Which salt-well driller did Edwin Drake hire to help drill the Drake Well?

Edwin Drake hired William A. Smith, a salt-well driller, to help drill the Drake Well. Smith brought practical experience from Pennsylvania’s brine-well industry to an experiment that helped establish commercial oil drilling in the United States.

Drake had been placed in charge of producing petroleum for the Seneca Oil Company near Titusville, Pennsylvania. Rather than digging a conventional pit, he decided to use the percussion-drilling methods used for salt wells. Smith, who was also a blacksmith from Tarentum, Pennsylvania, helped apply that approach to the search for underground oil.

The team built a derrick and engine house and used a 6-horsepower horizontal steam engine to drive the drill. After the hole reached bedrock, progress averaged about 3 feet per day. Because groundwater caused the walls to cave in, Drake used cast-iron pipe to line and stabilize the borehole.

Smith discovered oil at the well on August 28, 1859, after the drill had reached 69.5 feet. The name most easily confused with Smith's is George Bissell, an investor and organizer who helped promote the project, not the salt-well driller Drake hired. The other listed names belong to later or separate oil ventures.