“Whatever Happened in Mount Vernon Stayed in Mount Vernon”

Cindy Schmit started with a question for the #VisitChatham Bus Tour. Who here is from the coast? In the old days, she told us, families from the coast came to Chatham County for the summer. We do it the other way around now. So why would anybody leave the beach to spend the summer here?

The answer was mosquitoes. The coast had far more of them, and with them came malaria. Mount Vernon Springs, a few miles south of Siler City, offered fewer bugs, country air and the water, which people drank for fevers and chills, kidney ailments and dyspepsia.

“And according to everybody that, you know, filed a newspaper report, it really worked,” Schmit said.

Schmit volunteers with the Chatham County Historical Association, and on the ride out she gave us the springs’ whole life story: the cure, the school, the party years, and one story she saved for October.

Health and Beauty

White settlers learned about the springs around 1817, Schmit said, and they learned about them from the Native Americans who were already taking the waters there. For a while, everyone called the place Indian Springs.

There are two springs. One is called Health, and the other is called Beauty. Schmit has a list from 1904 of what’s in the water: iron and several sulfates. As for where all that iron comes from, she pointed to Ore Hill, the community right next door. “There might be a connection there,” she said.

Taking the cure was not for everybody. A week at the Springs Hotel ran about $6, Schmit said, plus 50 cents a day for each horse. “Who can afford that now, right?”

School at the springs

The springs also had a school. According to the Historical Association’s own history, the Sandy Creek Baptist Association founded an academy there in 1855, buying the spring and the property from Abner Marsh, and it opened for classes in 1856. By the early 1860s it had about 100 students, roughly two-thirds of them boys and one-third girls. Schmit called it “kind of a high school kind of thing.”

As she tells it, a term of spelling cost $5, a term of English $8, and a term of ancient languages, “probably Greek, maybe Latin,” $15. Room and board in the boys’ bunkhouse ran $8 a month.

The Civil War hit the school hard. The academy closed for most of the war, reopened in 1865 and closed for good in the early 1900s. Across the county, Schmit said, “it took about 15 to 18 years for the school systems to recover after the Civil War.”

“So there’s lots of impacts in the Civil War other than what we normally think about,” she said.

Then it became a party

Around 1881, Schmit said, a new owner bought the run-down property, renovated it and electrified everything with the resort’s own generator, back before Duke Power reached that part of the county. From then on, people came for the fun. There was new furniture, new bathrooms and electric lights. A day cost $2, a week $8 to $12 depending on the amenities, and a month $30. Horses were now a dollar a day.

A lot of the guests came from Greensboro. The train ran up from the south to Ore Hill, then on to Greensboro, and wagons met every train to carry guests to the hotel. Business got so good, Schmit said, that the railroad ran two trains a day.

That train still shapes the area. “Most people in Siler City identify with Greensboro rather than with Raleigh or Asheboro,” she said. “And that’s because of the train.”

There was square dancing, card playing and drinking. A lot of young people came, and they “were not overly watched by older people.”

“So whatever kind of happened in Mount Vernon stayed in Mount Vernon,” Schmit said.

When the young men offered to fetch the young ladies something from the springs, asking for a cup from Beauty alone would have been unseemly. So most of the ladies asked for a mixed cup.

The man in the well

Schmit had to tell one story before we arrived. A hotel guest dropped his razor and his watch into the well. An employee bailed out the well and went in after them, headfirst, and got stuck. The well was going to fill back up whether he liked it or not. People came running but couldn’t pull him out, until he passed out and went limp enough that they could. They brought him back.

“The customer still wanted his watch and razor,” Schmit said.

That one ran in the newspaper.

An October story

In 1907, Schmit said, the springs were cemented over, and the two capped springs are what you see today, still flowing. People still pull up with pickup trucks and water jugs and fill them. The hotel held on until 1931.

Before it did, the little community around the springs had its share of trouble. “I’m glad we turned into October today,” Schmit said, “because this is kind of an October-y kind of story.”

A store proprietor and his helper kept finding things missing every morning, so they decided to set a trap. They stayed in the store overnight, both armed, and waited. When a man named Mitchell came in that night, they surprised him. Mitchell shot the proprietor, killing him. The helper grabbed both guns and started shooting at Mitchell, and Mitchell shot back. Nobody hit anybody.

When the ammunition ran out, they went at each other hand to hand. By the time someone heard the ruckus and pulled them apart, Mitchell had lost his nose, his cheeks and part of his chin. The helper had lost three fingers on his right hand, which were found on the floor. Both men survived, and Mitchell was charged with killing the proprietor. The story ran in the Greensboro newspaper.

“Even out in the country, you know, weird stuff can happen,” Schmit said.

The willies, the museum, and a mouthful

Schmit is one of the guides for the Historical Association’s spirit tours, a costumed walking tour of downtown Pittsboro’s folklore that runs this weekend, Oct. 23 through 25. This year’s tours are sold out, as they are every year, but she described them this way: “Some of it is history, but some of it is, we’ll give you the willies, which is what we’re after.” And for anyone worried: “Nobody jumps out at anybody.”

On the bus, she also teased that S&T’s Soda Shoppe in downtown Pittsboro was once the subject of a paranormal investigation. If you want the details, you’ll have to take the tour.

She also got the whole bus to say “semiquincentennial,” which is how you say America’s 250th birthday, and the Historical Association has been marking it all year. Its museum in the Historic Chatham County Courthouse is free, and it runs a free book club once a month.

“We’re online,” she said, “and we’d love to have you.”

Mount Vernon Springs Historic District
A few miles south of Siler City, near Bonlee, off Mount Vernon Springs Road. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.

Chatham County Historical Association Museum
Historic Chatham County Courthouse, 9 Hillsboro St., Pittsboro
Free. Wednesday and Friday, 11 a.m.–4 p.m.; Thursday, 11:30 a.m.–4 p.m.; Saturday, noon–4 p.m. (closed first Saturdays); first Sundays, April through December, noon–3 p.m.
chathamhistory.org

The #VisitChatham Bus Tour is presented by Vector Security and sponsored by Fidelity Bank, organized by The Chatham Chamber. The Pittsboro Post is covering each stop as a feature series.