Healing Springs

Julia Gaines
In the last two years, my research of my family roots has reaped many discoveries, two of which are included in this photograph taken in October of 2006: Kelley, a cousin I didn't know I had, and Healing Springs near Blackville, South Carolina, a place I'd never heard of. The springs, the story goes, were bought from the Edisto Indians in the 1750's by our ancestor Nathaniel Walker, paid with an unknown quantity of maize. The Indians, who may have only understood that they were allowing Walker to use the springs, believed the waters had the power to heal and the earth and its treasures could not be owned by man. The Edistos eventually disappeared from the area and the springs changed ownership many times until Lute Boylston in 1944, agreeing that the springs should be available to all, "deeded the property to God." When I visited this spot, people with carloads of plastic bottles were constantly driving into the small, parklike area. They'd fill their bottles from the free-flowing pipes installed there, often saying a prayer as they did so. My cousin Kelley filled her own water bottle and then cooled off under one of the pipes.