PENCE SPRINGS W.Va. (Hinton News) – I recently discovered something that I had always thought my Grandfather Bernard Thompson mispronounced just to agitate me, HaHa. He made a habit of doing this such as saying “TaLcoTT”, or “Hofanugal” Road in Lewisburg. When it was actually pronounced “Houfnaggle Road.” He would then just smile, laugh under his breath and walk on.
He said, “Pence’s Springs Water,” or when talking about the town, he would say “Pence’s Springs.” I always assumed he was doing this again just to “ruffle my feathers” because he knew how passionate I have always been about the community.
For the first time in all my years of researching local history, I have seen anything backing up the fact that Grandad wasn’t just saying it to “get my goat.” My friend Danny Eggleston manages the Facebook group Broken Porch, which refers to his years of cleaning out the old house in Alderson on the Monroe side of the river.
He got into posting a lot of history from this area recently. And made a post showing a May 16, 1900 advertisement for The Hotel Alderson which was also on the Monroe side of the river. Pretty much every small town of any size had a train depot and at least one hotel like this one.
This advertisement lists other small towns in surrounding counties as a “beautiful drive” to the following areas. I find it very interesting that the word “drive” was used when that word is primarily used in regard to automobiles. And at this time horse and buggy was still the primary means of travel.
I digress, it lists Blue Sulphur Springs, Salt Sulphur Springs, Red Sulphur Springs, Wolf Creek Sulphur Springs, and White Sulphur Springs. It also mentioned what is now Pence Springs as “Stock Yards (Pence’s) Sulphur Spring. So Granddad didn’t just refer to it as “Pence’s Springs” to agitate me. It referred to it as “Stockyards” because, at that time, in 1900, that is what the community was called. Andrew Pence didn’t win the silver medal at the World’s Fair until 1904 with his sulphur water and the name was not changed to Pence Springs until after that to honor him.
So apparently he was already building quite a name for his sulphur water. So much so that people in this region referred to it as “Pence’s Water,” meaning Andrew Pence’s Sulphur Water. And over the years that name just stuck even after it formally became Pence Springs.
I like to imagine that as a child in Talcott, my Grandfather, Bernard, was with his paternal grandparents L.W. and Delia Thompson, and his maternal grandparents in Alderson, Albert and Mary Margret Knapp, who most likely referred to it as “Pence’s Water” when they were younger and hearing it so much as a child that it stuck with him for 90 years.
One of Danny’s favorite quotes to use on his Broken Porch page is “History is never lost, only found.” This is one time that it was found after all these decades of me wondering the origins and the reason for Granddad calling it Pence’s Springs.
The old photo you see of Pence Springs is probably the most famous photo of it ever taken. It is during the last part of the Victorian era. The late Ashby Berkley used it to have this painting made from it that hung in the Pence Springs Hotel lobby while he operated it after restoring it from its days as the West Virginia State Prison for Women.
