in
Cherrytree Township Venango County was created on March 12, 1800, from parts of
Allegheny and
Lycoming Counties. The name "Venango" is derived from the Native American name of the region,
Onenge, meaning
Otter. This was corrupted in English as the
Venango River. The settlement at its mouth was likewise called
Venango, which since March 3, 1871, has been the South Side of
Oil City. Venango County was home to an
oil boom in the years following discovery of natural oil (petroleum) in the mid-1850s.
George Bissell, a
Yale University chemistry professor, and
Edwin L. Drake, a former railroad conductor, made the first successful use of a drilling rig on August 28, 1859, near
Titusville. (Although Titusville is in Crawford County, the first oil well was drilled outside of town, less than a mile inside of the Venango County boundary) This single well soon exceeded the entire cumulative oil output of Europe since the 1650s. Within weeks, oil derricks were erected all over the area. Other oil boom towns located in Venango County included Franklin, Oil City, and the now defunct
Pithole City. The principal product of the oil was
kerosene.
McClintocksville was a small community in
Cornplanter Township in Venango County. In 1861, it was the location of
Wamsutta Oil Refinery, the first business venture of
Henry Huttleston Rogers, who became a leading United States
capitalist, businessman, industrialist, financier, and philanthropist. Rogers and his young wife
Abbie Palmer Gifford Rogers lived in a one-room shack there along Oil Creek for several years beginning in 1862. After joining Standard Oil, Rogers invested heavily in various industries, including copper, steel, mining, and railways. The
Virginian Railway is widely considered his final life's achievement. Rogers amassed a great fortune, estimated at over $100 million, and became one of the wealthiest men in the United States. He was also a generous philanthropist, providing many public works for his hometown of
Fairhaven, Massachusetts, and financially assisting helping such notables as
Mark Twain,
Helen Keller, and
Dr. Booker T. Washington. A little girl named
Ida M. Tarbell, whose father was an independent producer whose small business was ruined by the
South Improvement Company scheme of 1871 and the conglomerate which became Standard Oil. Introduced to each other in 1902 by their mutual friend Twain, Tarbell, who had become an
investigative journalist and Rogers, who knew of her work, shared meetings and information over a two-year period which led to her epoch work,
The History of the Standard Oil Company, published in 1904, which many historians feel helped fuel public sentiment against the giant company and helped lead to the court-ordered break-up of it in 1911. The oil heritage of Venango County is commemorated by a Pennsylvania State Park and many heritage sites which help tell the story and memorialize the people of the oil boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. ==Geography==