there. While I was drilling I felt the jars stop working.
From this I knew there was a crevice and I let out
until the jars struck again. It was within a half hour
after that time that I got the oil out of the well. When the
jars stopped working I noticed the fluid rising in the drive
pipe, and called Drake’s attention to it. He said; ‘What
does that mean?’ I said; ‘That’s your fortune coming.” 1
ran two bits after that, and then I plugged a piece of common
tin pipe with a pine plug. I attached it to a strip of lumber
and lowered it into the well. No, I did not use a string or
rope to lower it, no matter what history says. It was Saturday
 when I lifted the oil and had about a half gallon of it.
The men were called over from the saw mill. The works were
shut down and all hands came over. Next day I took out
nearly a barrel and a half of oil with the tin pipe. On Monday
Drake got about 20 feet of 14-inch pipe, which we attached
to a common hand pump, and in that way brought up eight
barrels per day.
“What we used as a tank was an old fish oil can that
would hold about five or six barrels. A man named Sillman
then built a wooden tank of about 25 barrels capacity. Then
bigger ones were put up. I got a tube and tubed the well,
seed-bagged it, made it tight, and then we got nearly 20
barrels per day until October 7. At 10 o’clock that night it
burned up. The fire caught from a lamp in my hand. We
were so bothered with people coming to look at the well that
we put up a big tank house, and that night I thought the
tank was not filling fast enough and went in to see. I raised
the lamp near the great tank, and in an instant it was all
ablaze; burned everything up. Drake was not discouraged.
He said: ‘The oil is there yet.’
“A new derrick was put up and got started again November
 7, and it began anew at 32 barrels per day, and kept it up
as long as I was there. I was there nearly three years. Ido
not know where the engine was built that was used to drill
the well. It was there when I went there. I never saw such
a time as there was at that Drake well. Hundreds of people
every day, and the fool questions they would ask were awful.
I thought it funny at first, but soon got sick of answering
questions. An Irishman came along one day and asked: