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The People Who Lived on the Land that is Now Redstone Arsenal, page 351
He built a two-story, seven-room house on a high spot near the creek just east of Bradford Mountain. That house was home to four generations of Penlands spanning a century until the family had to move around 1940 when the Army bought the house and the last 17 acres the family owned. The rest of the farm had been taken by the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1935. David Alexander Penland came in to the area soon after the Indians had left. He was a farmer, preacher and school teacher. He taught Latin and Greek at the Hobbs Island and Taylorville Schools and was pastor of Hobbs Island [Ebenezer] Presbyterian Church for 55 years. He is buried at Hobbs Island Cemetery. When David Alexander Penland settled on the land, it was native hardwood forest except for three acres on the river that had been cleared by Indians. But Walter Cooney Penland, who will be 81 next month, said the land was all cleared and in crops as far back as he remembers. The land is presently in a remote part of Test Area 1. Some of it once again embraces mature hardwood timber, some has been planted in pines and some is in scrub vegetation. “It's growed up to where I can't tell much about it. It just don't look right,” said Penland as he looked over his old neighborhood. Penland was accompanied by his nephew, also named Walter Penland and who like his uncle was born on the arsenal, and his great nephew Richard Penland. They were escorted by Murphy Stoltz, a Test Area 1 worker who has a map showing the location of roads and who the property owners were when TVA bought the land in the 1930's. Using the maps and the Penlands' description of their home place as being on a high spot near the creek, Stoltz was able to pinpoint the old house location. While the old house was torn down when the Army bought it, the Penlands instantly recognized the place from the presence of ornamental “bear grass” plants in the yard still thriving after more than 40 years. They found remnants of tin and chimney rock that had belonged to the old house and just down an old road they discovered bars of mortar that had chinked cracks in the logs of a house that had belonged to Walter Penland's (the nephew's) mother. Walter Cooney Penland located what he identified as his old garden spot behind the house and a burial plot that he said contained three Indian graves. The graves, which aren't apparent now, were identifiable by depressions in the earth many years ago, Penland said. He said they were present when his pioneer grandfather built the house on the site in the early 1800's as the area's first settler. He said the old house contained 7 rooms, three rock chimneys and five fireplaces. It was built around cedar posts sunk five feet in the ground and set two feet apart. It had yellow poplar siding and pine floors. Penland was born in the house as 351 - (4384)