Evans W. Shippen

biography

Evans W. Shippen, third son of Judge Henry Shippen, was born in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, and carried an infant in the arms to Meadville in 1825. He was educated in the common: schools of the village and one year in the preparatory department of Allegheny College. At the age of twelve years his father remarked, “I have six sons and I do not know what one of them will be excepting that one (pointing to the subject of this sketch); he will become a mechanic.” After his father’s death he traveled the state in search of employment at iron works, and finally succeeded, in 1844, in becoming the manager of iron furnaces in Lancaster and York counties, where he remained for six years. Thence he went to Philadelphia, where he carried on the foundry business for twelve years. A specimen of his work may be seen in the fountain on the public square in Meadville, which he presented to the city in 1863, when he came here to live.

In 1861 he engaged in drilling wells on oil creek and built a refinery in Philadelphia, where he, in 1862, chartered the barque Catharine and shipped the first full cargo of oil to England, overstocking the market for nearly one year. In 1864 he organized a company for drilling wells in Venango county and struck a well producing one thousand eight hundred dollars’ worth of oil per day, when he retired to a farm.

In 1869 he imported the first Percheron horses that came into Pennsylvania; but becoming tired of the monotony of farm life he moved Into the city, in 1873, where he has been engaged in various pursuits; he is now pumping the old well drilled in 1864, drilling new wells and building new machinery for oil wells.

In 1851 he married Catharine Y. McElwee, daughter of Colonel McElwee of Philadelphia and great-granddaughter of Judge Jasper Yeates of the supreme court of Pennsylvania. What is very remarkable, he shows photographs of eight generations, whilst his wife shows those of seven generations on her side, most of them taken from old portraits.

Our county and its people: a historical and memorial record of Crawford County, Pennsylvania by Samuel P. Bates, 1899, page 709.