Drake Well Museum and Park’s annual lecture series, Wisdom and Wine: Home in the Oil Region, kicks off on March 10, 2022. Guests will enjoy a lecture from regional experts featuring the people, places, and events of local petroleum history. Doors to the museum will open at 5:30 p.m. for a wine tasting happy hour by Brokenstraw Valley Winery, charcuterie, and refreshments, and the lectures begin promptly at 6:30 p.m.

Admission to each lecture is free for current members of the Friends of Drake Well and $5 for the public. Admission to the happy hour event proceeding the lectures is an additional $5 for members and nonmembers. During the happy hour, in addition to wine tasting, guests will be able to purchase a bottle of wine to take home and a glass of wine to enjoy with the lecture.

Reserve your spot by calling 814-827-2797 or email drakewell@verizon.net.

Topic: The Sometimes Unholy Entanglement of Church and Oil: The Local Church’s Seldom Mentioned Impact on the Oil Boom and the Mixed Legacy the Boom Bequeathed to the Local Church
Lecturer: Dr. Barry Cressman

At the time that Colonel Drake struck oil, there were two churches in Titusville — the Presbyterian (founded by the first settlers in 1802) and the Universalist. Between 1860 and 1872 ten more congregations erected permanent houses of worship in the city. Even before the drilling of the Drake Well, the church was indirectly impacting the quest for oil; and after Drake’s successful first well, the church impacted the course the oil boom would take as well as John D. Rockefeller’s efforts to bring “order” to the “chaos” he found in oildom. In this lecture we will explore the various ways in which the local church impacted Titusville’s oil boom and the variety of ways — both negative and positive — in which oil impacted the local church.

BIO: Raised in the Town of Oyster Bay (about thirty miles east of mid-town Manhattan), Dr. Cressman holds degrees in History and English from The College of William and Mary (Williamsburg, VA) and The University of St. Andrews (St. Andrews, Scotland) as well as degrees in divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary. Arriving in Titusville in 1972 to pastor The First Presbyterian Church, Dr. Cressman continued as the Church’s pastor until his retirement in 2014. One of the founders and current President of the Board of The Crawford Heritage Community Foundation, Dr. Cressman is also Chairman of the Board of The Oil Region Alliance of Business, Industry, and Tourism. He enjoys golf, bridge, reading, good movies, and travel. He and his wife, Lynn, were married in Titusville in 1974 and have three children and three grandchildren.