Venango Museum of Art, Science & Industry

10/21/2026

What gave people a reason to stay after an oil town grew smaller? This week's A Minute in History visits Rouseville, where refinery work and everyday community life continued along Oil Creek.

10/20/2026

It’s been a busy few days for silent film at the Venango Museum!

On Friday, a sold-out audience joined us for "Nosferatu," with Clark Wilson at our 1928 Wurlitzer theatre organ. On Monday, we welcomed Drake conference guests for Buster Keaton’s "Sherlock Jr.," accompanied by Eric Cook.

Thank you to Clark and Eric for bringing these films to life, and to everyone who attended.

We’re also grateful to Robert and Andrew with Musical Restorations LLC for their work on the organ, and to the supporters and volunteers who help make these events possible.

The museum’s 2026 Silent Film Series is supported in part by the Jack Rowley Charitable Trust and a Venango County Tourism Event Support Grant.

10/17/2026

10/16/2026

Today is our fifth silent film program of the season with “Nosferatu” (1922).

Tonight’s showing is sold out! No tickets will be sold at the door.

Please note that the museum is closed to visitors today as we prepare for this special program.

For ticket holders: doors open at 6:30 PM, and the program begins at 7:00 PM. We look forward to seeing you this evening!

10/15/2026

This week’s A Minute in History follows the Oil Region’s early telephone connections, from an ambitious plan in Titusville to the networks that became part of everyday life.

Oil brought people here in a rush. Keeping their towns, businesses, and daily lives connected helped them build communities that could last.

10/07/2026

This week’s A Minute In History looks at how the oil boom reshaped more than the landscape. It changed where people lived, how business moved, and even how communities were governed.

09/30/2026

By the 1860s, photographers were carrying cameras, glass plates, and chemicals into Pennsylvania’s oil fields, recording wells, streets, workers, families, and entire boomtowns.

This episode explores what those photographs preserved, what they left out of the frame, and how fleeting boomtowns became part of the Oil Region's permanent record.

09/23/2026

Petroleum Centre received a post office in 1864, but not a post-office building.

According to an 1866 history, the mail was distributed from a “little shanty” attached to hardware merchant Clinton Robson’s store, while the town’s “anxious ones” waited outside, sometimes in mud nearly to their boot-tops.

In this episode of A Minute in History, we look at how mail service struggled to keep up with the communities appearing across Pennsylvania’s Oil Region and why a letter could mean so much in a town filled with newcomers.

09/21/2026

While fortunes were being made and lost at wells, other kinds of work kept families and businesses going.

Our latest blog post follows three women whose livelihoods survive in brief historical records: Laura Drake sewing to support her family, Mrs. Rickets earning her living by washing in Pithole, and Mrs. M. Magrane advertising her boot-and-shoe business in Petroleum Centre.

Their stories look away from the derricks and fortunes to a household, a washing job, and a shop counter.

Read the new post here: https://www.venangomuseum.org/post/while-everyone-watched-the-wells

09/16/2026

In 1865, one Oil City church was known by an unusual nickname: “The Church of the Holy Derrick.”

Its derrick-shaped bell tower inspired a joke, but that nickname reveals how the oil boom reshaped the region’s towns, everyday life, and even the language people used for a church.