A local history librarian, recently made a deep dive into Springfield history that took him from databases to crawl spaces. Brandon Broughton works for the Springfield Greene County Library. The library recently published a blog recounting his search for John Polk, Campbell's “bottomless well,” and the Birthplace of Springfield.
Broughton: I'm reading this article by this Martin J. Hubble and it's full of little factoids from Springfield's early history, most of which I recognized, but I see this odd mention of a bottomless well that was donated to the city by John Polk Campbell, who people often call him Springfield's founder. That's complicated. But, anyway, Hubble's talking about this well, and he is saying that he pumped a million gallons of water out of it over the course of three days. He pumps all this water out, and he claims that the water level of the well doesn't lower at all. So, you have what seems like sort of this classic 19th century tall tale, back in the era where hyperbole was kind of the norm in journalism. But it's nestled within all of these verifiably true accounts of Springfield's early history.
Broughton took Hubble's account and looked at the library's collection of local history books, historic city directories, old maps, GeoSTRAT databases from the Missouri Geological Survey and historic markers.
Broughton: I'm able to, using these sources, trace the history of this site over the centuries, from the Campbell homestead to a semi-public water source, to being basically paved over and destroyed through quarrying, through the laying out of Water Street, as we recognize it today and then through the culverting of Jordan Creek on top of it.
So, the next thing is, okay, the well itself is probably gone, but can we figure out where exactly it would have been? And everything seems to point to the National Audio Company. Eventually I'm like, well, it's not going to hurt to just call and ask. So that's what I do. I reach out to the National Audio Company. I say, this is going to be a weird question, but would you happen to have a well or a spring somewhere underneath your building or maybe nearby? And I hear back from the co-owner of the National Audio Company, Steve Step. And to my surprise, the answer isn't just yes, it's yes, here's what we know about its history, would you like to come see it? And we got in and we looked down and there was limestone and water. So, it isn't exactly Campbell's well that we found, but rather the same cavern and the same body of water from which they were drawing.
He says he hopes people learn about historical research in the library's resources. That was part of the goals of the project. But he also says the experience taught him something.
Broughton: History is not something that just lives in books and in records. It's out there. It is beneath our feet. Sometimes you have to pound the pavement. Sometimes you just have to put yourself out there and ask questions. And, sometimes even if what you read in the paper from 1909 isn't the exact truth. It's published for a reason. And there's typically something there that you can discover. What I hope people take away from this is that history is something that we all do. It's collaborative. There were so many people who assisted me with this. Even just today, we learned that there actually was a marker from 2003 that we were not aware of due to the construction that's currently going on on Water Street, but a reader reached out and made us aware of that. So, the story continues to grow even after the blog is published.
Read Broughton's full article and learn about the Springfield-Greene County Library's local history department at the thelibrary.org/localhistory.