The Big Tree and the Poison Spring

Among the notable objects of Grant county was a large poplar tree, near Dry Ridge Baptist Church. It was nine feet in diameter, its magnificent trunk and branches towering far above the surrounding trees as the giant of the forest. Before it was cut down, in 1831, it was known by everybody as the 'big tree.'

Another object of note was the Poison Spring, situated about one hundred yards north of Sherman. A family by the name of Wheeler, living at the place where Joseph Wayland now lives, and who used the water out of the spring, all took sick and died from some cause unknown then, but since supposed to have been milk-sickness.

Many believed it was the water from the spring that killed them, and hence it took the name of the 'Poison Spring,' and for many years it was regarded by the more superstitious and less enlightened people as a dangerous and even fatal place to pass. The oldest man in the county is Rankin Blackburn. He is now in his one hundred and second year; is as straight as an arrow, and reads and writes without the use of spectacles.