RENCEBURG

In this little, almost forgotten town on the Allegheny, in the northernmost part of the county limits, Armstrong can claim the credit of possessing the smallest city in the United States. Yet at the date of its incorporation every evidence was given that Parker would one day stand in the class of the average metropolis of from 10,000 to 25,000 inhabitants. But that hope is now past, and Parker has only her charter as evidence of her once mighty population.

The name of this city was adopted as an honor to the Hon. John Parker, who surveyed most of the land now included in the counties of Armstrong and Butler in 1786. In 1797 he was granted several hundred acres of land for his services, most of it being on the present site of Parker City. He settled here and built a house on a hill in the edge of Butler county, where he resided until his death. He was associate judge of Butler county for thirty-five years. He left a large family, all of whom later became identified with the history of Parker City and the surrounding territory.

William Parker, father of Judge Parker, moved from Washington county with his family about the year 1798, settled upon Bear creek and erected a gristmill there. It was of logs and contained only the rudest machinery, but it was a great convenience to settlers for many miles around. It was the first mill erected in the northern part of the county.

BEAR CREEK FURNACE

DECLINE OF

the once important industry save the memory existing in the minds of old residents. The furnace stood on the north side of Bear creek, about three fourths of a mile from the mouth of the stream. It was built by Whiting & Stackpole, who failed after conducting the business for a time. Colonel Robinson, Henry Baldwin (afterward Judge Baldwin), and a Mr. Beltzhoover were the next managers. They also failed, and were succeeded by John and Alexander McNicoll. A Mr. Davis, of Pittsburgh, next tried the business and failed. Samuel and Reuben Leonard became the owners of the furnace, and carried on a successful business until about the year 1840, when they ceased operations on account of the scarcity of timber and the increased cost of conducting the business. The furnace was run by steam, and had a large capacity for those days. The product was frequently seventy-five tons of pig iron per week.

LAWRENCEBURG

One of the pioneer industries of Armstrong county was a charcoal blast furnace for the reduction of iron ore, erected at a date probably not later than 1820. The old stack was torn down years ago, and now nothing remains of

ing machine. It is now the oldest building in Parker.

The first store in Lawrenceburg was established about 1820, and was conducted by Judges Parker and Bovard, of Butler county. It was run on the coöperative plan and many settlers of the neighborhood were interested. It flourished a number of years. James Reed opened the first tavern. The number of stores and taverns increased as the village grew, and it was not long until there were three stores and three taverns, each doing a thriving business for those days, and attracting customers from points many miles distant. There was a large amount of traffic and travel upon the river, by means of canoes and keelboats, and all who had business to transact at Parker's Landing naturally came to Lawrenceburg to do their trading, as there was no village at the former place.

Besides those already mentioned, Michael McCullough, John Andrews, Edward Carleton, Dr. Beggs and John McCaslin were among the first residents of the place. McCullough kept store and built the first brick house. John Marshall came to the place in 1825, and bought twenty acres of land at $1 per acre. His land was not included in the original plot of the village, but was adjacent to the northern line of the town. When his land was found to be valuable oil territory, $45,000 was offered for it, but Mr. Marshall concluded not to sell.

From the closing up of the furnace business in 1840 until the discovery of oil, in 1865, Lawrenceburg continued to exist in name, but was a place of no importance. At the latter date there were, at a liberal estimate, less than fifty inhabitants. By 1870 thousands of people had located here either as permanent or transient residents, while all the surrounding oil fields were thickly populated. No one who has not witnessed the rapid upbuilding of towns in the oil region can form an adequate idea of the growth of the place. The importance of the oil discoveries was not fully realized until midsummer of 1869, and that date really marks the beginning of Parker City. Lawrenceburg became a part of the second ward of Parker City in 1873.

PARKER'S LANDING

In the early years of the settlement of this part of the country, Parker's Landing was an unimportant station, occasionally visited by the canoes and keelboats plying upon the river. Subsequently it became a steamboat landing and a lumber station. A store was kept at

the landing many years, but no village ever sprang up around it. In 1824 Judge Parker erected a large building which was used as a warehouse. It passed unscathed through the many fires since its erection and is still standing and is the oldest house in this part of the city. It has been converted into a hotel, and is now known as the Parker House.

