Where was Worths Spring?
In 1849, some of the troops that had fought with William Jennings Worth in Mexico camped around springs in San Antonio during a cholera epidemic. Worth and 600 others died, and for a while the campsite of the troops was known as “Worth’s Spring”. There are least three different stories regarding the location of the campsite and springs, and it is not completely clear if the site was at San Pedro or San Antonio Springs. In her well-researched history of San Pedro Springs Park, Cornelia A. Crook reported that after Worth’s death, San Pedro Springs became known for a time as Worth Spring (Crook, 1967). In an unpublished 1975 manuscript on the history of the Incarnate Word grounds, Betty Dunn reported that by 1852 the large spring on the property (presumably the Blue Hole at San Antonio Springs) was variously known as “Worth’s Spring”, the “North Springs”, and “San Antonio Spring”. All three names appear in an Abstract of Title prepared for the Incarnate Word Property in 1936 (Dunn, 1975).
