A Short History Of

The "History Tree" - For 100 years kids have played around Maxwell Springs, leaving their mark on this giant American Beech.

Connie Maxwell

The wooded and rolling grassland that was once meadows for cattle on the Connie Maxwell Children's Home farmland is the location for Maxwell Springs. This 400 acre site takes its name from both the natural water supply and the historic Baptist shelter which first became a haven for children in May of 1892.

In 1891 a committee of the South Carolina Baptist Convention accepted the offer from the town of Greenwood and Dr. J.C. Maxwell of both money and property to found an orphanage for children. Dr. Maxwell gave 470 acres of land west of the town, ten acres in the city on which the Maxwell home sat, and about $35,000. One of the two conditions Dr. Maxwell stipulated was that it should be named the Connie Maxwell Orphanage after his daughter Constance Pope Maxwell.

Connie, as she was affectionately called, died at the age of seven from scarlet fever, a deadly disease which Dr. Maxwell brought home from attending a patient. Since Dr. Maxwell had already lost four children in their early infancy, Connie's death left him and his wife childless again. A highly respected physician known as a compassionate family doctor, Dr. Maxwell wanted to commemorate Connie's all too brief life in a permanent memorial. A shelter for children, he thought, was an ideal memorial. Tributes to Dr. Maxwell after his death stressed his kindness to children, his generosity, and his concern for the children's education and their quality of life. At Dr. Maxwell's death, Mrs. Maxwell gave permission for Connie's body to be transferred and the entire family to be buried on the Orphanage grounds.

Ellenburg Home - A classic home for girls erected in 1932

The first cottage was completed in May of 1892 and immediately accepted the first child. By the end of the first year, twenty-six children were making Building No.1 their home. Today, eighty-eight children reside in eleven family-styled homes on the main campus in Greenwood.

The Maxwell Springs property, therefore, has been under the watchful care of Connie Maxwell Children's Home since its donation in 1891 by Dr. Maxwell. These acres have been the site of meadows for the animals and a woodland playground for the children who have been educated and nurtured by both their cottage families and these natural surroundings. In fact, the "History Tree," a giant American Beech tree located on the Maxwell Springs property, bears the carvings of generations of Connie Maxwell children.

top