Edwin Drake, ‘Uncle Billy’ Smith among those who helped create oil industry

By Jamie Kelly

Eagle Correspondent

April 09, 2024 Last Updated: April 08, 2024 05:22 PM America 250

A drawing showing the original Drake oil well in Titusville, Pa. Library of Congress photo

The first oil well in the world was dug in northwestern Pennsylvania in 1859.

Less than 20 years later, the boom would make Butler County a world leader in oil production. Today the state is still know for its large oil and gas industry.

The names of Edwin Drake and William “Uncle Billy” Smith, who drilled that well, bringing up the crude oil most people believed was just below the surface to be refined, is forever linked to Titusville, Crawford County, and the history of the oil industry.

After that first well was drilled, Pennsylvania was the epicenter of the first oil boom in the world. In “The Age of Illumination 1859-1899,” a history of the early oil industry by Harold Williamson and Arnold Duam, U.S. oil production for 1859 was 2,000 barrels.

A decade later the nation produced 4 million barrels and by 1873, national production was 10 million barrels.

The first wells were dug in Crawford County, but the boom didn’t stay localized for long. By 1868 there was a working well at Parker’s Landing, on the Allegheny River at the border of Butler and Armstrong counties, according to an 1883 history of the county.

Oil would be discovered near Petrolia and along Muddy Creek, briefly making Butler County the hub of oil production in the country.

Over the succeeding decades, oil production would continue to rise. Figures from the U.S. Bureau of Mines show Pennsylvania would dominate the nation’s oil and gas industry until the 1890s.

In 1891, the state produced 31 million barrels of oil, which was nearly 60% of all the oil produced in the nation. But new discoveries kept coming, and in 1895, Ohio surpassed Pennsylvania for oil production.

By 1907, Pennsylvania would produce about 10% of the nation’s oil, but the industry never really left. Since 2000, about 1,500 wells have been dug in the state, according to the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

In all, since the first wells were drilled, the state has produced as much as 1.4 billion barrels of oil and at least 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Fascinating figures of time

There are a lot of well-known names associated with the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania.

Drake, obviously, is remembered as the father of the oil industry not just in the state, but nationwide.

But far fewer are familiar with the other names — some belonging to truly fascinating figures — that were part of the world's first oil boom.

Some of them, like Ben Hogan, were the kind of rogue that historians love to memorialize. Hogan, who occasionally styled himself the wickedest man in the world, ran brothels throughout the region during the early days of the oil boom.

He's even reputed to have had a floating brothel at Parker’s Landing on the Allegheny River, the same location as the first productive well in the area.

Pithole was one of the first oil boomtowns and lasted just a few years before being abandoned. Library of Congress photo

But despite the Wild West feel of the start of the state's oil boom, not all of the characters were villains. Some were cautionary tales.

John Washington Steele, known in the mid-19th century press as “Coal Oil Johnny,” inherited a massive fortune funded by one of the first and most productive wells in the region.

“Upon turning twenty-one, he went to Philadelphia and New York and embarked upon a spending spree that wiped him out in a single year,” David L. Taylor wrote in “Resources of the Oil Industry in Western Pennsylvania, 1859-1945.”

“Christened 'Coal Oil Johnnie' by the eastern newspapers, his escapades were so spectacular that they were chronicled in the press and were devoured by readers to whom such incredible wealth was only a dream. He eventually squandered his entire fortune and when he declared bankruptcy, a newspaper account suggested that 'perhaps no man in the United States ever squandered as much money in the same space of time.'”

And then there is the connection of a truly infamous American figure to the Pennsylvania oil fields in the 1860s. John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, owned an interest in a well in Pithole, a short-lived boomtown located near Oil City in Venango County.

Edwin Drake

Booth left the area months before he killed Lincoln, having spent time in multiple towns, including Meadville and Franklin.

Other well-known figures pop up, as well, with John D. Rockefeller getting his start in the oil industry in the region. Rockefeller, who founded Standard Oil, built the earliest pipelines used to get crude oil to market and to refiners and eventually built the National Transit Company.

But none of those figures was as essential to the beginning of the oil industry in Pennsylvania — and therefore the world — than William “Uncle Billy” Smith, the actual first man to strike oil.

A man stands near the ruins of the original Drake oil well in Titusville, Pa. Library of Congress photo

Drake, Smith and the oil well

Drake didn't know much about oil, or drilling for oil, before he started his work, but not many other people did then, either. Petroleum oil had been known for centuries, but it was only with the first oil refinery, which was built in Pittsburgh and produced kerosene for lamps, that it had a commercial market.

In Titusville, where Drake and his family were living in the late 1850s, there were places where crude oil bubbled up to the surface. In early 1858, Drake was hired by the Seneca Oil Co. and given the task of finding a way to extract the oil.

