[1] Astral Oil Works was founded in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, New York, by Charles Pratt.

[3] As a young man, Pratt had joined a company in Boston, Massachusetts which specialized in paints and whale oil products.

[6] While spending eight years in the Brooklyn refinery starting in 1866, Rogers, according to The New York Times, “invented the machinery by which naphtha was first successfully separated from the crude oil.

"[5] Rogers moved steadily from foreman to manager, and then superintendent of Pratt's Astral Oil Refinery.

The error resulted because the firm DEVOE & PRATT had been dissolved, with the different partners selling different patent oil canned in the same manner, and "sold in Fulton-street at neighboring stores.

[10] The Pratt's Astral Oil Guards, numbering 200 men, were organized on the night of August 30, 1871 on Long Island.

Mr. Walter of the machine department was elected captain, with most of the men employed at the Pratt establishment at Hunter's Point.

[11] Around 10 o’clock in the evening of January 26, 1873, Pratt's Astral Oil-works on the northern Williamsburg block “bounded by North 12th and North 13th street and extending from First-street to the river”[3] (First Street was renamed Kent Avenue in 1880[12]) was the scene of a large fire, creating shoots of flame at the building that “formed large spiral columns of flame which shot into the air fifty feet high.”[3] Nearby houses were far enough away to not be harmed,[3][13] although great alarm was reported in the neighborhood as different barrels were heard exploding.

[1] Around this time, the coopers’ union opposed Pratt's efforts to cut back on certain manual operations, as they were the craftsmen who made the barrels that held the oil.

[1] In March 1881, New York City had a smelling committee make the rounds to various stills and waters in Brooklyn.

[15] On December 21, 1884, a fire at Astral Oil was first noticed when an explosion shook houses and “broke windows for 300 feet" in front of the new Williamsburg Gas Works along North Twelfth Street.

He testified in a $50,000,000 lawsuit brought by Cadwallader M. Raymond and the estate of B. F. Greenough against him and other Standard Oil operators.

Standard Oil's Brooklyn refinery, at 20 acres, burned down in 1919, in what may have been an intentional attempt to clear the land and draw insurance.