Frank N. Maxey’s Well Water: Part II

Frank N. Maxey. Courtesy Emily Jenkins, Memories of Buckingham.

In 1957, Lily Patteson wrote, once again, about the conception of Buckingham County’s village at Well Water.  Click here if you missed the first installment: Frank N. Maxey’s Well Water: Part I

Miss Patteson continues with F. N. Maxey’s biography in her article for The Daily Progress:

Close by the veranda, where he and Mrs. Maxey so often sat in the twilight, sleeps F. N. Maxey, friend of the community through all the span of his life and a tower of strength for those about him in the Reconstruction Days, “that tried men as by fire.”

Franklin N. Maxey was a broad-hearted, reverent-spirited man, who like Esther at the court of King Ahasurus, “seem to have come to the kingdom for a time,” as these days of hardship and to play out his part in the magical development of business at Well Water, as the post office there was called.

Born in a humble home, trained in the stalwart virtues of honesty and truthfulness, Mr. Maxey spent the years of his life until almost middle-age, in a quiet, unobtrusive way. Wedded to the sweetheart of his youth, they seemed destined to go into life’s end with no special significance attached to their passage. They had no children of their own but years before there had come the slow traveling message from the Deep South, that yellow fever had claimed his younger brother and wife, leaving two small sons. Mr. and Mrs. Maxey had taken these nephews into their hearts and home until they reached the years of young manhood and answered the call of the Southland at the beginning of the war. Sorely, they grieved when after two years of fighting, notice came that Ned and Fred would not come home ever again  . . . that they had offered life’s supreme sacrifice on the battlefield.

Surrender

So when Appomattox had received its immortal name as the Surrender Ground of the Confederacy and the survivors of the Southern Army began to straggle home by one, twos or threes, something seem to be born in the heart of F. N. Maxey that was to reach out in blessing to the families far and wide in his neighborhood, his county, and even in “the regions beyond.” Something born of his own heartache over the two nephews, gone before this hour of humiliation, and perhaps of his compassion for the needy and suffering about him that drew his interest and sympathies towards seeking ways and means of assisting them. Though as yet no crystal ball revealed that he would one day count his industries on the fingers of both hands and more, and that the name “Well Water” would one day hold more significance from a construction standpoint than any other place for many miles beyond.

To be continued…