The problem was few people believed that such an operation was possible. Drake had difficulty finding anyone to help get the drilling done.

William "Uncle Billy" Smith drilled the first oil well in the United States in 1859. He was born in Butler County, worked as a blacksmith in Tarentum. He is buried in Hannahstown Cemetery.

In April 1859, Drake met Smith, who was a blacksmith in Tarentum, Allegheny County. Smith could make the tools, but he had some other experience that would prove useful — he had done some salt well drilling.

For much of the 19th century, salt wells were a major source of table salt throughout the United States. A hole is drilled into a salt deposit, water is pumped down the hole, which dissolves the salt, and the water is pumped back out to be evaporated and extract the salt for sale or for use.

Soon, that same basic idea was tried in Titusville. When Smith arrived in spring 1859, the hole Drake's workers were digging kept filling with water, and no amount of pumping kept up with the deluge.

Finally, Drake and Smith settled on ramming a cast iron pipe down into the bedrock and used the pipe to drill through, keeping water out of the hole. In the middle of August, they sunk the pipe 32 feet down, where they hit bedrock, and began to drill.

Slowly.

An oil well in Petrolia gushes in the late 19th century. Library of Congress photo

Smith was drilling about three feet per day. Watching the slow progress, skeptical locals questioned the wisdom of drilling for oil.

At 69 and a half feet, the well started to bring a liquid to the surface. As Smith was getting ready to start work on Sunday, Aug. 28, 1859, he realized it was oil and began to pump, filling barrels, tubs and other miscellaneous containers with crude oil.

Drake was almost of out of money when he came to work that Monday to see the bounty Smith had extracted.

“No one realized it at the time, but Drake had drilled in the only spot in the region where oil could be found at such a shallow depth as 69 feet,” noted an American Chemical Society's article “Development of the Pennsylvania Oil Industry.”

It didn't take long for Drake's lucky break to give thousands of other people the same idea — an oil boom was born.

“The excitement attendant on the discovery of this vast source of oil was fully equal to what I saw in California when a large lump of gold was accidentally turned out,” wrote a correspondent for the New York Tribune in 1859. “When California 49ers came into the valley they claimed conditions here were crazier than any they’d ever seen.”

People poured into the vicinity of Oil Creek, and oil poured from their wells to refineries all over the area. Some people got rich.

Some people, like Rockefeller, got rich and famous.

Drake, however, had to settle for fame. He hadn't had the capital to buy up much land in the area.

He'd had to borrow $500 locally to keep the operation going long enough to strike oil. It had been a shoestring operation.

Neither Drake nor Smith had patented the method they'd used to drill the well.

An oil rig in Western Pennsylvania in the early 20th century. Library of Congress photo

And while Drake had been the largest shareholder of the Seneca Oil Company, which had funded the drilling, he didn't seem to have a head for business. He lost all of the money from his oil ventures by 1863 and he left the area.

About 10 years later, in 1872, the state legislature voted to give Drake an annual pension of $1,500 in recognition of his monumental discovery.

By about 1881, the Bradford field in Pennsylvania, which is located north of the Oil Creek area, was producing more than 70,000 barrels per day, accounting for 94.4% of Pennsylvania oil production and 93.8% of the oil production for the entire United States.

Butler middle schoolers went on a walking tour of the Wall Dogs Murals Thursday afternoon. Butler Eagle file photo

But Drake would miss that milestone. He died in Bethlehem, Pa., in 1880.

Smith, however, did get to see it. He worked at the Drake well until 1862, and would live on until 1890.

Smith was born Feb. 5, 1812 in Winfield Township, Butler County, and retired to the family farm. He is buried 9 miles southeast of Butler, in Jefferson Township in Hannahstown Cemetery.

A Pennsylvania Historic Marker along the road commemorates Smith. In 1952, the Pennsylvania oil industry put up a new headstone for Smith, honoring the work he did to start the industry so many in the state still rely on for their livelihood.

And that industry is still going quite strong. In Butler County, which ranks fourth in the state for oil and gas production, there were nearly 675 active wells in January. That month alone, the county produced more than 24 million cubic feet of natural gas, according to state statistics.

This photograph from “Early Days of Oil,” by Paul H. Giddens, shows an oil field in Petrolia in 1872. Though Edwin Drake drilled the first oil well in Titusville, Venango County, 150 years ago, Butler County was considered the petroleum capital of the world for a period in the early 20th Century, according to Ned Stokes, author of “History of the Muddy Creek Oil Field.”

A monument erected in 1952 honors William "Uncle Billy" Smith, the first person to drill an oil well. He is buried in Hannahstown Cemetery in Jefferson Township. Butler Eagle file photo

Jack Neely