Wamsutta Oil Refinery was established around 1861 in McClintocksville in

Venango County Venango County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 50,454. Its county seat is Franklin. The county was created in 1800 and later organized in 1805. Venango County comprises the Oil City, ...

near

Oil City, Pennsylvania Oil City is a city in Venango County, Pennsylvania known for its prominence in the initial exploration and development of the petroleum industry. It is located at a bend in the Allegheny River at the mouth of Oil Creek. Initial settlement of O ...

, in the United States. It was the first business enterprise of

Henry Huttleston Rogers Henry Huttleston Rogers (January 29, 1840 – May 19, 1909) was an American industrialist and financier. He made his fortune in the oil refining business, becoming a leader at Standard Oil. He also played a major role in numerous corporations a ...

(1840–1909), who became a famous businessman, industrialist and financier.

Whale oil and petroleum compete

Prior to the second half of the 19th century,

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 hea ...

was the primary source of fuel for lighting in the United States. The

whaling Whaling is the process of hunting of whales for their usable products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that became increasingly important in the Industrial Revolution. It was practiced as an organized industry ...

industry was the mainstay for many

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian province ...

coastal communities for over 200 years. Among these was

Fairhaven, Massachusetts Fairhaven (Massachusett: ) is a town in Bristol County, Massachusetts, United States. It is located on the South Coast of Massachusetts where the Acushnet River flows into Buzzards Bay, an arm of the Atlantic Ocean. The town shares a harbor wit ...

, founded on land purchased by English settlers of the

Plymouth Colony Plymouth Colony (sometimes Plimouth) was, from 1620 to 1691, the first permanent English colony in New England and the second permanent English colony in North America, after the Jamestown Colony. It was first settled by the passengers on the ...

from an Indian chief and his son, who was named

Wamsutta Wamsutta ( 16341662), also known as Alexander Pokanoket, as he was called by New England colonists, was the eldest son of Massasoit (meaning Great Leader) Ousa Mequin of the Pokanoket Tribe and Wampanoag nation, and brother of Metacomet. Life W ...

. In 1854, natural oil (petroleum) was discovered in western Pennsylvania. In 1859, George Bissell and Edwin L. Drake made the first successful use of a drilling rig at

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 f ...

. This single well soon exceeded the entire cumulative oil output which had taken place in Europe since the 1650s. The principal product of the oil was

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 reg ...

. Another related product was natural gas. Kerosene and natural gas soon replaced whale oil in North America. In New England, whaling reached its peak in 1857, then gradually began a period of decline. The situation was aggravated considerably by the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by state ...

, as whaling vessels and crews were diverted to assist in blockading the Confederate coastal areas and ports. By 1900, the whaling industry had collapsed, due in part to the discovery and refining of petroleum from the western Pennsylvania oil fields.

Henry H. Rogers

Perhaps realizing both the trend and opportunity, in 1861, in Fairhaven, 21-year-old

pooled his savings of approximately $600 with a friend, Charles H. Ellis. They set out to western

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; (Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, Ma ...

and its newly discovered oil fields. The young partners began their small Wamsutta Oil Refinery at

McClintocksville, Pennsylvania McClintockville, Pennsylvania was a small community in Cornplanter Township in Venango County located in the state of Pennsylvania in the United States. History Venango County, Pennsylvania was home to an oil boom in the years following disco ...

, near Oil City. The name "Wamsutta" was apparently selected in honor of their hometown area of

, in New England.

was the son of a Native American chief who negotiated an early alliance with the English settlers of the

in the 17th century. The name chosen for the new refinery may also have derived from the Wamsutta Company in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Opened in 1846, it was a major employer. (The Wamsutta Company was the first of many textile mills that gradually came to supplant whaling as the principal employer in New Bedford). Rogers and Ellis, and their Wamsutta Oil Refinery, made $30,000 their first year. This amount was more than 3 entire whaling ship trips from back home could hope to earn during an average voyage of more than a year's duration. He was regarded as very successful when Rogers returned home to Fairhaven for a short vacation the next year. There, in 1862, he married his childhood sweetheart, Abbie Palmer Gifford. Abbie returned with him to the oil fields where they lived in a one-room shack along Oil Creek, and he and Ellis worked the Wamsutta Oil Refinery.

Charles Pratt

Rogers met

Charles Pratt Charles Pratt (October 2, 1830 – May 4, 1891) was an American businessman. Pratt was a pioneer of the U.S. petroleum industry, and he established his kerosene refinery Astral Oil Works in Brooklyn, New York. He then lived with his growing ...

a short time later. Pratt (1830–1891) had been born in

Watertown, Massachusetts Watertown is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, and is part of Greater Boston. The population was 35,329 in the 2020 census. Its neighborhoods include Bemis, Coolidge Square, East Watertown, Watertown Square, and the West End. Watertow ...

. In nearby

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the capital city, state capital and List of municipalities in Massachusetts, most populous city of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financ ...

, he had joined a company specializing in paints and whale oil products. In 1850 or 1851, Pratt came to New York City, where he worked for a similar company handling paint and oil. Charles Pratt had seen the same trend as Ellis and Rogers and became a pioneer of the natural oil (petroleum) industry. He established a kerosene refinery Astral Oil Works in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Kings County is the most populous Administrative divisions of New York (state)#County, county in the State of New York, ...

, New York. Pratt's product later gave rise to the slogan, ''The holy lamps of Tibet are primed with Astral Oil''. In Pennsylvania in the mid-1860s, Pratt met Ellis and Rogers. Pratt had earlier bought whale-oil from Ellis in Fairhaven. The two young men agreed to sell the entire output of their small refinery to Pratt's company at a fixed price. Ellis and Rogers had no wells and were dependent upon purchasing crude oil to refine and sell to Pratt. A few months later, crude oil prices suddenly increased due to manipulation by speculators. The young entrepreneurs struggled to try to live up to their contract with Pratt, but soon their surplus was wiped out. Before long, they were heavily in debt to Pratt. Charles Ellis gave up, but in 1866, Rogers went to Pratt in New York City, and told him he would take personal responsibility for the entire debt. This so impressed Pratt that he hired 26-year-old Rogers immediately. In the next few years Rogers became, in the words of Elbert Hubbard, Pratt's "hands and feet and eyes and ears" (''Little Journeys to the Homes'', 1909). The following year, in 1867, Charles Pratt joined with his protégé Rogers to form Charles Pratt and Company.

Standard Oil, Henry Rogers as a tycoon and philanthropist

Pratt's companies (and he and Rogers) became part of John D. Rockefeller's

Standard Oil Standard Oil Company, Inc., was an American oil production, transportation, refining, and marketing company that operated from 1870 to 1911. At its height, Standard Oil was the largest petroleum company in the world, and its success made its co- ...

in 1874. After joining Standard Oil, Rogers invested heavily in various industries, including copper, steel, mining, and railways. The

Virginian Railway The Virginian Railway was a Class I railroad located in Virginia and West Virginia in the United States. The VGN was created to transport high quality "smokeless" bituminous coal from southern West Virginia to port at Hampton Roads. History ...

is widely considered his final life's achievement. Rogers amassed a great fortune, estimated at over $100 million, and became one of the wealthiest men in the United States. He was also a generous philanthropist, providing many public works for his hometown of Fairhaven and financially assisting such notables as

Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has p ...

, Helen Keller, and Booker T. Washington.

Pennsylvania oil heritage

Near McClintocksville and Oil City, in western Pennsylvania, Oil Creek State Park and many heritage sites to tell the story and memorialize the people of the oil boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

External links