Aaron Hadley, Water Witcher
Aaron Hadley was born and raised in north Baldwin. He had a unique talent, documented in the following newspaper articles.
So You Don't Believe in Water Witches!
Well, You'd Better Not Let Aaron Hadley Know It, For He's 'Witched " A Lot of Streams
If you remember the town of Quincy in Baldwin County you qualify as an Old-Timer. And if this arouses your curiosity and starts you scanning maps for its location, you won't find it. But Qunicy is where Aaron Hadley lives. He's about all that's left of the town - except memories. Aaron will proudly show you a picture of the one-room, log schoolhouse with wooden shingle roof where he got his education - a building which also served as a church on Sunday. A herd of cattle now grazes peacefully where the schoolhouse once stood.
The way Aaron tells it, his parents had 13 chidren, but he was the only one to develop a special talent which made him different. He was - and still is - a water witch. He didn't learn it in school, so he regards it as "a gift from God".
If you've got time to listen he'll explain how it happened. One day when he was about eight years old his father's well went dry. Now the old man's sister had the gift and he thought surely one of his children would be blessed. One by one he sent them around the house with a tender peach tree twig. When it became Aaron's turn the twig bent at a spot where his father dug and found water. Since that time, he has been much in demand to go hunt water for people whose well has gone dry.
Because he is so renowned for his accuracy in finding water, he has been called on to go all the way down in Florida and across the river in Washington County. Sometimes the drillers have to go down as far as 80 feet to find the underground stream he spotted with his twig.
Aaron is semi-retired now. He likes to recall and wishes times were the same as it was when he was growing up and people were happy. In those days, he says, if you owed the doctor a bill, come hog killing time you would settle up with a ham or some of the fresh pork. You could take egges to town and swap them for coffee. Seldom any money was exchanged; an item for a needed service or a needed service for a needed item. The forest rang with happy children playing and laughing. There is silence in the forest now, Aaron laments. Thre are neither school, post office, commissary nor turpentine still at Quincy like there once was.
Bu Aaron Hadley still lives there within sight of where he was born.
by Juanita Threet
Front page - The Independent, July 20, 1977, Robertsdale, AL
'Witch quenches thirsts
Latham, Ala. - Walking just a few steps beyond the house, Aaron Hadley returned with a slender forked branch which he flexed as he frowned. The branch was thicker than he preferred, he said, and wouldn't bend as easily during his search for water.
With three of his grandchildren at his sleeve, the 76 year old man stepped quickly across the yard into a fenced pasture. Holding the fork of the stick with both hands, he began pacing methodically. As he walked, the stock and Hadley's hans and arms began quivering, at first slightly, then violently.
The stick turned downward and hadley stopped. He had located the stream.
Hadley has been a practicing "water witch" for some 60 years, locating water on the property of friends and drelatives by surveying the premises with a peach or persimmon branch. Although he performs the mystical search only when requested, Hadley's reputation for accuracy has made his services much sought after, not only in his home territory of north Baldwin County, but wherever he is needed.
He recalls one 10-hour drive to Orlando, Fla., where he found water for a nephew planning to install a pump for a new house. But you need not go that far to learn of Aaron Hadley's success.
Ask almost anyone in or around Latham or Stockton, and they will tell that they - or a relative or neighbor or friend - had struck water just where Hadley had told them they would. And, often, at the depth he predicted.
Hadley, who grew up as one of 13 children in the backwoods community of Quincy, known now as Latham, recalls his first experience atwater witching. He was 14 or 15 years old at the time.
Hadley's father, whose sister possessed the same talent for finding water as Hadley does, was entertaining his family one day by having them circcle the house with a forked branch. Each made the rounds with no success until Aaron took the stick.
Locating water has always been more of a hobby than a job, however. Hadley, who says he managed only to complete the sixth grade before he went to work farming and turpentining with his father back in the 1920's, earned his living for 20 years dynamiting stumps to sell as fuel to an area plant. Hadley attributes his success at not injuring himself or anyone who worked with him to a healthy respect for the explosive.
"Some got careless and got blown away," he added.
Sitting on the proch of his home just yards away from the house he grew up in, Hadleytalked about his special talent and hobby.
Asked if he knew how it was done, he said he had no idea. "I just know you can't teach a person how to do it," he continued.
By crisscrossing a piece of property, Hadley can tell which way a tream runs, But, he says, his detection powers won't work on standing underground water.
Stockton resident Lynn Thompson, who with her husband James recently built a new home in Stockton, asked Hadley to water witch her homesite. When Hadley arrived with forked stick in hand, she said she told him she preferred to locate the pump in the back yard.
Starting in the front of the house, she said Hadley surveyed that area, rounding the side of the house and ending up in the back. As he completed the half circle, Hadley gestured to a tree, she said, saying the stream ran from there, under the house, and into the front yard. She could probably hit water, Hadley told her at less than 20 feet, although the best water would be at a depth of 20 feet.
On another occasion, Hadley was called in when the first attempts to find water at the Stockton Post Office failed. According to Richard Lee of the Stockton community, he was asked to assist in locating a spot for a pump at the post office.
he said he would, providing Aaron Hadley was called in to water witch the site. He was, and water was found on the spot Hadley designated.
Puffiing on his pipe in the mid-day winter sun, the sound of his dogs barking nearby, Hadley seems to take his unusual hobby in stride. What interests him more, perhaps, are the rabbits and goat he keeps out back.
With a laugh, he looks around him and says, "After 75 years, it's gettin' to where it seems like home."
by Tyki Noble, Mobile Press Register, Mobile, AL, Sunday, February 10, 1980.