Answers
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- James Miller Williams dug the first commercially successful oil well in North America.
- Hugh Nixon Shaw discovered the first oil gusher in Oil Springs.
- John Henry Fairbank invented the jerker-line, or jerker-rod, system.
- The term "foreign driller" was used to describe a driller from Petrolia, and surrounding areas, who travelled to other countries to drill for water and oil. They were also known as "hard oilers".
- James Miller Williams learned about the gumbeds of Enniskillen Township from Charles Tripp.
- John H. Fairbank learned of the oil in Lambton County when he was hired by Mrs. Julia Macklem to survey this area for her.
- William H. McGarvey was the man who made Canadian foreign drillers famous, especially in Europe. He moved to Europe to search for oil, and sent home for Canadian drillers to help him in his search. Our Hard Oilers were responsible for bringing in the first well in Galicia.
- Charles and Henry Tripp formed the first oil company in North America, and some say, in the world. It was called the International Mining and Manufacturing Company.
- James Miller Williams won awards at the 1862 International Exhibition in London, England, for his discovery of oil, and for refining it into quality lamp oil.
- Jacob "Jake" Englehart was instrumental, along with sixteen others, in forming the Imperial Oil Company in 1880.
- Some of the dangers that an oil driller could face would be:
- deadly gases found inside a well
- nitroglycerin explosions when blowing wells
- wild animals, when drilling in other countries
- malaria and other illnesses
- accidents while travelling to and from the countries in which they were drilling
- repercussions from political uprisings in countries where they were living
- financial ruin, especially if they were financing their own drilling expeditions
- loneliness and loss of families
- The Northern Ontario town of Englehart was named after Jake Englehart. Jake was the Chairman of the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway, and was instrumental in pushing through over 400 miles of railway track through the wilderness that existed there in 1906.
- John H. Fairbank was involved in many business ventures:
- He worked for the Western Railway Company, as a surveyor.
- He was a travelling salesman who travelled between London and St. Thomas, Ontario selling machine lubricating oil.
- He was an oil producer, with many wells.
- John went into business when he partnered up with Benjamin Van Tuyl, in 1865, and opened a grocery and liquor store, which later expanded into hardware and oil well supplies.
- Fairbank also bought and sold real estate.
- He traded in lumber
- In 1869, John joined with Leonard Vaughn, to set up Petrolia’s first bank.
- He organized a group of oil producers to build an eight-kilometer spur line railway from the Great Western depot at Wyoming.
- John entered local politics and was elected three times to council.
- He was elected as the Federal Liberal Member of Parliament in 1882.
- John was the president of a refinery which was erected in Petrolia.
- In the 1870’s, he was appointed as Fire Chief, a position he held until he retired in 1889.
- John Fairbank also had an interest in the railway business, and with John W. Sifton, became involved in financing the Canadian Pacific rail line from west of Lakehead.
- William H. McGarvey was honoured by the Austrian Emperor, Franz Joseph, for introducing the "Canadian drilling system" to Galicia.
- The First Lord of the British Admiralty, Winston Churchill, consulted with William McGarvey and British Navy officials, on the importance of converting their ships to oil during the first World War.
- John D'Oyley Noble's contribution to the oil industry, was his invention, along with Charles Jenkins, of a series of underground pipelines that were used to connect the wells and the refineries, thus eliminating the potential fire hazard presented by above-ground pipes and storage tanks.
- John Noble was sent to Paris, France in 1900, as a delegate to the first Petroleum Congress, which was held at the Paris Exhibition. He was asked to read a paper on the oil history of Canada, and in it he described the Canadian drilling method, which had become famous around the world.
- When Hugh Nixon Shaw struck his gusher, he ran into an unusual problem: he did not know how to turn it off! The men worked for three days before getting it under control, and it was knowledge of some oilmen from Pennsylvania, that helped to stem the flow.
- Elizabeth Adamson was Ontario's first licensed female druggist.
- Petrolia was a "single-parent" family town due to the fact that most of the men at that time, lived abroad as foreign drillers. Most women stayed at home, and raised their families alone.
- Some of the hardships that the wives of the foreign drillers may have faced were, loneliness, the raising of the children single-handedly, and the personal difficulty of relating to a husband, who was a virtual stranger in his own household.
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- Petrolia got its Charlotte Eleanor Englehart Hospital when Jake Englehart gave his home, Glenview, to the town. The Englehart residence was converted into a hospital at the bequest of Jake's wife, Charlotte, in her Last Will and Testament. Jake gave the hospital funds, and shares in Imperial Oil stock, which have allowed it to remain self-sufficient.
- The four towns that make up the Oil Heritage District are: Oil City, Oil Springs, Petrolia, and Wyoming.
- Oil Springs, Ontario boasted the first paved street in Canada, as well as a gas-lit main thoroughfare before larger centres in Europe or the United States.
- James Miller Williams dug his well in 1858, a full year before Drake's well was drilled in Pennsylvania. As noted in Gary May's book, "Hard Oiler!", As early as June 1860 the American book, Oil in Pennsylvania and Elsewhere, acknowledged Williams' earlier discovery. That book indicated at the time of publication that Williams' well had been in operation for two years, a full year before Titusville began producing." p. 34 This controversy is covered in more detail in Gary's book, as well in the book "Rivers of Oil" by Hope Morritt.
- Some events that transpired to establish Petrolia as a prominent oil town were:
- The Oil Springs boom had ended.
- King had brought in his famous well in Petrolia.
- A rail spur was completed to Petrolia in 1866.
- The American Civil War had ended.
- The Oil Museum of Canada was built in Oil Springs, Ontario, Canada because this was the site of James Miller William's oil well.
- Some of the places that the foreign drillers went to drill were: Africa, Australia, Borneo, Burma, Cuba, Egypt, Equador, Galicia, India, Java, Persia, Peru, Russia, Singapore, South America, Sumatra, Venezuela, Trinidad, and Japan.
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- Oil is formed as follows:
- Tiny sea plants convert the sun's energy into living matter.
- Tiny animals feed on the plants.
- The plants and animals die, sink to the bottom of the sea, and are buried in the mud.
- Great pressure over millions of years turns the fossil plants into oil.
- Some products that are made from crude oil are: gasoline, chewing gum, paints, detergents, telephones, bubble bath, aspirin, and panty-hose.
- The jerker-line, or jerker-rod, pumping system is a system that allowed the producer to use one engine, to pump several wells. This was accomplished by attaching lengths of wooden rod to a wheel assembly, just outside of the pump house. The wheel would rotate, and by this push-and-pull motion, move the jerker rods, which would in turn cause the walking beams at each well to rise and fall, thus pumping the oil out of the well.
- The name of the drilling rig that was sent all over the world to assist in the drilling of wells, was the Canadian Drilling Rig.
- Hugh Nixon Shaw used a spring-pole rig to dig his well.
- Charles Nelson Tripp concentrated on producing asphalt from the gumbeds o f Enniskillen Township.
- James Miller Williams concentrated on producing quality illuminating oil from these same gumbeds.
- Illuminating oil was the more commercially successful of the two products. This was greatly due to the fact that transportation to and from the gumbeds had improved significantly when James Miller Williams was refining his product. The use of kerosene, as a lighting fuel, had recently been perfected by Abraham Gesner in 1846, and the supply of illuminating oil was steadily increasing.
- A three-pole derrick was a structure that was erected over a new well to assist the oil men in lowering and raising heavy equipment in and out of the well. It was made from three black ash trees, and was erected with the aid of horses.
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