venango county homes 29

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29. The Historic McLaurin Home � 1201 Chestnut Street

This beautiful yellow brick home was built in 1907 on property that Elizabeth Cochran McLaurin inherited from her father, Alexander Cochran. Mr. Cochran owned most of Out Lot 49, which contained six houses in the area of Twelfth and Chestnut. After the McLaurin's built the large home on the corner, it was noted that the value of the Out Lot increased by five or six thousand dollars.

Alexander Cochran was a teacher, Prothonotary, Clerk of Courts, storekeeper, studied law, was an extensive land owner ( Cochran farm was a large area on the other side of the Eighth Street bridge ) and a very successful oilman. He and his wife, Mary Boal Cochran, had four daughters and a son. The family were members of St. John's Episcopal Church in Franklin.

Their daughter Elizabeth married George Duff, a Colonel in the Civil War, who died in 1869. In 1877 she married John James McLaurin. Elizabeth's mother died in 1898 and her father died in 1903.

John J. McLaurin was probably the best-known authority on the history of Oildom. Born in Glengarry County, Ontario, Canada, his literary career began as the local editor of the Perth Courier, a weekly newspaper. McLaurin's job was to "scour the district for pertinent paragraphs and paying subscribers".

The petroleum development lured him to Oil Creek in the 1860s. While working as a producer on Cherry Run, he contributed articles to the Titusville Herald, the Rouseville Bulletin and the Oil City Times, most of them written "on tower" between midnight and dawn.

On November 3, 1872 he started with the Oil City Derrick as their first traveling correspondent with the entire petroleum region to cover. His instructions were to "get the news regardless of man or beast".

For the next four years he was the busiest person in oildom, in touch with nearly every prolific oil tract and personal acquaintance with nearly every operator and man of affairs, from Richburg, NY to Sistersville, WV. Much of his time was spent traveling the oil fields on foot or on horseback; traveling two thirds of the year through mud practically unfathomable.

His oil reports required special attention and abundant labor and he established a record that stood for decades when he visited eighteen oil towns in one day and "dished their happenings up in print the next morning."

His newspaper career not only included the covering of news of the oil country, but for a period of eight years he was editor of the Harrisburg Telegraph. For three years he mined gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota and then returned to Franklin.

McLaurin authored The Story of the Johnstown Flood, an "intimate picture of the terrible flood of 1889" . Another book, Sketches in Crude Oil, met with such success that three editions were necessary. The book remains one of the most popular of early oil histories. With over 450 pages of fine print and probably 500,000 words, plus pictures, it is not a boring scholarly history book, but as oil scholars note, a constant run of stories and people integrated with facts and humor. Today these three editions are scarce, but a fourth edition was printed in 1998.

McLaurin would reminisce that it was "a proud reflection to be able to look everybody square in the eye and declare that never once was willful injury done any creature and that no figure or estimate was ever changed or colored a single iota to favor or damage any company, firm, individual or interest."

John McLaurin died August 29, 1923. His wife, Elizabeth Cochran Duff McLaurin died November 1, 1927. She had been reading a book and had risen to go to the front door for the evening paper when she dropped to the floor of the hall and almost immediately was dead. They are buried in Franklin Cemetery.

Submitted by: Penny Minnick
minnick862@verizon.net