Penderlea Homestead - Fact Sheet and Timeline 

Penderlea Homestead Farms, the first of 152 homestead projects developed in 36 states and the Virgin Islands under President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, was established in 1934. 

Location:  northwest Pender County – North Carolina. 

Purpose:  To provide penniless tenant farmers, bankrupt farm owners, and unemployed ex-farmers during the Great Depression a means to make a living and to provide self-sufficient rural communities while easing the burden of over-crowded cities.

 Objective: To establish a cooperative truck farm with a central marketing plant.

 Plan:  To build and recruit people to a community consisting of: family farms, a school (on a 23-acre campus) which included an auditorium, gymnasium, cafeteria, library, shop building, home economics building, and teacherage; a vegetable grading shed, potato storage house, cannery, grist and feed mills, general store, social building, furniture factory, a hosiery mill, church and other buildings.

 In the latter part of 1933, Hugh MacRae, prominent Wilmington realtor and agricultural experimenter, proposed to the Division of Subsistence Homesteads, U.S. Department of the Interior, that a homestead project be established in Pender County.  The Division sent experts to investigate the land for its suitability and they found the soil perfect for truck crops.

 In February 1934, MacRae sold 4,700 acres of cut-over woodland to the U.S. government at a cost of $6.50 per acre. MacRae named as first project manager.

 The first tenant chosen to live on Penderlea was J.S. “Sutt” Austin who came to the property in March 1934.

In 1935, the project was taken over by the Resettlement Administration which decided to develop 142 farming units of 20 acres each.  Ten dwellings and accompanying outbuildings were initially erected. 

In 1936, the Resettlement Administration was placed under the U.S. Department of

Agriculture.  Penderlea, along with other projects, was then shifted to the Farm Security

Administration.

In March 1936, options were secured on an adjoining 6,000 acres which was designated as the Penderlea Extension.  An additional 50 farming units were completed which accommodated 158 additional homesteads of 30 acres each, bringing the total to 300 units.  The cost per acre was $10.50.

A farmstead consisted of: a modern home equipped with a complete bathroom and running water; a barn, poultry house, A-type hog house, corn crib, and a combination wash and smoke house. 

Homes ranged in size from 4 to 6 rooms , depending on the size of the family.  Each home was supplied with electricity as well as with indoor plumbing.  This included an individual water supply operated by an electric pump and storage tanks for hot and cold water.  The houses were mounted on brick tiers and featured exterior siding of white creosoted cedar shingles with green shutters.  The interiors featured walls of 6- to 8-inch tongue-and-groove pine boards and Celotex ceilings.  The flooring consisted of scraped and oiled pine.  (The first 10 of the original 142 homes had oak floors in the living room.) Cost to build: approximately $1,700.

The community center was set up in a horseshoe design with three hard-surfaced roads connecting Penderlea to surrounding towns.  The school, constructed in 1939, was placed in the curve of the horseshoe. 

The federal government withdrew from Penderlea in 1944 and transferred the project to the newly created Farmers Home Administration, which began the liquidation of the government’s interests in Penderlea.  Homesteaders soon acquired the right to purchase their farms through a deed-mortgage arrangement.  The prices of the 105 consolidated farms ranged from $2,700 to $5,000 with an average price of $3,020.  

That year, Penderlea was re-organized into 105 farm units of 40 to 125 acres each.  Also, that year, the hosiery mill which was owned by Penderlea Mutual Association, the retail and service cooperative, was sold to local businessmen for private operation. It was was sold in September of that year to Dexdale Hosiery Mills for $603,619.  In addition, the Penderlea Manufacturing Company (furniture factory) was liquidated at a small loss to the government.

 In 1949, the hosiery plant was sold to the Concentrate Manufacturing Company, a processing and packaging company for Roger and Gallet, a French cosmetics firm.

 By 1950, Penderlea was no longer a homestead cooperative project but a community of independent farmers who were buying, not leasing their farms.

 Today, of the 300 homes built on Penderlea only about 99 remain.