By Renee Gannon, 2/2007
- 1: Introduction
- 2: Building Penderlea
- 3: Life on Penderlea
- 4: Penderlea Today
- Download the full article
as a
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
| Click photos to enlarge and learn more. | |||
In 1933, the Great Depression had hit every sector of the economy, and Franklin Roosevelt, in his first term as President, knew the country needed to get back to work. Roosevelt persuaded Congress, as part of his New Deal, to pass the National Industry Recovery Act of 1933. This led to the formation of the Subsistence Homesteads Division within the Department of Interior. Its purpose: to create communities that will fuel the economy and put people back to work.
These “resettlement” towns would focus on helping farmers and industrial workers by moving families to homestead farming communities and planned mill towns.
Penderlea, in northwestern Pender County, N.C., became the first homestead farm project in the United States. The government held the community’s hand from 1934 until 1943, when the government bowed out as landlords and allowed homesteaders to buy their farms as well as adjacent non-occupied land.
Many federal officials deemed the “experimental agricultural community” a failure, but those who worked and lived on Penderlea called it a success that still thrives today.
Ann Southerland Cottle remembers the cold, rainy winter day her family moved onto Penderlea. The Southerland family traveled from neighboring Duplin County to the homestead project in 1941, bringing along clothes, furniture, the family mule and Jersey cow named “Boots.”
“I was four years old with chickenpox. Mother and Daddy were afraid this would prevent our move,” remembers Cottle. “My father carried me into the house and told me to push a wall switch. I did and a light came on in the kitchen. I pushed again and it went off. I was amazed for we had never seen electric lights before.”
What made Penderlea work, says Cottle, is that it was a small town made up of “outsiders who grew a community that welcomed all.”
| top |