Old Times in Oildom

Abstract

Old Times in Oildom, published in 1911 by the Derrick Publishing Company of Oil City, Pennsylvania, contains the memoirs and stories of George W. Brown, who was deeply involved in the oil business in Pennsylvania in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Brown was a witness to times of profound change in the industrial and economic landscapes of Pennsylvania’s oil regions, when technology rapidly developed and oil wells sprang up across the northern part of the state, irrevocably altering both the land itself and the communities living on it. He provides a detailed account of what life was like in the “oildom” of nineteenth-century Pennsylvania, from the striking of the first oil well, the famous Drake Well in Titusville, to the solidification of the industry in the early twentieth century. In addition to stories from his own life, Brown tells those of his prominent contemporaries, and includes a series of biographical sketches of men who played important roles in the Pennsylvania oil industry.