Isaiah N. Frazier (1823,

Butler, Pennsylvania Butler is a city and the county seat of Butler County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located north of Pittsburgh and is part of the Greater Pittsburgh region. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 13,502. History Butler was na ...

– June 24, 1864,

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

)John Woolf Jordan
Isaiah N. Frazier
in ''Genealogical and Personal History of the Allegheny Valley, Pennsylvania, Volume 2'', Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1913. Page 590. was an oil speculator who in 1864 was the first to discover oil in what became Pithole City in Verango County, Pennsylvania. The legendary and largest oil boomtown grew almost overnight, its population reaching 20,000 in 2 years, only to then fall to under 2,000. Frazier had previously profited from an oil venture at nearby Cherry Run before he and his partner, James Faulkner, drilled Frazier Well (later renamed U. S. Well) at Pithole. Frazier formed United States Petroleum with wealthy

Wall Street Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for t ...

financier, J. Nelson Tappan, who became the company's president. Pithole was termed "Tappan's Mushroom City" by the New York Times. Prior to his oil ventures, Frazier was a dry goods merchant in

Allegheny City, Pennsylvania Allegheny City was a municipality that existed in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania from 1788 until it was annexed by Pittsburgh in 1907. It was located north across the Allegheny River from downtown Pittsburgh, with its southwest border formed by ...

;

Springfield, Missouri Springfield is the third largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and the county seat of Greene County. The city's population was 169,176 at the 2020 census. It is the principal city of the Springfield metropolitan area, which had an estimat ...

; and

Iowa City, Iowa Iowa City, offically the City of Iowa City is a city in Johnson County, Iowa, United States. It is the home of the University of Iowa and county seat of Johnson County, at the center of the Iowa City Metropolitan Statistical Area. At the time ...

. He was a Presbyterian. Frazier was the eldest son of James Frazier, a farmer and early settler of

Butler County, Pennsylvania Butler County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is part of Western Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 193,763. Its county seat is Butler. Butler County was created on March 12, 1800, from part of Alleghe ...

, having immigrated from

County Armagh County Armagh (, named after its county town, Armagh) is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland and one of the traditional thirty-two counties of Ireland. Adjoined to the southern shore of Lough Neagh, the county covers an area of and ha ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

. His mother was Maria Niblock, sister of Dr. Rev. Isaiah Niblock, a pioneer Presbyterian minister of Butler and the surrounding area. Frazier was the great uncle of

Rachel Carson Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) was an American marine biologist, writer, and conservationist whose influential book ''Silent Spring'' (1962) and other writings are credited with advancing the global environmental m ...

, the environmentalist. He married Keziah Walker, also of Butler. Frazier died in

Notes

*Babcock, Charles A. (1919). ''Venango County Pennsylvania, Her Pioneers and People''. J. H. Beers & Co., Chicago

References

External links

Pittsburgh Diary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Frazier, Isaiah 1823 births 1864 deaths 19th-century American businesspeople American people of Irish descent Founders of the petroleum industry People from Butler, Pennsylvania