Tyler County
Located along the Ohio River, Tyler County has a rich history. In 1802, Charles Wells brought his family of 22 children down the Ohio River to a point later know as Wells Landing. With its ferryboat, tannery, blacksmiths, lumber, and flour mills, the village became a stop for river traffic and a commercial center where the scattered farming population would sell their wares. When Charles Wells died in 1815, he willed part of his estate to two daughters, Delilah Wells Grier and Sarah Wells McCoy, which they plotted and named Sistersville. In 1816, two years after Tyler County was formed, Middlebourne was chosen as the county seat. When the railroad reached Tyler County in 1884, its quiet communities enjoyed moderate prosperity; however, when Joshua Russell struck oil at the Polecat well in 1891, nearly 15,000 people rushed into the Sistersville area to find their fortunes.
Sistersville is now closer to what it was before the onslaught of population that made it a rip-roaring oil boom city. The oil flowed for much longer than many expected based on production to the north. As opposed to ghost towns lost in old oil fields of Western Pennsylvania and the Hughes and Little Kanawha River Valleys, Sistersville prospered in a fashion that has carried the benefits of oil to the present day. Though some are lost, the homes, churches, brick streets, and fine public buildings that benefit the town today are a lasting legacy of the incredible story of oil in Tyler County. The bubbling "Devil's Grease" that announced its presence over 100 years ago in Sistersville no longer hides far below the beautiful hills but shows grandly in the living history it left behind.
Excerpt from Sistersville and Tyler County by Luke N. Peters