scorn held by the oil men for a greenhorn is

very typically represented in the above story. Few new men

entered the occupation without similar initiation rites.

The experienced man occasionally received his due as well,

if his behavior did not meet the expectations of his super­

ior or his peers. The following anecdote began with a dis­ cussion about Sandy MacDonald, the Irish field man mentioned earlier for his unusual size:

If you get a good Irishman, get a friend of him, he is a damn good fellow. He’s damn good; you can depend upon him. Sandy, he was a Irishman and he would do anything for me. I would take him a bill for drilling a well and you were allowed to furnish water-- to get water to drill with. Maybe, you had to build the studding for a water well the. same day or something like that. One time I had a bill as I had finished a well. Sandy said, "You give me the bill and I’ll hand it into the company and get you your check." I gave him the bill and he handed it back and he says, "You God damn monkey, you. You’ve got a bill there and you haven't got nothing for water!" I didn’t drill a water well; I hauled water as it took only about a couple of hundred barrels to spud it until you got down deep enough to get water to put your pipe in the same hole as you were drilling in, you see? He says, "You didn’t carry water over there, did you?" He says, "You didn't carry it over there. You didn’t stand up and piddle it in there to drill down there deep enough to drill the well. You put on there whatever it costs you to drill a water well." That was the kind of man Sandy was. (24, p. 18) Inexperience shown by anyone but particularly by a driller was inexcusable in the oil field. Ridicule was an effective corrective for erroneous behavior. Aimed at a 147 driller whose self-image included pride in workmanship and

ability, the Irishman’s sharp and scornful words had left

an impression on the informant which lasted eighty years.

C. Shooting a Well

The shooter--the daredevil who handled the go-devil.

The stereotyped qualities which comprise the character of

the shooter are inextricably a part of the stories of his

death, dealt with in the final section of the next chapter.

Needless to say, he was thought of as an heroic man. To the

oil men, he was the absolute authority on the field when he

arrived with the glycerin-loaded wagon to shoot a well:

When he backs his wagon up to the derrick floor and takes over there, he's the boss! I don't recall there being any trouble. The drilling crew recognized him as the boss because he is doing the work. (26, p. 9)

Because of the danger of his position, oil companies offered high wages to the man who would haul the necessary explosives to the wells. One informant told about a reluc­ tant teamster who yielded to the offer of fifteen hundred dollars, but did not complete the trip as the wagon exploded, killing driver and horses. The process of shooting a well was detailed by several informants. In response to the question "How did you handle the nitroglycerin?" an informant recalled:

The workers would measure your well to see how deep it was. The nitroglycerin was handled carefully. I can tell you, very carefully! They poured the nitroglycerin 148

Above: HORSE DRAWN NITROGLYCERIN WAGON carrying tubes or cans for shooting the well.

Right: NITROGLYCERIN WAGON, 1900, a more modern vehicle than the one above.

Below: TROUBLESHOOTERS in rig in northwestern Ohio, 1908.

Photos courtesy Marathon Oil Co. 149 in a tube which was built as high as they wanted to shoot it. The tube was lowered to the necessary depth, sometimes to the bottom where it was hold by a pipe. Then they would be ready to drop the go-devil on it. The empty nitroglycerin cans were taken a long distance from the wells when a well was shot. Q: Do you recall how many quarts of nitroglycerin were needed? A: It varied. Some wells would require ten or twelve quarts and some would take more. (67, p. 2)

A description of the nitroglycerin cans and their

placement in the Trenton rock were emphasized by another

informant:

Cans we used to call them. They ran from three inches to five inches in diameter and each can held twenty quarts. A smaller can had to be so much longer, so that it would hold twenty quarts than a five inch would. When we were going to shoot a well--supposing we got a good pay at sixty feet in, what I mean, sixty feet in the sand, the Trenton rock. There’s where we'd put a big shot, a big can, and shoot the crevice heavy. The rest of the Trenton we wouldn’t shoot so heavy either above or below it. But we’d shoot it heavy where the crevice was. Q: For many years the shooter when he came on the job came with horse and wagon and had the glycerin in five gallon cans? A: No, in one gallon cans! He would take these tin tubes and fill them all and put a hook on them and lower them into the well. Q: Was the fluid over the top of these tubes? A: In most wells, if they were but a dry hole, they wouldn’t be, and then they would pump water in on this well--the idea having fluid there was to help this pres­ sure from the shot down in the Trenton. If the well was perfectly dry, they’d pump water in after the shooter would get his shot all lowered in there. Then they’d start the engine. The drillers would start their engine and pump water into the hole until they covered the shot. Q: I suppose people wanted to stay clear of the men hauling the nitroglycerin. A: Well, most people did--I did! (26, pp. 9-10)

Another informant described the details of preparing the well to be shot with nitroglycerin, giving as well an 150 indication of the responsibilities of the driller, the tool dresser, and the shooter:

The biggest amount of nitroglycerin that I have used happened in a well in which I had used two hundred quarts and it failed to respond. The well was one that I had been drilling for another company and was looking after the well in which I was using my own tools. I shot the well with two hundred quarts, but the company wasn't satisfied. Then there were many shooters around the small towns, and you could get a man out that was called the shooter. They would have a nitroglycerin team, a special team. They would set a pan in the wagon that held twenty quarts. It was a long, high, square pan in which they hauled the nitroglycerin. You would get ready to shoot at three or four o'clock in the morning. You would tell the shooter to get ready to shoot at three or four o' clock in the morning. The drillers would be there as well as the tool dressers. They would put in whatever water they wanted because that was used for tamping it if the well didn't have enough fluid. They would shoot the well with two hundred quarts as the average. I shot the well with two hundred and it didn't respond. They said they would give another shot free. They shot the same well a few days later using three hundred quarts. That was the biggest shot that I remember, but there were many wells that have been shot with more than this well. (24, p. 6)

Once the nitroglycerin was carefully lowered in place and the well was ready to be shot, the go-devil was dropped:

This go-devil, what they used to set those off with, it was a piece of iron, cast iron about eighteen inches or two foot, and it had a pointed end on it. It was like a three quarter piece of steel. It was dropped down and this point was guided so it wouldn't hit the side of the casing. She'd send her down, and when that hit that was--. There was a springing cap on the top. And that exploded it and you.' could feel the jar on the ground when that glycerine went off, regardless. And you always went into the wind when them wells was shot. That would keep the rocks from falling and hitting you. Q: How about the oil? A: That was the same way. The oil would always blow into the wind, with the wind. And if you had what they 151 call a northeasterly wind, you would have no gas pressure whatsoever. Q: Do you know why? A: Gas pressure. Nobody--they've had scientists out here and they never could figure it out, only there was some kind of a vacuum. (64, pp. 1-2)

The loss of gas pressure under a northeast wind was

mentioned by several informants as a mysterious and unex­

plained phenomenon of the oil field.

Women played little part in the drama of the oil

fields. In the precarious act of dropping the go-devil to

shoot the well, however, it would seem that half the women

of Wood County, those living during the oil boom, had at

one time shot a well by dropping the go-devil and running

full speed for the nearest safe shelter as the gusher came

in. The other half had a girl friend who had done so, ap­

parently. One informant proudly told of his wife dropping

a go-devil in the last well drilled in one section of the

Wood County oil field, and in so doing she brought in a

hundred barrel well.

Women also managed to enter the lore of the oil worker

in the story of a wager made to test female courage:

Well, I heard this story along about 1903, over in through there, and years ago they was one fellow out in here. He had a daughter. He offered her and another woman, another girl, twenty-five dollars to go up on top of this derrick while it was shot. (65, p. 6)

This story is very typical of the mischievous pranks which' formed a large part of the oil men’s humor.

To see a well shot was a big event and a well-publicized 152

one. Many people came "to get as close as we dared to see

them spray the oil over the top of the derrick." (46, p. 12)

Care was taken by, the spectators to "get on the lee side

away from the wind. It would spray all over you if you

didn't." (51, p. 6)

The oil men, whose stereotype consistently depended on superlatives--the largest, strongest, and boldest of men, might be expected to ply their occupation in the same whole­ hearted manner. It was the oil man's natural inclination to test situations. Both in drilling and shooting a well, in­ formants recalled the deepest well drilled and the largest shooting made. The latter, of course, was'far more spec­ tacular, but neither venture proved gainful for the oil men.

The deepest well, drilled to nineteen hundred feet, "filled up with salt water. Evidently they had drilled to what we call tempeleau, and at that time they called it green sand."

(21, p. 6) The second incident, that of shooting a well with an extraordinary amount of glycerin, was told by several in­ formants. It is the type of incident which leads easily to many variants and to enlargement by the narrator. Two vari­ ations of the incident are given:

On my farm at one time, they put twelve hundred quarts in a well to see what it xwuld do and it blew the casing right out of the hole. (42, p. 3)

The second informant, further removed from the incident, had a slightly exaggerated variant:

There was a well in the Cygnet area that the drillers 153

experimented with in which a thousand quarts were used. They claimed that the nitroglycerin blew down the der­ rick and the tubing out of the well. (67, p. 2)

Concerning the amount of nitroglycerin customarily

used to shoot a well, the first informant in this section,

who described the biggest shot used in a well he drilled,

stated that the average well took two hundred to five hundred

quarts of nitroglycerin. In great contrast was the informant who described the care necessary for handling the explosive.

He believed that most wells were shot with from ten to twelve quarts of nitroglycerin. Still another oil worker claimed

that "they used anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 quarts of glyc­ erine to blow ’em up at that time." (64, p. 1) And the in­ formant who described the shooter as boss at the derrick claimed one hundred sixty quarts was the usual amount. Little imagination is necessary to see how variations in legends and stories have their beginnings.

D. The Flowing Well

Many times a well flowed oil before it was shot with nitroglycerin. Some wells came in as flowing wells when the shot was made. Much oil was wasted if the contractor had not prepared carefully the lines to carry the oil to tanks. Even then he might not be able to case the oil well for some time.

And oil lay knee-deep in the surrounding fields and glistened from the branches of the trees. The flowing well might spray 154

Left: FLOWING WELL, Foltz farm, Wood County

Lower Left : FLOWING WELL,1900.

Photos courtesy Marathon Oil Co.

OIL GUSHING out of a well near Lima after it had been shot, 1904. 155

oil with great force, causing a great deal of damage. An

informant recalling the Fulton Well said, "Thousands of bar­

rels of oil flooded the land before they got it under con­

trol and a place to put it." (26, p. 1) The Fulton Well was

the first oil well in Wood County, drilled before pipelines

carried the oil to huge storage tanks. At that time the oil

was run into large wooden tanks or vats, then put in barrels

and hauled by teams to the railroads.

Of later wells in the area, the same informant said:

Oh, all of our wells flowed out there, in the start, but eventually the gas pressure weakened, they didn't flow. Some of them flowed wickedly, pretty near tore things to pieces. Q: Did you have oil scatter much over the area? A: No, we were very fortunate and very careful. We had our lines laid from the wells to the tanks in advance. We were ready for any emergency that might arise. When the well would flow, we'd turn it in our lines and it would go right up to the tanks. (26, p. 1)

This rather contradictory text of uncontrollable and destructive flowing wells and of the informant's well-con­ trolled flowing wells indicates two contemporary attitudes toward oil: that of wonder at the spectacular but wasteful gusher and that of unbelievable control, of the driller who capably turned the oil into lines from well to tank without spilling a drop. Gib Morgan was one of these men.^

The wife of an oil boomer said that in the earliest oil days, before tanks for storage were’.built, wells were

"agitated" to make them flow. She explained the process in this manner: 156 [Two men] agitated wells to make the wells flow. They used that before the wells were pumped. . . . They had a rope, which was like the rope used on the bull wheels for drilling a well, that was all coiled up on the back of the wagon. They ran that rope down into the well and some way they got rid of the B.S. [bottom settlings] and the wells would flow. (33, p. 8)

The flowing well was shot whe.n the pressure had de­

creased. After it had been pumped for a period of time,

the pressure gradually dropped and the well was shot to

retain the high oil production.

E. Pumping the Wells

The wells were pumped by steam engines in a boiler

house. Connecting the engines in the boiler house to each well were the steam boxes to run the steam to the well with­

out heat loss. At each well was a small steam engine to receive the steam from the boiler. One woman, raised in an oil working family, described the advantages of the steam boxes and engines to the housewife:

I Wralked the steam boxes a many a times with two buckets and carried hot exhaust water from the engines, where they run the engines, you know, and that was a wonderful water. It was better than any cistern water you ever used. You would run a faucet or turn a throttle, fill your bucket, and I'd take my buckets and I'd walk the steam box. The line was in a box through your farm. They didn't lay right on top of the ground. They was steam boxes, they called them, and they would be about a foot, fourteen inches wide. Q: Now these steam boxes, for the benefit of people that don't know what they are, they were steam lines to run the wells and the box was a board box made to keep the heat in the line. A: That's right. And built up off the ground. It wasn't right down on the ground. They were built up. 157

OHIO OIL COMPANY WORKERS, 1907.

CENTRAL POWER PLANT for several wells on a farm in Wood County, 1900. The pipes are enclosed in wooden steam boxes.

WILDCATTERS sitting by their shanty, or "dog house" northeast of the Frank farm and west of Hammansburg, 1905. Photos courtesy Marathon Oil Company. 158

Some of ’em were quite high. And some of ’em would be maybe a foot, half a foot. They never was built low on the ground. And they was run from one engine to the other. The boiler houses just stood thick pretty near on any farm right through this oil field, and they'd run these big boilers, fire them with coal, and then these steam lines, that's what would run the wells, and they'd be engines to every well, and that's the way we done. Q: I guess it was a good thing in those days that you had the steam box as the country was pretty wet. You had something to walk on. A: I'll agree with you there. Oh, yes, I'll tell you. Yes, it was a good thing, and I know I lived a good many years where people them days, wasn't hardly anybody that had cisterns. And it was a good thing--that exhaust water, but that was better than any cistern water you'd ever have, and that's what they called it. You could get it boiling hot. I would carry water the day before to use it as cold water to wash on my washboard. (5, pp. 15-16)

It became a custom, in fact, in oil country to use the steam boxes as sidewalks from one location to another.

This was especially useful in the wet, muddy country of Wood

County.

The construction of the steam box was described by a landowner who had several wells on his farm:

Q: Do you remember the days when they used steam to pump the oil wells? A: Oh, yes! I've fell off the old steam box many the time. Q: How wide were these steam boxes? A: About either eight or ten inch planks on top. Q: How big was that steam line? A: Two inch. They put the steam line and the oil line both in the same box. Q: I suppose the steam kept the water from freezing in the lead line. (26, p. 6) 159

F. Pumping Stations

Once the oil was pumped from the wells, it was gathered

at pumping stations. There were several of these in the area.

One station of local fame was Station 8, claimed to be one of

the largest stations in the world. Following the American

dream of success through one's own initiative, an informant

told this anecdote about her father:

He started out as a water boy at Station 8, and he designed sort of a contraption that he carried over his back, and he was able to carry more water, which impressed some of the officials that came. They decided from that day on to give him a chance, and he really did go places from being a water boy at Station 8. (40, p. 5)

That Station 8 was an exciting place to the local people was evident in the descriptions of it and attitudes toward it. Sunday trips were made to the oil field whether to see a gusher, a fire, or Station 8 and its intricate ma­ chinery:

That was one of our Sunday jaunts as a rule to go to Station 8 in order to see all the men working, as well as the mechanisms of the entire plant. Of course, in those days it was so much different than it is now because the workers fired individual boilers and gauged differently. Today everything has become so much more advanced, worldwide. Q: Were there many men going to work in those days? A: Oh, there were! There were teams, stores that opened early, men carrying great big well-filled dinner buckets. Some would go on wagons or take any way that they could to get there. It was a sight to see them go to Station 8. (40, p. 6)

The pump stations, like the oil tanks, were subject to fires and explosions. The station had several large tanks 160 around it which also might burn. For some informants who were young during the oil boom, the fires at the tanks or stations were the most memorable sight around the oil field.

