With the help of salt well driller and blacksmith William (Uncle Billy) Smith, Drake adapted and used salt well technology to drill for oil. His mission was to find and produce crude oil in quantities that would make it commercially successful for refining into kerosene. Drake traveled to Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1857 as an agent of the Seneca Oil Company of Connecticut.
Ida Horner standing in front of the boulder she found for the DAR Monument, 1913 (DW2010.1.1g)Įdwin L.
