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There is no armor against fate…--James Shirley Some fifty years ago Ernest C. Miller, a well known historian from Warren, Pennsylvania, reported a little known fact about the infamous assassin of Abraham Lincoln. It seems that John Wilkes Booth had owned an oil well called the Wilhelmina well in Venango County, Pennsylvania, in the early 1860's. He and his partners thought the well, which was producing some 25 barrels of oil per day, was not sufficient, and a decision was made to detonate an explosive charge in the well. The shot completely ruined the well and it never produced another drop of oil. Henry Sires, who was in charge of the operation of the Wilhelmina well reported, "The well cost Booth and his associates a great deal of money and they got almost no oil." Since this shot was done prior to September, 1864, Booth's last known visit to the oil regions, one is tempted to speculate the outcome for John Wilkes Booth, and the nation, if a Roberts Torpedo had been loaded into the well by a professional well shooter. |
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