Oil and Gas History of Kentucky: 1629 to Drake

Contact: Brandon C. Nuttall

[Kentucky Oil History Home] [Pre-Drake] [1860 to 1900] [After 1900]

While cannel coal in the western end of Pennsylvania and other sections of the country, bitumen and shales from the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Huron, chapapote or mineral pitch in Cuba and San Domingo, oozings in Peru and Ecuador, asphaltum in Canada and oil-springs in Columbia and a half-dozen states of the Union from California to New York denoted the presence of petroleum over the greater part of this hemisphere, wells bored for salt were leading factors in bringing about its full development. Scores of these wells pumped more or less oil long before it "entered into the mind of man" to utilize the unwelcome intruder. McLaurin, 1896, Sketches in Crude-Oil

• 1541, Kentucky: DeSoto marches north through parts of western Kentucky. Modern locations along route include Fort Campbell through Hopkinsville, Madisonville, and Sebree to Henderson (FloridaHistory.com).
• 1543: Survivors of Hernando de Soto's expedition under the command of Luis de Moscoso Alvarado were forced ashore in southeast Texas, between Sabine Pass and High Island. They used oil they found floating in the water to caulk their ships. (History of Daniel Boone Wilderness Trail, 2007)
• 1608: Jan Bogdan, a Polish expert in the manufacture of pitch and tar and in the construction of ships, is hired by Captian John Smith of the Virginia Company and lands at Jamestown, Virginia, about October 1, 1608. (Boberg, 1976)
• 1622: French missionaries discover Indians igniting natural gas in northwestern New York (FMGP, 2004).
• 1629: Joseph de la Roche D'Allion, a Franciscan missionary, crossed the Niagara River from Canada and wrote of oil in what is now New York (McLaurin, 1896)
• 1674: Gabriel Arthur, an indentured servant to James Needham, is the first settler of record to follow the Indian trail through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky. The trail originated near Kingsport, Tennessee, and, after Daniel Boone's explorations 100 years later, became known as the Wilderness Trail. (Daniel Boone Wilderness Trail Association, 2006)
• 1719: First manufactured gas street lamp in Boston installed by Eliakins Hutchinson. Selectmen order more. (FMGP, 2004)
• 1721: A French officer, Captain de Joncaire, in charge of military operation on the upper Ohio River and it tributaries, reports "a fountain at the head of a branch of the Ohio, the water of which is like oil." The area was later named as the Oil Creek area of Pennsylvania in the Massachusetts Magazine for July, 1791. (McLaurin, 1896)
• 1733: Sir James Lowther finds gas ("firedamp") in his mined coal bits and exhibits it before the Royal Society. (FMGP, 2004, Oxford Archaeology)
• 1750-1800: The springs in the Kanawah River Valley near Charleston, West Virginia, become a major source of supply for salt (Billingsley, 1949)
• 1753: The first account of salt-making west of the Alleghenies. Mary Ingles is abducted from Viginia by Shawnee Indians from the Scioto Valley of Ohio. She recounts a journey down the Kanawah River during which water from a salt spring was boiled to make a quantity of salt which was then carried back to the Ohio area (Billingsley, 1949)
• 1755: Evan's indicates the occurrence of petroleum in the vicinity of what will become Titusville and Oil City, Pennsylvania, on his map of the Middle British Colonies in America. (Evans, 1755)
• 1756: A company of volunteers, Virginia militia, and Cherokees undertook a expedition against the Shawnee and French in the New River area [of West Virginia]. The men stopped at Burning Spring on the Tug River and broiled strips of buffalo hides in the burning gas. (Johnson, 1906)
• 1775: General George Washington visits a burning spring in the Kanawha valley (WVGES, 1999)
• 1781: Thomas Jefferson describes the brilliant flame that can be produced by thrusting a lit candle into the flow of natural gas issuing from a spring near the confluence of the Little Kanawha and Hughes Rivers on a stream called Burning Springs Run. (WVGES, 1999)
• 1784: Martin Beatty (or Beaty) born in Abingdon, Virginia, October 8. (United States Congress)
• 1785: Joseph Ruffner (Sr.) purchases land around the salt spring to the mouth of Campbell's Creek along the Kanawha River. (Billingsley, 1949)
• 1790: At about this time, Nathaniel Carey began collecting and skimming oil from Oil Creek (Pa). He peddled the oil and is said to have introduced petroleum in Pittsburgh (Giddens, 1948, McLaurin, 1896)
• 1792: Marcus Hulings, of Franklin, Venango County, Pennsylvania, was the first white man to turn the oil springs near the mouth of French Creek to profit as liniment and medicine. As the "Charon of Venango County", Hulings ferried passengers across the unbridged stream and collected "earth-oil" from a tiny pond he formed by damming a bit of the creek (McLaurin, 1896)
• 1796: Ruffner leased the use of salt water on his land in the Kanawah River Valley to Elisha Brooks who erected a salt furnace consisting of 24 kettles. He sank two or three hollow logs, "gums," into the soil around a salt lick near the river. Brooks manufactured approximately 150 pounds of salt daily that sold at the plant for 8-10 cents per pound. (Billingsley, 1949)
• 1799: William "Strata" Smith completes his circular map of the geology around Bath, England, the first modern geologic map (Winchester, 2001)
• 1806: Ruffner's sons, David and Joseph, determine to dig wells with a spring-pole device to secure a more reliable flow of brine for salt making. In the process, they invent conductor, casing, jars, tubing, and packers (Billingsley, 1949, Brantley, 1961, McLaurin, 1896, Orton, 1891)
• 1807, Kentucky: John Francis reports the discovery of saltwater along the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River, southeastern Kentucky, "near the mouth of Bear Creek, where Richard Slavey now lives." (Slavey, 1998b)
• 1809: On behalf of the American Philosophical Society, William MacLure publishes a report that includes a reconnaissance geologic map of the eastern part of the country based on the concepts of Abraham Gottlob Werner. (Owen, 1975)
• 1810: By this date, salt wells were being drilled in the area around Tarentum, Pennsylvania along the Allegheny River near Pittsburgh. Oil was being skimmed from Oil Creek (Pa) and placed in hollow logs to be floated down the creek to Pittsburgh (Giddens, 1948, John Harper, personnal communication)
• 1811, Kentucky: John Francis and Richard Slavey petition the State and receive a grant of 1,000 acres on the condition they produce 1,000 bushels of salt. The 1,000 bushels were produced around 1818 about which time John Francis received another grant just south of the original tract. Marcus Huling worked with Col. James Stone and sank a saltwater well on this new tract. (Slavey, 1998b)
• 1814: A well near Marietta, Ohio was drilled to a depth of 475 feet and flowed so much gas and oil by heads that salt water could be collected only intermittently (Billingsley, 1949, McLaurin, 1896, Owen, 1975)
• 1814: George Rapp purchases 30,000 acres on the Wabash River and founds a utopian society, the Rappites (New Harmony)
• 1815: William "Strata" Smith publishes his Great Map of England, the "map that changed the world." (Winchester, 2001) Captain James Wilson digs a well in the search for brine and finds gas in Kanawha County, West Virginia, within the present city limits of Charleston, West Virginia. The well caught fire and was presumably later drowned out. (Billingsley, 1949)
• 1815, Kentucky: Kentucky's first oil well is reported drilled approximately 2 miles south of Monticello in Wayne County. The well, drilled for salt water, was abandoned because oil was found in sufficient quantity to ruin it as a source of salt water. Click to view map of vicinity of this well. (Jillson, 1952)
• 1818, Kentucky: Martin Beatty, operator of an iron furnace near Abington, Virginia, acquired property and contracted with Marcus Huling and Andrew Zimmerman to drill a well for salt water at the confluence of (what is now) Oil Well Branch and the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River, McCreary County. In early December, the well came in with an initial flow estimated to be 100 barrels of oil per day. Beatty abandoned intentions of producing salt from the well, established a salt works 2 miles downstream at the mouth of Bear Creek, and later entered politics. Beatty, Huling, and Zimmermen hired two fishermen, Pierson Watson and John Spradling, to ferry the oil downstream in wooden barrels. Two attempts to navigate the narrows at Devil's Jump resulted in disaster and a near drowning. The oil was hauled overland by wagon to local merchants who sold it to the makers of British Oil, Seneca Oil, Mustard Liniment and other similar medicinal preparations with quantities being distributed in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia. The expense of hauling the oil soon led the venture to be abandoned. Beatty continued with salt-making. He moved the operation downstream, below the narrows, possibly near the vicinity of the present crossing of the Big South Fork near Yamacraw (Highway 92). (Jillson, 1952, United States Congress) Jillson's 1952 account of this well is available online. The DjVu Web browser plug-in is required to view scanned records.