From 1843 to 1869 W. D. Robinson ran a store at the Landing. In 1851 Samuel Craig opened a blacksmith shop. Fullerton Parker was the proprietor of the warehouse, Peter McGough and William Rogers acting as his storekeepers; Thomas P. Parker ran a hotel and James P. Parker was the ferryman. These conditions remained unchanged up to 1869. But a new act was soon to be placed on the stage. Within a few years that spot became the center of enormous activity. Lawrenceburg was swallowed up by its formerly tiny neighbor and the city of Parker was the result. Stores, hotels, banks, daily newspapers, a railroad and hundreds of industries sprang up as from the lamp of Aladdin, and this great transformation was the result of petroleum.

THE OIL BOOM

In 1858 oil was discovered in Venango county and in 1860 the first successful well at Oil Creek was put in. This caused Thomas McConnell, W. D. Robinson, Smith K. Campbell and Col. J. B. Finley to purchase two acres of Elisha Robinson in 1860, on the Allegheny river, ninety rods north of Thom's run, on which they drilled a well 460 feet deep. However, the war came on and for a time their operations were abandoned. This proved fortunate for them as well as for the future of the oil industry, as at a later date this territory was proved to be "dry." In 1865 they returned, organized the Foxburg Oil Company, bought 100 acres of the Thom's run tract from Robinson and put down the well which was the first of hundreds that later on studded the hills and lined the hollows of that section. The well was called Clarion No. 1, and at first produced eighteen barrels a day, but four years later yielded twenty-five barrels. By that time at least twelve test wells had been sunk and the craze had commenced. In July of 1869 there were 25 wells, producing 310 barrels a day, and in November of the same year 1,056 wells were either completed and producing or in process of drilling. Lawrenceburg became a thrifty village and Parker's Landing rapidly became a center of intense activity. Rude shanties were con

structed, in which business was commenced before the carpenters could remove their tools. Saloons, stores, hotels, eating houses and machine shops soon crowded every available space along the base of the bluff, and even encroached on the river bank. Repeated fires destroyed these "shacks," but the loss was unnoticed and they were replaced as soon as the fires died down. In a short time the population became metropolitan as well as cosmopolitan, and in 1873, by a special act of the Legislature, Parker City was incorporated. A period of unexampled prosperity then ensued. Fortunes were made and lost in a day. Handsome residences were erected by men who were formerly day laborers, and imposing business structures lined the lower flat. At one time the Parker Oil Exchange did the largest trading in oil of any body in the petroleum fields, and they possessed a $5,000 library and lavishly decorated clubrooms. So great was the traffic from the lower part of the city to the upper bluff that an elevator was constructed which carried the wearied speculators to their homes on the beautiful hilltop for the price of a gallon of oil-five cents.

"THE FLOATING PALACE"

As vultures are attracted by the carnage of battlefields, so there came to Parker in her boom days all the scum of the cities, and for a time crime flourished. Among the noted characters of those days the most conspicuous, not only for his crimes but from his remarkable personality, was Ben Hogan. Prize fighter, bounty jumper and blockade runner during the Civil war, he combined versatility in crime with great physical strength and courage. In partnership with the notorious "French Kate," he bought several flatboats and moored them in front of the town. On one he kept a saloon and gambling joint; on another he promoted a series of weekly prize fights, and on the third he kept a large "maison de joie," filled with women of evil character and great physical attractiveness. When business slackened he he frequently paraded the water front with his "stock" to attract the spendthrifts.

This caused the better class of residents to finally drive Hogan away by cutting the mooring ropes of the flatboats one dark night and causing them to drift down the stream before the owner could halt their progress. Hogan took the hint and continued on to Pittsburgh, where the authorities finally drove him out of business. Some years later the late Dwight

L. Moody, of Chicago, converted Hogan and he started out as an evangelist, visiting the places of his former misdeeds and preaching the gospel to many of his former evil companions. He is now dead.

THE DECLINE OF PROSPERITY

A directory of the oil region in 1875-76 placed the population of Parker at 4,000. At the height of the boom there were probably 15,000 to 20,000 residents and a floating population of 5,000 more. Many large business establishments catered to the wants of this mushroom populace, and every other house was either a saloon or an eating house.

But the decline came at last. Oil, which in 1874 was $4.00 a barrel, dropped at one time to ten cents, and even the tremendous output of the wells could not make the production pay. By 1878 the wells were beginning to be exhausted and the price had not increased to a paying level. In 1879 almost the entire river front was fire-swept and the depression was so great that little attempt was made to rebuild.

