1 Peebles, J. M., The Practical of Spiritualism: A Biographical Sketch of Abraham James. Historic Description of his Oil-Well Discoveries in Pleasantville, Pa., Through Spirit Direction (Chicago: Horton & Leonard, 1868), 36.
2 Ibid., 77, 37. The Oxford English Dictionary defines psychometry thus: “The supposed practice of obtaining information about an object's history, or about people or events with which it has been associated, purely by touching it or through close proximity to it.” For more on the various uses of this term, see “psychometry, n,” OED Online, Oxford University Press, accessed 17 March 2011.
3 Accounts of the number of professed spiritualists in America vary. For more, see Cross, Whitney, The Burned-Over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Western New York, 1800–1850 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1950), 349; Sheri Weinstein, “Technologies of Vision: Spiritualism and Science in Nineteenth-Century America,” in Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, ed., Spectral America: Phantoms and the National Imagination (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), 125; and McGarry, Molly, Ghosts of Futures Past: Spiritualism and the Cultural Politics of Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 3. According to Robert Fuller, by the 1870s spiritualism boasted as many as eleven million followers, while Barbara Goldsmith offers a more conservative estimate, putting the number of believers around two million in 1870. See Fuller, Robert, Mesmerism and the American Cure of Souls (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), 95; and Goldsmith, Barbara, Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull (New York: Knopf, 1998), 78.
4 Parker quoted in McGarry, 3.
5 Pond freshets were an early means of transporting oil from the oil fields to Oil City, where it could be transported by boat to Pittsburgh. The tributaries of Oil Creek were dammed and barrels of oil loaded onto flat-bottomed boats. A rider would indicate when each dam should be released, and the resulting rise in water levels would push the boats downstream. An average of 15,000 to 20,000 barrels would be transported in a single pond freshet, and collisions and other accidents were common occurrences. On 31 May 1864, between 20,000 and 30,000 barrels of oil were lost near Oil City. For more, see Henry, J. T., The Early and Later History of Petroleum: With Authentic Facts in Regards to Its Development in Western Pennsylvania, the Parkers’ and Butler County Oil Fields (Philadelphia: Jas. B. Rodgers Co., 1873), 287; and Babcock, Charles A., Venango County, Pennsylvania: Her Pioneers and Her People, Embracing a General History of the Region, 2 vols., (Chicago: J. H. Beers & Co., 1919), 1, 304.
6 Harmonial philosophy asserted, among other things, that the material world (i.e. Nature) was a reflection of and existed in harmony with the spiritual realm. “Davis's version of Swedenborg's correspondence guaranteed that the existence and activity of heavenly spheres were replicated in the worldly arrangements of an American earth.” Albanese, Catharine, “On the Matter of Spirit: Andrew Jackson Davis and the Marriage of God and Nature,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 60, 1 (1992), 6.
7 Discussions of the oil industry and other forms of industry in the mid-nineteenth century were informed by American understandings of classical republicanism, which juxtaposed agrarian virtue with the greed and corruption of manufacturing and commerce. This discursive tradition often operated in conjunction with evangelical Protestant warnings about the single-minded pursuit of wealth and conservative fears about how the newly rich might misuse their money and upset established social norms. A figure such as the infamous John W. Steele (aka “Coal Oil Johnny”) was offered as a cautionary tale of how individuals, families, and communities could be destabilized by the economic promise of the oil fields. For more on Steele as a cautionary tale, see Olien, Roger M. and Olien, Diana Davids, Oil and Ideology: The Cultural Creation of the American Petroleum Industry (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 23–4.
8 The term “oil wizards,” which is also evoked in the title of this essay, appears in History of Venango County, Pennsylvania, and Incidentally of Petroleum, together with Accounts of Early Settlement and Progress of Each Township, Borough, and Village, with Personal and Biographical Sketches of the Early Settlers, Representative Men, Family Records, Etc. By An Able Corps of Historians, ed. J. H. Newton (Columbus: J. A. Caldwell, 1879), 404.
9 While most accounts refer to him as Abraham James, he is also called Abram James, James Abram, William F. James, and “Crazy James.”
10 Brian Black notes that two major journals, Merchant's Magazine and the Journal of the Franklin Institute, began what he calls “a decade-long search for uses of the abundant petroleum.” For more on the search for uses of crude oil, see Black, Brian, Petrolia: The Landscape of America's First Oil Boom (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 34–36, 35.
11 “Early Days in Oil Creek. Death of the Discoverer of the Pleasantville Oil Fields” New York Times, 29 Nov. 1884, 3.
12 An 1891 letter from Abraham James to John Bunyan Campbell, the founder of vitapathy, is reprinted as “Letter from a Former Graduate” in Campbell's Spirit Vitapathy: A Religious Scientific System of Health and Life for Body and Soul, with All-Healing Spirit Power, as Employed by Jesus, the Christ, His Apostles, and Others, that Cures and Saves All Who Receive It (Cinncinnati: H. Watkin, 1891), 299–300. In this letter, James writes that he is “extensively engaged in the development of a new and prolific oil field in the State of Kentucky” (299). Vitapathy, which seems to have been closely linked with spiritualism, was defined elsewhere in Bunyan's book as a “religious system of health” (11).
13 An “Abrham James” who appears the 1880 Census as born in 1828 (not 1827, as listed in the 1900 Census), living in Fredonia, NY in 1880, and married to Martha Anne James, listed his occupation as “oil operator.” Abrham James, age 52, “United States Census, 1880,” Census Records, FHL microfilm 1254553, United States Bureau of Census, National Archives, Washington, DC, FamilySearch, 8 April 2011; Abraham James, n.d., “United States Census, 1900,” Census Records, FHL microfilm 1241238, United States Bureau of Census, National Archives, Washington, DC, FamilySearch, 8 April 2011.
14 On James's Quaker background see Shufeldt, George, Petroleum Near Chicago: Its Existence a Spiritual Revelation (Chicago: Chicago Evening Journal Print, 1864), 7; idem, History of the Chicago Artesian Well (Chicago: Religio-Philosophical Publishing Association, 1865), 15–16; Peebles, The Practical of Spiritualism, 7–9; and “Early Days in Oil Creek,” 3. Shakers (also known as “Shaking Quakers”) and Quaker mystics who proclaimed a direct experience of the divine profoundly influenced American spiritualism.
16 The lyrics of the song “Famous Oil Firms” is quoted in Olien and Olien, 25.
17 The one exception is Harry Botsford, The Valley of Oil (New York: Hastings, 1946), who described James (at 243) as “a fine figure of a man” who was “inclined to be stout.” In contrast to other accounts, Botsford describes James as having a full beard, dark hair, and dark eyes.
18 Shufeldt, Petroleum Near Chicago, 7.
19 Shufeldt, History of the Chicago Artesian Well, 16.
20 McGarry, Ghosts of Futures Past, 28.
21 Shufeldt, History of the Chicago Artesian Well, 16.
24 Carroll, Bret, Spiritualism in Antebellum America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 26.
25 Skeptics of James's spiritual powers would claim that he knew more about geology than he let on. “Early Days in Oil Creek,” 3.
27 “Early Days in Oil Creek,” 3.
28 Pratt, Mary Louise, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 9.
29 The 1891 letter to Campbell is the only piece of writing attributed to James that I have been able to locate.
30 For more on the limestone, Joliet marble, and surface indications, see Shufeldt, Petroleum Near Chicago, 7–8.
31 Chicago Avenue was renamed Artesian Avenue to commemorate the placement of the well.
32 Andreas, A. T., History of Chicago: From the Earliest Period to the Present Time, Volume I (Chicago: A. T. Andreas, 1884), 165.
33 Braude, Ann, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in the Nineteenth Century, 2nd edn (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 165.
34 McGarry, Ghosts of Futures Past, 47, describes the Religio-Philosophical Journal's support of women's rights.
35 “The Artesian Well of Chicago, and the Spirits” Spiritual Magazine, 1 Jan. 1866, 5.
36 Cleveland, William, The Religion of Modern Spiritualism and Its Phenomena. Compared with the Christian Religion and Its Miracles (Cincinnati, OH: The Truth of Light Publishing Co., 1896), 149.
37 Shufeldt, Petroleum Near Chicago, 9.
41 Buffum, Adeline, History of the Spirits’ Oil Well, Alias Artesian Well Near Chicago. The Facts as the Spirits Gave them. The Artesian Well No Demonstration of Spirit Power (Chicago: Religio-philosophical Publishing Association, 1866), 6–7.
46 Peebles, The Practical of Spiritualism, 29.
48 See, for example, George Shufeldt, “Letter no. 1,” Scientific American, 17, 11 (14 Sept. 1867), 163; Ambrose, “Chicago Revisited,” New York Evangelist, 36, 46 (16 Nov. 1865), 1; D. W., “Subterranean Rivers,” Round Table: A Saturday Review of Politics, Finance, Literature, Society, 3 April 1869, 219; Ellis, J. M., “The Great West,” Friends' Intelligencer, 23, 20 (21 July 1866), 300, 314–15. The above sources were accessed online through American Periodicals Series. For an account published in London see Benjamin Coleman, “Passing Events – The Spread of Spiritualism,” Spiritualist Magazine, 4 (1869), 68–72.
49 “Religious Notices,” New York Times, 23 Feb. 1867, 6.
50 Andrew Cone and Walter R. Johns noted, “Several good wells were obtained that had been located, as asserted, by parties who profess to be guided by revelations made by spirits or spiritualistic manifestations.” Cone, Andrew and Johns, Walter R., Petrolia: A Brief History of the Pennsylvania Petroleum Region, Its Development, Growth, Resources, Etc., From 1859 to 1869 (New York: Appleton and Company, 1870), 122.
