Cattle and sheep barn; workshop, ca 1935
|
Chinqua-Penn mansion in the early days, ca 1930
|
The Chinqua-Penn Plantation
The Chinqua-Penn Plantation once consisted of more than one thousand acres of rolling land, bounded by what are now Wentworth Street, Salem Church Road, Cedar Lane, and 4H center, just north of Reidsville, in Rockingham County, North Carolina.
Who were Jeff and Betsy Penn?
Thomas Jefferson “Jeff” Penn was the son of Frank Reid Penn, who brought the Penn Tobacco Company from Virginia to Reidsville in the early 1880s, and Annie Spencer Penn. Jeff grew up in Reidsville and attended local schools, the Danville Military Institute, and the University of Virginia. He worked for a number of years for his father's tobacco company as a tobacco sales representative in California and China. After the company was sold to the American Tobacco Company in 1911, Jeff became an investment banker in Buffalo, New York. But his ties to Rockingham County were still strong: In 1911 he began acquiring land just north of Reidsville. His first purchase was the o1d Poplar Lake Tract, which he renamed "Corn Jug Farm." Here he erected a rustic bungalow for a residence when he was visiting his farm in North Carolina. He purchased adjoining land and began to develop "The Practical Farm," a model farm for agricultural demonstrations in cooperation with the local County Agent.
Jeff married Genevieve Schoellkopf, a widow, in 1915, in Buffalo. The Schoellkopf family was well-known and well off in Buffalo, having developed hydroelectricity from Niagara Falls. Tragically, Genevieve and their two sons died of disease by 1921. Jeff focused what remained of his life in Reidsville, where he had grown up, and continued to acquire land for his farm. In 1918 he renamed his property “Chinqua-Penn Plantation" after a dwarf chestnut bush which grew in the area. In the 1920s he was employing local farm workers and raising Berkshire hogs, poultry and sheep. His special interest was a large dairy herd of Holstein cattle. In 1921 he started the Chinqua-Penn Dairy with local milk delivery.
As Jeff was tying up his affairs in Buffalo, he met Genevieve’s cousin, Betsy Schoellkopf, a divorcee. They shared interests in travel, horseback riding, and fine art. Before their marriage in 1923, Jeff asked Betsy whether she would rather live in Buffalo, or on the dairy farm he was developing in Reidsville. She chose the farm.
The Development of the Chinqua-Penn Plantation
Jeff had already built a cluster of two-story stone and log buildings on Wentworth Street, which would serve as carriage house, laundry and pump house, and homes for some of the people employed on the property. They were the first residential structures erected on the rolling farmland that became Chinqua-Penn Plantation. The Penns first lived at the Belvidere Hotel in Reidsville while the main residence on the plantation was being built between 1923 and 1926, then lived to the lodges before moving into the main residence in just before Christmas 1925.
Their 27-room, 33,000 square-foot mansion was designed by New York architect Harry Creighton Ingalls and constructed of oak logs and quartzite stones harvested from the surrounding area. The mansion had three wings with a floor plan shaped like a Y. The Penns intended their two-story home to be a comfortable and permanent residence. Over the years, they embarked on a series of European and world tours, purchasing a number of art objects that they sent to back to Chinqua-Penn. The home was decorated in an eclectic style, with art and architecture from every corner of the world.
Gordon Hurleman of Switzerland landscaped the grounds around the home. Hurleman laid out extensive vegetable and flower gardens surrounding the house. Over the years the Penns added a number of unusual buildings to their property, including a windmill, a full sized stone and timber Chinese pogoda, clock tower, swimming pool, stew site, summer picnic house and While the house and gardens were Betsy’s domain, Jeff's passion was the Chinqua-Penn farming operations.
Around 1938 Jeff closed his milk bottling operation and began to retail milk to Meadow Dairies in present-day Eden. During World War II he switched from a dairy herd to the less labor-intensive beef cattle because of the shortage of laborers. The first of the Black Angus beef cattle herd was purchased in 1943 in the valley of Virginia. The herd is still maintained at Chinqua-Penn by the Upper Piedmont Research Station and was designated a historic herd in 1998.
The Penns' Community Involvement
The Penns contributed to a number of local charities. They made major donations to the Reidsville Community Chest, the local Boy and Girl Scout programs, the American Red Cross, the North Scales Street Christian Church, the local Masonic lodge, the Jeff and Betsy Penn Foundation, and the Annie Penn Memorial Hospital. Betsy Penn was particularly interested in the Girl Scouts and was responsible for the creation of the Chinqua-Penn Girl Scout Camp near Reidsville. Jeff Penn was chairman of the county Committee on Economic Development, a member of the Reidsville Industrial Committee and of the county school board, and chairman of the board of directors of the First National Bank of Reidsville. He was a thirty-second-degree Mason and a member of the Oasis Temple of the Order of the Shrine.
The Legacy of the Chinqua-Penn Plantation
Jeff Penn died in 1946 at age 70 in Hot Springs, Virginia, a well-known resort. His heart was buried in a small container behind the Chinqua-Penn mansion and his other remains were cremated and scattered over the plantation from an airplane. After Jeff's death, Betsy continued to reside at the Chinqua-Penn Plantation, continued her community philanthropic work, and began planning the estate's future.
In 1954, she donated 700 acres of pasture - as well as her husband's Black Angus herd of cattle - to North Carolina State University's long-standing agricultural research program, which resulted in the creation of the Upper Piedmont Research Station (UPRS), now one of 18 research stations in the state. In 1959, she made the decision to donate the estate to the consolidated University of North Carolina, which included the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina State College (now North Carolina State University or NCSU), and Woman’s College (now University of North Carolina at Greensboro or UNCG). At the same time, she gave the university system more than $750,000 to maintain the home and its vast farmlands, orchards, lakes, forest, and livestock. Provisions in this gift stated that she be allowed the status of lifetime tenant, giving her full rights to the property until her death and that after twelve years, if the management of the estate became “unfeasible,” the university system could dispose of the property as they saw fit.
Betsy had one more project in mind. In 1964 she arranged for the construction of the Betsy-Jeff Penn 4-H Educational Center on nearly 200 acres of her Chinqua-Penn property, full of forests, streams and fields, and donated it to the state of North Carolina in 1964 in honor of her late husband, Jefferson Penn. It also included "Lake Hazel," a 22-acre lake built in 1954 after Hurricane Hazel. She envisioned a place where young people from Rockingham County and throughout North Carolina could come to enjoy the outdoors and learn about nature. She gave detailed instructions of how the center should be utilized. It was to be operated by NC State University for the purpose of providing research-based educational experiences that would develop the life skills necessary for youth to become productive members of society.
Betsy Penn passed away in 1965 at the age of 83 and was buried beside her husband's remains on the grounds of Chingua-Penn. The house and gardens remained open to the public for tours for years under the management of UNCG. In 1986, the estate was turned over to NCSU, who was already managing the surrounding property. In 1991, Betsy Penn's legacy funds ran out, and when the state could not find additional funds, the estate was forced to close; the mansion was stuck in time, just the way Betsy Penn had left it. However, members of the community were adamant that this local treasure needed to be supported, and the Chinqua-Penn Foundation was formed. With support from NCSU, the Foundation was able to reopen the estate to the public in 1994, with volunteers as docents for tours.
Despite all the valiant efforts to raise money, the 33,000 square-foot house built in the 1920s just required too much maintenance for a grassroots organization, and the estate closed again in 2003. In 2006, the state sold the property to a Calvin Phelps, who used his tobacco businesses to finance the $4.1 million purchase. He and his wife Lisa reopened the estate to visitors. Regrettably, in 2012, Calvin Phelps was forced to declare bankruptcy for all his businesses, and the Chinqua-Penn estate was foreclosed on. Even more regrettable was the court's order to auction off all Phelps's property, including the mansion and the treasures Jeff and Betsy Penn had been so proud of. Sun Trust Bank bought the house and property for $1.4 million dollars, hoping to get their money back on resale; however, it finally sold in 2016 for a mere $650,000.
A private family lives there and it is unlikely it will ever be open to the public again.
Today at Chinqua-Penn
When you follow the Chinqua-Penn Walking Trail, you still get a tour with many reminders of the plantation. You can sit on the stone benches and eat your lunch at the stone tables where Jeff Penn used to serve his guests his famous Brunswick stew, and gaze at the large chimney where the stew simmered. Next to the chimney you'll see the Spring House, where the head of Cardwell Creek appears. You can follow the creek past "Little Niagara" (named in honor of Betsy's family's business) to the dam Jeff built for "Lake Betsy," and see the Pump House where a large pump operated by an electric motor drew water from the lake and pumped it up the hill by an underground iron pipe to the flower and vegetable gardens near the mansion. Near the dam you can take a rest at the Summer House with its giant umbrella over a table of six millstones, and look out over the waterfall coming from the dam. Betsy and Jeff would ride their horses from the stables near the house down the same farm road that you travel along as you pass by the quarries where the rock for the all the stone structures came from. The rhododendrons Betsy had planted along the farm road still blossom in the spring. Along the road between the hay barn and the parking lot, you will see the cemetery where the Penns buried their beloved dogs. And from the parking lot you can get a glimpse of the Penns' house, built to last a hundred years ago.
Who were Jeff and Betsy Penn?
Thomas Jefferson “Jeff” Penn was the son of Frank Reid Penn, who brought the Penn Tobacco Company from Virginia to Reidsville in the early 1880s, and Annie Spencer Penn. Jeff grew up in Reidsville and attended local schools, the Danville Military Institute, and the University of Virginia. He worked for a number of years for his father's tobacco company as a tobacco sales representative in California and China. After the company was sold to the American Tobacco Company in 1911, Jeff became an investment banker in Buffalo, New York. But his ties to Rockingham County were still strong: In 1911 he began acquiring land just north of Reidsville. His first purchase was the o1d Poplar Lake Tract, which he renamed "Corn Jug Farm." Here he erected a rustic bungalow for a residence when he was visiting his farm in North Carolina. He purchased adjoining land and began to develop "The Practical Farm," a model farm for agricultural demonstrations in cooperation with the local County Agent.
Jeff married Genevieve Schoellkopf, a widow, in 1915, in Buffalo. The Schoellkopf family was well-known and well off in Buffalo, having developed hydroelectricity from Niagara Falls. Tragically, Genevieve and their two sons died of disease by 1921. Jeff focused what remained of his life in Reidsville, where he had grown up, and continued to acquire land for his farm. In 1918 he renamed his property “Chinqua-Penn Plantation" after a dwarf chestnut bush which grew in the area. In the 1920s he was employing local farm workers and raising Berkshire hogs, poultry and sheep. His special interest was a large dairy herd of Holstein cattle. In 1921 he started the Chinqua-Penn Dairy with local milk delivery.
As Jeff was tying up his affairs in Buffalo, he met Genevieve’s cousin, Betsy Schoellkopf, a divorcee. They shared interests in travel, horseback riding, and fine art. Before their marriage in 1923, Jeff asked Betsy whether she would rather live in Buffalo, or on the dairy farm he was developing in Reidsville. She chose the farm.
The Development of the Chinqua-Penn Plantation
Jeff had already built a cluster of two-story stone and log buildings on Wentworth Street, which would serve as carriage house, laundry and pump house, and homes for some of the people employed on the property. They were the first residential structures erected on the rolling farmland that became Chinqua-Penn Plantation. The Penns first lived at the Belvidere Hotel in Reidsville while the main residence on the plantation was being built between 1923 and 1926, then lived to the lodges before moving into the main residence in just before Christmas 1925.
Their 27-room, 33,000 square-foot mansion was designed by New York architect Harry Creighton Ingalls and constructed of oak logs and quartzite stones harvested from the surrounding area. The mansion had three wings with a floor plan shaped like a Y. The Penns intended their two-story home to be a comfortable and permanent residence. Over the years, they embarked on a series of European and world tours, purchasing a number of art objects that they sent to back to Chinqua-Penn. The home was decorated in an eclectic style, with art and architecture from every corner of the world.
Gordon Hurleman of Switzerland landscaped the grounds around the home. Hurleman laid out extensive vegetable and flower gardens surrounding the house. Over the years the Penns added a number of unusual buildings to their property, including a windmill, a full sized stone and timber Chinese pogoda, clock tower, swimming pool, stew site, summer picnic house and While the house and gardens were Betsy’s domain, Jeff's passion was the Chinqua-Penn farming operations.
Around 1938 Jeff closed his milk bottling operation and began to retail milk to Meadow Dairies in present-day Eden. During World War II he switched from a dairy herd to the less labor-intensive beef cattle because of the shortage of laborers. The first of the Black Angus beef cattle herd was purchased in 1943 in the valley of Virginia. The herd is still maintained at Chinqua-Penn by the Upper Piedmont Research Station and was designated a historic herd in 1998.
