Edwin Laurentine Drake (March 29, 1819 – November 9, 1880), also known as Colonel Drake, was an American businessman and the first American to successfully drill for
oil
An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) & lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturated ...
.
Early life
Edwin Drake was born in
Greenville, New York on March 29, 1819, the son of Lyman and Laura Drake. He grew up on family farms around
New York state
New York, officially the State of New York, is a state in the Northeastern United States. It is often called New York State to distinguish it from its largest city, New York City. With a total area of , New York is the 27th-largest U.S. stat ...
and
Castleton, Vermont
Castleton is a town in Rutland County, Vermont, United States. Castleton is about to the west of Rutland, the county's seat and most populous city, and about east of the New York/Vermont state border. The town had a population of 4,458 at the 2 ...
before leaving home at the age of 19. He spent the early parts of his life working the railways around
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134 ...
as a clerk, express agent and a conductor. During this time, in 1845, he married Philena Adams who died while giving birth to their second child in 1854. Drake remarried three years later to Laura Dowd, sixteen years his junior, in 1857. During this summer, illness prevented Drake from carrying on with his job. He retained the privileges of a train conductor, including free travel on the railroads. By 1858, the Drake family found themselves living in
Titusville, Pennsylvania
Titusville is a city in the far eastern corner of Crawford County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 5,601 at the 2010 census and an estimated 5,158 in 2019. Titusville is known as the birthplace of the American oil industry and fo ...
.
Seneca Oil
While
petroleum
Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crud ...
oil was known prior to this, there was no appreciable market for it.
Samuel Martin Kier is credited with founding the first American
oil refinery
An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where petroleum (crude oil) is transformed and refined into useful products such as gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, asphalt base, fuel oils, heating oil, kerosene, lique ...
in
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...
. He was the first person in the United States to refine crude oil into lamp oil (
kerosene
Kerosene, paraffin, or lamp oil is a combustible hydrocarbon liquid which is derived from petroleum. It is widely used as a fuel in aviation as well as households. Its name derives from el, κηρός (''keros'') meaning "wax", and was regi ...
). Along with a new lamp to burn Kier's product a new market to replace
whale oil
Whale oil is oil obtained from the blubber of whales. Whale oil from the bowhead whale was sometimes known as train oil, which comes from the Dutch word ''traan'' (" tear" or "drop").
Sperm oil, a special kind of oil obtained from the head ...
as a lamp oil began to develop.
Seneca Oil, originally called the
Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company , was founded by
George Bissell and
Jonathan Eveleth. They created the company after hearing of reports that petroleum collected from an oil spring in
Titusville, Pennsylvania
Titusville is a city in the far eastern corner of Crawford County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 5,601 at the 2010 census and an estimated 5,158 in 2019. Titusville is known as the birthplace of the American oil industry and fo ...
was suitable for use as lamp fuel. Until this time, the primary lamp fuel had been whale oil. Bissell found that the "rock oil" would be a practical alternative if a method could be devised to extract the oil from the ground. Interest in the
Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company was initially low until a report commissioned by Bissell and Eveleth showed that there was significant economic value in petroleum. Due to a disagreement between the shareholders and the pair, the company was split and Seneca Oil was formed in 1858. Before being offered a job by Bissell and Eveleth, Drake bought stock in Seneca Oil. But his job opportunity with the company arose because both parties were staying in the same hotel in Titusville. He was hired on a salary of $1,000 a year to investigate the oil seeps on land owned by Seneca Oil.
Oil drilling
![Edwin Drake House, Fountain Hill HD](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Edwin_Drake_House%2C_Fountain_Hill_HD.JPG)
Edwin Drake was hired by the
Seneca Oil Company
Edwin Laurentine Drake (March 29, 1819 – November 9, 1880), also known as Colonel Drake, was an American businessman and the first American to successfully drill for oil.
Early life
Edwin Drake was born in Greenville, New York on March ...
to investigate suspected oil deposits in
Titusville, Pennsylvania
Titusville is a city in the far eastern corner of Crawford County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 5,601 at the 2010 census and an estimated 5,158 in 2019. Titusville is known as the birthplace of the American oil industry and fo ...
.
