Warner Petroleum Mining Co.

Stock printed by Wm. Braden & Co., Indianapolis. Rare! From the Genealogy of the Descendants of Omri Warner: Sister Emma went that summer to live with Aunt Cordelia in Brooklyn, and the following winter I went to visit them and also Aunt Frances in Connecticut. The next fall I had become rather tired of the monotony of the farm, and I wrote to A. J. Warner, father's cousin, asking him if he could give me work in the oil fields of West Virginia in which he was operating. Rowland Smith, who was also a cousin of Warner on his mother's side, had been out there. He had become interested, had procured a lease and proposed to put down a well, having asked his neighbors to go in with him in the project. I took $100 in it, and probably that had something to do with my going. The well proved a dry one, so that did not add to my wealth; but the trip had a great deal to do with my life afterward. My first work in the oil regions was to run an engine pumping an oil well. The well belonged to the Warner Petroleum Mining Co. of which A. J. Warner was president. I had no practical knowledge of running a steam engine, but some idea of the theory. The young man who was running the engine claimed to know all about it. He said: "What I do not know about an engine is not worth knowing." I soon came to the conclusion that what he knew was very little. The feed pump was not working well and he stopped the engine and took it apart to try to fix it, but could find nothing the matter with it, and after putting it together it worked no better. He took it apart again, but could not see the trouble; but I saw what I thought it was. The plunger of the pump was horizontal and was worked by a cam on the main shaft. There were two valves, one above the other, the lower the inlet and the upper the discharge. I noticed that when I raised the lower valve it also raised the upper, and I came to the conclusion that the upper valve seat had worked down. I told him so. He said that was the way the pump was made, and he guessed the makers knew more about it than I did. How it worked at all I could not see, but by thumping it we kept water in the boiler. The next time I came on watch I took the pump apart without stopping, a thing he said could not be done; drove up the upper valve seat and wedged it fast with a sliver of iron, put it together, and it worked all right. He was mystified when he came on watch again. Why was the pump working steadily when before it would hardly work at all? I did not tell him. He got drunk and then Warner took my advice and discharged him.

Read More

Read Less