A few weeks ago I did some work on the strange story of Brownwood’s magnetic healer, Professor E B Garner. Here is a link to that one, if you’d like more of his backstory. The tale left us with a few questions, which I did not think we’d find answers for, but, as it turns out, we have found a few answers. My husband, David, took an interest in Garner’s career, and he spent some time really digging out some facts I did not find. Very interesting stuff.

So Garner did in fact open his Institute of Healing in Brownwood. David was able to discover his place of work, which was also his home. The structure, amazingly, is still standing, but as it is a private residence, I will leave it at that, except to say it looks just exactly like you’d expect the lair of a magnetic healer to look!

Garner’s institute, rather than being run out of town or something dramatic like I’d envisioned, just seems to have faded away. In an article from the Brownwood Bulletin in March of 1919, Garner is cited as a sort of water witcher, but for oil wells instead of water wells. The headline reads, “Brownwood Man Has Located Some Important Oil Fields in County.”

The article goes on to say, “E B Garner, The original oil discoverer in Brown County has made some of the best locations for oil in the county, it is said. He has, in the course of his investigations, gone out in all directions and after careful examinations has discovered a good many real, producing oil fields, notably the Grandview addition, the Counts and Grooms fields, the Childress field, the oil field in White’s pasture, 3 miles west of Mercury, Pecos City, Cross Cut and Cross Plains–giving it as his opinion that oil in paying quantities would be found in these localities, even before any wells has been drilled there. He has gone out with some of Brownwoods’s most reputable citizens to at least fifteen drilling wells and on being asked his opinion as to whether they would be dry or producers said they would be dry holes and later developments revealed that every one of them came in dry, in spite of the fact that all these wells were located by geologists.”

So our enigmatic Professor seems to have successfully taken up a form of oil speculation, based on his knowledge of what could be termed spiritual science. Another Bulletin article, from 1921, sings the praises of Garner’s ability to locate producing oil fields in this area, and across West Texas. Whatever you think of that kind of thing, it is interesting that Garner made a living from it all, and seems to have been a helpful and frequently consulted member of the community. I myself find it fascinating, but I’m a bit of a student of spiritual science myself, in that I read Rudolf Steiner and other patriarchs of the movement, so that figures.

Elijah B Garner is mentioned in a 1940 census as a resident of Brownwood. David thinks he came here around 1906 and lived here for about 34 years give or take. Garner was married twice. He was divorced from his first wife with whom he had children, and later married a woman less than half his age with whom he had a few more. The old sparker seems to have lived out his days happily in Brownwood with this much younger wife, a woman named Lola. Garner died in May 1940, and he is buried in Greenleaf Cemetery, along with Lola, who died approximately one year after Garner’s demise.

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Diane Adams is a local journalist whose columns appear Thursdays on BrownwoodNews.com