A pump station worker recalled a station fire, caused as many were by lightning:

I remember the morning that lightning struck that station. It was full of oil. We heard the lightning strike and we got up and looked out of the window? and the station was just a ball of fire. ... I worked over there a part of the time that day. The blaze was so hot when the oil boiled over that it burnt our faces. We were out by a maple tree and you had to turn your head when you tried to look at it. (43, pp. 2-3)

The detailed reports of the processes of bringing-in an oil well constitute one type of folklore. These are reminiscences based on personal experiences, often quite detailed, sometimes accompanied by slips of memory and in­ accuracies. They were usually told as absolute truth. In each case the informant believed himself to be an authority on his topic. That the folklorist in analyzing and comparing the texts found many discrepancies illustrates the influence that a duration of time and many narrative sessions ' have had on the data. Regardless of whether the informants can be considered authorities on the statistics of the processes on the oil field, they were certainly authorities on the attitudes of oil men toward their work and toward their texts. As carriers of the traditions of the oil field, the retired oil boomers conveyed their attitudes toward their 161 rough life--twelve hour tours in all weather, never ceasing

until the well came in. They conveyed also the behavior

and values of the oil men, their manners and mores, their

various skills, and the ingenuity and courage required in

each oil occupation, as well as attitudes toward their labor

and their amusements. For the informants these intricacies

of their occupation have become a basic part of their lore.

Most of them retired from the oil field at least fifty or sixty years ago, when the boomers moved from Ohio to Okla­ homa and Texas, following the rich flow of new production, opening new fields. A few followed the oil trail, later returning to Wood County. They are the exceptions among these informants. Most were here when the oil boom began or came from Pennsylvania fields to the Wood County field, worked here and retired here.

The majority had an established repertoire of oil lore. In detailing the processes of the oil field, the better raconteurs [by which is meant the informant who capably narrated the process-related incidents and details] were specialists in an oil occupation--retired drillers or tool dressers or teamsters or roustabouts who knew intimately the requirements of a particular oil occupation. 162

CHAPTER V

LOCAL OIL LEGENDS

Of equal and sometimes superior significance to the texts of oil processes for the folklorist are the legends of the spectacular events of the oil field. Local legends of gushers, discovery wells in an area, tank fires and ni­ troglycerin explosions proliferate in oil country. Whole fields become known for one memorable gusher--the Drake Well in Pennsylvania, Spindletop in Texas, or in Findlay, Ohio, the

Karg Well, a gas well which was piped and lit so that resi­ dents for many miles had perpetual light. In Wood County the Fulton and Potter Wells share this reputation. Calamities also became the nucleus for many local legends. The infor­ mants for these texts were both oil men and townspeople, sometimes reflecting very different attitudes toward gushers, explosinns and fires. The Grant Well explosion and the Gypsy

Lane Road explosion are two tragedies about which many variants have grown away from fact, gravitating eventually toward leg­ end. For these are the types of experiences which breed folklore.

These texts were told not only for entertainment pur­ poses but also for didactic purposes, confirming the heritage to the young to whom the informants felt an obligation. The texts were also told for egotistic and boastful reasons, the legend being a media through which the narrator established 163

rapport with a peer group and either attained or maintained

a position of authority with any audience.

In telling and retelling stories of any spectacular

event which happened over three quarters of a century ago,

the informant establishes patterns in a legend, makes changes

of emphasis, omits and adds to a text. Having heard vari­

ants, he may also have changed the text consciously or uncon­ sciously for various reasons.1 Comparison and analysis of

some of these texts of local legends has proceeded on these

bases of folklore function and the folk esthetic.

I. EARLY WELLS AND GUSHERS

The first wells drilled in Wood County offered great

excitement for oil men and residents alike. One informant

remembered the day her grandmother signed a lease with

Standard Oil and the dinner which was held in honor of the

event. The oil men promised a well within so many days, and

the informant watched with anticipation the arrival of the

first men and equipment from Findlay, Ohio, where gas wells had been drilled previously. Most of the early oil men came

from the Pennsylvania field, a few by way of Lima where head­ quarters for the Ohio Oil Company were located and where the

Lima oil field had opened in 1885. Drilling in new territory, the men were almost as uninitiated to the geology of the Wood

County area as the townspeople. One resident told an anecdote 164

recalling the first well drilled in his section of the county:

I’ll tell you about the first well that came into this section. It was just about six hundred feet from where I am sitting on the north side of the main street in Jerry City on the west side. That well was just this side of Bull Run Creek that runs through the edge of town. The drillers of that well were shipped in from Pennsylvania. They lived in a little house on the west side of town and had a little boy often with them as they drilled along. That was the first well in this part of the country and this oil well was getting down pretty fast. The little boy was over there and was looking down the hole as they pulled out. As the sand pump was out, he said, "I’d like to see what is down there. I would like to see what is down in that hole!" He was still bending over the hole as the oil came up. It knocked him over backwards and splattered him all over with oil. Although they hadn’t expected any oil at this time, the oil came out of the top of the derrick and flowed over the top of the derrick for four days before they could get the necessary tools to shut off the well. When they were ready to shut off the oil, they had no tanks in and they had no pipeline to ship the oil away so they had to find tanks. They put in one tank and that didn’t last for a day! Finally, they had sixty tanks with a capacity of two hundred fifty barrels and every few days they would be filled up as the wells were running oil all the time. From then on, there was oil! (49, pp. 2-3)

The text above was told for the obvious didactic purpose of presenting the cultural milieu of the earliest oil days. It is as well a story which served another pur­ pose: that of humorously and entertainingly discrediting the knowledge and skill of the driller, the man who was an authority both on and off the rig.

Local legends of early gushers often reached fantastic proportions as the informant recreated the incident. Another informant recalled an early oil gusher in Sandusky County on 165

the eastern edge of the Wood County oil field:

I think one of the sights that left an indelible impression on me was the Kirkbride Gusher that was drilled about a mile from where I lived. I saw the well flow when I was a boy of six years old. This well flowed and the oil carried a half a mile with a strong wind. They pumped about three thousand bar­ rels of oil a day for a month! (21, p. 1)

The narrator authoritatively referred to exact figures of

oil production as he remembered them and also attempted to

give the listener specific images of the gusher. In so

doing, as a raconteur he lends credence to this text of a

remarkable event. Compare the text with the following

account of the Kirkbride Gusher from the Record of Wood

County:

During the year 1894 there were 3,001 wells com­ pleted in Ohio, it being the banner year of the field. The largest well completed during that period was that of the Kirkbride Bros., on the Jones farm, in Madison township, Sandusky county. The daily output was said to have been 20,000 barrels, but it never produced it. The well yielded 310 barrels of oil an hour, which is equivalent to 7,440 barrels in a day of 24 hours. It was completed in October, and is said to have produced 500 barrels a day for some months after. According to the same source the first well in Wood

County drilled specifically for oil was the Fulton Well.

Like the previously mentioned well, thousands of barrels of

oil were lost while the men prepared storage tanks. During

the early oil days pipelines connected to large metal storage tanks were not used. Oil was stored in wooden tanks at each well and was then transferred to barrels. As one man described the process at the time of the Fulton Well, "The 166

OIL CREEK, PENNSYLVANIA. Oil was first carried in BEFORE TANK CARS wooden barrels barrels loaded on were used to transport oil. At flatboats. times the barrels were worth more than the oil. Above a wood- burning locomotive strains to pull three oil laden cars.

BARRELS BY THE THOUSANDS for oil storage and transportation. An array of barrels at the first oil well in Findlay, 1885.

_EARLY VINTAGE TANK KTCARS. Wooden tanks mounted on conven­ tional flat cars, designed in 1865. Photos courtesy Drake Well Museum and Marathon Oil Company. 167

oil was shipped out on trains. It was hauled to Cygnet

where a loading rack would put the oil on the trains where

it was hauled in wooden tanks and flat cars." (44, p. 9)

The Record of Wood County mentioned above gave the

following account of the attempted chicanery of the drillers

of the Fulton Well:

On December 1, 1886, the drill penetrated the Trenton rock on David Fulton’s farm, on Section 14, to a depth below the mouth, of 1,194 feet. The drillers, and the Vandergrifts, who owned it, never opened a more discouraging hole, and were about aban­ doning work, when a resolution to go down another hun­ dred or two hundred feet was adopted. When, at last, oil answered the drill, on December 13, the wily owners plugged the hole and let the 1,800-pound drill rest upon the plug, but the oil, like Banquo’s ghost, would not down, and thus their only hope of acquiring more land, by making this well a "mystery," was de­ feated. 3

An oil driller gave the following narration of the Fulton Well coming in:

Q: What can you tell me about the Fulton Well? A: All I can tell you--it came in on December 13, 1896 [1886]. Q: Was there much oil there? A: Why, it flooded the whole section. Q: How did they get rid of the oil in those days? A: Hauled it away in barrels in tanks. Q: Where was the well located? A: Three quarters of a mile south of Hammansburg on the Fulton farm and the owner of the well was named Vandergrift. The drillers were very discouraged up un­ til they hit oil and gas at the depth of 1,194 feet. Thousands of barrels of oil flooded the land before they got it under control and a place to put it. This started the action in Henry Township. (26, p. 1)

Other than the year of the oil well, the informant’s text correlates with the written source with surprising regu­ larity. 168

Many wells attained individual reputations for

steady production or for irregular but high production.

One of these was the Fulton Well, as described by another

informant:

Q: Tell me what you know about the old Fulton Well. A: That was the first well that was drilled for oil. There had been wells before the Fulton Well but the drillers were hunting for gas because it was hoped to make North Baltimore a gas center. Q: Was there much oil found in the Fulton Well? A: That well flowed oil until my dad couldn't wade out of the dirt. He had to back up as it was going over the top of his leather boots. Q: How long did this well last? A: The well lasted until just a few years ago until the time they closed out the other wells. (44, p. 1)

Other wells also attained reputations for production or reliability. Some people grew to have very personal regard for these wells which had become known for particu­

lar characteristics: "There was a well that they called the Old Cory Eight that they pumped for years and years and she never seemed to fail for so many years." (34, p. 4)

Another such well was Old Calamity, about which the proud owner boastfully related its history:

Q: As I looked over your oil property, I see a sign that says Old Calamity. What does that mean? A: Well, it derived that name from the litigation from its earliest inception. They fought over it when they moved the tools in there. Later on, the well adjoining it was only forty-four feet from casing head to casing head on the rival company's lease, and they shot the well and nearly ruined it. They raised their casing, raised their water level and again nearly ruined it. It was through incidents of this type that the well acquired its name, Old Calamity! 169

Q: Has this well been productive? A: Yes, Old Calamity has produced more oil than any well in the state of Ohio. I pumped this well for nearly ten years--that is, intermittently--and got salt water and some gas, but finally it took off and over three years it made about seven thousand barrels. At the present time, it is again on water. Q: What was the date on Old Calamity? A: It was brought in December, 1894, and-- Q: Still producing? A: Yes, still producing. Q: That is an unusual record. A: Well, yes, it is. There are a few other wells, I understand, here in Wood County that are older and still producing, but they are few. (21, pp. 13-4)

The Potter Well

The gusher in Wood County about which most local

legends are told was the Potter Well. Incorporated in these

legends of the well are several familiar oil lore traits:

the lucky well, the fabulous gusher that flowed and could

not be cased, and the sterling character of the landowner/

driller. There are several variants of the legend telling

how the well came in. One text named Potter as the driller:

I heard that Potter was on the stool running the drill himself. When some fellow came to buy it, he didn’t sell, but changed his mind. They tell the story that he got off the stool to call the fellow back and the well began to flow. (43, p. 9)

This same variant is heard many times in local lore. The

driller is often identified as a German farmer, and he either

offers to sell to an oil man, usually a Standard Oil Company man, or the oil man offers to buy. The farmer is about to

agree, but he changes his mind, immediately after which the

Well begins to flow: 170

The Ducat well [the well was located on the Ducat farm] was drilled in by a poor German, who had secured a lease of twenty acres in which was considered "wild­ cat" territory. He had a poor string of tools, and these, together with the lease, had taken every cent he possessed. Eagerly he followed the click of the drill to the Trenton, and into it with no sign of oil. Greatly discouraged he continued to go deeper. Fifty feet into the Trenton he struck a strong flow of gas, but no liquid gold. To him the outlook was now hope­ less, in view of the results in the other fields. At this juncture, a representative of the Standard Oil Company drove by. Noticing the well, he stopped and walked over to the derrick. The driller, though still at work, was too discouraged to go much farther, and then and there offered to sell the lease and well at cost, which was $2,500. The situation was apparent to the visitor, but he lacked the heart to add to it, and agreed to take the proposition under consideration. Returning to his buggy he drove but a fraction of a mile from the scene when he was startled by a loud report. Stopping and looking back he saw a solid stream of oil from the well, rising higher than the derrick. He returned at once and offered to purchase the well on the original terms. The situation was now completely reversed, and the German refused to sell. He held the well six months and then sold it for $10,000.4

The local newspaper gave another variant of the lucky strike and of the sale of the well, accomplished not six months later, as in the text above, but only three weeks after the gusher came in on May 19, 1888: The great king gusher, The Ducat Oiler, of Liberty [township] is still the center of attraction in the field. The well has been partially shut in. The pipe line is taking some of the oil, while considerable more at last account was running on the ground. Said an operator Monday: The well promised to be a dry hole until forty-three feet in the sand, and Potter had his last cent in was about to abandon it. He got the tools fast and in despair was about to give up, when ten minutes later they had to get out of the way of the oil. At one time he offered to sell his interest for $600, and has since 'been offered $40,000 for the same. Verily the fortunes of oil men are varied and peculiar. The well is also said to be an 8,000,000 feet gasser. (May 31, 1888) 171 Reed and Merry, D. C. Bromley and W. A. Hardison have purchased, for $10,000 of Clarence Potter, the big Ducat gusher, Liberty, with territory, and will sink another well in the same forty acres. The king gusher is said to be good for 3,000 though its actual capacity cannot be computed. (June 14, 1888) 5

The Record of Wood County confirmed the fact that

Potter was the driller, not the landowner, of the famous well drilled on the Ducat farm:

He [Potter] continued to work in the oil fields of Ohio and Michigan until the spring of 1888, when he purchased tools and began taking contracts for drilling wells. In 1888 he drilled, on the Ducat farm, a well whose estimated yield was 10,000 barrels per day; after two weeks he sold this well for $10,000. In June, 1889, he purchased forty acres of land, to which he has added until he now has 200 acres, upon which he has drilled twelve wells, which have proved productive and profitable.6

Another variant from the field data is quite differ­ ent in its story of how the well came in, although like the others it attributes the event to lucky circumstances:

. . . the story went that Mr. Potter had run out of money. 1-Ie contracted the well to go so deep and for so much. When he ran out of money and they hadn’t struck anything, he pulled out his gold watch and told the drillers that he would give them the watch if they would drill just six feet more. Before they reached the six feet, they had reached the jackpot! (42, p. 6)

This variant contains two traits often told as part of the legend. These are that Potter was in poor financial condi­ tion when the well was drilled and that he offered his gold watch for the drillers to drill "just one more screw,” oil terminology for the distance of the temper screw, about six feet, by which the driller lowered his tools as the well deepened. Note in the above variant Potter is not the driller 172

The century-old informant mentioned earlier gave an account of the well coming in which included no reference to the element of fortune or to the personal part Potter played in striking it rich. He referred instead to the huge production of the well. His is the story told by a driller, the driller of an adjacent well which did not come in:

It was the biggest well in Wood County. It was better than a thousand barrels a day. I was drilling a well just about a thousand feet away from it. Oil came down there the night it struck that well in the crevice. I was drilling about a thousand feet from there. As the wind was coming that way, the mist of oil came down so that we had to shut our fire out of the boiler and shut down everything else around there. I was there when the well was flowing and filling the ditches around there. (24, p. 7)

The unparalleled reputation of the Potter well, the second common oil lore trait found in this legend, was told by the informants in acclamatory statements:"a fabulous well ... it flowed all over the ground and so much oil that they couldn’t stop it" (43, p. 10), "we would go and watch the oil flow, with oil spread all over the ground"

(33, p. 9), and "just a wonderful well." (5, p. 5)

A cnntemporary source, the Wood County Sentinel, also emphasized the amazing size of the gusher:

Another great oil well has been struck in Liberty which came in Monday evening on the Ducat tract, the west half of the northeast quarter of section twenty- seven. The event causes great excitement in that vicinity as it demonstrates the fact that Wood County's oil field is a wonderful thing. A communication received Tuesday says: "The greatest gusher ever knovrn in the United States was struck last evening. Oil continues to flow to the top of the derrick this morning, and the well is estimated at 10,000 barrels. It has covered 173

THE POTTER WELL FLOWING from a horizontal pipe attached to the casing head. Clarence Potter, the drillers, is in the second row on the right. Photo courtesy of Charles Potter.

