Remembering Hale Springs
Written by Justin D. Lamb
Hale Springs in 1907
(Courtesy of Marshall County Genealogical Society)
It was written years ago that Hale Springs was once “a place for picnics, revivals, dances, and drunken brawls.” Needless to say, this now almost forgotten place was a lively section of Marshall County.
Hales Springs is located a few feet back in the woods off the Brewers Highway near the community of Brewers in southwestern Marshall County. The pool is about two feet in diameter at the base of an old knotted tree where water is coming from the tree roots and from the base of the nearby hill.
When the area was first settled a man named Hale owned the land and he was the one who discovered the spring thus the spring was called ‘Hale Springs.’ It was determined years ago that the spring is a six inch stream and in one day puts out 2,160 gallons of water. The spring forms a creek which runs along the highway and emptied into Solider Creek until the highway was built and it then emptied into the west fork of the Clark’s River.
The spring served as a great resource in the early days of Marshall County and was an ideal place for a settlement. Hale Spring School was located on a hill across the road from the spring. According to the late H.A. Mathis who was a lifelong resident of the area, the school was in operation for about 75 years and it had no well because it used water from the spring. Some of the teachers that taught at Hale Springs were Betty Shemwell, Etta Ross, Eddy Riley, and Nola Morgan. Mr. Neal Haley has been a longtime resident of the Brewers community and recalled stories of old Hale Springs. “After the schoolhouse shut down, it was bought by Porter Smith and he rolled it with logs under the house to the next hill and lived in it until it burned in the 1960s,” Haley said.
The community also had a prosperous church congregation. “The Methodist Church at Hale Springs was established in 1827 as Davis Chapel and was later renamed to New Hope,” Haley said. Charlie McNutt was a preacher at the church in the early 1900s. He always wore a derby hat and was so short in stature that he could hardly see over the pulpit. New Hope Methodist eventually joined with Mt. Herman Methodist and a new church was built in 1923 which took the name Brewer’s Methodist Church. The church was also used as a Masonic lodge.
Hale Spring was a place of recreation and many picnics were held at the sight. Many people in the early 1900s would come as far away as Mayfield to the area to camp and picnic. With the spring, cool drinking water was plentiful and mothers would place the bottles of milk in the water to keep the milk cold. Many brush arbor meetings were also held in the grove of beech trees located near the spring. These meetings were very similar to a church tent revival.
A beer and dance hall was located in Hale Springs at one time as well. “The honky-tonk was about 12’x20’ with five bar stools and a window to sell out of,” said Haley. “It had a part for a store room in the back and Dorris Pascal and his wife and daughter lived in that room.” The hall was eventually shut down after a man named Singleton was shot and killed in a drunken brawl.
Hale Springs is a very quiet place now with many Marshall Countians not even knowing about its existence. But almost a century ago, it was “a place for picnics, revivals, dances, and drunken brawls.”