John...may mean something or may mean nothing...at UCSB campus, if the wind is light esp. from south or sw, it reeks of oil...it is common that it reeks of oil. If there was a quake, many people would remember that it reeked of oil....so...it kind of depends on where this guy lived....it is much more uncommon for there to be a strong oil smell at Santa Barbara near, for example, the harbor....UCSB is 20 km farther west...

I know there are lots of stories about Santa Barbara and geysers out of the seafloor or whatever....but I think these are after the 1857 (and maybe 1925) quake, not before...but probably worth checking if you are interested in this sort of thing (I can suggest offline who to ask).
Rick Sibson, when he was a professor at UCSB, talked about huge volumes of water that came out during/after the 1952 Kern County quake...
Chris