[THE PENNSYLVANIA OIL RUSH] A small archive documenting oil-land speculation in the Venango County oil region — with a manuscript document dated at Pithole City.

Item Details

"This cursed 'McCost' stinking case": An Archive of Pennsylvania Oil-Rush Land-Speculation Letters Addressed to a Connecticut Owner, [Walter] G. Davenport of Roxbury, 1868–1874 — with the associated Davenport family papers, c. 1830s–1910s.

Six oil-region items: five autograph letters signed ( 13 pp. on folded stationery, 2 on the printed letterhead of the Mansion House, Titusville); one manuscript legal receipt dated at Pithole City, "for notorial fees ( ?) on depositions in case of Geo. W. Davenport vs. M. A. Sands. Court of Common Pleas of Venango County. "

Together with family papers, approx. 20 items,  including deeds & a dairy farm account book. c. 1830s-1910s. 

A cohesive, single-focus archive tracing one two-acre speculative parcel on the McCaslin Farm near Pleasantville — held by an absentee Connecticut owner and managed by agents on the ground — across the full arc of the northwestern Pennsylvania oil boom. The correspondence moves from peak-boom brokerage and neighborly well-by-well reporting (land at $200–$300/acre, 1868–1870), through judgment, lien, and a sheriff's inquisition (1869), to the post-boom collapse of the parcel to roughly $30/acre once condemned for oil (1874) — a documented per-acre decline of about ninety percent in six years. Uncommonly, the group captures the investor's experience of the rush rather than the driller's: remote ownership, brokers and commissions, clouded title, mounting court costs, and eventual write-down.

The datelines map the oil frontier: Titusville (birthplace of the industry, here on oil-hotel letterhead), Pleasantville, Tidioute, and Parker's Landing — and, in the receipt, Pithole City, which rose from farmland to some 15,000–20,000 people in 1865 and had already collapsed to a remnant by the 1869 date this document bears. Genuine Pithole-dated manuscripts are scarce.

Descends within the Davenport family papers of Roxbury–Washington, Litchfield County, Connecticut (c. 1830s–1910s), principally area property transfers and deeds — fixing the owner's home ground and confirming the absentee character of the Pennsylvania venture. The wider family group also includes Walter G. Davenport's memorandum book of milk sales to B. N. Seeley and Mitchel's Dairy (1910–1912) and a deed to Benjamin Davenport's plot in the Roxbury Cemetery with a printed copy of the cemetery's Rules and Regulations (Bridgeport, 1875). There is also an undated letter re: a Texas grain investment. 

Petroleum industry and trade — Pennsylvania — History — 19th century. · Oil lands — Pennsylvania — Venango County. · Land speculation — Pennsylvania. · Pithole (Pa.) — History — Sources. · Titusville (Pa.) — History — Sources. · Pleasantville (Venango County, Pa.). · Tidioute (Pa.). · Venango County (Pa.) — History — Sources. · Davenport family. · Roxbury (Conn.) — History — Sources. · Actions and defenses — Pennsylvania — Venango County.

Full note

Five letters (four correspondents) and supporting documents, all concerning the same two acres on the McCaslin Farm near Pleasantville, Venango County, Pennsylvania, and its absentee owner, Walter G. Davenport of Connecticut. Together they form an unusually complete, small-scale documentary record of oil-region land speculation seen from the investor's side rather than the driller's:

• Tidioute, July [18]68 — James Broad[?] to "G. W. Davenport, Esq." A confidential brokering letter: a buyer, M. A. Bingham, has offered to purchase; the writer stands to take one-third of anything the tract brings over $300 per acre, and quotes a working figure of $200 per acre. Directs Davenport to find Bingham via Robinson's livery stable.
• Pleasantville, Nov. 20, 1869 — H. Bower to "Friend Davenport." The legal crisis: a judgment entered against Davenport (c. Sept. 10, 1869), a lien on the two acres, and a court inquisition at Franklin on Nov. 19 ordering the land sold. Bower reports obtaining a stay of proceedings, offers to advance the money to clear it, and christens the whole affair the "McCost" case — a pun on the McCaslin name and the mounting court costs. He also notes his own oil investments at Parker's Landing.
• Pleasantville, April 16, 1870 — J[no?]. McCaslin (of the namesake farm) to "G. W. Davenport." Boom fever at its height: a neighbor's well ("Hebert's") is about to come in on "a good sand," land is "worth three hundred dollars pr acre," Hebert "is buying every thing that he can get," and Davenport is urged to "put down a well on your 2 acres."
• Titusville, Oct. 1871 — H. Bower to "My Young Friend, Walter G. Davenport," on the printed letterhead of the Mansion House (Z. Martin, prop'r), the oil-boom hotel later known as the Colonel Drake. Holding pattern: the two acres "stand as they have," taxes paid, on the faith that "sometimes a little land in this country turns out big." Bower writes on returning from his home in Penn Yan, New York.
• Titusville, July 19, 1874 — H. Bower, again on Mansion House letterhead. The bust: the land "has been thoroughly tested for oil and found not good for oil," now worth about $30 per acre — "the largest price that could be obtained for the land in many years to come."

Also present, and the single most evocative piece: a notary's fee receipt dated at Pithole City, Dec. 8, 1869 — "Received, Pithole City, Dec. 8th 1869, of Geo. Davenport, Five Dollars, for notarial fees on depositions in [the] case of Geo. W. Davenport vs. M. A. Sands, Court of Common Pleas of Venango County," signed by the notary public [signature not yet resolved]. It is the direct evidentiary companion to Bower's November 20 letter (the "papers and receipts" he promised to forward), and it carries the dateline of the most famous of all the flash boomtowns — a town already collapsed to a fraction of its 1865 peak by the time this was written, making any genuine Pithole-dated document scarce. One blank p. has  contemporary pencil calculations,  a heading reading "$25.00 paid…"), evidently working the per-acre valuation or the settlement of costs.