Blake Ellis/The Independent

“It started because of me,” said Charles Nelson Tripp.

As Oil Springs marked its 160th anniversary as a municipality Saturday, people could also visit the Oil Museum of Canada for the annual Black Gold Fest celebrating the beginning of the commercial oil industry in Canada. Among the many displays, people could meet Tripp, as his life was retold. 

Tripp was born in New York State but came to what was then British North America in the 1840s in his early 20s. 

Tripp grew up in poverty and wanted to be rich. He educated himself on the basics of mineral extraction. It was while he was working at the Iron Stove Works in Bath when he heard about the Logan Report, which first documented the gum beds in Enniskillen Township. 

Tripp was aware of how popular asphalt was in Europe to hardtop streets. So he  came to Enniskillen Township in 1852 and tried to buy as much land as he could. By the end of the year, he had 1,300 acres with his younger brother Henry as a silent partner. 

Tripp went through the back breaking work of turning the gum beds into asphalt. By 1854, he and his partners were granted a charter as an incorporated company becoming the first owners of a petroleum production company in all of North America.

“We owned the oil industry and went to work,” Tripp told those attending Black Gold Fest. He took out loans to finance the operations. By 1856, his loans were coming due. 

The sheriff seized everything Tripp owned and sold it on the courthouse steps in Sarnia, in 1857. 

Fortunately, his brother Henry was able to buy a lot of the land by simply paying off what was due for taxes and the interest on the loans. But the elder Tripp’s reputation was destroyed. 

Even though everything had been sold, Tripp still had debt and the sheriff threatened to throw him into jail. So in 1858, Tripp left Enniskillen and made it to Louisiana and Mississippi where there were rumours of silver mining finds. 

People there didn’t know about his troubles in Enniskillen, but simply knew him as the man who started the oil business in Canada. He leveraged this becoming the consultant and managing partner of three companies that extracted copper, zinc, iron and oil. 

The work ended with the beginning of the Civil War in 1861. He returned to New York because he was simply known as a Yankee in the south. He was pressed into the Union Army.

 At the end of the war in 1865, he received a letter from Henry who was still in Enniskillen. All of his debts had been secured and the sheriff no longer wanted to put him in jail. 

Trip came back to Enniskillen in 1866. The oil industry was booming but instead of asphalt, lamp oil as well as oil for the use of a lubricant and a possible heating agent was the focus.

Tripp was heartbroken as he saw businessmen making a lot of money in an industry he had started. He left Enniskillen and died in New Orleans by the end of 1866, a year after Oil Springs became a municipality.