1870's Diaries

1872
Saturday
January 27
Well I went down to post office this morn and about 11, Stillings came up & we run oil, total oil run net was 46.26 Bbls. Ella went down town and up to Lovell and carried a pie and a cake.

(In the early 1860's, when oil production began, there was no standard container for oil, so oil and petroleum products were stored and transported in barrels of all different shapes and sizes (beer barrels, fish barrels, molasses barrels, turpentine barrels, etc.). By the early 1870's, the 42-gallon barrel had been adopted as the standard for oil trade. This was 2 gallons per barrel more than the 40-gallon standard used by many other industries at the time. The extra 2 gallons was to allow for evaporation and leaking during transport (most barrels were made of wood). Standard Oil began manufacturing 42 gallon barrels that were blue to be used for transporting petroleum. The use of a blue barrel, abbreviated "bbl," guaranteed a buyer that this was a 42-gallon barrel.)
source: http://seekingalpha.com/article/18636-where-does-that-2nd-b-in-the-abbreviation-for-crude-barrels-bbl-come-from