![]() For years, he had struggled in the shadows of his renowned thespian father, Junius, and brothers, Edwin and Junius, Jr. The 1863 theater season had brought a handsome, 24-year-old aspiring actor the fame he had long pursued. Investors had organized Seneca Oil for tax advantages after founding the first American oil company established to drill for oil, the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company of New York. ![]() Photo by Alexander Gardner courtesy Library of Congress.ĭrilled for the Seneca Oil Company of New Haven, Connecticut, Drake’s August 27, 1859, discovery launched a drilling boom that made newspaper headlines (the industry’s first “dry hole” a few days later did not). John Wilkes Booth’s dreams of Pennsylvania oil wealth ended in July 1864. oil well was drilled in 1859 by former railroad conductor Edwin L. The weathered post and Booth’s capped well stand about 20 miles south of an oil museum and park at Titusville - where the first commercial U.S. Hidden deep in the woods of the “Valley that Changed the World,” a small concrete marker can be found (with some effort) at the actual site where the future assassin drilled for oil. ![]() Maps reveal the three-acre strip of land on the farm, about one mile south of Franklin and on the east side of the Allegheny River. A failed oilman turned assassin.Īs the Civil War approached its bloody conclusion, John Wilkes Booth in January 1864 made the first of several trips to Franklin, Pennsylvania, where he purchased an oil lease on the Fuller farm. He then sought fame as a martyr to the Confederacy. John Wilkes Booth and his actor friends drilled for Pennsylvania oil in 1864 - and found it.Īfter forming an oil company and drilling for “black gold” in booming northwestern Pennsylvania, the actor’s dreams of a petroleum fortune collapsed in June 1864.
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