• 1819: A well in Beaver Township, Crawford County, northwestern Pennsylvania, originally drilled for salt water in 1815, was deepened to 300 feet and struck oil. The production of the unwanted oil caused the well and salt works to be closed in 1821 (Pees, 1989)
• 1819: Edwin L. Drake born in New York (Giddens, 1948)
• 1820, Kentucky: The first oil well in Clinton County was drilled by Captain G. W. Hurt looking for brine. Although salt water was found, oil and gas rendered the well unfit for use and it was abandoned. (Jillson, 1946, Loughridge, 1890)
• 1820: By 1820, the area around Tarentum, Pennsylvania, was that state's western center of salt manufacturing. Samuel Kier and his father owned and operated two wells and Kier thought there must be some use for the oil that was often flushed from them. He began by selling it for medicinal purposes, employing salesmen traveling the countryside in gaudy wagons. (John Harper, personnal communication)
• 1825: William A. Hart of Fredonia, New York, drills a 27-foot deep well into an outcrop of Devonian shales, a natural gas seep, and produces gas for street lamps. (Office of Fossil Energy, 2001, Orton, 1891). This event is often dated to 1821, but Lash & Lash (2011, http://www.aapg.org/explorer/2011/09sep/natgashist0911.cfm) have located contemporaneous documentation of the 1825 event.
• 1825: New Harmonie, Indiana, was purchased by Robert Dale Owen and renamed New Harmony. The town was originally founded by a religious sect, the Rappites, from Pennsylvania. (New Harmony)
• 1828: Steam engines came into use for pumping brine and drilling wells in the Kanawah River Valley. (Billingsley, 1949)
• 1829, Kentucky:

  In the search for brine, a was drilled on the Lemuel Stockton farm along Little Renox Creek, near Burkesville, Cumberland County, Kentucky. This well came to be known as the Old American Well and was an early "gusher". Drilled by Col. Emerson to a depth of 171 feet using a spring pole rig, the well came in on March 11, 1829. The drill bit and rope were shot out of hole and a solid stream of oil was "thrown to the top of the surrounding trees." Oil flowed into the Cumberland River and covered the surface of the river downstream for 40 or 50 miles. The oil ignited, catching many miles of the river on fire and halting riverboat traffic. It burned for 3 weeks. Between 1829 and 1860 the Old American Well is estimated to have produced 50,000 barrels of oil. Much of that oil ended up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where Samuel Kier either sold it as medicine or refined it into lamp oil. The well was documented in early technical journals, see, for example, "Naptha Quelle in Amerika," Dingler's Polytechnical Journal, 1836. Click to view Jillson's 1947 account of this well. (Jillson, 1947, Jillson, 1951, Orton, 1891, Owen, 1857, Owen, 1975)

• 1830: Paraffin was discovered independently by Reichenback and Christison. Originally it was distilled from the bituminous matter in cannel coal and black shale. It could be used as a substitute for spermaceti (whale oil) in candle making. (Miller, 1919, Moore, 1998, Orton, 1891)
• 1833: Dr. S.P. Hildreth describes the "Process Pursued in Sinking a Salt Well" in the American Journal of Science. (Orton, 1891)
• 1836, Kentucky: Garnett Well on Crocus Creek north of Bakertown (Cumberland County) was struck in or about the year 1836 and flowed probably 2,000 barrels of oil. (Cumberland River Oil and Salt Company, 1865)
• 1838, Kentucky: W. W. Mather undertakes the first geological reconnaissance of Kentucky at the request of the Kentucky Legislature. Several oil and burning (natural gas) springs were noted. (Mather, 1988, reprint)
• 1838: Mr. Daniel Foster of Findlay, Ohio, inverted an iron salt-kettle over one of his unsuccessful water wells and conveyed gas from it by a wooden pipe to his house a few feet away, burning the gas as it issued in a small and steady flame from a perforated gun-barrel, which he had built into a fireplace. (Orton, 1891)
• 1840, Kentucky: An entrepreneur from Pittsburgh recalled stories of the well at Burkesville and traveled there to make suitable arrangement for bottling it. (Jillson, 1947) This could have been Kier or possibly Job Moses (1848). The 1840 date is uncertain.
