PENCE SPRINGS, (Hinton News) – It is time for another edition of A Peek into Summers County’s Past. Each week, a collector of local history items, William Jones, provides information about one or more pieces from his collection. This week, we are talking about the Pence Springs Water Company.
To bring this story to life, we must go back to 1872. According to Jones, “In 1872, Andrew Pence, for whom Pence Springs was named, around the turn of the century, erected a large wooden frame hotel near the springs and developed it commercially as a resort. In the early 19th century, the water was believed to have medical properties. The amount of visitors to the site largely increased due to the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway extending their line down the Greenbrier River to what is now Pence Springs.”
The story continued when Pence obtained the property with the spring a few years later. Jones said, “Mr. Pence then acquired the property that contained the spring in 1878, but he did not start bottling and selling the water until 1882. He built up a business selling and shipping the water very quickly. Later on a manufacturing plant was constructed to bottle the water and produce and bottle ginger ale using the spring water. Eventually numerous boarding houses ran during the time of the original hotel to accommodate the influx of traffic coming to Pence Springs daily. Around 1900, E.M. Carney of Charleston, W.Va., acquired property a little further up Valley Heights above the spring.”
Continuing the story of E.M. Carney, Jones stated, “He erected a very stately rival hotel and started bottling the water himself, having drilled into the very spring that fed the spring that Andrew Pence had built into a very successful business. Carney, having tapped into Mr. Pences spring, caused his supply to dwindle and caused Mr Pence to lose a lot of business. This ordeal ended up being dealt with by a lawsuit in the West Virginia Supreme Court, which was ultimately decided in Mr. Carney’s favor.” The entire 1905 West Virginia Supreme Court decision is available through the Harvard University Caselaw Access Project.
Moving on to this week’s featured objects, Jones noted, “Pence Springs water shipping crates can be seen on the ground beside the train depot where the water was sold and shipped across the country. The first item in my collection that I am showcasing this week is a wooden shipping crate like the ones in the photo from the turn of the century.”
“I will first address the early blue glass bottle with embossed lettering that reads ‘Pence Springs Water Co. Pence Springs, W.Va’ bottle with a wooden stopper. My father found this bottle shortly after he moved with his family to Pence Springs in 1962 on the site of the Hines Boarding House,” Jones said. “These bottles were used when Andrew Pence started selling spring water in the 1880s until the 1910s. They were produced in blue like the one you see here and clear ones. I had always wanted one of these shipping crates. I went with my grandfather to the flea market during the West Virginia State Fair about 25 years ago, and one happened to be there that day. It was near my birthday, so my granddad bought it for me as an early birthday gift.”
The bottles were originally sold in wooden crates like the one previously mentioned. Jones said, “They were sold and shipped in wooden shipping crates like the one seen here. Two of these shipping crates can be seen in the photo of the Pence Springs railroad depot from the turn of the century. Next we will address the dark green bottle with the burgundy and gold label that simply reads Pence Springs Water. The ginger ale that was produced using the spring water used an identical bottle with a nearly identical label. The only difference was that it read Pence Springs Ginger Ale. This was the label used from the 1910s to the late 1920s.”
Finally, Jones discusses the more colorful bottle label pictured. He said, “Last is the more colorful, predominantly blue label that was used until the bottling company closed in 1935. This particular bottle and its label is one that someone has placed on a much earlier bottle just for looks, I have never seen an original bottle with one of these labels. However, my good friend Alvin Garten salvaged this pack of unused labels that were stored in a barn in Valley Heights above the flea market when it was being torn down around 20 years ago.”
That’s it for this week’s edition of A Peek into Summers County’s Past. Did you know about the Pence Springs Water Company? We would love to hear your stories! Be sure to check back next week for more about the county’s history.
If you would like to submit a story from Summers County’s history, send us an email at news@hintonnews.com.
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