Enslaved community cemetery

Vallie Penn was born in the Mayo River District of Patrick County to Kemp and Ann Foster Penn in 1884, the 10th of 15 children. He was married to Mary Bell Cobb in 1907.  Vallie Penn’s last employment in Critz, before he moved to Martinsville after WWII, was as a sharecropper on land owned by Dr. Thomas J. Tudor of Norton, Virginia.  Vallie Penn was a lifelong farmer who worked on the land owned by his parents and also farmed on rented land from Hardin Harbour Reynolds, son of Harden W. Reynolds.

After the death of his wife, Mary Bell Cobb Penn, in 1939, he and their daughters Mary and Mattie, their son Samuel and his family continued to sharecrop in Critz. 

Vallie Penn’s death certificate denotes his burial place as the Penn Family Cemetery in Patrick County.  Had his grave not been marked, considerable speculation as to the location of his burial could have been made.  Although the couple ­— based on tradition and burial practice — would have been buried together their individual places of interment are identified differently on each death certificate. The clues are very distinctive based on the family affiliations and the date of burial. For Elizabeth Reynolds, whose parents Henry and Martha Ann Penn are also buried at Rock Spring, the place is listed as “Family Cemetery, Critz, Va.”  For her husband, Myles (mistakenly written as Marshall), it is “Reynolds Cemetery, Patrick Springs, Va.”  Because his wife pre-deceased him, Myles Reynolds would have buried his wife near her parents, while his burial would have been at the Reynolds Cemetery at Mt. Nebo in Patrick Springs.  

Vallie Penn’s interment was the last recorded and marked gravesite at the Penn-Reynolds Cemetery.  He was also the last of a seven-person family burial cluster at Rock Spring.

Elizabeth Penn Reynolds was born to Henry and Martha Ann Penn in 1871 and married Myles Reynolds (Jr.), the son of Myles (U.S.C.T.) and Rhoda Reynolds on Dec. 26, 1889.

This interment is the only one found that could have been included in either a Penn or a Reynolds family cluster. Had Elizabeth Reynolds’ husband, Myles Reynolds (Jr.), been buried with her, the cluster designation might have been based on Cluster R4, which is the cluster based on Rhoda Reynolds and the infant of Myles and Elizabeth Reynolds.  Because Elizabeth pre-deceased her husband the more likely scenario is that her husband buried her near her parents Henry and Ann Penn.  Her grandson Charles H. Hagwood was the informant on both her death certificate and her husband, Myles’, five years later.  

As Charles Hagwood was likely responsible for both burials performed by the Collins Funeral Home, his specific burial designations reinforce this unusual scenario. Her brother Ernest Penn would also be located in this cluster 

Nannie (Nancy) Lee Reynolds was born around 1865 to Robert “Bob” and Delila(h) Reynolds. Nannie Lee married William Lee Reynolds in 1880 and raised three children on the Rock Spring plantation and in the Mayo River area. The couple are buried next to each other at the Penn-Reynolds Cemetery along with their children. Two of their three children died before the couple between 1880 and 1910, and although there is no documentation of names or dates of death, they were likely buried in a cluster with their parents.  

Nannie’s mother, Delilah Reynolds, belongs to another cluster consisting of Nannie Reynolds’ siblings. Her father, Robert, remarried after her mother’s death in 1886. He wed Ida Penn in 1887. Robert Reynolds died in 1922 and was buried at what was noted on his death certificate as “Home Burial grounds,” which would have been the cemetery known as Ida Reynolds at Mt. Nebo Church. William and Nannie Reynolds provide an exemplary case of spousal burial and possibly children’s burial, which was practiced both in antebellum and postbellum periods.

Mary Bell Cobb was the eldest of six children born in the Mayo District to Joseph P. Cobb and Mattie Reynolds Cobb (daughter of Peter and Sarah Lee Reynolds). After her marriage to Vallie W. Penn, they lived in Critz with their eight children until her death in 1939.  

Her mother, Mattie, was likely born at Rock Spring although she and her husband, Joseph, are buried in Stella. No undertaker is noted on the death certificate. Mary’s marked gravesite is located next to her husband, Vallie Penn. 

Ben "Pennie" Penn, whose name is listed on 1880 U.S. Census as Ben(nie), was born to Richard (Dick) and Susan Penn in Patrick County. His older sister was Ida Penn, who later married Robert Reynolds and established a cemetery at Mt. Nebo Church.  A direct family connection between Pennie's father, Richard Penn, and Kemp Penn or other Penn family members at Rock Spring has not been established.  

