The development of one of the most beautiful areas around here could accurately be called “A Tale Of Two Families”.
Our story starts when three different Bennett families migrated here in the mid to late 1840’s
from Virginia and Kentucky through Illinois down to Missouri.
About the same time the Brice family migrated to Missouri from Illinois, in search of land which the U.S. Government was selling to settlers for $1.25 an acre.
James Brice camped beside a clear stream of water that flowed from a large deep spring and eventually emptied into the Niangua River. He filed a claim with the government for the 160 acres on which the spring was located and kept buying land as money became available until he owned all the land through which the stream flowed on its way to the Niangua.
He planted many different crops and built a mill on the stream between the spring and the site of the present day dam.
In the late 1840’s Peter Bennett, Sr. and his family settled in the same valley but on the other side of the Niangua River.
Peter purchased from the government the land that is now the location of the Sand Spring Resort, and built a mill on his property at the confluence of the spring branch and the Niangua River.
After Peter Bennett died, his son Peter, Jr. continued to run the mill but both the Bennett and the Brice mills were washed away in the flood of 1852.
James Brice had a daughter named Anna who wanted to marry Peter Bennett but her father wouldn’t allow it and she married a wagon maker named John Clanton instead.
Before James Brice died in 1853, he made a will leaving the majority of his estate to his son-in-law, John Clanton.
After John died, his young widow Anna married her first love, Peter Bennett, Jr. James Brice’s estate, including the 427 acres that he had willed to John Clanton, reverted to Anna.
Peter and Anna Bennett now owned all of Clanton’s property, including the Clanton mill. The small community which had grown up there was known as Brice, but soon the general area took on the name of Bennett’s Spring.
At the start of the Civil War, Peter Bennett built a new three-story mill closer to the town of Brice.
After Peter’s death, his son William Sherman Bennett took over the operation of his father’s mill. In addition to running the mill, William had opened a general store in Brice.
George Bolds, an evangelist with the Church of God in Anderson, Indiana, came to Bennett’s Spring to hold a revival in 1893 and he and his family decided to make Brice their permanent home.
William Bennett married George Bolds’ daughter, Louise, also a minister, and the young couple set up housekeeping in living quarters in the back of his general store.
The Bennett Mill was destroyed by fire in 1895, but a new mill was opened in 1900. It was located close to where the current park store is now.
It was during this time period between the opening of that mill until the establishment of the state park and the onset of the great depression that the town of Brice reached its economic peak.
The town included a blacksmith shop, a post office, two stores, a hotel called the Brice Inn, and the Bennett Spring Church of God, which is the only building still standing that was part of the original town of Brice.
Our family genealogist has researched all these facts and we have connections in several different layers with the Bennett family and the Bennett Springs area.
Lucinda Bennett, the sister of Peter Bennett Jr. married William Hawk, who lived in the same area as the Bennetts. Their son, Peter Hawk was my great-great grandfather.
Louise Bolds Bennett, also known as Aunt Louie Bennett, and her father, George Bolds, started the Bennett Spring Church of God, where my grandparents, Everett and Nellie Dame, and my mother, Wilma Lorea, attended.
After the Taylor Avenue Church of God was begun here in Lebanon, Aunt Louie became the first pastor. I began attending the Taylor Avenue Church in 1953, and I was ordained in the Church of God in 1986.
As was usually the case with small close knit communities there were many marriages with neighboring families. My family goes back six generations to the Brice and Flatwoods communities.
My husband’s mother, Pauline Jennings Hart, and her family also grew up in Brice and went to school at Flatwoods.
My grandmother, Nellie Hawk, married Everett Dame. They both grew up in Flatwoods. My grandfather was born in a tiny log cabin on the property that we call the Cole Tree Farm.
Not long after the State of Missouri bought the Bennett property, they replaced the old dam with the new one. The State paid my grandfather to provide the logs for that new dam. He cut down the trees from his farm, and used his two draft horses to drag the logs from Flatwoods to the construction site which was four miles each way.
When the Dame family would come to the mill, my grandfather’s Aunt Susan Dame always accompanied the family, carrying the family laundry downstream to a quiet pool where she scrubbed all their clothing clean and spread them on the bushes to dry.
Many a trout fisherman has sought out that quiet pool in which to cast their line, and it carries her name: The Suzie Hole.
The historical display just outside the park store held a picture of our grandmother, Nellie Hawk, and her sister Inez, taken around 1920. It had begun to fade away and we noticed just recently that it had been taken down.
“A tree stands strong not by its fruits or branches, but by the depth of its roots.” ― Anthony Liccione.
I’m glad my roots grow deep in this part of the Ozarks.
© Joan Rowden Hart 2017
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