A Well of Oil in McGraw, N.Y.

transcribed from the Monday, January 18, 1904 Cortland Standard.

A WELL OF OIL
 

Found by F. E. Webster of McGraw in His Yard.

USED TO BE A WELL OF WATER.

Water All Gone Now and Oil in its Place Three Feet Deep—Preparations for Deepening the Well. The Town Going Wild Over the Oil Craze.

     The village of McGraw is wild in the craze over the growing prospects of oil. It is thought that the whole town is built over one huge oil well. From time to time references have been made in these columns in regard to the discoveries on the Gutchess property, but now has come another find which has created a new sensation.
   F. E. Webster lives on Clinton Ave., just in the rear of the corner grocery. For a long time be had a dug well under a piazza upon the north side of his house, but nine years ago he decided to drive a well in his kitchen and obviate the necessity of going out of doors for water. When the driven well was ready for use Mr. Webster threw a quantity of stones into the bottom of the dug well, planning to fill it up, but after a little he abandoned this project and simply covered it up, building the floor of a piazza over it.         
   Last week Mrs. Webster tried to pump water from the driven well in the kitchen, but to her surprise no water came. The liquid which came up was a yellow oily substance that very much resembled crude oil, and when a match was touched to it a blaze resulted, showing that it was oil. Mr. Webster's attention was drawn to it and he began operating the pump, thinking that there might be some oil down there, but that water must be below it and that water would soon come. But it didn't. As long as he pumped he got only oil.
   Saturday, in company with Clayton Phillips he removed the covering from the dug well that had been closed for nine years and to their surprise they found three feet of the same oil in this well above the surface of the stones that bad been thrown in the bottom of the well. They could find no water there but only oil.
   Neither Mr. Webster nor Mr. Phillips is very likely to get excited over a thing of this kind. They had previously been rather inclined to laugh at the oil stories, but when it thus came to their personal observation they both became excited and enthusiastic.
   Mr. Webster has brought a bottle of this oil to this office, and it surely presents the appearance of unrefined oil. He is going to have it chemically analyzed and tested. He says he purposes pumping out the well, if he can do so, and then removing the stones which were thrown in there to fill it up and as far as possible restore it to its original depth and see if it is still as full of oil as before.
   All the residents of the vicinity are now out looking for oil and the whole town is exalted. There is prospect of an oil boom.