The lovely ladies who cleaned the 57 hotels in Pithole barely beat out Samuel Van Sickle, creator of the first oil pipeline, by a single vote. The selection process happened over Zoom where attendees listened to nominations from the host Julia Mann, Drake Well Museum Curator Sue Bates and bedding malaysia Museum Educator bedding malaysia Sarah Goodman. Each presenter was able to nominate one candidate per round for two rounds.
For the uninitiated, at its peak in 1865, Pithole, Pennsylvania, bedding malaysia had a population of 15,000 people. When oil was struck on Pithole Creek on Jan. 7, 1865, it was the third wave of the Oil boom in the area.
With stories of Colonel Edwin Drake and bedding malaysia others getting rich, Bed Sheets Malaysia thousands of Civil War veterans flocked to the area around Pithole searching for fortune. After the oil production slowed and fires torched many essential buildings, the famous boomtown went bust. Within a year of its peak, bedding malaysia Pithole had a population of just 2,000.
The famous hotels and brothels of Pithole were picked up and moved. All that is left of the town are cellar holes and plaques.
Drake Well Museum hosted tWednesday’s event to inform residents of all that happened in Pithole’s short but illustrious history.
Now to meet the candidates for Pithole Person of the Year:
The first round of nominations featured men with high status. For this category Sue Bates nominated Charles Leonard. Leonard was a former soldier who moved to Pithole to be a store clerk. After agreeing to write part-time for the Pithole Daily Record, Leonard left his job as a clerk to become a full time journalist.
After announcing her selection, a short video was played to give the attendees more information about the historical figure. The videos featured local volunteers dressed up in costume pleading their case for why they should be person of the year.
Leonard read the attendees an article he had written for the Daily Record, as well as giving a short biography. After the video finished, Bates also plead Leonard’s case saying, "He is one of the reasons we know so much about Pithole today."
While many other boomtowns had popped up in Northwest Pennsylvania, their lack of a newspaper limited the information we now know about them. Leonard was also a historian who published a history of Pithole after he retired.
While Bates went with the heart of Pithole with her nomination, Museum Educator Sarah Goodman nominated the "moral compass" of the town with Reverend Darius Steadman as her nomination.
Steadman was the first chaplain to successfully create a religious community in Pithole. Steadman was the perfect person to bring the message. Unlike other chaplains, bedding malaysia Steadman was a war veteran who carried a pistol and smoked a pipe. While his first sermon was given from a stable, Steadman was able to build a congregation on donated land.
After his church had grown, Steadman was able to open Pithole’s first school in his church basement. Goodman said it best, "He brought education, morality and charity to Pithole." As Pithole was known for Bed Sheets Malaysia its famous red-light district, that was no easy task.
The final round-one nomination was for Samuel Van Sickle. Van Sickle, one of Pithole’s most famous residents, built the world’s first oil pipeline in Pithole. The Pithole oil rigs were the first in the area not off of Oil Creek and the Allegheny, therefore there was no infrastructure.
As Pithole produced 6,000-8,000 barrels of oil a day, the only way to transport that oil was by teamsters. Teamsters were men who owned wagons drawn by horses or cattle that transported everything in and bedding out of Pithole.
The teamsters used their monopoly to charge $3 for the transportation of oil barrels. The barrels themselves were only worth $5. While the technology wasn’t quite there, Van Sickle engineered the pressure-based oil pipeline system to allow for bedding malaysia oil to travel the five miles from Pithole. If you have virtually any concerns about where as well as the best way to make use of bedding malaysia, it is possible to email us on our web-site. Not only were Van Sickle’s pipelines faster, he only charged the oilmen $1 per barrel to transport their oil.
After all three men had been property introduced, the attendees voted for bedding malaysia who they thought should move onto the final round. With 46% of the vote, Van Sickle moved on.
The second round featured Pithole residents who may have been forgotten to history; the chambermaids, teamsters and washerwomen whose work might have been unappreciated.
Some of the facts highlighted in the videos were that Pithole hotels often slept five men to one bed, washing the sheets only once a week.
Teamsters lead over 1,000 wagons per day, bedding malaysia and would often unwind by drinking whisky, which was cheaper than water.
The winners of the second round were the chambermaids. Goodman, who nominated the women, said they brought cleanliness and stability to Pithole. The chambermaids were often young women sent by their families to find work. Many of the maids sent their wages back home to help their families. "They had to be strong women," said Goodman.
With the stage set, the chambermaids were able to defeat the father of the oil pipeline. While the result was somewhat of a surprise to some of those attending the virtual competition, the strong women, who were responsible for much more than cleaning five-man bed linens, seemed deserving of the title.