Growing Up in Williamsport, Ohio

​​The Well

When we moved to the house on Water Street it already had a well. Since Williamsport is noted for its Sulphur Spring down by Deer Creek and the bridge, it was obvious that our water would be tinged with yellow sulfur. I believe the well was lined with bricks. It was called a hard water well because the water seeped through the ground and absorbed the minerals that were contained in it.

My mother wanted a soft water cistern to wash clothes and other things, so my Dad and brother Bob dug one behind the house. The reason the water is considered soft is because it is rainwater that comes off the roof into a gutter pipe and into the cistern without having gone through the minerals in the ground.
 
My Dad said roots had grown into the hard water well and he needed to clean it out. He brought a large, gasoline pump home and pumped the water from the well into the garden area. Then he and his helpers put a ladder into the well and my Dad climbed down. I wasn’t very old, and it was traumatic for me to see him descend into the well.  I went into the house and lay down on his side of the bed and cried.
 
I hadn’t thought about that for years and didn’t want to think about it ever again. My mother lived with me around 1999 and one day, out of the blue, she asked, “Do you remember when Bert when down into the well and you cried?”  Well yes………..
 
Anyway, one of our genealogist relatives, Cora Skaggs Fannin, speaking of a well at the home place in Martha, Kentucky, said in her writings, “We had a well with awful [sic] good cold water.” Now it’s my turn, “We had a well with awful [sic] good cold water.”

©Marilyn Francis Ferguson 2019
Photography/graphics by Michele Ferguson Schuck