• 1841: In the Kanawah river valley of West Virginia, William Tompkins drilled a well and obtained a quantity of natural gas and brine. He put the gas to successful use as fuel for the manufacturing of salt block. (Orton, 1891)
• 1842: The Rathbone brothers acquire property at Burning Springs on the Little Kanawha in West Virginia. They begin drilling for brines and discover oil. (White, 1904)
• 1843: Small, barreled shipments of crude oil from salt water wells on the Allegheny and Little Kanawah Rivers reach Pittsburgh where they were bottled and sold for medical purposes. Samuel Keir, a druggist of Pittsburgh, sold it widely using gilded vehicles, professional "medicine men," and flamboyant printed circulars. (Jillson, 1947)
• 1846: Samuel Kier, a Pittsburg druggist, "conceived the idea of saving the 'grease,' which for years had run waste from his and other wells, and in 1846 he bottled it as a medicine." (McLaurin, 1896) Note that this is later than dates cited elsewhere, but Kier certainly was selling bottled crude oil in the 1840's.
• 1848, Kentucky: Job Moses of Buffalo, Rochester and Auburn New York visited the site of the American well (Cumberland County, Kentucky) and decided to purchase it. He deepened the well to 400 feet and set up a pumping rig that produced 5 to 6 barrels of greenish-amber oil of 42° gravity oil a day. (Jillson, 1947)
• 1848: James Young, Derbyshire, Great Britain, began distilling illuminating oils (kerosene) from petroleum springs and coal. He patented his process in 1850. (Owen, 1975)
• 1849: Abraham Gesner (1797-1864), a Canadian geologist, immigrates to the United States where he developed and patented (in 1854) a method for distilling kerosene from petroleum. (Cochrane and Fairbank, 2000, Robbins, 1997)
• 1850, Kentucky: The Younglove brothers, druggists from Bowling Green, Kentucky, obtained a barrel of oil recovered from the spring on the A.S. Walker land on Trammel Fork of Drakes Creek near Scottsville in Allen County. This oil was shipped to Pittsburgh where it was bottled and sold as an "external application in the case of wounds of both man and beast." The oil was collected by spreading a blanket over the spring and wringing out the absorbed oil; the method is described as "indian fashion." (Orton, 1891)
• 1850: A sample of bitumen from the gum beds of Enniskillen Swamp, Lambton County, southwestern Ontario, Canada, was submitted to Sir William Logan, director of the Geological Survey of Canada. (Cochrane and Fairbank, 2000)
• 1850: Oil from hand-dug pits in California at Los Angeles is distilled to produce lamp oil by General Andreas Pico (San Joaquin Geological Society, 2002)
• 1852, Kentucky: Oil and gas were discovered in borings made for coal 3 to 6 miles northwest of Estill Furnace in the valley of Hardwicks Creek, 10 miles northeast of Irvine, KY. Black shale is associated with coal in the Pennsylvanian of eastern Kentucky. It was thought the presence of black shale in this area might indicate coal that could become an abundant fuel for the area's iron furnaces. In one of the borings the upper portion of the auger was blown out into the air by gas, and the lower part of the auger was so bent in the boring as to stop the work. (Hoeing, 1905, Lesley, 1861, Shaw, 1917)
• 1852: Charles Nelson Tripp, having secured asphalt from the Enniskillen gum beds west of London, Ontario, Canada, forms the International Mining and Manufacturing Company (IMMC) to provide materials for sealing the hulls of ships and manufacturing sidewalks. (Cochrane and Fairbank, 2000)
• 1854: J.G. Eveleth and George H. Bissell come to New Haven, Connecticut for the purpose of "disposing" certain lands in western Pennsylvania. They had collected a sample of "Seneca Oil" and sent it for analysis to Professor B. Silliman, Jr., of Yale College. Seneca Oil was being sold by Samuel M. Kier of Pittsburg as "Kier's Petroleum or Rock Oil, Nature's Remedy Celebrated for its Wonderful Curative Powers, taken from a Well Four Hundred Feet below the Earth's Surface." After control of the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company fell out of the hands of Eveleth and Bissell, the company retained E.L. Drake to check on the land: what did they really own, the title, etc. A lease on the lands controlled by Eveleth and Bissell was issued to the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company, but before drilling could commence, the New Haven stockholders formed a new company called the Seneca Oil Company. (Townshend, 1934) (Based on the wording of some of his product labels, at least some of the oil being sold by Kier was most likely bought from Job Moses, operator of the Old American Well at this time.)
