In the early 1850’s, Alexander Murray travelled to the Enniskellen Swamp to find the source of some petroleum that he had acquired. He returned to his home in Woodstock, where it is likely that word of oil in the swamp spread to one Charles Tripp, a treasure hunter of sorts. Tripp went to Enniskellan Township to find oil. He discovered a gumbed and by heating a piece of it, made it into asphault, a sample of which was sent to the Paris International Expo. As a result, it is said that Louis Bonaparte ordered enough asphault to pave the streets of Paris. Tripp and carriage maker James Miller Williams later went digging for crude oil. In 1858, Williams dug the North America’s first commercial oil well. It was in 1862 at Oil Springs that “Crazy” Hugh Nixon Shaw drilled deeper than anyone before.