Oil

Reading Times, January 12, 1866

Petroleum is looking up once more. Several new wells having been struck within a few days, one of them on Cherry Run.

The Reno Oil Company at Reno, Venango County, of which Hon. Galusha Grow is President, is advertising for proposals to put down fifty oil wells. This is going into the business in the right way. We must trust they may succeed. The more oil that is struck, the greater the increase of wealth.

On this subject, the Pittsburgh Gazette says: It is certainly refreshing and encouraging in these days of depression and stagnation in oil stocks to find any of them declaring dividends, but more especially when we have a dividend of eight percent announced out of the earnings of a single month.

We refer to the Dennis Run and West Hickory Oil Company, which, as will be seen by references to our advertising columns, has declared a dividend of 8% for the month of December. This company, with a comparatively small capital stock, owns a large amount of territory on Dennis Run.

[It] has very handsome interests in three producing wells, which yield the company about 100 barrels of oil per day. The wells are located on Dennis Run, within a short distance of the celebrated Economite Wells, which have been. And without speaking disparagingly of Pithole, Oil Creek or Cherry Run, there is certainly no better territory for oil developing in the Venango oil regions.

The stock of the “Dennis Run and West Hickory Run Oil Company” is owned almost exclusively by about a dozen Pittsburghers. The managers very wisely concluded that they would prefer a small capital and large dividends to a large capital stock and no dividends, which, unfortunately, has been the case with the great majority of our petroleum companies.