THE OIL BOOM WANES, leaving even the jack pump inactive. Photo by Michael Marsden. 174 about 40 acres of land already and is stronger this morning than last night." (May 24, 1888)

One informant’s recollection of watching the spec­

tacular Potter gusher which drew sightseers from many miles

is an exciting picture: I remember the first well, the gusher, that came in here was out here on Route 281. Clarence Potter drilled the well, and it come in a gusher, and it was a gusher, let me tell you! That was just a short time before my daddy died, and I know it drawed people from far and near. You could hear that well roar, and they couldn't get it shut in, you know, for the gas. You could just--. Oh, it was just a fog of gas! It was just a wonderful well and that was the first big oil well that was drilled in this regular oil field through here and that was on the Jess Ducat farm west on Route 281. Q: Was that the days that oil was selling for ten cents a barrel? A: That is right. I don't know how many barrels that made but I know it flowed out before they got it shut in to go into the tanks; it flowed till the men had to put on hip boots to wade to do it. I remember seeing that. My daddy was just interested in that, you know, and we went to see it. It was a sight to see, let me tell you it was. (5, p. 5)

Another informant on the Potter Well was a lady whose husband had been an oil driller and who had herself taken

an active part in the oil field and on the rig: "Many a night I have went out when some young man would want to go home

to see his girl friend, and I would help him to shut down his tools. I would steer the stem in the hole while he would run the engine." (34, p. 5) This informant also recreated the excitement of the Potter Well clearly and colorfully:

Q: You tell me that you have some knowledge of the Potter Well. Did you see the Potter Well in action? A: Yes, I did. I went with my parents to see that well when it was flowing. It would flow ever so often, 175

and the ground and trees were all covered with oil, and we went there on several different occasions to watch that well before they got it shut in. It was a long time. It just flowed and would flow ever so often, and before they could get it shut in, it would flow again. But luckily it didn’t catch fire like the one that I went to visit over at Bloomdale. They got it shut in, and I can remember so well that the man that owned that well and drilled that well boarded with my aunt. ... Q: Now, this Potter Well, you tell me that there was a great come and go to it, that is, it seemed to have to build up pressure before it would throxtf out the oil? A: Oh, yes, sure. It would flow for so long and then it would die down gradually, and then after a while when the pressure built up, it would flow again. It was real interesting to see it flow in the tanks after they got the pipe in the tanks. They had the pipe high enough that you could see that oil going into the tank. It would flow oil and gas. . . . Q: Now this Potter Well, you say that there was an awful pressure of oil and gas. Now did that flow out for quite a ways? A: Oh, yes. They had then I think their rigs were standard rigs. I think they had some that was seventy- four feet high and some that was higher than that still. The oil would flow clear over that derrick, clear up there and over the top of that derrick. Q: That must have flowed over the ditches and the creeks, over everything. A: Ditches, creeks, and the trees! The trees just glistened with oil. All over the trees. (34, pp. 1, 4) The text includes a description of how the well flowed, its

characteristics, and its gigantic proportions, and ends with a series of vivid images--oil shooting into the air over the derrick and glistening from the trees. There is no con­ cern for the enormous waste of oil and destruction of land.

The excitement of the oil boom, like that of the gold rush in California and the lucky silver strike of a Nevada pros­ pector, excludes such considerations until later, more 176

conservative days. Only then did these people begin to realize that the golden flood was by no means inexhaustible.

Of course, the natural excitement produced by the boom and the vast possibilities it opened did not encourage critical analysis.

As was mentioned earlier, the Potter Well as a local legend has three traits present in the texts. The lucky well and the extraordinary nature of the well are repre­ sented above. The third trait, that of the sterling character of the landowner/driller, Clarence Potter, to some degree parallels the stereotype of the Landowner in oil lore.

Potter was in financial straits, the poor man who struck it rich in local lore. While he was no Coal Oil Johnny, famous for spending millions in a matter of months, Potter’s reputation for giving to the poor is firmly established.

He was described as "one of the finest men that ever lived."

(43, p. 9) He is remembered as

... a hard-working young man. He was a good man, and if he had any responsibilities after he was able to take care of ’em, I know he took care of them. And he was always very good to the poor, and I remem­ ber so well of his wife saying to me one time, she said, "Clarence says don’t never pass anybody by that’s walking that would be welcome," and he would stop and pick them up. (34, p. 2)

Potter’s honesty and good character are carried from the oil field to the horse barn where he was known to be a square-dealing horse trader:

We bought a team,of horses from Potter once, that is my dad bought them when I was a kid fifteen years 177

old, I was going up on the prairie to farm, and Potter always had a big bunch of horses. He had horses and anybody that wanted a horse could go there and buy pretty near anything they’d want. So this was a beau­ tiful team of sorrel mares, white mane1 and tail, that is, light mane and tail and baldfaces. And when Dad and Potter had the deal just about made for the team, why, Potter called my dad Tink and he said, "Tink, who's gonna drive this team?" And my dad told him I was. And he said, "Well, then, you don’t want ’em. Don’t buy 'em," he said, "because they run away pretty near every time we hitch ’em up." And he said, "You can't haul a load of fodder behind them at all," and he said, "it takes two good men to haul a load of hay." So Dad said, "Well, then, I guess we don't want 'em." And, of course, I had the big head pretty bad, and I said, "Dad, I believe I can drive them." And so he bought them for me and they never run away from me but once. I had 'em a little over two years, I had 'em one day with the storm blankets on, and they were scart to death of the storm blankets, and I un­ hitched in the field from whatever I was doin' and went to the barn, and they jerked the lines out of my hands. And when I turned in the barnyard I was afoot and they run in the barn and that's the only time they ever run away with me. And I used to drive ’em to the fair. We'd go to the fair in the fall, a friend and I one fall. There'd be I suppose ten or fifteen guys wanta stop and look 'em over and want to know if they could buy them or anything. They hardly ever walked a step, pretty near always prancing. And they were a beautiful team. (43, pp. 10- 11) The motif of the fine character of the now rich land- owner occurred often in the field data. No doubt Potter’s fine reputation had strong foundation in fact. His biogra­ pher in the Record of Wood County, published in 1897, attri­ buted to him the same fine characteristics:

Clarence Potter, of Liberty township, is a young man of excellent business and executive ability, whose leading characteristics are enterprise and energy. He is careful in his management, far-sighted in his dealings, and above all is honorable and straightforward in every 178 transaction. . . . He is a popular and esteemed citizen, genial and pleasant in manner, and ever ready to extend a helping hand to those in need, many having received timely assistance from him.7

Each narrator of the texts of the fabulous well

was eager to include references and stories of Potter’s

honesty, his' concern for the poor, and his fine character.

The story of the gusher has become as well the legend of the man. The elements coexist as part of one legend.

II. TANK FIRES

The spectacular tales of the oil field were of two

types: those of the gushers and early wells which created

the fever and excitement of a boom, and those of the disas­

ters of the oil field--tank fires, derrick fires, and explo­

sions. About each type of tale, local legends grow, fed by many narrations, often the primary recreation of the retired oil men.

Huge oil storage tanks, originally wooden, later metal, were built to store the oil from the wells. Pipe­ lines ran from the wells to the tanks. The huge vats of oil were often the site of catastrophic fires usually caused by lightning. Eventually laws were passed requiring the tanks to be surrounded by levees so that burning oil could not spread from one tank to another or, according to two informants, from one town to another 6n the flat Wood County terrain where oil towns were located at almost every drossroads. 179

BURNING OIL TANKS at Station 8, Cygnet. Courtesy of Max Shaffer.

BUILDING A LEVEE around the tank to prevent burning oil from spreading to nearby tanks, should the tank collapse. Tank fires brought many men from the locality to work, all anxious to earn 404 an hour. Bottom photos courtesy Marathon Oil Company. 180 The tank building and legislation were described by an oil man:

Q: Do you remember when they built those large tanks around Cygnet? A: That came later. The big tanks, they built a hundred of them because the Standard Oil Company had so much trouble with fires that burned their oil and tanks. Hence, they came in there, organized, and built the thousand barrel tanks. When I was there, the company built only thirty-five, fifty, or hundred thousand barrel tanks. If a big storm came along, lightning would strike one of the tanks and burn it. The tank would get so hot that the oil would boil over and over. This proved very dangerous. The legislators passed a law that the oil company had to buy the land on which they built the tanks. The fires were dangerous as the oil would boil over to provide a sight for the people who came to watch on Sundays. The tank would get so hot at the top that it would just roll down and roll down to the ground. Then a law was passed that the company would have to dig a trench with a team of horses and a scraper to dig a hole in the ground large enough to set the tank in the center of it and with dirt high enough to prevent the burning tanks spreading to nearby tanks. . . . yQ: How many would you say there were? A: Oh, my god! If you take it clear through to Findlay and Lima and scattered in all directions, you could only build one so close to another tank because of the lightning striking. I couldn’t guess any more than you can. There were hundreds of them. (24, pp. 3, 5)

The tanks were located together on tank farms. Often when one tank ignited, another would also burn:

There were two tanks burning at the same time. Oddly enough, one tank that was in between the burning tanks didn’t catch on fire. The first burning tank was supposed to be struck with lightning while the second burning tank must have been ignited through the line because the two tanks were connected together. (12, p. 5)

The same informant also related the story of a tank fire, one not caused by lightning as most were: 181 In 1888, while the tank builders were building the tanks on the Frederick Farms, ... my uncle and another' man got burned up. The tank caught fire as at that time they lacked the riveting apparatus that they have now. The workers were heating rivets with a torch, and I guess the atmosphere was heavy and the tank caught fire from the torch. At that time they heated the rivets red hot while today they weld them. The workers would heat the rivets red hot and drive them in. (12, p. 6)

Another incident of an oil tank ignited by a worker's negligence was narrated:

This man blew up with a tank. He went up on top of a big tank to see how full it was getting, and they was a sign at the bottom, "Do not take any lighted lights up this ladder." Well, he went up there with a lantern, and the gas off'n the oil that was coming in there blew the tank up and they never did find nothin' of him. They don't know where he's at. They never did find anything of him. (64, p. 5)

A similar incident was told by Boyce House in Oil

Boom. The oil man using a lantern to check a tank as it was being filled started a fire which destroyed tank, o derrick and boiler, and threatened the whole oil field.

The largest tank farm in the area was the Sun Oil

Tank Farm at Station 8, the pumping station. The tank fires at Station 8 have created a lore of their own. The

Station 8 tank fires brought many men to fight the fire, some of whom were burned or killed. A resident who lived near the Sun Oil Tank Farm narrated the following text, not of one particular fire, but of the routines which was followed, apparently on a regular basis, when fires occurred, and the shrill Station 8 fire alarm sounded: 182

Q: What do you remember about the tank fires? I suppose that was quite a rough time in Cygnet, wasn’t it? A: Yes, they were mostly caused by lightning, and we had an alarm sounded. Q: What kind of alarm did you mean? A: Station 8 had a very shriek whistle that would start blowing. We knew that there was something wrong, and it wouldn’t be long before we could see the flames in the sky. Grandfather had a livery stable, and they would take the teams and the men would all go and sort of dike it up in.order to keep the flow of oil from spreading to other tanks. Immediately they would begin to pump from the station what they could get out in their way and to pump it into other tanks to save it. Of course, oil does burn fast, and there was some terrible scenes at those tank fires. I can still recall some of the boys coming in with where they had been burned on their necks and blisters and on their arms, and especially that would be when the oil would get so hot that it would flow over the top. It seemed that it would be about like boiling water. There was a certain time element on that overflow. After it would burn so many hours it would overflow. Q: They had it figured out pretty closely, didn't they? A: They would try to dike it in so as it overflowed the burning oil couldn't get to other communities. (40, p. 16)

Tank fires had been known to spread from one community to another, from Mungen to Mermill, a distance of about two miles. The flatness of the land allowed the burning oil from the crumpled tanks to spread quickly. Again, an anec­ dote reflects not only one fire but customary behavior at any of the many tank fires as the informant recalled the danger:

We would run a mile to get away from them. Did you ever hear the story about Aunt Frieda when she was sitting in Brisbane's yard? She was holding Doris Brisbane when the tank boiled over. Frieda grabbed Doris and away she ran. Soon she found her­ self away back on the Mercer farm where Frisbees lived at that time. She never stopped for anything. 183 Q: She was scared to death, wasn't she? A: Sure, it was frightening. Many of us women walked out there. When the tank boiled over, I was up on the hill. Your father was out there and they said that he came home on a run. Everybody ran, you bet they did! (54, pp. 5-6)

A rather unusual way of averting danger in a Station

8 tank fire was employing the use of a cannon. The cannon figured largely in the lives of the oil men. It was an anticipated part of every Fourth of July celebration, and the oil men also found other methods of amusing themselves with it, as was mentioned in Chapter III. The oil man described a Station 8 tank fire:

At one time, I took the cannon out with my truck. Before that tank boiled over, we pumped all the oil out we could pump out until the pumps in Station 8 got so hot that you couldn't lay your hands on them, and they didn't dare pump any more. I took the cannon out from Station 8, and they shot a cannon ball through that tank so it wouldn't explode and let that oil in around them tank levees. Q: Now, your tank fires were caused by lightning, is that right? A: Most of them. Q: How long would the fire go on? A: Oh, this sometimes would last a couple of days and nights. It just depended on how much oil was in that tank, and how much they could pump out before it got too hot, see. Because it would get boiling. Then's when your tank would boil over; then's when your trouble was, and if it couldn't get out, your tank would blow up... . Q: I have seen these tanks, there was one which was buckled in down at the refinery at Findlay. Do you know what caused the buckling? A: Yes, it would get red hot. Those tanks would get red hot from the tank fire and they would just collapse. They would bend and curl in any old way. They were red hot so you could take tongs and bend it any way that you wanted. (17, pp. 13-14)

Toward the tank fires there were two differing 184

attitudes, the oil man’s and the sightseer's. The oil

man, regarding the potential loss of life and of oil,

stated: "I just hated to see them . . ." (17, p. 13),

while the farmer, unaffected by any possible loss of income,

marvelled at the fire: "The oil ran over and burned, and

you could read a paper right here in the yard. Everything

was lit up!" (1, p. 10) Another informant, a local resi­

dent, remarked on the number of "sight-seekers and curiosity

seekers" the tank fires brought. (22, p. 3) And the far­

mer's wife reflected the attitudes of many people: "Every

time there would be one [tank fire] we would go down and

watch it. It was wonderful to see!" (3, p. 2)

These four quotations reflect the varying attitudes

of members of the oil field community toward a dangerous

and expensive element of oil work. Naturally, the more

closely aligned the informant was with oil work, the more

adverse his attitude toward an oil tank fire or any other disaster of the oil field.

No single tank fire served as the basis for a com­ monly told story which might have developed into a local legend. Most are typical of the narrations given above. They depict customary behavior at tanks fires and occasionally recall incidents of individual fires. They are indicative of folk attitudes toward oil disasters and of the cultural context and danger of oil work. 185

III. GLYCERIN EXPLOSIONS

The most dangerous element of oil field work was

nitroglycerin. Handling this explosive was a perilous

chore shunned by most oil men; thus it became the specialty

of the shooter and his team of men, if he had assistance.

Numerous accounts of explosions and deaths occurred in the

field data.

The glycerin was stored at glycerin dumps or maga­

zines, from which the shooters obtained enough of the explosive to shoot a well. Several stories were related of magazine or dump explosions caused by lightning. There were no deaths mentioned, but the informant of such a text usually emphasized the size of hole the explosion caused and the amount of nitroglycerin involved--from 300 gallons to 5,000 quarts, according to differing accounts. The

Record of Wood County also followed this format in reporting a nitroglycerin explosion which occurred on December 6,

1895, in Plain Township, two and one; half miles from Bowling

Green. The shooter, "a fearless and intelligent worker in nitroglycerine, could not explain the cause of the explosion."

