"During a heavy rainstorm on August 14, 1864, a spring suddenly gushed from this hillside. The prisoners were desperate for fresh water, and over time the event became legendary. Several men claimed to have seen lightning strike this spot just before the spring burst forth.
The story of Providence Spring got its name is one of the only bright moments at Andersonville.
A sign erected nearby by the National Park Service reads as follows:
"During a heavy rainstorm on August 14, 1864, a spring suddenly gushed from this hillside. The prisoners were desperate for fresh water, and over time the event became legendary. Several men claimed to have seen lightning strike this spot just before the spring burst forth.
This damp slope, with its many natural seeps, would appear to be a likely site for a spring. Workmen may have inadvertently buried the spring´s outlet while digging the stockade trench. Whether an act of nature or divine providence, the effect of the stream was an answer to thousands of prayers.
"A spring of purest crystal water shot up into the air in a column and, falling in a fanlike spray, went babbling down the grade into the noxious brook. Looking across the dead-line, we beheld with wondering eyes and grateful hearts the fountain spring."
John L. Maile, 8th Michigan Infantry August 15, 1864."
In 1901 the Woman's Relief Corps built a handsome stone spring house at the site of the spring, as part of their efforts to preserve and protect the Andersonville prison site.
From the National Park Service website: (
visit link)
"The sudden appearance of the spring at the western wall of the stockade in the summer of 1864 was a treasured memory of many Union survivors of the prison. By the 1880s, visiting the site of the spring was an important Memorial Day tradition.
Following the initial preservation of the prison site in the 1890s by the Grand Army of the Republic, the Woman's Relief Corps arranged for the spring house to cover the site of the spring. The Providence Spring house was dedicated on Memorial Day, 1901."