Quotes About Titusville

In 1849 a Titusville sawmill owner, Ebenezer Brewer, had sent to his son Francis Brewer, a young physician practicing in Vermont, five gallons of Seneca oil from the creek that ran below his sawmill, "with the assurance," his son said later, "that it possessed great medicinal and curative properties.

To get things going he dispatched a man named Edwin Drake—always referred to in history books as "Colonel" Edwin Drake—to Titusville with instructions to drill. Drake had no expertise in drilling and was not a colonel. He was a railroad conductor who had lately been forced to retire through ill health. His sole advantage to the enterprise was that he still possessed a railroad pass and could travel to Pennsylvania for free.