The fear of nitroglycerin was illustrated by the conclusion of the report: "Throughout this and adjoining townships, the concussion was felt, and the power of the explosive manifested to many, who heard much of it, but never understood the ter­ rible chemical."9 186

The glycerin explosions caused the deaths of many

shooters and teamsters. Near Galatea, the site of the oil

refinery, an explosion killed the teamster and his team:

I remember that as if it was last May as I know right where I was standing when that happened. I was standing at the window spelling down about four o’clock in the afternoon. And that went out and I turned around and seen it. Q: Were you at the Stoney Battery School? A: No, I was at the Galatea School. My sister lived where Ford Simon lives now. . . . And it broke all the windows in their house and cracked the chim­ neys that eventually afterwards set the house, the house burnt down from that. And I was out there all evening. Q: What type of explosion was that? A: There was a team of horses and a man. They were moving glycerin and it went off and I mind of them picking up segments there of the man and trying to designate ’em from pieces of horses and that, you know. Q: It must have been an awful thing, you know. A: Terrible. It was just a flash, like a bolt of lightning, that went right up in the air. The children begin to cry because they thought it was in the refinery, and they dismissed school'right away. It knocked the clock off, at home it knocked the clock off my mother’s clock shelf. It turned over and went on the floor. (8, pp. 8-9)

There are several elements in the above text which were found to be typical of the local legend once it has become well established in the repertoire of a raconteur. Among these are the narrator-oriented point of view through the establishment of the informant’s actual position or activity when the catastrophe occurred, the eye-witness account of there was one, the description of the danger or miraculous escape from danger, the account of the actual disaster, and the concluding self-orientation of the narrator. The 187

conclusion of the above text returns the audience to a

narrator-oriented point of view, in this case to the image

of a fallen clock about which implications based on folk

attitudes could be drawn. The clock often becomes a symbol

of life, the stopped clock representing death. In this

local legend the folk attitude is not fully developed: the

clock "turned over and went on the floor." No mention was

made of damage to the clock or to whether it ceased to

operate.

The lucky accident also entered the field data in

an account of a street car which hit a nitroglycerin wagon

"just easy enough to turn it over," yet no explosion occurred.

The lucky accident is also evident in an account of the shooter whose tube or can of nitroglycerin came floating back up the well, carried by a surge of oil, and exploded without injury to the shooter:

. . . they was drilling a well and they was going to shoot it that day. And they put that glycerine down there in cans and he put one down, and when he went to put the second one down, the one had floated on him. Q: It came back up? A: Came back up and exploded on him right in the casing. Those derricks were forty-five feet high [perhaps the informant meant seventy-five feet, as all derricks in Wood County were at least sixty-eight feet], and it shot one hundred feet of that casing right up through that rig and was just going around up in the air like that. Q: Tear it all to pieces? A: No. She just went through and didn’t even tear the crown block off! (25, p. 6)

The narrations of two explosions occurring in Wood 188 County have achieved legendary proportions. They were, to begin with, very spectacular and therefore excellent mate­

rial for the local raconteur. These were the Gypsy Lane

Road Explosion and the Grant Well Explosion. Each of these local legends was well represented by several variants.

A. The Grant Well Explosion

One explosion in the Wood County oil field was par­ ticularly expensive in the toll of deaths--according to one informant, thirteen men. The several variants of the local legend which have developed around this often-narrated catas­ trophe have some common traits :

1. The appalling number of deaths, told in gory detail

2. The death of a man who had the top of his head re­ moved by a piece of flying steel

3. The unextinguished fire in the boiler

4. The presence of the glycerin wagon near the well at the time of the shooting [both traits three and four were unallowable foolhardiness in any oil field]

5. The shooter’s reluctance to shoot the well in the evening, a time considered dangerous by oil men

6. The well owner’s persistent attitude in proceeding with shooting the well

7. The damage to the town’s buildings

The informant of the text below, a retired preacher, related the following brief account of the Grant Well Explo­ sion:

I remember that it was on the seventh day of September 189 in the year eighteen hundred and ninety-seven. It was about seven o’clock in the evening.

Following this promising beginning given in stately

and precise language, the narrator provided this brief

text which he labeled as ’’hearsay":

I know that they shot the well, and it was late enough in the evening that it was dangerous to shoot a well at that time. Those wells were all heavy gassers. There was a fire in the stove. We didn’t have electricity at the time, and we had gaslights or a coal-oil lamp. The gas in the air could be ignited from almost any source. (22, p. 2)

Despite his belief that his story was hearsay, he went on

to report on his presence at the fire, close enough to be

burned. The variant contains traits three and five, ignoring

mention of the deaths and of the owner's persistance in shooting the well.10

Another brief text mentioned only the deaths and

the destruction to the town: I was there the next norning. It had torn up things. There were dead men laid out on a front porch. A piece of steel went through the neck of a young fellow about twenty-five years old. The force tore many buildings. Shaking the buildings, the explosion moved them over. (44, p. 3)

A third variant is indicative of the eyewitness who

served as a poor raconteur:

I lived right across down the street, but I can't remember much about it. Of course, there was a large explosion. I was at home, and I was in the house when that happened. ... I think there was a man killed. There was much excitement.

As the informaht stated, she did not remember the incident well, and she had evidently not had her memory reinforced by 190 telling the story or hearing it told.

Two variants serve as excellent examples of the well developed local legend told by able raconteurs. Like many local legends, each began with a reference to the narrator’s position and role as he remembered the incident. By this method he established his authority as narrator. The first text provided an elaborate description of the dead and in­ jured, then proceeded to the well established traits con­ cerning the shooter, the owner, the fire in the boiler, and the unremoved nitroglycerin wagon:

We lived on a farm over near North Baltimore at that time. We drove over to see it. The explosion was over but the fire was still burning where the buildings had been set on fire. There was one man that I will always remember. All I remember was his brain lying on the grass as we walked down there. A fellow ahead of me pushing a bicycle ran through the brains that were like a sur­ geon had taken them out and carefully laid them down there. There were two or three dead who hadn’t yet been taken away, and the doctor was operating on a boy, Hubert Stevens, who later owned a barber shop in Cygnet. . . . Q: How did the explosion start? A: All I know is hearsay! They tell me the shooter asked Grant to hold off until morning. On top of that, they didn't have the fire out in the boiler. I heard that from hundreds of people that when the shooter asked Grant to postpone the dropping of the go-devil until morning, he said, "Ah, to hell with them," and dropped it in the well. I have worked for George Grant for years and he liked me and I liked him. . . . Q: How did that catch fire? A: Naturally, when the well flowed, it sprayed oil and all kinds of debris around there. There was some oil and some gas mixed with the fire still burning in the boiler. It was easy to ignite the whole thing. Everything burned to the ground! 191

Q: Did the oil run down and ignite the glycerin wagon? A: The glycerin wagon hadn’t been taken away and the shooter didn't have a chance. A bunch of volun­ teers had grabbed the wagon as the fire started. When it blew up, it caused most of the deaths. One man was lying there with the top of his head blown off. Probably a piece of steel that had been used for lowering these cans of glycerin in the well took the top of his head off. That was a fellow who ran a blacksmith shop on the corner. (46, pp. 7-8, 12)

The second well developed variant of the legend of this explosion followed the format of the often-narrated tale in style. In content and presentation the text bears the marks of a firmly established part of the raconteur's repertoire:

I was there when George Grant shot the well. I watched it as the well caught fire. I heard him say that he would shoot that well that night if he blew Cygnet up. I stood at the side of his wife and I was wearing^ a big waist, as I was just a kid at the time. When the well caught on fire, it scared me so much that when Mrs. Grant caught hold of me I went out of my waist and home without it. My mother was standing in the yard and said, "Where's Rollie?" I said, "Here I am, Ma!" There were thirteen men burned and killed in that explosion on that night. Among them was Langsdale, who was tangled in the barb wire that ran down along the street. My father went out to untangle him. Going over to the barn, he grabbed a blanket and rolled the corpse in the blanket. All his clothes were burned from him. Allen Falls was another victim. George Bortel, who had been on top of a roof, was on the street with his head blown off as though the Indians had scalped him. Sam Barber's home had been blown to pieces while in Harry Wilson's home the old roof came down on the furni­ ture in the house. Another old house across the road appeared to be full of bullet holes from the material in the glycerin wagon. Sam Barber had been the shooter that shot the well that night. The porch roof on our house was blown down on our front steps, which were bent and mashed. The houses across the road and along the streets looked as though somebody had taken a bull­ dozer to go through them and wrecked them all. ... 192 The explosion burned down all buildings except the ones saved by the old hand pump. At that time the water was pumped by a gang of men who got on either side of the hand pump and worked it up and down as you would a railroad car. (45, pp. 2-3)

Beginning with reference to the owner of the x^ell, the infor­ mant proceeded to the humorous incident which centered on his role in the event, ending with the explosive "Here I am, Ma!" Thirteen, the unlucky number, is stated as the toll of deaths. As has been seen, part of the format of this story is to recount in detail the tragedy of deaths and injuries, which the raconteur did, ending with an account of the damage to buildings in the town.

The truth about the Grant Well Explosion may never be exactly determined. Newspaper accounts of the event varied in the initial reports and in later follow-up stories.

The Cygnet Review in an anniversary edition gave the follow­ ing account, probably quoted from a contemporary paper:

The streets of Cygnet, which have been clogged with mud and oil since the oil boom began, ran with a grimmer fluid last night when the Grant well, located just be­ hind the main street buildings, exploded with a force which rocked the countryside and left in its wake a toll of six dead and several injured. Spectators watching the shooting of the well were victims of the savage blast, which occurred after a charge of 150 quarts of: nitroglycerine were detonated at a depth of 1,400 feet in the ground. Hoping to witness a gusher, many persons had driven to the well site in their wagons, or stopped by on their way home from a day in the oil fields. The time was 6 p.m. The night air was heavy. Gas released by the shot rose, and when it came in contact with the boiler fires, it exploded. This small explosion was enough to set off the 100 quarts of glycerine remaining in the glycerine wagon, and the resulting horror shattered the suppertime quiet of the town. 193

In addition to the suffering of the persons involved, a great deal of property was destroyed, with neighboring houses flattened, and throughout the community, homes, stores and boarding houses had broken windows.H

This is an unusually generalized report in comparison with

contemporary sources which named the men killed and which

always sought to ascertain who should be help responsible

for the explosion. An article from a source identified as

an "area newspaper" was quoted in the Daily Sentinel-Tribune

of July 21, 1960, giving the following account:

The report of an explosion was felt Tuesday evening in Bradner and later it was found that glycerine had exploded at Cygnet. A well had been shot in the evening and produced much gas. The air, being heavy, the gas settled to the ground and caught fire burning people who had gathered about and setting fire to surrounding buildings. After the shot had been put in, the shooter did not take the usual precautions and allowed his shooting wagon to stand within 100 feet of the well and within the range of the fire. The wagon caught on fire and soon thereafter, exploded. Today Cygnet is mourning over the loss of the several people killed and injured and the destruction of $20,000 worth of property. The sights beggar description. It was a case of carelessness on the part of the shooter. The dead to date are John Thompson, Charles Borle, Allen Falls, Henry Lansdale, Grant Wilson and Fred Snyder. The seriously injured are Hubert Stevens, Sam Barber (the shooter), Lafayette Fishburn, Joshua Falls, Edward Ebbert, Sherman Summerlott, Carl Gibbons and others. The force of the explosion wrecked nearly half the buildings in town. Something near 100 quarts of glycerine exploded. Fully seventy-five people drove over from Bradner that night. It is awful to think about.

This contemporary source contains many of the common traits of the oral narratives presented earlier. Among these are

the number of deaths, the proximity of the glycerin wagon to the well, the unusual practice of shooting in the evening, 194 and the damage to the town's buildings. The article places blame directly on the shooter's lack of precaution with his wagon.

A lengthy article appeared in the September 9, 1897 edition of the Wood County Sentinel, two days after the dis­ aster. An abbreviated account of the article is given below:

By far the most disastrous and horrifying accident of the entire history of the oil fields of Ohio, took place at Cygnet Tuesday evening. A wagon containing a quantity of nitro-glycerine, estimated at 100 quarts, exploded in the midst of a large crowd of spectators, who were watching the shooting of a well in the center of the village. The result was awful to contemplate. At least five unfortunate bystanders were shattered by the force of the concussion, and were either instantly killed or soon after died from their injuries. • • • • The occasion of the awful calamity was the shooting of an oil well located on the Grant lot in the rear of the Supply Co.’s store. The go-devil was let down at about 7 o'clock in the evening. The shot was a perfect one, and the fluid and gas came rushing up out of the mouth of the well in great quantities. The gas pressure was strong, and owing to the heavy atmosphere, and the fact that the well was hemmed in by adjacent buildings, the gas hung low over the earth. Soon it thickened to an explosive stage, and, communicating to the fire be­ neath the boiler, exploded with a terrific report, and the vicinity became at once a mass' of seething flames. The shooter had hitched his team, the wagon of which still contained at least 100 quarts of the deadly stuff, but a short distance away. Either the heat from the burning gas and oil, or the force of the explosion, set off the glycerine; it at any rate let go with a report that shook the entire part of Ohio, and wrought devastation, destruction and sorrow to the inhabitants of Cygnet. • • • • The Sentinel found the streets crowded with the sorrow stricken citizens, several of whose homes were darkened by the death angel, the spark of life having been snuffed 195

out without a moment's warning. Almost in the heart of town, and before the eyes of hundreds, occurred a most horrible disaster. It was the old story--the gas from a newly shot well ignited from a fire under the steam boiler near by and exploded with awful effects. .Henry Lansdale, the man who sup­ posed that he had put out the fire under the boiler, was burned from head to foot in a horrible manner. Squire Snyder, Grant Wilson, Hubert Stevens and Sam Barber, the shooter, were also burned seriously. These injuries occurred before the glycerine had let go. Everyone had turned their attention to the burned men and apparently had forgotten that the well had been set afire and that the flames were leaping up the der­ rick and the well was flowing a steady stream of oil, which was running in a river of fire over the ground and down to the nitro-glycerine wagon, which stood but a few feet distant and contained a hundred quarts of explosive, which was liable to go off at any moment. Fortunately some observing person noticed the imminent danger, and that the wagon was afire, and called a word of warning to the throngs of spectators who had gathered to see the well shot, to get out of the way as the glycer­ ine might let go. The warning came not an instant too soon. The crowd scattered, and it was but a few moments when a terrific explosion occurred. The wagon was shat­ tered into a thousand pieces. • • • • The drillers and tool dressers on the well all es­ caped any injury whatever. At midnight report said that [they] had not been seen since the explosion, although they were seen in the neighborhood only a short time before the accident. The row of nine dwellings located on the opposite side of the street from the well were badly shattered by the glycerine explosion. ... Several stories are told about the amount of glycerine in the wagon at the time of the explosion, but one to the effect that there were about a hundred quarts aboard seems to be most generally believed. . . . The wagon was hauled only a short distance, perhaps less than a hundred feet, from the derrick, which is a most unusual way of doing. When proper precaution is taken the empty cans are loaded in the wagon and hauled away at least 40 or 50 rods from the well before the go-devil is dropped. It is reported that the shooter, Sam Barber, said that it was too late in the evening to make a shot, and that he would wait until morning. Some bystander ob­ jected to this plan and stepped forward with the go- devil and dropped it. It is said that the fellow took 196

to the woods when the gas explosion occurred, and has not been seen since.

This report was taken from eyewitnesses in Cygnet by the

Sentinel. The fire was reported to have begun when the

heavy atmosphere carried the gas to a lighted boiler, and

the flames thus ignited the shooter’s wagon. Some suspi­

cions were cast on the drillers and tool dressers who were

not to be found after the explosion. Speculation was made,

as it was in most texts, on the amount of glycerin left in

the wagon. Reports varied from seventy-five to 500 quarts.

Special note was made of the improper handling of the wagon,

and Sam Barber, the shooter, was represented as?¡having objected

to shooting the well in the evening. The blame for the dis­

aster was placed on ’’some bystander” who dropped the go-devil

and ’’took to the woods.” According to texts of some infor­

mants the go-devil was dropped by the well owner, George

Grant, as was customary, and dropped at his insistance.

In fact, some informants believed that Grant after dropping

the go-devil and witnessing the consequences hid on the roof

of a town building throughout the night to avoid possible

retribution.

There is an incongruity in the newspaper account above and in the texts which was pointed out by Max Shaffer,

a local oil historian. He determined that this element of

the Grant Well story could not be true because no shooter would lower the glycerin tubes and then suggest leaving 197 them overnight. The tubes, once lowered, could be pushed up and out of the well by swells of gas and oil coming un­ expectedly up the casing. If this happened as the tubes were being lowered, the only chance the shooter had to save his own life was to catch the tubes in his arms, not allow­ ing them to be carried up and out of the well to explode.

It would have been too foolhardy to consider that any oil man would suggest a well readied for shooting be left unat­ tended for a prolonged period because of this possibility.

A report of the inquest following the explosion appeared in the September 16, 1897 issue of the Wood County

Sentinel. It stated that six perons died in the fire and explosion and also that "the wagon contained fifty-two quarts of the dangerous stuff." The relationship betwen Grant and

Barber, the shooter, was reported as follows:

There has been much talk to the effect that George Grant, owner of the well, insisted upon the well being shot upon protest of Barber, the latter claiming that the darkness made it unsafe, according to the testi­ mony of witnesses. Grant notified Barber during the early part of the day that he should get his charge ready; as the well would soon be in. Barber desired to delay the shooting until the next day, owing to some other engagement; but Grant told him that the well would be in at 2 or 3 p.m. and that he wanted it shot that day. The later developments proved, however, that the well was not ready for the shot until pretty late in the afternoon. Grant admitted to the coroner that he dropped the go-devil down the hole, but there is no great importance attached to this act, from the fact that it is customary for the owner of the well or some by-stander to drop the go-devil.

