Blight to Delight in Urban Pennsylvania: 50. Strange Story of Abandonment and Rehabilitation in Northwest Pennsylvania

An abandoned and neglected house in Venango County was located roughly midway between Titusville, PA and Oil City, PA in the world's first oilfield of the 1860's.

The land in that oilfield was owned by farmers the length of Oil Creek. The Widow McClintock became unexpectedly wealthy from royalties paid to her by oil well owners who leased parts of her farm for sites to explore and drill for oil. Impatient in March of 1863 with the slow wood fire in her cook stove to burn more quickly, she went to a nearby oil well and collected a pail of crude oil. She added it to the wood fire in the cook stove. The resulting flashback killed her. Her adopted son, John W. Steele, inherited the farm and all the oil royalties. He was 20 years old. The estate was under the supervision of a conservator until he became of the then majority age of 21. Shortly thereafter John W. Steele through a series of stresses, not the least of which was the violent death of his stepmother became the object of scorn and ridicule as "Coal Oil Johnny."

The McClintock farm was adjacent to Rynd's farm and across the Oil Creek from what is today Rouseville. Before Colonel Edwin Drakes production of some 5000 barrels of oil from the first oil well near Titusville in 1859 the farmers in the Oil Creek Valley led a self-sufficient and isolated life in a remote section of Northwest, PA. In four years the oil production skyrocketed to over 2 millions barrels a year. The farms changed drastically.

The 1865 drawing from Frank Leslies Illustrated Newspaper above shows the McClintock farmhouse overlooking the congested oil wells on the farm. The house was no longer part of a farm. The roads were near useless mired with a mixture of leaked oil and rainwater creating deep ruts as seen in the right foreground.

Steele had a number of life stressors. He saw the complete destruction of a farm valley, he saw the loss of life and injuries caused by the Rouse well fire that happened across the valley in 1861, he lost his stepmother in a violent flare and flashback explosion in 1863. About 1865 his young wife and their child visited her family in Philadelphia. As planned, they went ahead as Steele took care of business affairs in the Oil Creek Valley. When he arrived in Philadelphia his child was seriously ill and the family was in quarantine. That set in motion Steele's drinking and mania. From drinks on the house to buying a traveling minstrel show to chasing a train in a chartered steam locomotive the yellow press created "Coal Oil Johnny." Subsequently, he managed to sort out his life and was employed as a yardmaster for the Union Pacific Railroad in Nebraska.

The house became abandoned and blighted.

In the early morning summer with creek fog, the house looked like this in 1991:

Rear of Coal oil Johnny House, 1991

The forlorn house was saved in 2000 when it was decided by the local tourist groups to move the house to an accessible place for appreciation by the general public. It was the only surviving house in the Oil Creek Valley that was much as it was before the boom in the world's first oilfield in the 1860's. It had a significant story due to the notoriety of Coal Oil Johnny, a.k.a Jone W. Steele. But, it was located on a township road with bridge load limits that a tour bus would overwhelm.

The house was moved less than a mile to Rynd Farm station on the Oil Creek and Titusville Railroad just north of Rouseville, PA.

Here it is today in its restored condition with the Oil Creek and Titusville Railroad passenger station in the. background: