Pre-contact – 1839
A mineral spring known to Cherokee and documented by three published authorities before Dr. Chick ever arrived.
“The water bubbled up from the earth, cool and clear, rich in calcium sulphate and dissolved minerals.”
Before European settlement, Cherokee people recognized the mineral spring as a place where deer gathered to lick the mineral-rich rocks. The water bubbled up from the earth, cool and clear, rich in calcium sulphate and dissolved minerals. The name “Lick Spring” predates every other name this place would carry.
In the Treaty of De Witt's Corner, the Cherokee ceded the territory that included the mineral spring to the State of South Carolina. The land that had been Cherokee for generations was now open for European settlement. Within a decade, Virginia families would begin arriving.
Shortly after the Revolution, a cluster of families made their way south from the Virginia Piedmont to the land around the springs. Alfred Taylor’s diary counts twelve white families and one free Black household among the founding group — among them his own grandfather James Taylor, Absalom Carney (whose land would eventually become part of the resort), and Joseph McGlothlin, a free Black man and the only recorded free Black household in the settling party. Alfred wrote decades after these events, working from stories passed down to him, so the precise details are hard to pin down. But the families were real, and the community they built was the one the spring would organize.
In his 1802 View of South-Carolina, Governor John Drayton recorded the earliest written account of the spring, noting sulphur water flowing near Paris Mountain. David Ramsay followed in 1809 with a description in his History of South Carolina. The spring was in the published record before Dr. Chick was born.
Hananiah Ray received 692 acres on both sides of Lick Creek and two branches of the Enoree River—the tract that would eventually become the Chick Springs resort. The grant was dated December 1, 1817, when South Carolina charged only office and surveying fees for vacant land. Within a decade, competing claims would entangle the tract in a knot of overlapping titles.
Sources
Hananiah Ray Land Grant, 692 acres. Greenville County Register of Deeds, Land Grant Book G, 1817.
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Note (line 7; plat label 19): The ink could read “Lick” or “Leek.” Every other record of this land, including the 1939 plat, names it Lick Creek.
Mills wrote of a “beautiful spring” that “bursts and boils up from the earth in a large stream.” The water smelled “like the washings of a gun barrel” and proved effective in “desperate cases of ringworm.” Three published authorities had documented the spring’s significance before Dr. Chick ever arrived.
In September 1828, Hananiah Ray sold his 692 acres — including the sulphur springs — to Thomas J. Shockley for fifty dollars. Ray signed with his mark. But this was not the only claim on the land. Five years earlier, Ray had lost the same tract in a lawsuit brought by Fanny Shelton; at the sheriff’s sale, Edmond Waddell bid $61.43, and later sold to Asa Crowder for $50. Two chains of ownership now ran through the same 692 acres — one through Shockley’s deed, the other through the sheriff’s sale. Both Waddell and Crowder appear in the Shockley estate papers decades later as neighbors and debtors, and the equity court would eventually untangle the competing claims. The full story of how Dr. Chick acquired the mineral spring from this knot of overlapping titles is documented in J. Rion McKissick Flynn’s history, though the original equity court decree has not yet been located in the digital archives.
Sources
Hananiah Ray to Thomas Shockley, 692 acres. Greenville County Register of Deeds, Book Q pp80–81, 1828.
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Note (lines 5, 7, 27 and 36): The clerk wrote I and J with the same letter. We read “Thomas J. Shockley,” as the clerk’s own index, the 1850 census and Shockley’s 1862 probate file all do.
Chick began buying land in Greenville District in 1828, years before he owned the spring. In 1828, he bought 100 acres from Banister Southerland on Bartons Fork of the Tyger River and 226 acres from Austin Almond on Neals Fork of the Tyger. In 1831, David J. Goodlett sold him 180 acres on Richland Creek. In 1834, he bought his first land next to the spring tract: 78 acres from Absalom Carney for $160, running from the mouth of Carneys Spring Branch up to its head.
Sources
Banister W. Southerland to Burwell Chick, 100 acres. Greenville County Register of Deeds, Book Q pp40–41, 1828.
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Austin Almond to Burwell Chick, 226 acres. Greenville County Register of Deeds, Book Q pp42–43, 1828.
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David J. Goodlett to Burwell Chick, 180 acres. Greenville County Register of Deeds, Book R pp4–5, 1831.
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Absalom Carney to Burwell Chick, 78 acres. Greenville County Register of Deeds, Book R pp266–267, 1834.
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While deer hunting near Taylors, Dr. Chick stopped at Asa Crowder’s home. According to an account passed from Alfred Taylor to J.A. Bull to Mrs. Tom Taylor and finally recorded by Jean Flynn, Crowder hired two or three Native guides—possibly Catawbas camped on the Enoree—to lead him to Lick Spring. They told him the ground at the spring would heal a sore. Flynn herself noted it was doubtful that any Indigenous people were living permanently in the area by 1838, suggesting these may have been travelers camped briefly along the river.
Chick purchased 192 acres through the Commissioner of the Court of Equity — the legal mechanism that allowed him to consolidate his holdings around the mineral spring. The underlying action was Burwell Chick v. Asa W. Crowder et al., Equity Roll #102, a partition suit that untangled the competing claims on the land around the spring. Combined with the Carney tract beside it, Chick now controlled the headwaters, the spring, and the surrounding hillside. The resort could begin.