The Critz, Virginia, designation for his burial during this time is a marker for the Penn-Reynolds Cemetery at Rock Spring. Additionally, because his parents, Richard (Dick) and Susan (or Sally) Penn, resided at the time of their last location on the U.S. Census within the Research Range, they also may have been buried at Rock Spring. Rachel Clanton Penn, his widow, outlived him by 30 years during the period when the Mt. Nebo Cemetery was used by those Penn family members still living in the Mayo District.

William Reynolds was born on the Reynolds plantation ca. 1855 to Peter Harris and Sally Lee Reynolds. His parents, who died before 1900, would be buried at Rock Spring where they had been enslaved. When Hardin Reynolds sent his 15-year-old son, A.D. Reynolds, to get salt from western Virginia in 1862, Peter Harris was possibly one of the two enslaved men went with him.  

After the Civil War, William worked at the Reynolds tobacco factory along with others formerly enslaved at Rock Spring. He married Nannie Lee Reynolds on March 31, 1880, in the Mayo area. One of their three children, Sallie Lee Reynolds, married Edward Penn, son of Kemp and Ann Penn in 1899. Edward died between 1900 and 1910 and was likely buried at Rock Spring in the family cluster identified with his father Kemp Penn. 

In 1864, Ann Foster was born to Frank and Lucy Tatum Foster in Patrick County, Virginia. Their homestead was located in the Mayo District at least 3 to 5 miles from the Reynolds plantation. Ann Foster was married to Kemp Penn in 1865 and was the mother of 15 children. Five of their six children who pre-deceased them were unrecorded but likely would have been buried at Rock Spring. The death of Cota or Kate in 1887 was recorded.  

Ann’s son Vallie Penn was the informant on her death certificate and both of them remained on their family farm within a mile of Rock Spring at the time of her death. Although unmarked, her burial location would be next to her husband. This location is actually a family cluster which includes her husband, Kemp Penn, her son Harry Penn, son Edmund Penn (d. ca. 1900-1910), daughter-in-law Mary Bell Penn, and a daughter Cota or Kate Penn, who died in 1887. Some of her other children, besides Vallie Penn, are buried in West Virginia or Pennsylvania.

Harry Penn was born in Stuart, Virginia, to Kemp and Ann Penn, the 12th of 15 children. As was common in Patrick County and elsewhere in the region, Harry Penn sought employment in the coal mines of West Virginia. During antebellum slavery, Africans had been hired out by slaveholders to work in the coal and salt mines in western Virginia, which later formed West Virginia. After the Civil War, these mines continued to attract African American and other farmers to work for cash income.  

Harry Penn died in a mining accident in the mining town of Pageton, West Virginia, where he was “caught under a fall of slate.” His widow, Carrie Rucker Penn, removed him to Critz, Virginia, where he was interred. Harry’s brother-in-law James Rucker, who worked with him, was the death certificate informant. Harry Penn’s gravesite is one of five unidentified gravesites that have been connected to a recorded death.  It is located near his father, Kemp Penn’s, grave.  

Born in Patrick County during the antebellum period, Ann Reynolds would have been born on a Reynolds plantation in the Mayo District. Her daughter Elizabeth Penn married Myles Reynolds Jr., son of Letty and Jacob Reynolds. Based on the ages of Ann’s children in 1870, she and her husband, Henry C. Penn, were likely married while enslaved around 1853 or 1854. They were the parents of 10 children.  

For the last 15 years of her life, Ann lived with her daughter Elizabeth and son-in-law Myles Reynolds on Joyce Road in Critz, Virginia. Elizabeth died in 1948 and Myles in 1953. They may also have been buried at Rock Spring. 

Ann’s husband, Henry, was deceased before 1900. Given the location of their residence in 1880 and Martha Ann’s in 1900, both Ann and Henry would have likely been interred at the Penn-Reynolds Cemetery. Ann’s son Earnest P. Penn was also interred in the cemetery at Rock Spring.

*Alternate sources for name: U.S. Census 1900, Death Record, Earnest P. Penn

Born to Jim and Ruth Kellum Scales, Bertha Scales was married to Earnest Lynn Penn in 1917. She died in childbirth in 1925, aged 26. Her death certificate lists her burial place as the “Sam Penn Graveyard” in the only reference to this place thus found.  

Sam Penn and his wife, Sarah, lived at Rock Spring after the Civil War. Sarah died in 1870 and would have been buried at Rock Spring.  