While Grant is not held responsible, some doubt is cast upon his actions. Much controversy was reported on the question of 198 the unextinguished boiler fire: Some of the witnesses were wild in their imaginations of what they ,saw at the time of the gas explosion. One man testified that he plainly saw a fire beneath the boiler from his upstairs window. Dr. Thomas made a little personal investigation and found that from that point of view, the boiler house completely obstructed the man’s view of the entire boiler; that in order that he might have seen the furnace of the boiler, the boiler house could not have been over four feet high. The testimony in the main, however, was from witnesses who were eyewitnesses of the terrible affair, and who told straight stories.

A final source for the account of the Grant Well

Explosion appeared in a local paper as a poetic recreation of the disaster, written by "A Cygnet Citizen." Because of the length, twenty-four stanzas, the narrative poem, written in the tradition of the native American ballad and the broadside ballad, appears in full in Appendix C.1^

Entitled "The 1897 Disaster at Cygnet" the first five stanzas set the scene and prepare the reader for the coming disaster. The danger of shooting in the evening is the topic of stanza six: "A well to be shot," is what they say, A well to be shot at the close of day. It cannot, no it MUST NOT be, The danger is plain for all to see.

The amount of glycerin in the wagon is set at a poetic

"forty quarts of the deadly stuff." Fires are put out except for the spark unseen beneath a boiler. The shot is made, the vapory gas settles and hugs the earth. The fires is lit and occupies everyone’s attention while the burning oil creeps toward the wagon. According to the inquest three 199 i men died from the fire, and three from the exploding wagon.

Most texts attribute the deaths to the explosion rather than

the fire. The poem represents the explosion in this manner:

I have said all fled, but I said not true, Of all the mass remained a few, A few, the bravest of the brave, The women .and children trying to save, Till alas for them, when all too late, To save themselves, they meet the fate Of other heroes gone before, To wear a crown on the other shore.

The deafening explosion heard for miles is compared to the

Lisbon earthquake. The destruction of buildings is included

in the account and the ballad ends with a prayer of benedic­

tion on widows and orphans and the "little village in ruins."

To the common traits of the oral texts, some poetic

additions and alterations have been made. The aura of horror

and disbelief which is present in contemporary newspaper

accounts permeates the poem. The balladeer, like other sources,

avoids casting blame on the insistant Grant, though he suggests

in stanza six the obvious danger. The ballad, typical of

its form, is an impersonal though emotional account of the

fatal tragedy.

The turning of factual descriptions into folklore begins when the story becomes part of oral tradition. Each narrator lends to the legend his own sense of order. In this manner the chaotic events which were a part of the disaster have imposed upon them meanings created by the raconteurs. In the seventy-four years since the explosion, 200

the variants have taken on folkloristic elements, such as

the number thirteen and the established traits which the

able raconteur includes for this legend. In any local

legends dealing with oil the folkloristic elements and oral

traditions include references to established methods of

handling nitroglycerin and shooting a. well, as the legend

of the Grant Well Explosion indicates. Even more encrusted

with superstitions and oil belief, as well as mythic ele­

ments, are the following texts of the Gypsy Lane Road Explo­

sion.

B. The Gypsy Lane Road Explosion

The Gypsy Lane Road Explosion occurred when a wagon

crossing a railroad track exploded, killing driver and horses

An eyewitness provided a variant of the legend. He began

with a reference to his own activities at the time of the

disaster and then carefully set the stage for his audience with comments about his own horse and the beautiful team

of the driver who was killed. VARIANT A

I can tell you the story about that event. Now we lived up three miles south of Custar and two miles east, and Dad and I went to Bowling Green to pay the taxes. We drove a little black pony that I owned. The pony was like the driver, as he was mean. I was pretty young then, about twelve years old at the time. My brother said that if I could drive the pony, I could have her. So I drove her and we took her to go to pay taxes. When we started home and reached the well on the 201

Gypsy Lane, my dad wanted to stop and get a drink of water. We stopped to get the drink of water, and I went back to the cart before he did. While I was waiting, a fellow went by that was laying down on the seat and whistling. He spoke to me as he went by, and he had a nice, big dapple-gray team and nice, trim horses. I have always liked horses and harnesses. He drove on with the horses just walking, and he was car^ rying a big load of glycerine on a stock wagon, not a shooting wagon. When Dad came out and got in the buggy, we started on. The horse started to trot, and Dad said, "Pull her down and make her walk until I get a chew of to­ bacco." So I pulled the horse down and she started walking. We reached about halfway between that well and the railroad when the fellow went over the railroad track with the stock wagon. Evidently, when his rear wheels went across the track, the glycerine blew up. It blew the railroad track toward us, and the story went that it knocked our horse down but it didn't even jar us because we were in the buggy with springs. One of the horseshoes went through the house close by where the woman was getting a meal. Her stove piled up in a corner. The house was an awful mess, and the horseshoe lay on the bed. One of the horses still had a bit in his mouth, but there wasn’t a scrap of a strap fastened to the bit. Those horses were blown pretty much to pieces. One could see the heart of one horse while the back part of the horse up to about the front leg was blown up. One horse was on one side of the road, and the other was on the other side. Just west of the tracks of the railraod, there was quite a hole that went down to the rock about two or three feet. I don't think they ever found a piece of the man. We went on, but I was the last man that he ever spoke to and the last man that he saw! • • • • The glycerine dump was between that road and the Mitchell Road. The shooters would go there and get glycerine to shoot the wells. That was where the victim was headed for that unfortunate day! (43, pp. 2-3)

The variant above has unusual length and description. The raconteur was a good storyteller, carefully building detail by detail to the climax of the incident and attaching -A;- 202

melodramatic emphasis to his conclusion, "I was the last man that he ever spoke to and the last man that he saw!”

Thus the listener is led to recall the driver lying on the

seat whistling in his last moments of life. There is also

a secondary conclusion, brought about by a question from the collector concerning the location of the nitroglycerin dump. The second ending also has a purpose of drawing the legend to a close with a suitable and memorable epitaph:

"That was where the victim was headed on that unfortunate day."

Briefer references to the explosion were recorded.

Though they cannot be considered full blown legends told by able raconteurs, they did emphasize the motifs or traits from the legend which were memorable to local residents.

Such descriptions center on shocking images: "As I remember it, there was no wagon but there was a part of a horse hanging in a tree branch." (67, p. 1) Because of the presence of some of the traits common to the legend and because a general outline of the legend is included, the next text is labeled Variant B. VARIANT B

. . . some men were killed from glycerine. The glycerine wagon exploded as they went. I think that was nearly down toward Gypsy Lane Road near Bowling Green, Ohio. The accident was close to the railroad track there. They was a couple men killed, I know. (34, p. 3)

In this variant, every detail has become somewhat hazy. The accident is not attributed directly to crossing the railroad 203 tracks, although they are included; while the wagon was

said to be near Gypsy Lane Road, the incident did not

necessarily happen on it; the number of men killed is

at first not determined, then set at two; and, unlike

every other variant, no mention was made of the deaths

of the horses.

The traits which comprise the legend in Variant A

told above are those upon which a comparison and analysis of texts was made. Two more full texts given below .'share to a great degree these traits, as well as adding more traits, usually of a folkloristic nature. The traits are listed below:

1. Opening the narration with a self-orientation

2. Description of the admirable team of horses

3. Personal contact with or knowledge of the driver

4. A loaded wagon; a stock wagon, not a shooter’s wagon [both imply danger]

5. The explosion at the railroad

6. Theceffect on the narrator: danger, but amazingly no harm 7. The nearby house and its occupant

8. The horseshoe 9. The segmented bodies of horses and man

10. The conclusion, again with a self-orientation

Two more texts of this local legend were collected, both from the same informant. These consecutive recordings were made for the definite purpose of attaining data for 204 determining a folk esthetic toward the local legend. The local legend is one of the most prevalent folk narratives found in Wood County and, therefore, was chosen as the vehi cle for this study. Comparison of the texts, given below, was pursued on two bases:

1. Comparison of Text 1 with Text 2 to determine the method of the raconteur and the similarity of content in the same legend told at a two-month interval.

2. Comparison of both texts of Variant C with Variant A, the only other variant as fully developed, on the basis of the traits listed above.

Text 1 of Variant C was collected at the first taping session. It was told in one segment and followed an introductory discussion of a magazine dump explosion and a precise didactic description of the process of drop­ ping a go-devil and shooting a well. The text was followed by discussion of the early railroads, place names, and more oil lore, including stories of tank fires.

VARIANT C

Text 1 Q: Tell me about the explosion out here on Gypsy Lane Road. A: Well, on the Gypsy Lane Road. That fellow was going to be married and he didn’t want to come. But they offered him fifteen hundred dollars and finally his wife, the girl he was marrying, coaxed him and the went. He had a leaky can in his wagon, and he didn't know it until he got over the magazine and unloaded. And on the way-/back crossing what is now the B 5 0, his springs come together and set him off. And they picked up horse flesh and what was supposed to be man’s flesh a half a mile from him. 205 And they was a house setting just west of the rail­ road. They was a house in there now that it blew a horseshoe clean through the outer wall, stuck on the inner wall about eighteen inches above the bed and stuck with the prongs up. And they«-was a girl and her mother laid at the point of death of diphtheria, and the doctor had left there just about a half hour before it happened and give ’em up all hopes. And within three weeks’ time after this explosion, they was up and walking around. And at the time of the explosion I was about a mile south up on what was known as the Chamber Road. Q: You must have heard it. A: Oh, yes. There was a bunch of children, neigh­ bor kids, and we was up in the hay loft and there was four of us setting down on the hay and three up in this cupola and it knocked the three out of the cupola, what was known as the cupola. That was the piece up on the barn for the air to get in through. And it put us all in a perfect circle and there wasn’t a one of us got a scratch on us. My father at that time was pulling a well, what was known in them days, on East 50, out there for the Brown­ ing Oil Company. It knocked him, my father, and a man by the name of A1 Slotterbach of Portage and another man, I don't recollect his name any more, off from under-, neath, off from the derrick floor and put 'em out on what was known as the sand pumpings. That's the drilling leavings from the well. They was a mile south of it. They had just pulled out a string of tubing and they was in there and had tongs in, and they was what they call bucking out the tubing. That's unscrewing it and taking it apart, but that's what they--. They was a mile from it and it knocked them right off their feet and onto the dirt. (64, p? 2) Text 2 was collected two months after Text 1. Prior to the taping session the writer asked to have the story re­ told. The session began with a discussion of place names, that of Gypsy Lane Road, and of the oil man's stock remedy,- a sip of crude oil or salt water drunk at the well. The explosion story was introducted on the informant's initia- tive. 206

VARIANT C.

Text 2

That glycerine wagon that went up on the--.. He had been to the magazine and he’s on his way back to unload it and he had a leaky can. He didn’t know it. And when he went over, coming back, over the railroad, that’s when his springs come together and that set it off. And there was a family, a woman and a girl, laid at the point of death. The doctor had left there about a half hour earlier, and they had black diphtheria. And Doc says, "Ain't no use to call me back." He says, "They'll certainly be passed away." And this glycerine when it blowed up, there was a horseshoe with open end up that went through the outer wall of the house, the inner wall and passed about eight­ een inches above her bed with the open end up. Within three weeks' time they was up walking around. Q: And where were you when this happened? A: I was about a mile south up in a barn catching pigeons, and--in a cupola. And they was four of us up in this cupola, and it knocked us all down and set us in a circle and not a one of us got a scratch. And my father at that time was pulling a well over, on a well at the--a fresh water well, on what we known in them days as the Browning Oil Company. And the--. He just came back in on the derrick floor as the ex­ plosion- -to help what they call buck up the tubing; that's to unscrew it. And it knocked all three of them off'n the derrick floor and right out underneath the bull wheels out on the old dry sand pumpings and they was a mile from it. The second section of the local legend as told in

Text 2 was appended to a discussion of possible changes in

a story, which the informant emphatically denied, such a

thing being impossible in a "real story." There was no

introductory remark to this section. As was his custom the narrator swiftly moved from one topic to another, once he

felt the first had been treated adequately. The appended

section follows: . . . his wife--. Well, course he never married, but 207

the one that was supposed to. She wanted to go and he didn’t want to. And finally they offered him fifteen hundred dollars. She said, "No, honey, that fifteen hundred dollars will buy a lot of furniture." He says, "Yeah, I don’t like to go." She says, "Well--" "But if you insist, I'll go." She says, "Well, go ahead." And she committed sui--lost her mind and as I under­ stand it she killed herself over it. We always figured she was the cause of his death.

Following an interspersed comment by the informant about the

realistic nature of the story, he concluded the narration:

You could set a two story framed house down in the hole where she--she was that deep. Q: You told before about they never found the man, didn't you? A: No, no, no. They picked them up in bushel bas­ kets, horses and all. They didn't know where they had horse flesh or--. The only thing that they could tell when they had part of a man was his hand or foot or maybe his head. But the rest of it they just picked up, put it in a bushel basket and put it in a casket and buried it. (65, pp. 1-2, 3-4)

Comparison of Texts 1 and 2 of Variant C revealed

that the legend has six sections:

1. The reluctant driver

2. The explosion

3. The segmented horses and man 4. The house, horseshoe, and miraculous recovery

5. The informant's role

6. The informant's father's role In Text 1 these sections were presented in the above order, without interruption. In Text 2, the informant hur­ ried into the narration without giving the preparatory re­ marks concerning the reluctant driver or his fiancee. He 208 began with the unloaded wagon exploding, section two. He

omitted the description of the segmented man and horses and

proceeded to section four, the horseshoe and miraculous

recovery. Prompted by the collector’s question on his own

whereabouts [the informant would probably have related this

immediately without prompting], he narrated sections five and

six. Sections one and three were apparently forgotten. Some

time later he returned to the story to tell first section one

and then section three.

Section two was told with almost word-for-word simi­

larity in both texts. Section four has the same content ex­

cepting the doctor’s actual quotation given in Text 2. The sentences are somewhat reversed but are again given almost

identically: "laid at the point of death," "open end up,"

and "within three weeks’ time they was up and walking

around."

Section five of both texts concluded in exactly the

same language, "set us all in a perfect circle and not a one

of us got a scratch." Strangely, the number of children has changed from a total of seven to four. The informant’s

original position changed as well, from hayloft to cupola.

In section two following the incident of the lucky horseshoe, a symbol for good fortune, a mythic interpretation dependent

on numbers and symbols had begun to develop. The woman and daughter were well in three weeks. The boys in the barn were seven in number, three fell from the cupola, landing in 209

a perfect circle. The second text in section five changed

the numbers three and seven to four.

Both texts complete the legend with section t six

relating to the informant’s father. Again, three occurred

in the number of men working at the derrick. As in section

five, the element of good fortune prevails in that no one

was injured from the experience.

When Text 2 did return to the legend, trailing in

with sections one and three, they were each far more de­

tailed than they were in Text 1. Text 1 shows a continuity

and order, a compactness and fluency which led the collector

to believe that the legend usually followed this format. In

the second text, however, having recalled the omitted sec­

tions, the informant seemed to try to compensate for the

earlier omission by elaborating on these sections. The re­

lationship between driver and fiancee was recreated in con­

versational speech, with tonal inflections and completeness,

and the informant included as well a reference to the woman's

later history and volunteered information on the attitude of

the oil workers, who avoided glycerin whenever possible, toward her. Section three was also more fully developed. The informant preceded the section with a reference to the huge crater created, then described not only the gory scene but the processes of gathering and burying, identifying the body parts found. Again, this elaboration apparently compensated 210 for its tardy inclusion, brought about after discussion on

various other topics.

Comparison of Variants A and C reveals in the analysis some basic differences in raconteurs and the changes arising

in a local legend as it lives in oral tradition. The basis for discussion is the listing of traits for Variant A.

Variant A began with a prolonged description of the narrator's activity before and at the time of the tragedy.

Variant C did not begin with a self-orientation, though such a reference does occur in section five of Variant C.

Text 2, section one, made a slight reference to "we," the oil workers as they talked over the explosion, fixing blame,- but there was no outwardly stated introductory reference to the narrator's position at the time of the explosion, such as occurred in Variant A.