James Townsend, President of the Seneca Oil Company, sent Drake to the site in the spring of 1858. The oil company chose the retired railway man partly because he had free use of the rail. Drake had no military experience, but Townsend gave him the title of "Colonel" in order to impress the local townspeople.
Drake decided to drill in the manner of
salt well
A salt well (or brine well) is used to mine salt from caverns or deposits. Water is used as a solution to dissolve the salt or halite deposits so that they can be extracted by pipe to an evaporation process, which results in a brine or dry produc ...
drillers. He purchased a steam engine in
Erie, Pennsylvania
Erie (; ) is a city on the south shore of Lake Erie and the county seat of Erie County, Pennsylvania, United States. Erie is the fifth largest city in Pennsylvania and the largest city in Northwestern Pennsylvania with a population of 94,831 ...
, to power the drill. The well was dug on an island on the
Oil Creek. It took some time for the drillers to get through the layers of gravel. At 16 feet (5 m) the sides of the hole began to collapse. Those helping him began to despair, but not Drake. It was at this point that he devised the idea of a drive pipe. This cast iron pipe consisted of joints. The pipe was driven down into the ground. At 32 feet (10 m) they struck
bedrock. The drilling tools were now lowered through the pipe and steam was used to drill through the bedrock. The drilling, however, was slow. Progress was made at the rate of just three feet per day. After initial difficulty locating the necessary parts to build the well, which resulted in his well being nicknamed "Drake's Folly", Drake proved successful.
Meanwhile, crowds of people began to gather to jeer at the apparently unproductive operation. By 1859, Drake was also running out of money. Drake's colleagues back in Connecticut gave up on finding any oil by April 1859 and after spending $2,500, Drake took out a $500 loan to keep the operation going.
On August 27, 1859, Drake had persevered and his drill bit had reached a total depth of 69.5 feet (21 m).
At that point the bit hit a crevice. The men packed up for the day. The next morning Drake’s driller, Billy Smith, looked into the hole in preparation for another day’s work. He was surprised and delighted to see crude oil rising up. Drake was summoned and the oil was brought to the surface with a hand pitcher pump. The oil was collected in a bath tub.
Drake is famous for pioneering a new method for producing oil from the ground. He drilled using piping to prevent borehole collapse, allowing for the drill to penetrate further and further into the ground. Previous methods for collecting oil had been limited. Ground collection of oil consisted of gathering it from where it occurred naturally, such as from oil seeps or shallow holes dug into the ground. Drake tried the latter method initially when looking for oil near Titusville. However, it failed to produce economically viable amounts of oil. Alternative methods of digging large shafts into the ground also failed, as collapse from water seepage almost always occurred. The significant step that Drake took was to drive a 32-foot iron pipe through the ground into the bedrock below. This allowed Drake to drill inside the pipe, without the hole collapsing from the water seepage. The principle behind this idea is still employed today by all companies drilling for hydrocarbons.
![DrakeMemorial-TitusvillePA](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/DrakeMemorial-TitusvillePA.jpg)
Claims of
prior art
Prior art (also known as state of the art or background art) is a concept in patent law used to determine the patentability of an invention, in particular whether an invention meets the novelty and the inventive step or non-obviousness criteria ...
exist, including
Bóbrka, Poland in 1854,
Wietze
Wietze is a municipality in the district of Celle, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated at the confluence of the river Aller and its tributary Wietze, approx. 15 km west of Celle
Celle () is a town and capital of the district of ...
, Germany in 1857, and
Oil Springs, Ontario
Oil Springs is a village in Lambton County, Ontario, Canada, located along Former Provincial Highway 21 south of Oil City. The village, an enclave within Enniskillen Township, is the site of North America's first commercial oil well. It is home ...
, Canada in 1858. The importance of the Drake Well near Titusville was that it prompted the first great wave of investment and additional drilling that established petroleum as a major industry. Within a day of Drake's striking oil, Drake’s methods were being imitated by others along Oil Creek and in the immediate area. This culminated with the establishment of several oil boom towns along the creek. Drake's well produced of oil a day. By 1872, the entire area was producing a day.
[Tarbell, I.M. (1963). The history of the Standard Oil Company. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith.]