The Penns' Community Involvement
The Penns contributed to a number of local charities. They made major donations to the Reidsville Community Chest, the local Boy and Girl Scout programs, the American Red Cross, the North Scales Street Christian Church, the local Masonic lodge, the Jeff and Betsy Penn Foundation, and the Annie Penn Memorial Hospital. Betsy Penn was particularly interested in the Girl Scouts and was responsible for the creation of the Chinqua-Penn Girl Scout Camp near Reidsville. Jeff Penn was chairman of the county Committee on Economic Development, a member of the Reidsville Industrial Committee and of the county school board, and chairman of the board of directors of the First National Bank of Reidsville. He was a thirty-second-degree Mason and a member of the Oasis Temple of the Order of the Shrine.
The Legacy of the Chinqua-Penn Plantation
Jeff Penn died in 1946 at age 70 in Hot Springs, Virginia, a well-known resort. His heart was buried in a small container behind the Chinqua-Penn mansion and his other remains were cremated and scattered over the plantation from an airplane. After Jeff's death, Betsy continued to reside at the Chinqua-Penn Plantation, continued her community philanthropic work, and began planning the estate's future.
In 1954, she donated 700 acres of pasture - as well as her husband's Black Angus herd of cattle - to North Carolina State University's long-standing agricultural research program, which resulted in the creation of the Upper Piedmont Research Station (UPRS), now one of 18 research stations in the state. In 1959, she made the decision to donate the estate to the consolidated University of North Carolina, which included the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina State College (now North Carolina State University or NCSU), and Woman’s College (now University of North Carolina at Greensboro or UNCG). At the same time, she gave the university system more than $750,000 to maintain the home and its vast farmlands, orchards, lakes, forest, and livestock. Provisions in this gift stated that she be allowed the status of lifetime tenant, giving her full rights to the property until her death and that after twelve years, if the management of the estate became “unfeasible,” the university system could dispose of the property as they saw fit.
Betsy had one more project in mind. In 1964 she arranged for the construction of the Betsy-Jeff Penn 4-H Educational Center on nearly 200 acres of her Chinqua-Penn property, full of forests, streams and fields, and donated it to the state of North Carolina in 1964 in honor of her late husband, Jefferson Penn. It also included "Lake Hazel," a 22-acre lake built in 1954 after Hurricane Hazel. She envisioned a place where young people from Rockingham County and throughout North Carolina could come to enjoy the outdoors and learn about nature. She gave detailed instructions of how the center should be utilized. It was to be operated by NC State University for the purpose of providing research-based educational experiences that would develop the life skills necessary for youth to become productive members of society.
Betsy Penn passed away in 1965 at the age of 83 and was buried beside her husband's remains on the grounds of Chingua-Penn. The house and gardens remained open to the public for tours for years under the management of UNCG. In 1986, the estate was turned over to NCSU, who was already managing the surrounding property. In 1991, Betsy Penn's legacy funds ran out, and when the state could not find additional funds, the estate was forced to close; the mansion was stuck in time, just the way Betsy Penn had left it. However, members of the community were adamant that this local treasure needed to be supported, and the Chinqua-Penn Foundation was formed. With support from NCSU, the Foundation was able to reopen the estate to the public in 1994, with volunteers as docents for tours.
Despite all the valiant efforts to raise money, the 33,000 square-foot house built in the 1920s just required too much maintenance for a grassroots organization, and the estate closed again in 2003. In 2006, the state sold the property to a Calvin Phelps, who used his tobacco businesses to finance the $4.1 million purchase. He and his wife Lisa reopened the estate to visitors. Regrettably, in 2012, Calvin Phelps was forced to declare bankruptcy for all his businesses, and the Chinqua-Penn estate was foreclosed on. Even more regrettable was the court's order to auction off all Phelps's property, including the mansion and the treasures Jeff and Betsy Penn had been so proud of. Sun Trust Bank bought the house and property for $1.4 million dollars, hoping to get their money back on resale; however, it finally sold in 2016 for a mere $650,000.
A private family lives there and it is unlikely it will ever be open to the public again.
