1883 – An oil company’s response to a customer query on matching stationery that features a portrait of Colonel Edwin Drake, inventor of the first commercially successful method of drilling for oil

Cleveland, Ohio, 1883. Envelope or Cover. Very good. This letter and its matching envelope sent by the Brooks Oil Company of Cleveland are both illustrated with portraits of Colonel Edwin Drake, “The first successful Producer of Petroleum.” The letter is dateline Cleveland, O. Apr 21, 1883. The envelope bears circular Cleveland, Ohio postmark and is franked with a green 3-cent Washington Stamp cancelled with a carved-cork ‘four-v’ handstamp.

The letterhead reads “Brooks Oil Company / Manufacturers of the / Col Drake’s Cylinder Oil & Corliss Engine Oil.” The letter is signed by Alfred Whitaker, the company president.

. After briefly attending Mt. Union College in Pennsylvania, Alfred Whitaker bounced between jobs, and in 1871 he was hired as a traveling salesman for the American Lubricating Company of Cleveland, Ohio. After representing the company at the Centennial Exposition in 1876 in Philadelphia, he returned to Cleveland inspired to start his own oil company despite the odds that his efforts would be crushed by the petroleum giant, the Standard Oil Company. He relentlessly traveled across the county promoting his gasoline and lubricating oil in every state and even visited Europe. The Brooks Oil Company was founded in 1876 in Cleveland where it produced gasoline and lubricants. After securing a foothold in the industry, he struck pay dirt by inventing Leadolen, a high-pressure lubricant for steel mills followed by Klingfast and Barcote used in the forging industry. The company was purchased by the Premier Industrial Corporation in the late 1960s.

Edwin Drake was hired in the late 1850s by oil speculator, James Townsend, to search for deposits near Titusville, Pennsylvania, where ground seepage had been seen. Oil prospecting at the time was done by digging trenches, but Drake acted on a hunch and, initially without success began boring holes deep into the ground as was done in salt mining. Running low on cash and surviving on credit, he found “Uncle Billy” Smith, a blacksmith to help build a pinewood derrick and invent a method to keep water out of excavated shafts. Finally, Drake struck oil nearly 70 feet down on 18 August 1859, and by early fall, the Oil Rush was on. Drake, however, was let go by Townsend. Worse, he never bothered to patent his system. Fortunately, later in life, grateful oil tycoons provided him with financial support and the Pennsylvania legislature rewarded him with a $1,500 annual annuity.

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