Leaves from the Diary of an Oil Operator
Titusville Morning Herald, Dec. 25, 1867
Discovered together with an empty pocket book, near West Hickory, and presented to the Young Men’s Historical Society of Bull Run, by “Crocus.”
August 1, 1865
Am attacked with oil on the brain. The doctor says there ain’t brains enough to stand the pressure. Am sand pumped, but no relief. Wife advises me to travel, for my health. Says she can not bear to part from me, but will try and stand it a year or two, if I will go. Can I leave my dear ones? I can. And without a struggle.
August 7
Visit the oilfield, fall into a tank of crude, and get my hair oiled for nothing. A flowing well is a good thing to have in the house, if your house is not too small. Play a few games of “bluff” and win $200 by drawing an ace from my sleeve. This will answer for a nucleus around which to form a fortune.
August 8
Find an old buckwheat who has a farm located over the oil belt, he didn’t know it. Offer him $1,000 for it. He wants $1,200. I won’t give it.
August 9
Become the owner of the buckwheat farm, for $800. Old man has not heard of the oil excitement yet. Pay him ten dollars down. Give a “tight note” for the balance. Am pretty “tight” myself.
August 15
Sell ten acres of the farm for $50,000. Dirt cheap, wished I had asked $100,000. All the royalty and no oil.
August 21
Send my wife a couple of a quarts of diamonds, and a thousand dollar bonnet.
August 25
Receive a letter from wife, which reads thus: “Dear John – I take my pen in hand to inform you that the baby has the poll evil, and such as contracted a violent spine in her back, which threatens to terminate fatally, if not otherwise. The bonnet you sent me I lost yesterday. The baby swallowed it I think. Shall give me an emetic tomorrow. Dear John, send me a lot of dime novels. Our library looks very bare. Besides the minister says Sarah needs to cultivate a literary taste. Get the books that have the prettiest covers. There is nothing like refined taste in selecting books.”
August 26
Commenced putting down a well and a barrel of whiskey this week. The whiskey will get down first unless I have the lockjaw. “Borrowed” an engine from an adjoining farm in the absence of the owner.
September 1
Poured a couple of barrels of oil in the well last night; good show this morning. Sell twenty-three sixteenths in her before breakfast. About the only arithmetic used in this country is Royle’s. We “subtract” all we can from our neighbors. Add a little to it. Multiply it by ten and carry from one to ten, according to the darkness of the night and the number of constables after us. “Evasion of payments” is practiced muchly, but no interest is reckoned except the “working interest.”
September 2
Sent home a gold watch and chain to the baby, who is looking to creep. My children shall not suffer while their father can steal or borrow.
September 20
Struck a dry hole last night. Stockholders mad, but it will learn them to “take a joke.” I cleared ten thousand by the operation. Dry holes are as profitable as flowing wells, sometimes.
September 25
Found a drunken man alone on a dark street last night. Knocked him over and grabbed his watch; it might be stolen if left upon him. This is an awful country; demoralizing in the extreme, but we must take things as they come. I take everything that will come, if the owner is not looking.
September 27
A letter from my oldest daughter, full of family incidents and touching affecting. Says she slings the biggest waterfall of any girl in town. It took seven horses’ tails and a buffalo robe to stuff it, and she used nearly a whole bed cord in tying it on. Set the Shanghai hen on a peck of eggs the day before she wrote, so as to be ready for the fall trade. Deacon Brown’s boy stubbed his toe on a brick while going to church last Sunday, and has had the cramp in the runnett ever since.
October 1
Sold the balance of the oil farm which proves to be dry territory, owing to the drought no doubt.
October 3
Buy a new suit of clothes, and wash my face for the first time in two months. My disguise is complete. My creditors don’t know me.
October 10
While traveling yesterday between Titusville and Pithole, I was attacked by nine highwaymen and robbed in cold blood. The only funds I had on my person belonged to the Orphan Asylum and consisted of $100 in five cent pieces, collected to purchase a library. Poor orphans, how I pity you.
October 11
Sent my wife a pair of shoes, which cost $100. The shoemaker remarked that he never saw so many five cent pieces before. It had been a poor reason for change. I can’t help but pity the poor orphans for their loss.
October 12
Letter from home. Wife wants to know how to wear the lace mantilla I sent her. Does not know which side up it goes. Sarah is learning Italian, so she can swear in company, and has traded her piano forte for a hand organ. She can play beautifully on the hitter. The refinement of my family is immense, so to speak.