Today at Chinqua-Penn
When you follow the Chinqua-Penn Walking Trail, you still get a tour with many reminders of the plantation. You can sit on the stone benches and eat your lunch at the stone tables where Jeff Penn used to serve his guests his famous Brunswick stew, and gaze at the large chimney where the stew simmered. Next to the chimney you'll see the Spring House, where the head of Cardwell Creek appears. You can follow the creek past "Little Niagara" (named in honor of Betsy's family's business) to the dam Jeff built for "Lake Betsy," and see the Pump House where a large pump operated by an electric motor drew water from the lake and pumped it up the hill by an underground iron pipe to the flower and vegetable gardens near the mansion. Near the dam you can take a rest at the Summer House with its giant umbrella over a table of six millstones, and look out over the waterfall coming from the dam. Betsy and Jeff would ride their horses from the stables near the house down the same farm road that you travel along as you pass by the quarries where the rock for the all the stone structures came from. The rhododendrons Betsy had planted along the farm road still blossom in the spring. Along the road between the hay barn and the parking lot, you will see the cemetery where the Penns buried their beloved dogs. And from the parking lot you can get a glimpse of the Penns' house, built to last a hundred years ago.
|
|
The Clock Tower
You can see the Chinqua-Penn Clock Tower, built in 1931 for Betsy and Jeff Penn, from Wentworth Street, adjacent to the Penns’ house and to the farm buildings now used by the UPRS. The clock itself has not worked for a number of years. But as recently as this past spring you could hear the chimes in many spots along the Chinqua-Penn Walking Trail, with that familiar Westminster peal on each quarter hour. The chimes are silent again now; it is not easy nor cheap to keep century-old mechanisms in good working order!
The Clock Tower was built in 1931 by Antonio Cescutti, the Italian stone mason who built the house, the dam, and the windmill. Seventy five feet tall, the three-story square tower was built with rock from the nearby quarries. The Penns wanted a clock they could see and chimes they could hear from almost anywhere on the estate. The ground floor of the tower has square windows and was originally used to smoke meat; iron hooks are built into the ceiling joists. The second story houses the Deagan Chimes and a set of slender Gothic arches on each side of the building. The third story has the clock works and a clock face on each side of the tower. A hipped slate roof with a weathervane caps the tower.
Deagan Chimes were the gold standard of chimes for large formal buildings in the early 20th century. J.C. Deagan created a radical improvement in carillons for churches and public buildings: massive tubular bells, equipped with dampers to eliminate tone intermingling, controlled electrically, and playable both manually from keyboard and automatically from perforated paper rolls, under clock control. Jeff Penn would have paid at least $10,000 in the 1930s to have the 16-tube system installed in the clock tower with a keyboard located in the adjacent lodge buildings. He could have had a Deagan Westminster chiming device installed to the chimes, connected to its own internal clock, or the chimes may have been just played with the keyboard on various occasions. In 1995 a Deagan automatic roll-playing unit was installed to play the Westminster peal chimes.
The clock in the tower is known as a “turret clock,” designed to be mounted high in the wall of a public building, such as churches, university buildings, and town halls. Its large face is designed to be visible from far away. This is said to be an Edward Howard tower clock, made by the Howard Clock Company in Roxbury, Massachusetts in the early 1930s.
The Clock Tower was built in 1931 by Antonio Cescutti, the Italian stone mason who built the house, the dam, and the windmill. Seventy five feet tall, the three-story square tower was built with rock from the nearby quarries. The Penns wanted a clock they could see and chimes they could hear from almost anywhere on the estate. The ground floor of the tower has square windows and was originally used to smoke meat; iron hooks are built into the ceiling joists. The second story houses the Deagan Chimes and a set of slender Gothic arches on each side of the building. The third story has the clock works and a clock face on each side of the tower. A hipped slate roof with a weathervane caps the tower.
Deagan Chimes were the gold standard of chimes for large formal buildings in the early 20th century. J.C. Deagan created a radical improvement in carillons for churches and public buildings: massive tubular bells, equipped with dampers to eliminate tone intermingling, controlled electrically, and playable both manually from keyboard and automatically from perforated paper rolls, under clock control. Jeff Penn would have paid at least $10,000 in the 1930s to have the 16-tube system installed in the clock tower with a keyboard located in the adjacent lodge buildings. He could have had a Deagan Westminster chiming device installed to the chimes, connected to its own internal clock, or the chimes may have been just played with the keyboard on various occasions. In 1995 a Deagan automatic roll-playing unit was installed to play the Westminster peal chimes.
The clock in the tower is known as a “turret clock,” designed to be mounted high in the wall of a public building, such as churches, university buildings, and town halls. Its large face is designed to be visible from far away. This is said to be an Edward Howard tower clock, made by the Howard Clock Company in Roxbury, Massachusetts in the early 1930s.
