Penn Place

Penn Place is a farmstead of about 275 acres along the Chattooga River near Trion, Georgia. Its main house, a two-over-two Plantation Plain frame dwelling, was built in the early 1850s with hand-hewn, pegged framing and hand-made brick chimneys. The family added a kitchen ell, a farm office and a bedroom in 1875, and a sunroom and baths in 1973, yet the house looks much as it did originally. Eight outbuildings survive, including a log smokehouse, an octagonal well house, a dovecote, a servants' house, a carbide gas generator house, a mule barn and a corn crib. The property was bought by William Penn in 1849, passed to his son James in 1850, and has stayed with the family since. Cotton and corn were grown here, first with enslaved labor and later through tenant farming. The farm is also tied to a Civil War river crossing at Penn's Ford in 1864. It was listed for its architecture and its record of continuous family farming.