Skip to main content

Stafford Mineral Springs Water Pamphlets

 Collection
Identifier: M467

Scope and Contents

The collection contains two advertising pamphlets from the Stafford Mineral Springs and Hotel Company, one circa 1893, the other circa 1898. The 1893 pamphlet features the company’s red heart trademark with the words “The Bo-go-ha-ma of the Indian” and the prominent question: “Will it be asking too much to beg permission to save your life?” The 1898 pamphlet states of the water, “It has no equal in the known world.”

Both pamphlets include testimonies of doctors verifying the water’s curative properties and mention Presidents Cleveland and McKinley in their advertisements.

Dates

  • Creation: circa 1893; 1898

Creator

Conditions Governing Access

Noncirculating; available for research.

Conditions Governing Use

This collection may be protected from unauthorized copying by the Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code).

Biographical / Historical

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, Confederate veteran Edward W. Stafford settled near the town of Vossburg, Mississippi, and discovered that a group of Choctaw, who had evaded deportation to the reservations in Oklahoma, often took their sick or wounded to a mineral springs in his pasture. The Choctaw called the springs “Bogohama” (“Water of Life”), and after word spread of the water’s curative powers, a group of capitalists formed the Stafford Mineral Springs and Hotel Company in New Orleans, Louisiana, on May 19, 1892. The bottling works began to produce two railcars of bottled water per day in 1893, and the hotel opened in 1899. Travelers from across the country came to Vossburg to visit the springs, and Stafford Mineral Springs Water was sold throughout the nation.

In 1918, the company’s original shareholders sold the company, and during the Great Depression, visitors stopped coming to the springs. In the 1950s, the site of the springs was converted into a motel and then a dude ranch in the 1960s. Commercial investments in the Stafford Springs ceased during the 1980s, and the area is now residential.

Extent

1 Folder (2 items)

Language of Materials

English

Abstract

The collection contains two pamphlets published by the Stafford Mineral Springs and Hotel Company in New Orleans advertising their spring water from near Vossburg, Mississippi.

Provenance

Donated by Diane Ross on August 21, 2004.

Related Materials

M448 Southern Tourism Collection

Title
Stafford Mineral Springs Water Pamphlets
Author
Processed by Lauren White.
Language of description
Undetermined
Script of description
Code for undetermined script

Repository Details

Part of the Historical Manuscripts and Photographs Repository

Contact:
118 College Drive - 5148
Hattiesburg MS 39406-0001
601.266.4345