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Dartmouth College. Bissell and the professor had met previously and
had discovered a mutual interest in finding a whale-oil substitute. The
professor wanted Bissell's opinion of the liquid's value as a lamp oil
and lubricant. The sample had been collected near a creek that flowed
through the woods of Crawford and Venango counties in northwestern
Pennsylvania. Besides water, the creek also carried an odorous, dark-
colored substance that burned and, when applied to machinery, was a
good lubricant. The substance was, of course, oil. Because it flowed
out of the rocky terrain in and near the creek, people called it "rock
oil." Indeed, so much oil flowed into the stream that settlers named it
Oil Creek.
The sample came from land next to the creek just southeast of
the town of Titusville, where the oil seeped from the rocks in the form
of a spring.

THE DRAKE WELL, 1850s

After examining the oil sample, Bissell was convinced that
refined rock oil would burn as cleanly and safely as any of the oils
available at the time, including whale oil. He also believed that it
would be a good lubricant. Bissell thus began raising money to collect
the oil from the Titusville spring and to market it for illumination and
lubrication. It was a difficult proposition; after a false start or two and
much wheeling and dealing, Bissell, a Connecticut banker named
James M. Townsend, and others formed what ultimately became the
Seneca Oil Company, in New Haven, Connecticut.
One problem the company faced was how best to produce the
oil from the land. The company directors knew that it was not efficient
to simply let the oil flow out of the rock and scoop it from the ground.
Others who had collected oil in this manner obtained merely a gallon
(a few litres) or two a day. Seneca Oil's purpose was to produce large
amounts of oil and market it in the populous northeastern U.S.
Somebody in the company - no one knows who - came up with the

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