Petroleum and Petroleum Wells. What Petroleum Is, Where It Is Found, and What It is Used For; Here to Sink Petroleum Wells, and How to Sink Them. With a Complete Guide Book and Description of the Oil Regions of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio

Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co, 1865. Second edition, revised and enlarged. 153pp. 12mo. Publisher's brown cloth, blocked in blind, spine lettered in gilt. Second edition, revised and enlarged. 153pp. 12mo. The second edition, considerably enlarged, published the same year as the 95-page first edition. An interesting work on the oil fields of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, with stories of early oils wells and their owners and how oil companies operate.

The first oil well in the United States was drilled by E. L. Drake in Oil Creek, Pennsylvania, near Titusville, in 1859 and America's first oil rush ensued, peaking in the late 1860s. The Titusville population exploded from 250 residents in 1860 to over 10,000 in little more than five years. Output of crude went from 2000 barrels in 1859 to 4,000,000 barrels in 1869.

The present work is one of the earliest separate publications on the American oil industry, still in its infancy. "This is a good history of the oil development thus far in Pennsylvania, with much shorter accounts of the West Virginia, Southern Ohio, and Kentucky regions, with a day-by-day account of a trip through the Pennsylvania oil region" (Streeter). Howes B598; Streeter sale 4040 (first edition); Sabin 6298