Before 1868, Roaring Spring was called Spang's Mill, a hamlet in Taylor Township situated around a gristmill operated by George B. Spang.The area was patented in the 1760s by white settlers attracted to the Big Spring, an eight-million-gallon-a-day limestone spring that emerges from a hillside in the center of town. At least as early as the 1760s, a gristmill was operated here by a German Dunkard named Jacob Neff and it was called Neff's Mill. German Dunkards and Scots-Irish Presbyterians were the predominant pioneer groups in Morrisons Cove during the late 18th century. As late as the 1750s, the land around the spring had probably contained a village of Lenni Lenape Indians.[11