Providence Spring 3:34 Tim Stafford

Providence Spring – Tim Stafford
Mike Evans, Paula Breedlove
Mark Brinkman Songs – BMI /Paulajon Music – ASCAP

“God smote the hillside and gave them drink” – Inscription at Providence Spring



In November 1863, Confederate Captain Sidney Winder chose the village of Andersonville in Sumter County, Georgia as the location for a new prison for captured Union soldiers. The prison was completed in February of 1864, and by August there were over 33,000 Union soldiers enclosed in an area meant for 10,000 men. The stream that supplied the camp with water soon became polluted by human waste, and deaths from disease and gangrene rose, with up to 90 soldiers dying each day. In desperation, a group of soldiers began to pray for water. Soon, a storm broke out, and thunder roared, and where lightning struck the prison ground, a fountain of pure spring water erupted. Whether it was the prayer or construction of the prison that caused the underground water to well up, no one knows, but that clean water saved the lives of thousands of Union soldiers, and continues to flow to this day.