Dartmouth Represented at Petroleum Anniversary

GEORGE L. SCOTT '25, formerly professor of Education at Dartmouth and now in the personnel division of the Gulf Oil Corporation at Pittsburgh, was the representative of the College in Titusville, Pennsylvania, on August 27 at the 90th Anniversary of the striking of oil at the Drake Well.

The events preceding Colonel Edwin L. Drake's drilling for oil in 1859 are Pre" dominantly connected with Dartmouth and had their inception as early as 1853. In July of that year Francis Beattie Brewer of the Class of 1843 brought to Crosby Hall from the Hibbard farm near Titusville, Pennsylvania a bottle of "rock oil." It was examined, analyzed, and pronounced valuable by Dr. Dixi Crosby of the Medical School, Class of 1824, and Professor Oliver Payson Hubbard of the Chemistry Department. A few weeks later George Henry Bissell of the Class of 1845 saw the oil and visualized its commercial possibilities. Albert Harrison Crosby of the Class of 1848 was sent to investigate the property. His enthusiastic report led to the purchase by George Bissell and his partner of the Hibbard farm on November 10, 1854, and to the incorporation on December 30, 1854 of the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company of New York—the first petroleum company in the world. Later it was George Bissell who first conceived the idea of drilling for oil, resulting in the first "striking" of oil August 27, 1859, by Edwin L. Drake on the Hibbard farm.

This chain of events has led to the recognition of George Henry Bisseli as the first to see the value of petroleum, and Crosby Hall at Dartmouth as the birthplace of the industry.