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 Sat- 
urday 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 Novem- 
ber 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: