Janes Mansion

Constructed in 1857 by Heman Janes, the 157 year old home, at 125 West 21st Street, was the oldest house in the West 21st Street Historic District before being demolished by VL Holdings LLC on Saturday, April 12, 2014. An architectural-styled Italianate on a lot size of 11560 square feet, the house was 3883 square feet with 5 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. It was one of the first homes built within the district that includes 34 contributing middle and upper class residential buildings, built between 1857 and 1939, in a variety of popular architectural styles including Queen Anne, Italianate, and Colonial Revival.

Workers with the Lipchik Demolition company demolished the house after assurances was given by VL Holdings to the members of Preservation Erie, a Non-Profit Organization, that they were only demolishing a small building in the back yard of the property, which was not within the historic district. VL Holdings in the course of their discussions with Preservation Erie gave them the impression that the house was going to be renovated.

Herman Janes

The original owner who built the house, Heman Janes, was a land speculator in the Northeast United States and Southern Canada.

Janes was an experienced businessman. While residing in Erie in 1858 Janes bought 200 acres of timber in Lambton County, Ontario. He bought the land not only for the timber, but the oil-soaked gumbeds found on it. Shortly afterwards he leased another 400 acres of these beds soaked with sulfur-laden petroleum. However, the dramatic developments on Oil Creek turned his attention to Venango County, Pennsylvania. Oil wells were eventually drilled on Janes’ Canadian property, which he sold in 1865 for $55,000.

In 1861 Janes bought Tarr Farm on Oil Creek in Venango County for $60,000. The Tarr Farm produced the Phillips No. 2, an oil well that flowed at 4,000 barrels per day; and the Woodford well, which yielded 3,000 barrels per day, and other significant wells. Later, Janes sold half of the farm (the upper elevations) back to Tarr, but he retained the portion of the farm close by the east bank of Oil Creek; the sections that contained the Phillips lease, the Woodford lease, his own wells and other big producers.

Aside from profits, Janes was also interested in the efficient drilling and transportation of crude petroleum. He aspired to build an oil pipeline along Oil Creek, but his plans were upset by the attack on Fort Sumter and subsequent U.S. Civil War. Janes was more successful in his venture to introduce the practice of casing wells, a process of encasing small tubing in larger tubing to protect the oil in the small tubing. Casing wells protected the well from being filled with water.

Early in 1861, Janes, Josiah Oakes, and General James Wadsworth, all from Erie, raised $300,000 to buy up the producing lands for ten miles along Oil Creek. This ambitious undertaking by Pennsylvania men came to an end when Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in April of 1861; the resulting panic hindered speculative ventures of all sorts. Janes sold all the oil property he owned in western Virginia. Janes and his Erie partners attempted another grand venture along Oil Creek in late 1861. They proposed a 4 inch pipeline made of wood be laid along the bank of Oil Creek from the Tarr Farm down to the mouth of Oil Creek at Oil City. The concept was to allow gravity to do its work and slowly but inevitably drop the crude in elevation over a run of about five miles. The concept may have worked since there would have been no need for pumps; the system would have been under a steady, low pressure from the natural head only. The partners made the mistake of seeking a charter from Pennsylvania. The local State Representative, M.C. Beebe of Pleasantville, took exception saying he did not want to put 4,000 teamsters, his constituents, out of work. Beebe failed to mention the Oil Creek Railroad had begun construction, from Corry on the Philadelphia and Erie to Titusville, to capture what it could of the quickly growing crude oil market. Beebe used his influence to see to it that Heman Janes’ early pipeline project would not be built.

While residing in the Village of Tarr Farm, a small back woods oil community Janes laid out and developed, Janes introduced the practice of casing wells. Prior to March 1865 the usual procedure in the Oil Region was to drill a 4 inch diameter hole in which a section of wrought iron pipe with a 2 inch inside diameter (called tubing) was inserted. A standing ball valve and a sliding plunger with a ball valve were attached to the bottom end of this first section. Thin sucker rods that passed down the inside of the tubing actuated the plunger. The arrangement would lift, or pump, the crude to the surface. To reach the bottom of the well, sufficient sections of 2 inch tubing were added.

Below the level of invasive ground water a flaxseed bag was securely tied around the outside wall of the tubing to create a water seal. Each time the tubing was pulled the water seal was broken. The tubing was pulled often and for a variety of reasons including testing, a fouled pump, joint leaks, or a torn flaxseed bag. The best of operators would inevitably flood their wells with water. By 1864 the great Tarr Farm was shut down completely, flooded by ground water.

Throughout the balance of 1864 Heman Janes persuaded and cajoled a number of heard-headed producers with leases on the Tarr Farm to join with him and spend some money; pumping water out of their wells, pulling the tubing, and re-drilling their holes to a diameter of 5 ½ inches. The producers agreed and drilled wider holes. A flaxseed bag, or water seal, was permanently attached to the outside of a section of heavy wall wrought-iron casing with an inside diameter of 3 ¼ inches. This section, and additional sections, were inserted down into the re-drilled well to a depth sufficient to be below the infiltrating water above. The working 2 inch tubing was then inserted into the casing. The water seal (the flaxseed bag) attached to the outside wall of the casing remained fixed and undisturbed when the separate working tubing was subsequently pulled.

Heman Janes’ carefully planned program of recovery worked. After an expensive re-drilling and casing program the operators agreed to pump the wells in a synchronized fashion managed by Janes. By March 1865 the once dead Tarr Farm was pumping collectively 1,000 barrels a day.

This first use of casing was called wet-drilling. George Bissell’s Central Petroleum Company, the producing company that owned nearby Petroleum Centre, adopted this technique and synchronized pumping. The Columbia Oil Company on the neighboring Story Farm did the same. By 1868 the Columbia Oil Company superintendent reported he was drilling all new holes down to below the water infiltration level and then inserting casing with a fixed water seal. He then dry-drilled through the permanent casing down to the producing sand. Within a few short years the more enlightened producers of Oil Creek had adopted the best of these efficient, productive oil field practices. Heman Janes is the producer that early writers credit with being the man who showed them the way.

Heman Janes remained a resident of the Village of Tarr Farm until the latter 1870s. While residing at Tarr Farm he invested heavily in the Bradford Field. Janes returned to Erie in 1878. The Village of Tarr Farm vanished in subsequent decades consumed by the returning woodlands growing about it.

Photo provided by Ken McDonald