- City:
- Willard, NC
- Site Type:
- Forestry and Agriculture, Resettlement Communities
- New Deal Agencies:
- Housing Programs, Resettlement Administration (RA)
Description
“Penderlea Homestead Farms, located in northwest Pender County, North Carolina, was the first of 152 homestead projects developed in 1934 under President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. The purpose of the homestead projects was to provide penniless tenant farmers, bankrupt farm owners, and unemployed ex-farmers during the Great Depression with a means of making a living. Providing for self-sufficient rural communities also eased the burden of over-crowded cities.
n 1934, Hugh MacRae, prominent Wilmington developer and agriculturist, proposed to the Division of Subsistence Homesteads, U.S. Department of the Interior, that a homestead project be established in Pender County…
In May of1935, the Resettlement Administration inherited the Penderlea project and with the help of nearly 2000 relief workers, completed 142 homesteads, including drilling wells and building pump houses, barns, hog houses, and chicken houses…” (https://www.penderleahomesteadmuseum.org)
Many of the original structures remain today.
Source notes
https://www.penderleahomesteadmuseum.org/facts.html https://ncpedia.org/penderlea-homesteads https://www.newdeallegacy.org/new_deal_towns.htmlContribute to this Site
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