• 1854, Kentucky: David Dale Owen begins his first survey of the geology of Kentucky. He notes the presence of several oil springs, in particular, the oil spring near Paintsville on Oil Spring Branch, Magoffin County, and the Burning Spring of Clay County. (Owen, 1856)
• 1854: C. N. Tripp and his brother Henry send a sample of asphalt from the Enniskellen gum beds to the Universal Exhibition in Paris. He received an order for asphalt to pave the streets of Paris, but, due to lack of transportation and capital, the IMMC went out of business by 1857. (Cochrane and Fairbank, 2000, O'Meara, 1958)
• 1855, Kentucky: Crude oil as a medicine, had begun to lose its popularity; purchasers were finding that many of its supposed curative properties were purely imaginary. Toward the end of the decade, the bottling of oil at Burkesville ceased altogether. (Jillson, 1947)
• 1856, Kentucky: An oil distilling plant established in Breckinridge County, western Kentucky, to use the local cannel coals in the production of kerosene and paraffin. (Miller, 1919) In his second survey of Kentucky, D. D. Owen describes the tar sands of Edmonson County. "At several localities in this neighborhood coal naptha, or petroleum, oozes from near the place of one of the coals of this part of Edmonson county, which, after becoming inspissated, forms a kind of consistent mineral pitch or coal-tar." (Owen, 1856)
• 1856: Thomas Donnelly an owner of some of Tarentum's (Pennsylvania) salt-wells, sold his well on the Humes farm to Peterson & Irwin. The senior partner, ex-Mayor Louis Peterson, of Allegheny thought the Donnelly well, which produced salt-water only, if enlarged and pumped vigorously, would produce oil. The hole was reamed out and yielded five barrels of petroleum a day. (McLaurin, 1896)
• 1857: The government lighthouse at Barcelona, the lake port of Westfield, New York, was abandoned, as was the harbor. At some time after 1821, gas was obtained in a manner similar to that at Fredonia, New York, and used to illuminate the lighthouse. After the lighthouse was abandoned, the flow of gas from the Devonian shale was maintained and used for illumination by the people of the neighborhood. (Orton, 1891)
• 1857: Michael Dietz invents a kerosene lamp that forces whale oil lamps off the market. (San Joaquin Geological Society, 2002)
• 1858, Kentucky: Discovery of Old Rock Haven field, Meade County (Eyl, 1922) Probably a shallow (less than 300') New Albany Shale gas field at the eastern margin of the Illinois Basin. Jillson (1922, p. 53) discusses the Meade County Gas Field and states the first well drilled in the field was in 1858. Jillson (pps. 32 and 54) provides maps of the field that show the vicinity of the Meade County Gas Field to be mostly coincident with the Rock Haven Field as shown by Eyl.
• 1858: E.L. Drake was appointed president of the Seneca Oil Company and in the spring, began his development of the lands around Oil Creek near Titusville, Pennsylvania. (Townshend, 1934)
• 1858: James Miller Williams, an investor in a carriage factory in Hamilton, Ontario, acquired the west gum in the Enniskillen swamp west of London, Ontario, Canada, from Tripp. He decided to dig for the gum instead of chopping and boiling it. At 14 feet, he struck oil, the "discovery" of the Petrolia field. He set up a refinery to distill kerosene from the free oil. A section of railroad was opened between London and Sarnia, Ontario. Oil was hauled 16 km to Wyoming, Ontario, where it was then shipped to Hamilton. (O'Meara, 1958) See the Petrolia Discovery, Canada's Historic Oilfield
• 1858: Colonel A. C. Ferris, a whale oil dealer, processed a small amount of Sam Kier's "tonic" to make a lighter oil that burned well in a lamp. When Kier heard about this, he began using a one-barrel whiskey still of his own to convert his rock oil into lamp oil. After Kier upgraded his still to five-barrel capacity, Pittsburgh forced him to move his operation to a suburb out of fear of an explosion. During 1858, Kier refined 1,183 barrels of petroleum. Ferris secured some of his supply of petroleum from J. M. Williams, Petrolia, Ontario, Canada. (Owen, 1975, San Joaquin Geological Society, 2002)