(fl. 1860s), oilman. In the exciting, early boom days of the Canadian and American oil industry, Thomas H. McLean drilled for oil on Lot 21 in the 2nd Concession of Lancaster Township, near Bainsville, GC. The boring was under way in the late summer of 1865, and it may have been in progress as late as a year later. The hole reached a depth of some 500 feet. No oil was found, though there are reported to have been indications of gas. Before beginning work on the well, McLean had built at South Lancaster one of the small, workshop type oil refineries of the period, and when no oil was available from his well, he brought in Pennsylvania crude oil by barge to supply the refinery, which for a few years on this basis provided the local people with kerosene. He was presumably the same man as the T. H. McLean who in 1867 was promoting a Lancaster-based patent medicine called Oleum Kalamos, for which he got local people to supply testimonials which he then published in the Cornwall press. The Greek name Oleum Kalamos translates as pen oil, and is a pun on Pennsylvania oil. Thomas H. McLean of Lancaster had a letter in the Cornwall Freeholder of 12 July 1867 on his visit to the plumbago mines of Buckingham, Que., in which he praised the plumbago prospects of a 500-acre tract in that area owned by the Rev. Thomas Macpherson of Lancaster. Earlier, McLean had written to the Freeholder of 24 Aug. and 5 Oct. 1866 on the geology of oil.

     No information has been obtained about McLean’s origins, or his life before the 1860s, or about his life after that decade. Neil John McGillivray, writing to his brother George on 1 Sept. 1865, mentioned “McLean the man who is searching for oil in Lancaster…” From the words, we may guess that he was someone who had come in to GC from outside, or at least was not someone known as a part of the familiar community by the McGillivray brothers (themselves the sons of a McLean mother). A century later, in the winter of 1964-1965, another well was drilled near the site of McLean’s well, in a search for oil or gas, or perhaps–as was alleged with some authority afterwards–in a search for a place to store surplus gas. (Glengarry News 17 Dec. 1964, 7 Jan., 4 Feb. & 25 Feb. 1965) This strange return to McLean’s well was virtually the last event in a fruitless but well-reported and well-financed search during the years 1959 to 1965 for–as it was believed–oil in the GC area, with wells drilled and options taken on land (the options at least providing some income for the local people).

     See also the entry for Duncan Macdonell of Greenfield.

MacGillivray & Ross 114-115, 687, and the sources (principally contemporary newspapers) listed there * Fraser (1959) 27-28 * Ross, Lancaster, 143-144, 154-156, 162 * NAC-MD, Vol. XIV, f. 820