Qualla: Chinqua Penn Plantation https://qualla.com/chinqua-penn-plantation en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:06 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/r/q/chinqua-penn-plantation-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Chinqua Penn Plantation https://qualla.com/chinqua-penn-plantation Chinqua Penn Plantation: Introduction https://qualla.com/chinqua-penn-plantation/ Photo credit Dangreer2000, CC BY-SA 3.0. The name reads like a misspelling and is in fact a pun. Chinqua Penn - the manor Thomas Jefferson "Jeff" Penn and Margaret "Betsy" Schoellkopf Penn built in the 1920s on a Rockingham County hillside about 25 miles north of Greensboro - splices the family name onto chinquapin, a small dwarf chestnut that once grew in clouds across the Carolina Piedmont before blight took the American chestnuts down. The Penn fortune that paid for the manor came from a less wholesome native crop. Jeff Penn was the heir to the Penn family tobacco interests, the same Penn Tobacco Company that American Tobacco - the Duke combine that pressed out Lucky Strike - absorbed in 1911.

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Image: Dangreer2000 | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/r/q/chinqua-penn-plantation-wp/dnrq-chinqua-penn-plantation-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Chinqua Penn Plantation: Tobacco Money, Carolina Soil https://qualla.com/chinqua-penn-plantation/ Photo credit Dangreer2000, CC BY-SA 3.0. Jeff and Betsy left Penn's Store in Patrick County, Virginia, when they came south. Betsy was a Schoellkopf - her father Arthur chaired the Niagara Falls Power Company and served as mayor of Niagara Falls, New York - and money from Niagara power flowed alongside money from Caroli...

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]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/r/q/chinqua-penn-plantation-wp/dnrq-chinqua-penn-plantation-tobacco-money-carolina-soil.mp3 0:06 2 full Chinqua Penn Plantation: Forty Years of Touring https://qualla.com/chinqua-penn-plantation/ Photo credit Dangreer2000, CC BY-SA 3.0. Betsy outlived Jeff by nearly two decades. She turned increasingly to philanthropy and community work, founding the Betsy-Jeff Penn 4-H Educational Center on part of the estate. In 1959 the Penns gave the house, its outbuildings, and ultimately its furnishings into the trusteeshi...

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]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/r/q/chinqua-penn-plantation-wp/dnrq-chinqua-penn-plantation-forty-years-of-touring.mp3 0:06 3 full Chinqua Penn Plantation: The Phelps Era https://qualla.com/chinqua-penn-plantation/ Photo credit Dangreer2000, CC BY-SA 3.0. In August 2006, Calvin Phelps - founder of Renegade Tobacco Company - bought the estate from N.C. State. He said he planned to build a replica in Davie County, keep Chinqua Penn as a second home, and run the original as a tourist attraction. The plan ran on tobacco money that wor...

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]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/r/q/chinqua-penn-plantation-wp/dnrq-chinqua-penn-plantation-the-phelps-era.mp3 0:06 4 full Chinqua Penn Plantation: The April 2012 Auction https://qualla.com/chinqua-penn-plantation/ Photo credit Dangreer2000, CC BY-SA 3.0. On April 25 and 26, 2012, the contents of Chinqua Penn went under the gavel at the Greensboro Coliseum Complex - eight decades of Penn-family collecting dispersed across two days by Leland Little Auction and Iron Horse Auction. The sale raised roughly 3.4 million dollars. The Mus...

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]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/r/q/chinqua-penn-plantation-wp/dnrq-chinqua-penn-plantation-the-april-2012-auction.mp3 0:06 5 full