The Haymaker House

The Living Room

 

Dining Room

Overview

This is Haymaker Family House, built from 1856 - 1860 , in Murrysville, Pa.  The brick for the house was fired on site and the foundation, being hand dug, consists of field stone.  Much of the original pains of glass are still present in the windows.

The house has been passed down through the generations and is owned and maintained by my parents, Margaret and William Powers.  They have done a wonderful job maintaining the house to near original condition.  My mother, Margaret Simmons Powers is a direct descendant of the Haymaker family.

The story of how the gas well was started is as follows:  Josh Cooper was tending a pot of boiling maple sugar in the woods of Murrysville along Turtle Creek, about 18 miles east of Pittsburgh.  There was nothing strange about boiling a pot of maple sugar, only that it was fueled by a steady invisible fuel from the ground.

A young man, Michael Haymaker, passed by one day, noticed Cooper, the boiling pot, and the flame.  Since he felt that invisible fuel could be natural gas seeping from the ground, the incident served to stir his imagination.

What followed were nine years of exciting events and finally the inception of a new service to homes and industry.  The well and all those that immediately followed gave Murrysville the site of the nations first commercial gas well industry.

Later in 1885 and 1886 some of the men who helped construct the Haymaker Gas Well moved on to Ohio and started the huge Sun Oil Company.

Michael Haymaker

This picture was taken after his 90th birthday.  He lived to be 96 years of age and along with his brother, Obadiah, were responsible for the construction of the Murrysville Gas Well in 1878.

Haymaker Gas Well

This is the sight of the Murrysville Gas Well.  It is located at the base of the Murrysville Tree Sign, under the "Y".  This now sits in the backyard of a private residence.  

Murrysville Tree Sign

This is a picture taken in 1933 of the Murrysville Tree Sign.  The sign is made from 850 Scotch and Red Pine trees and was started as a Boy Scout project by F.M. Slone.  The sign is 650 ft. long by 125 ft. high and was the worlds largest natural sign at one time.

Haymaker Tree

This is a tree we found back in the woods of the old Haymaker farm.  Its kind of hard to tell from the photo here but it reads "H.B. G.R. F.G HAYMAKER 1903".  Three of the Haymaker brothers served in the Civil War and fought for the Union side at Gettysburg under the Pennsylvania 63rd.