This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Brown Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/GeB.2ACI/959 Message Board Post: My great-great-grandfather, John W. Brown, was the chief carpenter on the Diamond Springs Hotel, located in upper Abbeville County, near the Savannah River. In 1837, twenty men invested certain amounts of money in a company known as the Diamond Springs Company. Some of these people were among those responsible for the Secession. The Diamond Springs Company was organized for the purpose of establishing, furnishing, and keeping a house of entertainment at Diamond Springs. The hotel was built in 1838 by John W. Brown. It was named for the company and a nearby spring, carved in the shape of a diamond, which was said to have medicinal values and cured many diseases. The hotel was a summer resort for pleasure seekers, as well as those who came to drink the waters of the mineral springs in the years before the Civil War. The family has only two photos of the hotel; one is not very clear, and the other one only shows a group of people sitting on the porch, which was built high enough off the ground for a horse and topless buggy to drive underneath. If anyone has a photo of some ancestors taken at this hotel, please get in touch and let me know. We feel like surely someone has an old photo in a box somewhere, that doesn't mean anything to them, but it would mean the world to John W. Brown's family. Please reply here, or contact me at: [email protected], or [email protected] Thanks very much!