Trait two, the description of the driver's admirable team of horses, does not occur in Variant C because the nar­ rator does not feel the affinity for horses which the nar­ rator of Variant A clearly shows. This is simply a personal difference in narrators. Concerning trait three, the relationship to the dri­ ver was implied through the omniscient description of his trip and of his discovery of the leaky can, and of the rela­ tionship between the driver and his fiancee in Variant C.

This is not to state the informant of Variant C was claiming personal contact with the driver. His texts, often reiterated 211 and elaborated upon, have come into the providence of folk­

lore. Variant C, more so than any other variant, has had

woven into it the folkloristic and mythic characteristics

of fortune, miraculous recovery, the reluctant hero, and

symbol. Personal contact with the driver in this, a local

legend, is not to be read as factual as much as it is part

of the format of the local legend. The "I was there” atti­

tude of the narrators lends credence to the local legend when it is told, as it usually is, to local residents and

other retired oil workers.

Trait four, the loaded wagon, became in Variant C a carefully described empty wagon set off by glycerin on

the springs, left there by a leaky can. The informant of

Variant C did not delineate the type of wagon used. If, in fact, the empty wagon set off by glycerin on the springs from a leaky can was not actually a part of the original incident, this trait may easily have moved from one local legend to another. Present in the field data areaaccounts of a glycerin wagon [or truck] in Findlay, Ohio, which though empty exploded when glycerin from a leaky can dropped onto the springs. (14, p. 11; 26, p. 10) . Both informants described the wagon exploding at the railroad track, trait five. The informant of Variant A described the explosion as occurring when the rear wheels hit the track and consequently threw the track toward him.

In more succinct manner, the informant of Variant C ? .cribcJ 212

described the glycerin leaking on the springs causing the

explosion. The informants of Variants A and C, though in

possible danger, suffered no physical harm, trait six. The

informants elaborated on this, noting their lack of harm

with amazement. The informant of Variant C built this into

a major portion of his text as he and his friends fell in

a perfect circle, a symbol for eternal life. The folkloris­

tic and supernatural elements in Variant C take an important

role in the text. Variant A represents the woman in the

house getting a meal and the horseshoe landing on the bed,

trait eight. The narrator of Variant C, using the same

images, built a motif of miraculous recovery brought about

by the horseshoe sticking open end up on the wall above the

bed. Both informants described in detail the gory scene,

trait nine. Text 2 of Variant C and Variant A are most similar in that each listed segments found and included

reference to the hole in the ground, several times larger

in Variant C. It is interesting to note that the informant of Variant A who oriented his local legend toward his af­

finity for horses described horse segments and organs found.

The informant of Variant C described human segments.

Both informants concluded with a self-orientation.

In keeping with the test of his text the informant of Vari­ ant C noted the amazing escape from injury for himself and his father. The informant of Variant A concluded with a 213 note of melodrama in keeping with the importance in his

narration of his personal contact with the hero in the local

legend.

IV. THE FOLK ESTHETIC

The folk esthetic in this study refers to the meaning

and value of the material to the people or to the individual

folk artist. Determination of the folk esthetic can be ac­

complished through analyses of the informant's attitudes

and of the functions and milieu of the genres in his reper­

toire. It would be impractical to attempt to determine the

functions or milieu of all texts collected; however, a sam­

pling will give some perspective of the folk esthetic.

Present folklore studies include many articles

describing the need for analysis of milieu and function

through extensive notes on the informant, the audience, and

the performance in addition to the collection of the text.

Many methods are suggested. Von Sydow, through his interest in the narrator or informant as an artist, places particular emphasis on the status of the teller and on audience rapport as well as context, particularly the appropriate time and place for presenting lore. Bascom follows Van Sydow's lead by emphasizing the need for the collector to collect social context of the data.1^ He speaks particularly of the narrator, the audience, the dramatic devices employed, the genres recognized by the audience and the audience 214 attitudes toward the genres. Both Azadowsky and Leach em­

phasize the importance of the role of the collector, who

needs unobtrusively to ask questions which the informant

may or may not feel he is able to answer adequately--ques­

tions such as "What is the meaning of this text to you?" 15 and "Why do you sing this song or tell this tale?" This

type of questioning makes collecting difficult; however,

without answers the folklorist cannot adequately proceed

beyond the stage of compiling collections of texts whose

merit lies in the fact of their existence.

A more recent study is concerned with the role of

the performer and informant and of the possibility of meas­

uring the degree of performance in order to make a reliable

commentary on the culture from which the collection was taken.16 By degree of performance, Jansen means.not.skill

alone but the degree of performance the audience and the

performer anticipate as determined by (1) the implications

in the form and/or content of an item, (2) the function of

the item in the situation, and (3) the actual as compared

to the ideal performer for the item. The ideal performer may be one who originated a particular story or one who is

recognized by the audience as a successful performer.

Proper handling of the guide lines laid out in these

studies could lead to adequate discussion of the functions of folklore and thus to the folk esthetic. On the basis of the above-mentioned studies, a questionnairewas compiled to 215

determine the role of the informant, the role of the audi­

ence, and the degree of performance demanded and fulfilled.

The questions directed to the informant, rephrased and re­ peated as was deemed necessary,: were the following:

1. What do you call this genre?

2. Do you think the text is true? fiction? Why? ) 3. Where and when do you tell it?

4. What does it mean to you?

5. Why do you tell it?

6. Why does each character act so?

7. Where did you get the.'.story?

8. Why do you keep it?

9. Is there a formal tradition?

10. Do you deliberately change parts? Why or why not?

11. Do you think this is a fine story? Why or why not?

These questions were asked of the informant of Vari­ ant C of the Gypsy Lane Road Explosion legend. This text was chosen because of its vitality in the community and be­ cause of the nature of the genre, the local legend, which requires a high degree of performance and which evidently serves more complicated functions than entertainment and instruction.

The sections of the text of the interview which dealtiwith folk esthetic are presented in their entirety in

Appendix D so that the reader may be aware of the context from which the following analysis is drawn. 216

As was stated previously, this informant had uncon­

sciously established a formal pattern for telling the local

legend of the Gypsy Lane Road Explosion. When asked if

he ever changed parts of a story such as this one, he re­

plied that while some people do, he had never changed this

one because he "actually saw it and knows how it is." The

informant went on to tell of an incident in which one per­ son who claimed to have seen the explosion told the story

incorrectly. A listener said, "I’m gonna have to call you

a liar." When the informant was asked if he would have made

this comment also if someone else had not, he replied, "Why,

sure I would have." While each teller may have his own

stylistic way of narrating the story, the informant gave

the impression that he and his friends would challenge

the validity of variants of the legend which did not coincide with their texts. The informant considered his text to be

true, based on actual fact and experience.

The problem of a formal tradition for this type of local legend was approached through several questions directed to the informant. The strength of the tradition, in his opinion, is indicated by his answers. The informant illus­ trated little faith in the impersonal younger generation carrying the legends. His reaction was rather one of fear of ridicule when he addressed himself to young people. With­ in his own family, the indication is that this story has be­ come established and achieved a status possible of remaining 217 in oral tradition. Even here, however, the narrator's

answer, ’’probably will,” is not a statement of conviction

typical of the informant's reaction to other questions.

The question "Why do you tell this story?" was

approached and rephrased in numerous ways by the collector.

The answers are indicated by the following statements taken

from the text: "Just ordinarily to have something to talk

about"; "Just like somebody wanted to brag about something";

and "... somebody talking that they been around here so

long at this and that time. Well, say, "Were you around

here when a certain thing happened some place?' Well, that's

the way they catch them . . . whether they're lying about

how long they've been around a place. ..." The first two

answers were to be expected. Most raconteurs apparently

enjoy the attention focused on themselves when they tell a

story. The third, though unusual, is to some extent ex­

plained by the answers to question three, "When and where do you tell the story?" The informant answered that the

story was often told at the pool room among the old timers,

four or five oil workers in the community who are still

active socially. He indicated that the men exchange stories

and occasionally a man from a nearby town joins the group.

The newcomer is initiated by being asked to tell a local

legend. Occasionally a member of the group is hazed in the

same manner. The correctness of the narrator's variant,

as judged by the audience, establishes his place in the group. 218 An ’’incorrect" text may bring upon him the indignation of

the men, just as the informant assured the collector that

he would have called the narrator a liar if another man had

not.

The answer to this question led to the question "Do

you deliberately change parts of the story?" While the in­

formant had previously said he never changed a "real story,"

he indicated that such stories are often changed. The rea­

son, in his opinion, is that the narrator adds more detail

to supply a forgotten section. He also said that a story

grows as it is told by each successive narrator who adds to

the tale for the purpose of making it a "bigger story." In

his opinion, the raconteur does not omit intentionally sec­ tions of a story of this nature, but that omission results

from a faulty memory. The informant gave a very ambiguous

answer when asked if the story were told better when the

narrator was less than sober. In light of other texts col­

lected from the informant, the ambiguity was not in this writer’s opinion a euphemistic avoidance or a reluctance based on moral reasons. The text reflects the informant’s

candid opinion and is indicative of the oil man's attitude

toward liquor: Q: Does a person who tells stories, this one, usu­ ally tell them when he's drunk or when he's sober? A: Both. Q: Any better at one time or the other? A: No, not if they get them right. There's no difference in them. 219

Q: How about getting them right? A: Well, that’s if he tells one when he's drunk he's liable not to get it right, where if he's sober he's liable to and he's liable not to, just works both ways. Q: Does he tell any more when he's drunk? or different? A: No. He wouldn't tell them any different. He might add more to it or cut off some. It goes both ways.

In an article on the folktale Von Sydow accounted

for folktale mutations on five separate bases. Each of

these is relevant also to the local legend of the Gypsy

Lane Road Explosion as it is found in oral tradition. The

five points made by Von Sydow are changes accounted for by:

1. Individual taste of the narrator 2. Desire to offer something novel 3. Failure of memory 4. Conformity 5. Oicotype--unification of variants from same locale17

The individual taste of the narrator accounts for the empha­ sis in Variant A on horses and in Variant C on symbolic elements. The desire to offer something novel accounts for the peculiar characteristics the legend has had appended by the informant of Variant C. The failure of memory accounts for variants of the legend which are found unacceptable by the informant of Variant C and by his friends in the pool room. It may also account for the changing motif of empty or loaded wagon. Conformity to other variants and to one's own memory accounts for the format which becomes established in the local legend, so that after some timeceach variant includes particular traits or motifs. The oicotype is 220 possibly the reason that Variant C contains reference to the empty wagon which exploded because of glycerin leaking on the springs, since this motif is present in the field data concerning other glycerin explosions.

In summarizing the analysis of this interview in or­ der to establish a view of the folk esthetic as seen through this raconteur, the collector was faced with several ambigu­ ities, but nevertheless some conclusions can be drawn. The meaning and value of the text of the local legend of the

Gypsy Lane Road Explosion to the informant is indicated in several ways:

1. By his formal performance pattern which is indicative of the method of many raconteurs,

2. By his belief in a "right" version, an ideal based on personal knowledge and experience and on oral tradition from which he excludes and rejects contradictory variants,

3. By his statement that he does not change his stories, although others might because of faulty memory or other influences, 4. By his authoritative and didactic attitude toward the text and his evidence of the oral tradition of the text,

5. And by his reasons for telling the legend which indicate that the story has a social function, a competitive function, and a group function serving as a method of judging and maintaining conformity to the peer group. By implication this means that the local legend has a definite function in validating the culture of the com*- munity in which the informant resides. 221 CHAPTER VI

REFLECTIONS ON THE OIL BOOM

I saw it come and saw it go as the street cars came and went and as many of my neighbors have come and have gone, the neighbors I used to get together with and talk of the present. We are all getting to be old fellows now. (44, p. 2)

These are the reflections of an oil man about the days

gone by--the days of the oil boom. The' excitement of that

era is relived by the -stories the retired oil men and their

families tell and sometimes by their hobbies as well-col­

lecting oil memorabilia or building replicas of drilling rigs. In an oil museum in Cygnet, Ohio, are several model drilling rigs constructed by various oil men in their lei­ sure time. One rig is complete with an operable steam en­ gine to fire the boiler and with all the tools necessary for drilling and operating the model. The crafstman, who grew up in the Wood County oil field, depended on the oil man’s experience and esthetic rather than on a measuring device to create his extremely accurate reproduction: "Well,

I can’t say the scale means much, because I made it so it was pleasing to my eye, not according to scale." (28, pp. 1-

2) The oil men, though they are fewer in number each year, actively attempt to keep alive the history and aura of the oil boom era. Most informants were very willing and capable contributors to the field data on which this study was based,

In many cases, their stories are the last oral remnants of 222

Max Shaffer, local oil historian and field collector, holds a pot torch, nicknamed the "yellow dog" because it had two wicks in it, burned kerosene and gave off a yellowish light. It was used as a source of light for drillers on the derricks.

A collection of drilling rig models at the oil museum in Cygnet, Ohio. Photos above cour­ tesy of Max Shaffer.

A retired oil man poses with a model replica of the cable tool drilling rig which he constructed in his leisure hours, 1934. Courtesy of Marathon Oil Company. 223

the history of settling the region and of creating a habit­

able land from an infested swamp. Their legends and anec­

dotes also represent first-hand knowledge of a unique period

of history which was reenacted several times in the nine­

teenth century--the boom era, whether it was gold, silver,

land or oil sought by a multitude. The frenzied "get rich

or go busted" atmosphere of the boom town and the crowded

temporary living conditions in a soon-to-be metropolis and/

or ghost town will not be repeated in the oil industry, now

that proration governs oil production and the modern tech­

nology of recovering oil imposes restrictions and controls

on the industry. The informant who thought that the project

for tape recording the oil men's stories was "a fine thing to keep the younger generation in contactknowing why and how this country developed" said more than he realized. (26, p. 4) These stories are not only irreplaceable; they are also about an era which will not recur.

I. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY

The field data for this study suggested some areas worthy of further investigation. Historical periods not pertinent to this study for which data are available are the colonization and settlement of the area, early military activity, the Civil War, and the depression of the 1930's.

Also the topics of husbandry and housewifery and of ethnic lore, which has been dealt with briefly, are rich in data. 224

Particularly two subjects dealing with ethnic lore in the

Wood County area invite attention. The first is the Penn­ sylvania Dutch lore in relation to the lore found in Penn­

sylvania, for which more data are necessary. This study

established what has evolved from the uniquely American

experience of the oil boom, which depended on the technical

knowledge of the Pennsylvania driller and tool dresser.

Another study might compare what changes occurred in the

traditions of those people and of the Irish settlers once

they,,became involved in the petroleum indsstry. The French also retained for many years traditions which are remembered, today but which appear to have disappeared or have been al­ tered to conform to neighborhood practices. This is particu­ larly true of funeral customs discussed in Chapter III.

A second ethnic-related subject which should prove fruitful is the study of the Mexican American in northwestern

Ohio. Some data are available in the Folklore Archives at Bowling Green State University. More are readily col­ lectible. Folklorists and sociologists from the university have "primed the pump"; the field awaits further labor.

The linguist may find in the field data language patterns and idioms noteworthy, particularly the ethnic patterns of speech and reiterations evident among some informants.

A study of the uses of a folk-oriented knowledge of an era by some authors woiild be a rewarding effort for the 225

student of American literature. Mark Twain’s use of the

rural traditions of the watch and the funeral were discussed

in Chapter III. More elaborate analysis could be conducted.

There would be merit in a study of the literary uses of the

oil boom or in fact of any boom town as depicted by some

authors of the American West. William Dean Howells’ novel

A Hazard of New Fortunes evolved from his knowledge of the gas boom in northern Indiana and depicts the problems of a newly rich Pennsylvania German whose land yielded a fortune in gas. Other writers, particularly those of the American

West and of the Yukon, have depicted boom towns in California,

Nevada, Alaska, and other places. These could comprise an informative and useful study.

II. THE CULTURAL-HISTORICAL METHOD: CONCLUSIONS

Each era and sometimes each decade of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has its own feeling or aura. This fact is readily discerned if one studies the literary sources of the time. Poets, novelists and journalists reflect the thoughts of the people around them at the time they are writ­ ing. A concept seldom recognized by historians and folk­ lorists is that people living through a particular time also recreate in a non-literary oral form the unique character of an era or decade which they have experienced. In the accounts of the oil boom the informants recreated a grassroots history reflecting both personal and universal attitudes and thus 226 reestablished the cultural milieu of that era. Strict

historical accuracy was not the objective of the study,

although contemporary newspapers and records were consulted.