51 For more on the professionalization of oil geology see Frehner, Brian, Finding Oil: The Nature of Petroleum Geography, 1859–1920 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011). He has noted that “the discipline of petroleum geology coalesced in approximately the second decade of the twentieth century” (22).
52 Black, Petrolia, 180–88.
53 Quoted in P. C. Boyle, ed., The Derrick's Hand-Book of Petroleum: A Complete Chronological and Statistical Review of Petroleum Developments, 2 vols. (Oil City: The Derrick Publishing Company, 1898), 1, 88.
55 The Derrick's Hand-Book, 98.
56 Quoted in Peebles, 64.
57 Olien and Olien, Oil and Ideology, 24.
58 Owen, Edgar Wesley, Trek of the Oil Finders: A History of Exploration for Petroleum (Tulsa: The American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 1975), 1577.
63 George Shufeldt, “Spiritual Phenomena. Abram James – Man and Medium,” Buchanan's Journal of Man, 1, 2 (March 1887), online, Project Gutenburg, 17 April 2010; Emma Hardinge, Modern American Spiritualism (New York: The Author, 1870), 517, 528–30. Spiritualists also extended their influence across the Atlantic; excerpt from J. T. Trowbridge, “A Carpet-Bagger in Pennsylvania,” Atlantic Monthly, 24, 140 (1869), 739, were reprinted as “Readings in the Atlantic Monthly. Spiritualism Everywhere,” Spiritual Magazine, 4 (June 1871), 242–43.
64 Wright, William, The Oil Regions of Pennsylvania (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1865), 62–3.
66 One 1866 account by Rev. S. J. M. Eaton, framed as a “popular description of the oil region,” dismisses those who listen to the advice of “lying spirits” without naming James specifically. Rev. Eaton, S. J. M., Petroleum: A History of the Oil Regions of Venango County, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: J. P. Skelly & Co., 1866), iii, 88.
67 History of Venango County, 404.
68 James's Harmonial no. 1 was a victim of its own success. So many wells were sunk in its vicinity that its overall production was greatly decreased. The Derrick's Hand-Book, 108.
69 Cone and Johns, Petrolia, 467; Coleman, “Passing Events,” 71–72.
70 The Derrick's Hand-Book, 113; Henry, The Early and Later History of Petroleum, 216; History of Venango County, 404; “Early Days in Oil Creek,” 3.
71 McKinney, Gary S., Oil on the Brain: The Discovery of Oil and the Excitement of the Boom in Northwestern Pennsylvania, 3rd edn (Chicora, PA: Mechling Bookbindery, 2008; first published 2003), 273.
72 Asbury, Herbert, The Golden Flood: An Informal History of America's First Oil Field (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1942), 270. Twenty-first-century audiences are perhaps most famous with one of Asbury's other “informal histories,” The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927), which informed the 2002 Martin Scorsese film.
75 Frehner, Finding Oil, 21. He wrote, “Although doodlebugs prospered until about 1898, the ad says that they disappeared shortly afterward because Union eradicated them as the first company to establish a department dedicated to studying the field of geology and hiring practitioners to find oil.”
76 Giddens, Paul, The Early Days of Oil: A Pictorial History of the Beginnings of the Industry in Pennsylvania (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1948), 89.
77 Dolson, Hildegarde, The Great Oilderado: The Gaudy and Turbulent Years of the First Oil Rush: Pennsylvania: 1859–1880 (New York: Random House, 1959), 239–40.
78 Boatright, Mody C., Folklore of the Oil Industry (Dallas: Southern Methodist University, 1963), 23.
80 For more on divination and the early oil industry, see Owen, Trek of the Oil Finders, xii, 9, and 239; Black, Petrolia, 46–8; or Frehner, 21–35. James is not mentioned in these three sources.
81 Owen, preface, Trek of the Oil Finders, ix.
84 James was by no means the last spiritualist to work in the oil fields. When the focus of the oil industry moved to Texas, a new generation struggled with the seemingly arbitrary nature of drilling wells. In 1919, Edgar Cayce gave his first oil reading for Day Matt Thrash of the Sam Davis Petroleum Company and would continue to offer readings for a number of Texas oilmen in the 1920s. As late as 2003, efforts were still being made to find Cayce's “Mother Pool” in Texas. For more see Kirkpatrick, Sidney D., Edgar Cayce: An American Prophet (New York: Riverhead Books, 2000), 205–36. For other discussions of twentieth-century “seers” see Boatright, 24–33.
85 David Barstow, David Rohde, and Stephanie Saul, “Deep Water Horizon's Final Hours,” New York Times, 25 Dec. 2010, New York Times Online, accessed 21 Jan. 2011, emphasis added.