The lowest point of the scale was reached in 1880, when homes that cost thousands were sold for hundreds and the population was less than a thousand souls. So in the brief space of ten years Parker had seen the heights and depths of existence and had grown from a simple landing-place to a city and descended again to a minor village.

TRANSPORTATION FACILITIES

Until 1872 there was no means of reaching Parker station on the Allegheny Valley railroad except by ferry. In that year, owing to the accumulation of business incident to the oil boom, a fine iron bridge was erected across the river at a cost of $80,000 by S. D. Karns, H. R. Fullerton and Fullerton Parker. In 1873 it was used by the Parker & Karns City narrow gauge road to connect with the Allegheny Valley. Ice in April, 1885, carried away the two western spans, but they were replaced and in 1897 Butler and Armstrong counties jointly purchased it and made the passage free to the public. The price paid to the heirs of James E. Brown, who finally owned it, was $35,000.

Railroad facilities became an important item to the town in the days of its prosperity, and in 1874 the Parker & Karns City road was pushed as far as Karns City, and in 1876 completed to Butler. S. D. Karns, H. R. Ful

lerton and Fullerton Parker were the promoters. In 1881 the road became a part of the Pittsburgh & Western. That road was financially embarrassed in 1879, but was reorganized and the old Karns City line was made standard gauge in 1887. The Baltimore & Ohio leased the road in 1892 and at present operates it as a through line to the East. The total length of this line through the two townships of Perry and Hovey is but seven miles. For a time the repair shops were maintained in Parker, but no vestige of them now remains.

INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES

The most important enterprise ever undertaken in Parker was the glass works, which were organized as a stock company in 1879, with John B. Leonard, president; William Morgan, James P. Parker, A. Sheidemantle and C. P. Hatch, directors. Buildings were erected in 1880 and for a time coal was used as fuel. Gas becoming plentiful and its value recognized, it was substituted within a short period. The product, which has been strictly high-grade bottles and druggists' containers, was valued at $100,000 the first year. Twentysix blowers, twenty-five laborers and forty boys were employed in that year. In 1882 the Thomas Wightman Glass Company of Pittsburgh bought the plant, and in a few years the name was changed to its present title, The Wightman Glass Company. At the death in 1910 of J. Smiley Wightman, his sons, W. K., A. R. and J. S., continued the business under the last name. In 1913 a bottle machine for the rapid manufacture of gallon and half-gallon containers was installed, but smaller bottles are still blown by human lungs. The works give employment to two hundred workmen and produce an average of nine carloads per month. The company arranged to remove the works to Punxsutawney, where better shipping facilities could be had, and have begun the erection of a fine factory building there. The citizens of the town, however, did not relish seeing the removal of their chief industry elsewhere so they organized a company and purchased the principal part of the works for $15,000, the Wightmans retaining the bottle machine and some private molds. It is proposed by the townspeople to repair and refit the factory, and run it on a modern system. With the near advent of the extension of the Shawmut road, the branch line of the B. & O. already here and the Pennsylvania just across the river, the projectors of the new company

are not worried about lack of shipping facilities.

In the fall of 1869 the first machine shop was opened by Bradley & Duff in Lawrenceburg, and continued in successful operation until 1882. One machine shop is at present located in the first ward. John Sweeney's machine shop and foundry and James McNutt's foundry were in operation from 1872 to 1882, as was also the Evans & Foster carriage factory.

An important industry of the early seventies was Wilkins & Fullerton's sawmill and box factory, which did a business at one time of $150,000 per year.

A small factory for the manufacture of oil cups for the oil well pumps, an invention of Elliott Karns, brother of the famous "Dune" Karns, has been in operation since 1880.

WATERWORKS AND FIRE PROTECTION

The Parker waterworks were set up in 1872 by Miller & Vesey, who later sold out to Coulter & Overy. In 1874 H. R. Fullerton purchased the works, enlarged their capacity and laid several miles of pipe. In 1882 Tinsman & Russell acquired the works and replaced the old Cameron pumps by a large triple-action Fleming, run by a gas engine. Water is taken from the Allegheny by a pump built from the two old ones, and lifted into a tank, whence it is forced to the top of the bluff into a filter plant before delivery to consumers. The plant requires but one man to run it and has cost but $13 for repairs since 1880. For fire protection hose reels are pulled to the scene by a volunteer force, and the pressure is sufficient to control an ordinary fire. The water is suitable for fire protection, but is far from desirable as a source of drinking water, owing to the fouling of the river and its shallowness the greater part of the year. The plant is now owned by M. T. Pew and T. A. Kerr.

