p VHJLAGES AND HAMLETS 203
i
  the last two building a cottage residence, and Alfred Richard-
p son, at whose home the legal voters were authorized to meet for
. the election of the town trustees. About 1852 Richardson sold
out to A. G. S. Calmes, who continued the business and built a
1 large warehouse and storeroom.
p By 1858 Raleigh’s decline had set in; it was never arrested and
  now the river has completed the ruin it began eighty years ago. '
  About a mile to the rear of Raleigh lies the Grundy Hill. It
l probably contains large quantities of coal and at its foot the
  Ohio River evidently ran not many centuries ago.
  Spring Grove
. Spring Grove, on Highway 56, is described, in the 1886 History
A of Union County, as an attractive little village situated in a .
1 hollow and upon the sides of a picturesque ravine that opens
_ upon a flat. It was iive or six miles from the Shawneetown Ferry.
on the lower Morganiield and Shawneetown road.
— Solomon Blue came to this district from Virginia in 1803 and
, bought several hundred acres of land. James Blue lived in what
is now Spring Grove, the name being self—explanatory though the
spring is now extinct. In the War between the States a battle °
- was fought at Blue’s Pond, within a strip of low marshy land T
crossed by Blue’s Bridge.
James Stanfield, an Englishman, opened a coal mine in 1861. .
This industry increased the activities and size of the town so
that it was soon considered one of the important places in Union
County until the railroad came through (1886) and missed it.
Hall and Owen opened a store in 1868. There were a blacksmith
shop and gristmill, run by Thomas Perrin and Mack Padgett.
respectively. For many years after the office opened in 1880,
Thomas Haun was postmaster. Distribution of mail was heavy  
and the fact that it arrived daily was a source of continuous
surprise to the inhabitants.
The Woodland Baptist Church was built at an early date and
is still in existence, as is also the Presbyterian Church, erected
on the hill above Spring Grove. The tiny school built near the
church was replaced in 1934 by a building of four rooms and
an auditorium.
McMurray’s general store. begun in 1886, manages to survive
, in a town of some ten residences by having been relocated stra-
tegically on Highway 56.