Drake set up a stock company to extract and market the oil. But, while his pioneering work led to the growth of an oil industry that made many people fabulously rich, for Drake riches proved elusive. Drake did not possess good business acumen. He failed to patent his drilling invention, and proceeded to lose all of his savings in oil speculation in 1863. He was to end up as an impoverished old man, and in 1872 Pennsylvania voted an annuity of $1,500 to the "crazy man" whose determination founded the oil industry.
He died on November 9, 1880 in
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Bethlehem is a city in Northampton and Lehigh Counties in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania, United States. As of the 2020 census, Bethlehem had a total population of 75,781. Of this, 55,639 were in Northampton County and 19, ...
, where he had lived since 1874. He and his wife are buried in
Titusville, Pennsylvania
Titusville is a city in the far eastern corner of Crawford County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 5,601 at the 2010 census and an estimated 5,158 in 2019. Titusville is known as the birthplace of the American oil industry and fo ...
next to a memorial built in his honor.
In popular culture
Edwin Drake and Billy Smith appear in ''
À l'ombre des derricks
''À l'ombre des derricks'' is a Lucky Luke comic written by Goscinny and illustrated by Morris. It is the eighteenth title in the series and it was originally published by Dupuis in 1962, in French. English editions of this French series were pu ...
'' ("In the Shadow of the Derricks"), an episode of the
Franco-Belgian comics Western series ''
Lucky Luke
''Lucky Luke'' is a Western '' bande dessinée'' series created by Belgian cartoonist Morris in 1946. Morris wrote and drew the series single-handedly until 1955, after which he started collaborating with French writer René Goscinny. Their ...
'', published in 1960, written by
René Goscinny
René Goscinny (, ; 14 August 1926 – 5 November 1977) was a French comic editor and writer, who created the ''Astérix'' comic book series with illustrator Albert Uderzo. Raised largely in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he attended French schoo ...
(co-creator of ''
Asterix
''Asterix'' or ''The Adventures of Asterix'' (french: Astérix or , "Asterix the Gauls, Gaul") is a ''bande dessinée'' comic book book series, series about a village of indomitable Gaulish warriors who adventure around the world and fight th ...
'') and drawn by
Morris
Morris may refer to:
Places
Australia
*St Morris, South Australia, place in South Australia
Canada
* Morris Township, Ontario, now part of the municipality of Morris-Turnberry
* Rural Municipality of Morris, Manitoba
** Morris, Manitob ...
. The action takes place at Titusville where the black
gold rush
A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of gold—sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, New ...
also attracts a crooked lawyer who takes over the town and the oilfields. Drake and Smith put an end to his reign of terror. Drake and Smith also appear in the animated television version of the story produced in the early 1980s.
Edwin Drake is portrayed by Richard Kiley in the January 10, 1964 edition of "The Great Adventure" history teleplay a CBS Television production entitled "The Colonel from Connecticut."
Drake is portrayed by
Vincent Price
Vincent Leonard Price Jr. (May 27, 1911 – October 25, 1993) was an American actor, art historian, art collector and gourmet cook. He appeared on stage, television, and radio, and in more than 100 films. Price has two stars on the Hollywood Wal ...
in the 1954 industrial film, ''Born In Freedom: The Story of Colonel Drake'', sponsored by the
American Petroleum Institute
The American Petroleum Institute (API) is the largest U.S. trade association for the oil and natural gas industry. It claims to represent nearly 600 corporations involved in production, refinement, distribution, and many other aspects of the ...
See also
*
Drake Well Museum
The Drake Well Museum and Park is a museum that interprets the birth of the American oil industry in 1859 by "Colonel" Edwin Drake along the banks of Oil Creek in Cherrytree Township, Venango County, Pennsylvania in the United States. The museu ...
*
Pennsylvania oil rush
References
External links
Drake Well
{{DEFAULTSORT:Drake, Edwin
1819 births
1880 deaths
19th-century American businesspeople
19th-century American inventors
American businesspeople in the oil industry
Businesspeople from Pennsylvania
Founders of the petroleum industry
People from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
People from Greenville (town), New York
People from Castleton, Vermont