When Rural Electrification come in the early ’30s. a well was drilled on our back porch and the spring was not depended upon for water. However. those who drank from the spring always considered its “Living Water” second only to the “Spiritual Living Water” which always permeated most of the lives of the citizens of Brunot.
Besides furnishing all the water for household needs and as a refrigerator, it served many other needs. Issac Brooks was a blacksmith as it is his administrator and his first shop was at the Brunot Cross Roads. He found to his advantage to move his blacksmith shop to a new building a fe’i.’i hundred yards from the spring. Water is very essential in blacksmithing’. All hot metals had to be cooled just exactly right and the spring water carried and placed in large wooden tubs was perfect as the cooling system.
Also, when the iron tires were mounted on wagon wheels it was done by contraction, the metal tire was heated, placed on the rim or the wheel angle and then spun around in a spillway of spring water. As it cooled. the iron shrunk to such a tight fit that it would never come loose from the wheel.
The spring also served as a boon to livestock; our cows, horses, pigs, and chickens. Some summers when the weather became hot and dry the little stream crossing the farm lot became dry. Then, water had to be carried from the spring and poured into large tubs for the livestock.
The spring is believed to be the key to ‘buried treasures. Around 1916, two men came to Brunot looking for the Brunot Spring. They carried a map that had been made during the Civil War. This map described a point so many feet north and west to the base of a tree. When this point was located, it was under the south front row of our house. My father would not permit any further exploring and he didn’t believe the map was authentic. However, the people who lived during the Civil Har days only one resource to save their treasures and that was to bury them
My brother and I got permission to take up the floor in that room. We found the remains of a tree stump and we dug around it but never found the treasure. He must presume the treasure is still there.
At tile dedication of the spring on July 23, 1985, Don presented to his father a bronze plaque to be mounted on the inside framework or the new spring house. It reads: “Dedicated to Rev. Isaac L. Brooks and Rowena Brooks and their descendants.”
Dedication Speech by. Dr. Fred E. Brooks
July 28, 1985