LIGHTING

A stock company, in which W. C. Mobley, William Smith, M. Naylor and J. Dougherty were interested, built the gas works in 1887, and manufactured gas from crude oil under Smith's patent. Later a way was found to utilize the vast stores of natural gas underlying the town, the works were closed and the natural flow turned into the pipes. So cheap is the gas that the street lights are allowed to burn all the time and only extinguished when replacing the mantles on burners. Gas is sup

BANKS

The rapid growth of the town and the increase of business soon rendered a bank necessary and in 1869 the Parker Savings Bank was opened and did business till 1882, when it failed, causing large losses to its depositors. The old Exchange Bank was established in 1871 and ceased business in 1880. In October, 1882, Parker, Fullerton & Co. revived the Exchange Bank and remained in business until 1901, when they, too, went under.

The First National Bank of Parker was organized December 11, 1901, with $25,000 capital. It now has a surplus of $25,000 and ample resources. The officers are: Dr. A. M. Hoover, president; G. A. Needle, Sr., vice president; D. B. Heiner, vice president; E. C. Griffith, cashier. Directors: Dr. A. M. Hoover, S. J. Ervin, G. A. Needle, Sr., W. G. Heiner, E. C. Griffith, W. P. Parker, D. B. Heiner, Daniel Galey, Alex Affolter, I. G. Smith and

M. T. Pew.

The State Bank (Incorporated) of Parker's Landing was organized December 6, 1911, with a capital of $25,000, and now has a surplus of $7,500, which is rapidly increasing. The officers are: A. S. Wightman, president; T. A. Kerr, vice president; A. E. Butler, vice president; C. W. Wick, cashier. Directors: A. S. Wightman, T. A. Kerr, A. E. Butler, S. W. Harrison, Charles E. Say, S. A. Hetrick, G. M. Slaughnhoupt, R. A. Robinson and W.

A. Wick.

MERCANTILE

Among the prominent merchants of Parker are William Leslie, T. H. McCamey, William P. Parker, E. F. Dunlap, Thomas A. Kerr, J. T. Overheim, P. M. Ramsey, Charles Feicht and H. C. Elder.

THE PRESS

A number of unsuccessful newspaper enterprises originated in Parker during the prosperous period of the city's history. A daily paper was established by Johns & Jackson, and published a short time in 1871-72. Clark Wilson conducted the Oilman's Journal several years. These papers, and several others which were started, were never financially successful.

The Parker City Daily, however, had an exceptionally prosperous career. Established in

came recognized as one of the most reliable and influential journals of the oil regions, and its circulation rapidly increased. The Daily was started as a rival of the Oil City Derrick, and was of the same size as the latter journal. It was controlled by able editors, who were assisted by a staff of enterprising reporters and correspondents. The Daily contained the Associated Press dispatches and much general information, in addition to its careful digest of news from every part of the oil region. It was published as a morning paper until 1879. The office was destroyed by fire in that year, and the paper ceased to exist as a daily. Mr. Needle, who had for some years been issuing a weekly edition of his paper, at once procured new quarters and on Christmas Day began the publication of the Phoenix, which like the fabled bird arose from the ashes of the Daily. The Phoenix is still prosperous under the direction of a son of the proprietor, G. Alfred Needle, and occupies the building once occupied by the famous Standard Oil Company when in the first throes of organiza

tion.

PHYSICIANS

For many years Dr. Simeon Hovey was the only medical adviser for the entire northern region of Butler and Armstrong counties, as well as considerable portions of Venango and Clarion counties. Some account of his services will be found in the history of Hovey township.

The first physician who settled in Lawrenceburg was Dr. Joseph Beggs, who came from Ireland and located at this place about the year 1824. He was accounted a good and skillful doctor, and won many friends and a most excellent reputation. He practiced in Lawrenceburg several years, and died at Miller's Eddy.

Dr. James Goe, a cousin of Dr. Beggs, came from Ireland a little later, and joined his uncle in the practice of his profession. After the death of Dr. Beggs he moved to Callensburg, Clarion county, and thence moved West and died.

After 1869 physicians became so numerous in Parker that it would be useless to attempt to catalogue their names. Scores took up their abode here, some of whom remained a few days, others a few weeks or months. The principle of "the survival of the fittest," however, appeared to prevail, and the number of those whose stay lengthened into years was not