Rather the purpose was to present and analyze the various

stories and reactions of people to the events of the past--

reflecting how they felt then and feel now, reliving the

spectacular and the mundane, the innovative and the tradi­

tional occurrences of a world they knew, in this case

eighty and more years ago.

Specifically, this research was an in-depth study of

the cultural changes in a carefully defined area, Wood County,

Ohio, during the oil boom era. It was .a case study of area

folklore, collected and analyzed, using a cultural-historical

approach based on the theory that the American folklorist can approach his discipline most effectively from the vantage points of American cultural and history. The study focused on folk narratives and attitudes and on folklore function and esthetic. The cultural-historical method proved to be an excellent medium for researching the oil boom era.

The research concentrated on oil lore and on lore from the field data which was pertinent to a whole-culture approach toward Wood County history during the years 1886-1910. In

Chapters II and III the use of the cultural-historical method led to a largely descriptive presentation of field data nec­ essary to an understanding of the cultural milieu out of which the oil boom came and of the changes it fostered. 227

Study of the texts, or oral transcripts, determined two

factors responsible for draining the uninhabitable Black

Swamp: construction of drainage ditches and deforestation.

These efforts made possible the large influx of population

caused by the oil boom. Also analysis of the texts deter­

mined the importance of the railroad, streetcar, and road

construction for settlement and the development of the oil

industry. Descriptions of the oil trail from Pennsylvania,

the oil towns, the abundance of gas, contemporary and tradi­

tional leisure activities, and changing social institutions

evolved from the analyses in Chapter III, and led to the conclusion that the culture of the area was drastically redirected by the oil boom.

Chapter IV specifically dealt with the processes and stereotypes of the oil industry. The oil raconteurs were found to have two clear purposes as they delineated the processes of their work: didacticism, in the form of a desire to gift the younger generations with the heritage of their specialized knowledge and experiences; and entertain­ ment, through which the listener vicariously relives the minute details and the spectacular events of the oil era.

In recounting their anecdotes and stories, the raconteurs were found to convey also their values and behavior and their attitudes toward their labor and the oil era. In addition, analysis of the texts in Chapter IV revealed three important qualities reflecting the oil man’s philosphy of 228

life: the camaraderie of the oil men, the ironic genial-

brutal position of the frontier braggadocio, and the folk

esthetic of weakness compensated with strength.

Chapter V contains the local legends of the oil boom,

a historical force which shaped the culture of Wood County

life for twenty-five years. Texts of the local legends of

the spectacular events of the oil field were analyzed and

variants compared. Analysis established why changes in

variant legends occurred over the years: individual taste,

novelty, memory, conformity to other texts, and the unifi­

cation of variants from the same locale. Analysis also

determined that patterns become established in local legends:

the inclusion and use of the narrator’s personal point of

view, aself-orientation usually in the introduction and

conclusion; the addition or deletion of elements; changes

of emphasis; and the imposition of order on a chaotic event were evident in raconteurs' variants. A detailed analysis of the folk esthetic was undertaken through consecutive interviews with an informant of the local legend of the

Gypsy Lane Road Explosion, a tragedy about which many variants have grown, eventually gravitating away from fact, toward legend and myth. The legend was found to have a social function, a competitive function, and a group func­ tion serving as a method of judging and maintaining conform­ ity to the peer group and thus validating the culture of the community in which the informant resides. 229 Because of the unique historical background of the

United States, the cultural-historical method provided an innovative and effective procedure for investigating one perspective or vantage point of American culture, the oil boom era. In fact, the thoroughness possible in this study indicates that this approach to American folklore will prove equally suitable and valuable when applied to the culture and traditions of other regions and eras of American history. 230 NOTES

Chapter One 1-See Richard Dorson, "A Theory for American Folklore," Journal of American Folklore, 72 (1959), 197-242; and "A Theory for American Folklore Reviewed," Journal of American Folklore, 82 (1969), 226-244. Dorson proposed a theory which in basic concept is an historical approach to the study of American culture and identified seven perspectives of Amer­ ican history which an American folklorist would find produc­ tive: colonization, the westward movement, regionalism, immi­ gration, the Negro and the Indian, industrialization, and mass culture. ^See William Bascom, "Four Functions of Folklore," The Study of Folklore, ed. Alan Dundes (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.^ 196577 PP« 279-298 ; MacEdward Leach, "Problems of Collecting Oral Literature," PMLA, 77 (June, 1962), 335- 340; and William Jansen, "Classifying .Performance in the Study of Verbal Folklore," Studies in Folklore, ed. W. E. Richmond (Bloomington, Indiana, 19577, PP* 110-118. Each of these men has written numerous other articles on these topics. ^See Pattern in the Material Folk Culture of the Eastern U.S. (PhiladeTphia, 1968)♦ Seealso MacEdward Leach and Henry Glassie, A Guide for Collectors of Oral Traditions and Folk Cultural Material in PennsylvaniaTHarrisburg, 1968)

Chapter Two lc. W. Evers, Pioneer Scrap-Book (Bowling Green, Ohio, 1910), p. 168. ^C. W. Evers, Commemorative Historical and Biographi­ cal Record of Wood County, Ohio (Chicago, 1897), pp. 244-245. ^Evers, . . . Record of Wood County, p. 306. ^William D. Humphrey, A History of The Ohio Oil Com­ pany, 1887-1937 (Findlay, Ohio, 1940), p. 86." ^Josephine Fassett, History of Oregon and Jerusalem (Camden, Arkansas, 1961), pp. 51, 9$7 ^Evers, Record of Wood County, pp. 188-189. 231

7Evers, Record of Wood County, p. 285.

^Evers, Record of Wood County, p. 307.

9Wood County Democrat, October 31, 1900.

Chapter Three ^Wood County Democrat, 1889.

^Humphery, pp. 88-89. •^See Sean O’Suilleabhain, Irish Wake Amusements (Cork, 1967).

Chapter Four 1-Mody Boatright, Gib Morgan, Minstrel of the Oil Fields (Dallas, 1945), p. 13. 2C. S. VanTassel, Book of Ohio (Bowling Green and Toledo, Ohio, c. 1901), Vl^TlT? Severs, Record of Wood County, p. 206. ^Boatright, pp. 29-30.

5Boatright, p. 66. ^Boatright, p. 30.

7Evers, Record of Wood County, p. 206. ^Boatright, p. 4.

!/' Chapter Five ■^C. W. VonSydow accounts for folktale mutations on these same bases and for additional reasons which are dis­ cussed on page 219 of this chapter. See ’’Folktale Studies and Philology: Some Points of View,” The Study of Folklore, ed. Alanltundes, pp. 219-242. 2Evers, Record of Wood County, pp. 201-202.

3Evers, Record of Wood County, p. 205. 232

^Humphery,. pp. 66-67.

3Wood County Sentinel, May 31, 1888 and June 14, 1888.

^Evers, Record of Wood County, p. 1176. ?Evers, Record of Wood County, pp. 1176-1177.

^Boyce House, Oil Boom (Caldwell, Idaho, 1941), p. 35.

^Evers, Record of Wood County, pp. 224, 386-387. l^Many informants of this local legend were reluctant to narrate the text as they know it because the people in­ volved are still alive and living in the community. The Grants were highly respected members of the community. Mrs. Grant served as an informant for this study: This may be one reason for the above informant's omission of any personal references in his text, though he was present at the explosion. HCygnet Review, July 24-31, 1960. l2Daily Sentinel-Tribune, July 21, 1960.

13C. W. VonSydow, Selected Papers on Folklore (Copen­ hagen, 1948), pp. 13-18. l^Bascom, pp. 279-298.

l^Leach, "Problems of Collecting Oral Literature," pp. 335-340, and Emma Emily Keifer, Albert Wesselski: and Recent Folklore Theories (Bloomington, Indiana, 1939), ppm-tt------IGjansen, pp. 110-118.

f^VonSydow, "Folktale Studies and Philology: Some Points of View," pp. 219-242. 233 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abrahams, Roger. Deep Down in the Jungle. Hatboro, Pennsyl­ vania, 1964.

Bascom, William R. "Folklore and Anthropology," Journal of American Folklore 66 (1953), 283-290.

Bascom, William R. "Four Functions of Folklore," The Study of Folklore, ed. Alan Dundes. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1965, pp. 279-298.

Boatright, Mody C. Folklore of the Oil Industry. Dallas, 1963.

Boatright, Mody C. Gib Morgan, Minstrel of the Oil Fields. Dallas, 1945.

Bowling Green Daily Sentinel-Tribune. June 23, 1890 to December 31, 1921; July 2l, 1960.

Campbell, Marie A. Folklore of Bowling Green: Genres and Esthetic. Unpublished thesis, Bowling Green State University, 1967.

Clemens, Samuel L. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York, 1962.

Cygnet Review. July 24-31, 1960.

Danford, Ardath. The Perrysburg Story, 1816-1966. Petfys- burg, 1966. Dorson, Richard M. American Folklore. Chicago, 1959.

Dorson, Richard M. Buying the Wind, Regional Folklore in the United States. Chicago, 1964.

Dorson, Richard M. "A Theory for American Folklore," Journal of American Folklore, 72 (1959), 197-242.

Dorson, Richard M. "A Theory for American Folklore Reviewed," Journal of American Folklore, 82 (1969), 226-244.

Dundes, Alan, ed. The Study of Folklore. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1965.

Evers, Charles W. Commemorative Historical and Biographical Record of Wood County, Ohio^ Chicago, 1897. 234

Evers, Charles W. Pioneer Scrap-Book. Bowling Green, Ohio, 1910.

Fassett, Josephine. History of Oregon and Jerusalem; The Story of Two Communities. Camden, Arkansas, 1961.

The Flow of Oil. Lima, Ohio, 1961.

Glassie, Henry. Pattern in the Material Folk Culture of the Eastern United States. Philadelphia, 1968.

Good, Howard E. Black Swamp Farm. Columbus, 1967.

House, Boyce. Oil Boom. Caldwell, Idaho, 1941.

House, Boyce. Were You in Ranger? Dallas, 1935.

Howe, Henry. Historical Collections of Ohio. 2 vols Nor- walk, Ohio, 1896.

Howells, William Dean. A Hazard of New Fortunes. New York, 1952.

Humphery, William D. A History of The Ohio Oil Company, 1897-1937. FinZlay, Ohio, lW.

Jansen, William. "Classifying Performance in the Study of Verbal Folklore," Studies in Folklore, ed. W. E. Richmond. Bloomington, Indiana, 1957, pp. 110-118.

Jansen, William. "The Esoteric Exoteric Factor in Folklore," The Study of Folklore, ed. Alan Dundes. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1965, pp. 43-51.

Keifer, Emma Emily. Albert Wesselski and Recent Folklore Theories. Bloomington, Indiana, 1939.

Leach, MacEdward. "Problems of Collecting Oral Literature," Publications of the Modern Language Association, 77. (1962), 335-340.

Leach, MacEdward and Henry Glassie. A Guide for Collectors of Oral Traditions and Folk Cultural Material in Pennsylvania. Harrisburg, 1968. McLaurin, John J. Sketches in Crude Oil. Harrisburg, 1896.

O’Suilleabhain, Sean. Irish Wake Amusements. Cork, 1967.

Phelps, Ralph E. Historic Maumee Valley. Toledo, 1957. 235 The Rambler. Story of Wood County, Old and New. Bowling Green, Ohio, n.d. Richmond,W. Edson, ed. Studies in Folklore. Bloomington, Indiana, 1957.

Tait, Samuel. The Wild-Catters. Princeton, 1946.

Vansina, Jan. Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Meth­ odology. CHicago, 1965.

VanTassel, C. S. Book of Ohio. Bowling Green and Toledo, Ohio, 1901.

VanTassel, Charles Sumner. The First One Hundred Years of Bowling Green, Ohio, 1833-1933. Bowling Green, Ohio, 1933? ------

VanTassel, Charles Sumner. Historical Highlights of Wood County. Bowling Green, Ohio, n.d.

VanTassel, Charles Sumner. Historical Landmarks: The Story of Their Location and Significance. Bowling Green, OKio, n.d.

VonSydow, C. W. "Folktale Studies (fand Philology: Some Points of View," The Study of Folklore, ed. Alan Dundes. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1965, pp. 219-242.

VonSydow, C. W. Selected Papers on Folklore. Copenhagen, 1948.

Wood County Democrat. 1889; Feb. 18, 1894; October 30, 1900.

Wood County Sentinel♦ May?J24, 1888; May 31, 1888; June 14, 1888; September 9, 1897; September 16, 1897; and 1884 to 1898. 236 APPENDIX A

SAMPLE QUESTIONNAIRE

1. Where were you born? When? 2. When did you come to Ohio? 3. Why did you or your family come to this country? 4. Where did your family settle? 5. Tell me about your family when they first came to this country. 6. What stories do you remember that your parents or grandparents told? 7. What was this community like when your family came here? 8. What type of business places were here then and sixty or seventy years ago? 9. How did the country look then? 10. Was there much excitement sixty to eighty years ago? 11. What were the main businesses before the oil boom? 12. What do you know about the discovery of oil? 13. What did people think of the oil boom? 14. Were people happy in those days? 15. Was there much wealth throughout the area? Did the farmers know much luxury at that time? 16. Did people work hard in those days? 17. Did people tend to waste their money? 18. Did oil bring prosperity to this community? 19. What did oil do for the people in this country? 20. Did you have oil on your land? 21. Did you work in the oil field? What did you do? 22. Was oil field work rough or hard? 23. What kind of men were the oil workers? 24. Was life very different from the present? 25. How did the oil men know where to drill? How did they find oil? 26. Did they believe oil was found in pools? 27. Why did they move the Stony Batter Cemetery? 28. Tell me how a well was drilled. 29. What was the cost of drilling a well then? 30. Explain cable tool drilling. 31. What was a "fishing job"? 32. How was oil shipped when the Fulton Well came in? 33. Was much oil wasted? 34. Tell me about the early storage tanks and about the storage tanks built south of Cygnet. 35. What is a levee? Why and when were they built? 36. Were many teams used in the oil fields? 37. How was a well shot? 38. Were there many flowing wells? Describe what happened. 237 39. What do you remember about building pipe lines? 40. What did the tong gang do? 41. What were the duties of a pipe line walker? 42. Tell me about the gathering stations. 43. Why was Station 8 famous? 44. What did the pumper do? 45. What is pumping on the beam? 46. Describe the functions of a steam box. 47. What were the barkers on the gas engines useful for? 48. When were gas engines first used to replace steam? Why? 49. What were slab towns (shanty towns)? 50. How many derricks were around here? 51. How was an oil town different from other communities? 52. I’ve heard many old timers speak of mud. Was it very wet here? 53. How did you travel? 54. What did you think of the roads in those days? 55. What do you know about the early railroads in this area? 56. What is the story of the Coldwater Railroad? 57. What do you know about the street cars in this community? 58. Do you recall the Jerry City Dinky? 59. Did you have to work out any road tax on your road? 60. What was there for entertainment and amusement then? 61. Can you describe the early dances? 62. What were some of the square dances? 63. Is square dancing different now? 64. What were the play parties? 65. What were the songs you sang then? 66. What were the stories and jokes that you used to tell, working with other oil men? What were some of the songs? 67. What was the best story, joke, song you remember? Why was it better than the others? 68. Why do stories and jokes change over the years? 69. What social events did you enjoy when you were a young man (woman)? 70. What can you tell me about your courting days and your marriage? 71. How did you celebrate the Fourth of July in your town? Memorial Day? Valentine’s Day? Christmas? Halloween? 72. Were people very patriotic in those days? 73. Did you go to the county fair? 74. Tell me about the horse races and ball games. 75. Did people have much education in those days? 76. How many grades were there in your school? What sub­ jects were taught? 77. Tell me about the country school. Was it adequate? 78. What happened to the huge quantities of gas in Wood County? How were homes heated? lighted? 238 79. Did they have any big fires, explosions, or tank fires in this territory? 80. What do you know about the old Fulton Well? Potter Well? Grant Well Explosion? Gypsy Lane Explosion? Station 8 fires? etc. 81. What do you think of this project to use tapes for recording history from local people?

