1. Edwin Drake grew up on family farms around New York state and Castleton, Vermont, before leaving home at the age of 19.
22 Facts About Edwin Drake
1. 2.
Edwin Drake spent the early parts of his life working the railways around New Haven, Connecticut, as a clerk, express agent, and conductor.
3.
Edwin Drake was the first person in the United States to refine crude oil into kerosene.
4.
Edwin Drake was hired on a salary of $1,000 a year to investigate the oil seeps on land owned by Seneca Oil.
5.
Edwin Drake was hired by the Seneca Oil Company to investigate suspected oil deposits in Titusville, Pennsylvania.
6.
Edwin Drake had no military experience, but Townsend gave him the title of "Colonel" in order to impress the local townspeople.
7.
Edwin Drake decided to drill in the manner of salt well drillers.
8.
Edwin Drake purchased a steam engine in Erie, Pennsylvania, to power the drill.
9.
Edwin Drake was surprised and delighted to see crude oil rising up.
10.
Edwin Drake was summoned and the oil was brought to the surface with a hand pitcher pump.
11.
Edwin Drake is famous for pioneering a new method for producing oil from the ground.
12.
Edwin Drake drilled using piping to prevent borehole collapse, allowing for the drill to penetrate further and further into the ground.
13.
Edwin Drake tried the latter method initially when looking for oil near Titusville, Pennsylvania.
14.
The significant step that Edwin Drake took was to drive a 32-foot iron pipe through the ground into the bedrock below.
15.
Edwin Drake's well produced 25 barrels of oil a day.
16.
Edwin Drake set up a stock company to extract and market the oil.
17.
But, while his pioneering work led to the growth of an oil industry that made many people fabulously rich, for Edwin Drake riches proved elusive.
18.
Edwin Drake failed to patent his drilling invention, and proceeded to lose all of his savings in oil speculation in 1863.
19.
Edwin Drake remarried three years later to Laura Dowd, sixteen years his junior, in 1857.
20.
Edwin Drake retained the privileges of a train conductor, including free travel on the railroads.
21.
In 1858, the Edwin Drake family relocated to Titusville, Pennsylvania and in 1874 to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania.
22.
Edwin Drake died on November 9,1880, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.