Finding List of Additional Topics

Mail delivery Blacksmith shops Early post offices Livery stables Open ditches Groceries Flowing oil Horses Manhattan Refinery Grist mills Sucker Rods Funeral customs Oil trail Undertakers Oil men’s wages and hours Wakes, watches Oil men's remedies Boarding houses Gib Morgan / Gid Gordon Hotels Oil men's fights Corduroy and plank roads Oil men's recreation Big Woods Cock fights Newspapers Early factories, brought into communities by free gas Dunkards Saloons House of David / King Ben Peddlers Mormons Ice Wagons Camp meetings Power plants Circuses Bucket brigades Tent shows Opera house Medicine shows Box socials Herb doctors Place names Early automobiles 239

APPENDIX B

THE INFORMANTS

1. Vernard Apple 8. Mrs. Jennie Shane Cline Cygnet, Ohio (Mrs. Orville) F arme r-1andowne r North Baltimore, Ohio Interviewed 1965 Daughter of oil field worker Interviewed 1965 2. Mrs. Vernard Apple Cygnet, Ohio 9. Mrs. Craley Wife of farmer Cygnet, Ohio Interviewed 1965 Age 67 Daughter of farmer-landowner 3. Mrs. Grace Bachman Interviewed 1966 North Baltimore, Ohio Age 90 10. Mrs. Helana Delancey Wife of farmer-landowner Jerry City, Ohio Interviewed 1965 Born 1890’s Daughter of country doctor 4. Mrs. Grace Hamman Bower Interviewed 1966 North Baltimore, Ohio Age 80 11. Freed Dennis Father farmer-landowner, Cygnet, Ohio founder of Hammansburg Born c. 1900 Interviewed 1965 Oil field worker, son of pumper and tool dresser 5. Mrs. Flora Carnicom Interviewed 1966 Rudolph, Ohio Age 87 12. Harley Dennis Wife of tool dresser, Eagleville, Ohio daughter of boarding Age 80 house owner Farmer Interviewed 1966 Interviewed 1965

6. Mrs. Clark Chandler 13. Joe Doyle North Baltimore, Ohio Cygnet, Ohio Age 72 Born 1880’s Interviewed 1966 Station 8 gauger and engineer Interviewed 1966 7. Orville Cline North Baltimore, Ohio 14. Oren Goodman Age 74 Findlay, Ohio Son of hotel owner Born before 1890 Interviewed 1965 Street car conductor and motorman Interviewed 1966 240

15. Mrs. George Grant 24/ Walter Hovis Bowling Green, Ohio Gibsonburg, Ohio Born c. 1875 Age 100 Wife of farmer-landowner, Driller daughter of oil boomer Interviewed October, 1966 Interviewed 1966 25. Clark Jimison 16. Mrs. George Grant Pemberville, Ohio , Second interview April, Age 75 1967 Roustabout, teamster Interviewed April, 1967 17. John Gribben North Baltimore, Ohio 26. Emery Jimison, Sr. Age 85 North Baltimore, Ohio Teamster, gauger, black­ Age 74 smith Driller, landowner Interviewed 1966 Interviewed 1966

18. Foyl Haight 27. James Kelbaugh Jerry City, Ohio Cygnet, Ohio Age 75 Teacher Pipe line walker Age 84 Interviewed 1966 Interviewed 1966

19. Dowling Hamman 28. Leland Kline Cygnet, Ohio Bradner, Ohio Interviewed 1966 Machinist Interviewed 1966 20. Perry Hamman Cygnet, Ohio 29. Charles Koons Age 89 Bairdstown, Ohio Pumper, farmer Age 82 Interviewed 1966 Oil field worker, son of oil man 21. Albert Hanline Interviewed 1966 Bradner, Ohio Born c. 1888 30. Glen LaLond Farmer-landowner Toledo, Ohio Interviewed 1966 Drove early bread truck Interviewed 1966 22. Reverend Henning North Baltimore, Ohio 31. Fred Lannert Age 83 Bettendorf, Iowa Minister Driller Interviewed 1966 Interview letter 1966

23. Mrs. Jessie Henry 32. Lawrence Leonard Cygnet, Ohio Rudolph, Ohio Age 93 Teacher, mail carrier, Daughter of sawyer son of rig builder ¿Interviewed 1966 Interviewed 1966 241 33. Mrs. Stella MacDonald 42. Fred Meeker Cygnet, Ohio Jerry City, Ohio Age 86 Age 68 Wife of driller F arme r-1andowner Interviewed 1965 Interviewed 1966

34. Mrs. Stella MacDonald 43. Leon Mercer Second interview 1966 Rudolph, Ohio Age 77 35. Mrs. Stella MacDonald Pumper, teamster, mail Third interview March, carrier 1967 Interviewed Feb., 1966

36. Vern McEwen 44. Ivan Meyer Cygnet, Ohio North Baltimore, Ohio Age 70 Born 1880's Pipe line walker Oil field worker, farmer Interviewed 1966 Interviewed 1966

37. Mrs. Hester McGann 45. Rollie Myers North Baltimore, Ohio Cygnet, Ohio Age 95 Born c. 1880 Wife of driller, grand­ Teamster, pipe line builder daughter of pioneer- Interviewed 1966 farmer Interviewed 1965 46. Grover Parr Akron, Ohio 38. Mrs. Amanda McGarvey Born c. 1885 Cygnet, Ohio Oil field worker, son of Interviewed 1966 teamster, farmer Interviewed 1966 39. Helen McGuire Rudolph, Ohio 47. Charles Pendleton Born c. 1890 Jerry City, Ohio Post mistress, parents Age 75 and grandparents oil Interviewed 1966 boomers Interviewed 1965 48. Mr. Perry Weston, Ohio 40. Helen McGuire Age 87 Second interview 1966 Postmaster, store owner Interviewed 1965 41. Harold McVelia Cygnet, Ohio 49. Hal Phillips Age 70 Jerry City, Ohio Pipe line builder, son Age 87 of Pa. oil boomer Rig builder, carpenter Interviewed 1965 Interviewed 1966 242 50. Charles A. Potter 58. Ben Sigworth Rudolph, Ohio Cygnet, Ohio Age 67 Age 79 Farmer-landowner Pipe line builder, Interviewed June, 1971 pumping station engineer Interviewed 1966 51. Bruce Pratt Jerry City, Ohio 59. Frank Simmons Age 75 Cygnet, Ohio Pipe line builder Age 78 Interviewed 1966 Driller Interviewed 1966 52. Mrs. Rodman Perrysburg, Ohio 60. Clayton Slotterbeck Age 100 Bloomdale, Ohio Daughter of settlers Age 69 Interviewed 1965 Farmer-landowner Interviewed 1966 53. Mrs. Sewell Galatea, Ohio 61. Clyde Solether Age 85 Jerry City, Ohio Wife of oil refinery Age 70 worker Farmer Interviewed 1966 Interviewed 1966

54. Mrs. Hazel Shaffer 62. Gladys Sterling Rudolph, Ohio Rudolph, Ohio Age 75 Mail carrier Wife and daughter of Interviewed 1966 oil field workers Interviewed 1966 63. Mrs. Merle Sterling Cygnet, Ohio 55. Max Shaffer Wife of boarding house Cygnet,' Ohio owner Age 56 Interviewed 1966 Barber, son of oil field worker, historian 64. James Sweet Interviewed March, 1967 Bowling Green, Ohio Age 73 56. Max Shaffer Roustabout Second interview May, Interviewed March, 1967 1971 65. James Sweet 57. Wilbur Shawaker Second interview May, 1967 Portage, Ohio Age 82 66. Wilbur Swope Oil field worker, farmer Jerry City, Ohio Interviewed 1966 Age 79 Farmer, son of ice company owner Interviewed 1966 243

67. Mr. Walker Haskins, Ohio Age 66 Interviewed 1966 244

APPENDIX C

THE 1897 DISASTER AT CYGNET

Cygnet, a place where oil and gas is found, In pent-up forces hidden 'neath the ground; Death dealing, when not well controlled, By men who value life far more than gold.

September seventh, the sun rose bright and clear, Eighteen hundred ninety seven was the year; The mellow, hazy, autumn day, Gave not a hint of all the dire dismay That would befall the ill-starred town Before the coming of another dawn.

Slowly the sun crept up the eastern sky, Men went to shop and field with fond good bye, The day passed on, as others had before, No pitying angel warned them of the grief in store.

The sun has reached its zenith, still unwarned, The people came, and went, nor dreamed of harm; And now the sun is sinking in the west, Bringing to all, as oft before, a night of rest.

The supper hour has passed, men come and go, Rose tinted are the streets with sunset glow; Small groups of men are standing here and there, As if they scented danger in the air.

"A well to be shot," is what they say, A well to be shot at the close of day. It cannot, no it MUST NOT be, The danger is plain for all to see;

A wagon with its deadly load Is standing adown the village road, Forty quarts of the dreadful stuff, Forty quarts, it is quite enough To bury the town in a single night, To bury the town quite out of sight.

An order is given, loud and clear, "Put out the fires," far and near; The fires are out, not a light is seen, But the silvery tinted pale moon beam, 245 And no one noticed a little spark, That glowed and glowed like a fiery heart, Beneath a boiler, standing near. ’’All ready!” they cried, we have naught to fear;

A shot is sent to the earth’s cold breast, Then followed a breathless hush, like death; When out on the chilly moonlight seen Burst the pent up forces of glycerine.

Away towards the heaven’s dome, Hiding the very light of the moon, And then around like a sea of glass, Settled a cloud of vapory gas;

Hugging the earth in a close embrace, Crowding and filling the smallest space, Creeping toward the fiery glow; Oh, God! will no one warn them now;

Quick and sure as the lightning’s flash, The gas is lit, with a terrible crash-- The wild falmes leaping high in the air-- Tinting the scene with a lurid glare; When above the roar came the awful cry, ’’For God’s sake save, or I perish and die.”

Willing hands to the rescue came, Bearing the wounded from the flame, Bearing them safe to a shelter by Or away to their stricken home to die.

In the awful horror of the scene, None though of the load of glycerine, But the burning oil is creeping down, In little streams along the ground; Near it came to the fatal load, Standing adown the village road.

At last to the wagon it has come, It is leaping upon it with fiery tongue: 'Tis seen at last by a human eye, When arose the terrible, thrilling cry, "Fly, fly for your lives, the dreadful load Of nitro-glycerine is sure to explode."

All knew what meant the horrible cry, Men, women and children turned to fly; Frantically crowding and pushing each other, Screaming alike for husband or brother. 246

I have said all fled, but I said not true, Of all the mass remained a few, A few, the bravest of the brave, The women and children trying to save, Till alas for them, when all too late, To save themselves, they meet the fate Of other heroes gone before, To wear a crown on the other shore;

But the fire has reached the cans at last, And now, with a deafening, deadly crash, As if to add to the terrible scene, Bursts forty quarts of glycerine,

Buildings come to the earth with a crash, Quick as the fatal lightning’s flash, And many homes in ruin lay Like the fatal "Lisbon’’ earthquake day.

Shall I tell of that horrible, horrible night, Of the souls that passed to eternal light-- Before the dawn of another day. And others in pain and anguish layl

The sun arose in a golden glow Shed pitying light on the scene below, And upon the ruined and blighted homes, And upon the broken hearted ones.

For God has said in His loving way I shall give, and I shall take away, And he spoke to the lonely and forlorn, Of His own mysterious ways to perform.

Let us draw a curtain o’er the scene, Where exploded the deadly glycerine, And memory of that fatal day-- When the little village in ruins lay.

God crown the hero for his part, And bind and heal the window’s heart, God keep the orphan from all harm, And help them all with thy strong arm; God save this all ill fated place, And give it peace profound and grace.

"A CYGNET CITIZEN" 247 APPENDIX D

INTERVIEW: THE FOLK ESTHETIC

Q: That's a story that was interesting to me. Do you tell it very often? Do you get to tell it often to people? A: No. • • • • Q: If we take some of these stories like you tell, like this one about the explosion, is there any kind of name for them? A: No, there's no name for those explosions or anything. The only name is, now like this wagon went through here is called the Twenty Mule Team Borax. That was the only name. Q: When you talk about the old days and about some of the things you did, is there any-- Do you call it anything? A: No, there is nothing, only to tell what people remembers, what goes on, telling about it. Q: Where do you usually tell stories like this? A: Oh, maybe we get a bunch of us fellows get up to pool. They's two or three of us old--will get up and talk. • • • • We get in there, some of us get to kidding about differ­ ent things. They ain't many comes up there from before. Right now in Bowling Green there's only about four or five old-time oil workers left that get around. Q:. Take a story like this, like the explosion. Do you think it ever gets changed when you tell it? Or do you usually tell it pretty much the same way? A: Well, some of 'em do, but this here one--anybody that was out there--it's never changed because they actually saw it and knows how it is. Q: You knew what happened, pretty much? A: Yeah, yeah. But of course, what I say is there's fellows tells-- I known one fellow. He went to telling all about it and everything, and, well, another fellow and I just kept still. And after he got through, this fellow was with me said, "Was you out there?" He says, "Yes, sir," says, "I was out there ten minutes after it happened." And he looked at him. He says, "Well, I don’t like to call.you a liar," he says, "but I'm gonna have to cause you don't know noting about it." Q: Was this guy that said that at the explosion, too? A: The one that told him he was a liar was, because I went over there and I was over there. And he said, "I'm gonna have to call you a liar." 248 Q: Would you have, too? Would you have said that if he hadn't? A: Why, sure I would have. . . . Q: Yes, there are many stories like that about the explosion and the dumps going up and the oil days. Is this one about the Gypsy Lane Explosion--do you think it's one of the better stories? A: That's one of the realistic stories. That's one of the real ones.

9 9 9 9 Q: Do you ever tell stories or do the men that you're up there with ever tell stories, those kind of stories to the younger people? A: Well, they try to but they just luagh at 'em. Bunch of these college kids out here and high school, they just laugh.

9 9 9 9 Q: Do you have children? A: Just one daughter, living in Jerry City. Q: Did you tell her the story, like of Gypsy Lane Road? A: Well, she knows. She's heard it told. Q: Do you suppose she tells her children? A: She's only got one and he's over in Korea someplace now. He's heard it; we've talked about it, different things. Q: It goes down through the family then. A: Oh, it probably will, yes. «999 Q: I was asking you before about all the oil stories, about the stories about the old times. Why do you think people tell them? A: Just ordinary--to have something to talk about. Q: That's the reason, you think? A: Yes. Q: Any other reasons that you can think of? A: No, just like somebody wanted to brag about something. He done this and he done so and so and he wanted to brag himself up. That was the only thing. Q: All of them though aren't bragging stories, like the one you tell of the explosion. What's the reason for telling a story like that one? A: Well, somebody gets to talking. He's been around here so long, this time and that, you know. Well, say, "Was you around here when the explosion happened some place?" Well, that's the way they catch :'em--if they been around. You know what I mean. Q: Catch them--you mean to see if they tell it right. A: Yeah, whether they're lying about how long they been around, different places. What I say, there's only about four or five old time oil workers, that is. 249 Course there’s some that’s retired used to live out Rudolph, they’re here. There’s quite a few of 'em at Rudolph, but--old time oil workers--but they ain't too many of them left anymore. Q: So is there any time when maybe one story just leads to another one? You’re not really trying to catch anybody? A: Yes, somebody just adds a little more to it. Now, like I told you this one about the explosion. Well, you tell it and add a little more to it. And somebody else, that you told it to, and they add a little more to it. Q: And so you get a bigger story? A: Yes, that’s the way they get bigger stories. Q: Do you suppose these people ever leave parts out that they heard? A: Yes, some of 'em do. And they leave some parts out and add some more. Q: Do you suppose they do it on purpose or do they forget? A: Well, they don't know. Somebody tells them and they forget half of it. That's just like you telling a story about something else you heard. You leave out parts of it, what was originally told, and you--because you forgot it and you add something else into it. Q: Do you suppose people ever leave parts out on purpose? A: No, I don't. Not on some of these stories, they don't/ • • • • Q: Let's take a story like the one about the oil derrick that had to be leaned. When would that be told? A: Well, that was told just to have something to say, to want to brag about something. About how high they go up. That was all it was told for. Q: And the guy that told it was supposed to be the one who built the derrick? A: Yeah, yeah. He was the one to do it--took it up to the moon. Q: What do you call stories like that? A: Just tall tale stories. But I have known them where they have went as high as eighty-five feet. • • • • Q: Does the person who tells stories like this one usually tell them when they're drunk or when they're sober? A: Both. Q: Any better at one time or the other? A: No. Not if they get'em right, there's no difference. Q: What about getting them right? A: Well, that's if he tells one when he's drunk, he's liable not to get it right, where if he's sober he's liable to and then he’s liable not to. Just works both ways. Q: You don't think he tells any more, though, when he's 250

drunk, or better? A: No. Well, he wouldn’t tell ’em any different, Some ' times he might add more to it and cut off some. What I say, it goes both ways.