Earnest Lynn Penn’s parents were Earnest and Janice Reynolds Penn. The dual surnames of Reynolds/Penn through her husband would also suggest a familial connection with other interments at the cemetery.  This would also explain Bertha Penn’s burial in the family cemetery. Earnest Lynn Penn died in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1979.

Caroline Reynolds was one of three children born enslaved on the antebellum Reynolds plantation to Abram (Abraham) and Mary Ann Penn Reynolds. Her first marriage was to Preston Hubbard. After his death, she married George W. Sheffield in 1908, and they lived at Rock Spring, near the family of Vallie Penn, from the time of their marriage until her death in 1920.  Her husband George died in 1942 at age 102 and was buried in Henry County.  

Vallie Penn was the informant on her death certificate; the couple had no children.  Typically, relatives provided such information and because Vallie Penn’s mother-in-law, Mattie Cobb, was a Reynolds, Vallie Penn was possibly the closest male relative. Caroline’s death certificate states that she was buried “at home,” however she was living at Rock Spring at the time of her death and would more likely have been buried in her family’s cemetery. 

Richard Penn was born in slavery in Patrick County, Virginia, possibly on the plantation of Greenville or W.S. Penn where he was enslaved as a blacksmith. Both Penn plantations were located near Hardin Reynolds’ Rock Spring plantation.  

His children included Ida Penn Reynolds and Ben “Pennie” Penn. According to family testimony, Richard “Dick” Penn and his wife, Susan, were married in Rockingham County, North Carolina, in 1874. The informant on his death certificate is his son-in-law John Abram “Abe” Tatum, whose wife, Mary Penn Tatum, was buried at Mt. Nebo Cemetery in 1960. 

Richard lived and worked in Critz on the farm of J.F. Critz. The presence of Critz references and the Penn family connection would coincide with a Rock Spring burial. His wife, Susan, likely died between 1910 and 1919, as Richard was listed as a widower at the time of his death. Based upon spousal burial patterns it is likely that Susan was also interred at Rock Spring. The death certificate for his son Ben “Pennie” Penn also bore a burial site reference to Critz. 

Earnest Penn was born in the Mayo District to Henry and Martha Ann Penn in 1869.  He married his wife, Jennie, in 1891. Their three children were also born there. Both of his parents are buried at Rock Spring based on death certificates, residential records, and the period in which they died.  His sister Elizabeth Penn is also interred at Rock Spring.

Kemp Penn was born in Patrick County in 1842, perhaps on the plantation of W.S. Penn or Greenville Penn. He was married to Ann Foster in 1865 in the Mayo River area.  Because of their longevity in the Mayo River region (1870-1910) and later on the Rock Spring plantation, it is possible that a familial link exists between Kemp Penn, Sam Penn, and other individuals born during slavery in the Mayo River District. Regardless, Kemp Penn’s marked gravesite at the Penn-Reynolds Cemetery is the center of the known Penn family cluster of marked and unmarked gravesites at this cemetery.  

Included in this group, in order of interment, are his daughter Cota or Kate (d. 1887), son Edward (ca. 1900-1910), wife Ann Foster (d. 1931), son Harry (d. 1930), daughter-in-law Mary Bell Cobb (d. 1939) and son Vallie Penn (d. 1958). In this seven-person cluster only three graves are marked — Kemp Penn, Mary Bell, and Vallie Penn. 

Rhoda and her husband, Myles Reynolds, were enslaved at Rock Spring plantation, however her husband and their children were born on a Stokes County, North Carolina, plantation also owned by Hardin Reynolds. They were married at Rock Spring in 1848. 

When Gen. George Stoneman raided Rock Spring plantation near the end of the Civil War, Myles — along with other enslaved men — left the plantation with Stoneman and joined what became the United States Army. He was enlisted in the 119th United States Colored Infantry Regiment. Myles contracted measles and died in a military hospital in Kentucky in June 1865. Rhoda received a widow’s pension to care for their children — Anne, Mariah, Cynthia, Matilda, Columbus, Nancy Jane, Emily  “Emma,” and Myles.

Rhoda Reynold’s cluster includes her 4-month-old grandson — born to her son Myles and his wife, Elizabeth — who died in 1891 in the Mayo River region.

Letty Reynolds was the widow of Pvt. Jacob Reynolds of the 119th United States Colored Infantry Regiment. She and her husband were enslaved on the Stokes County, North Carolina, and Rock Spring plantations — both owned by Hardin Reynolds.  Jacob died after contracting measles shortly after enlisting. In 1870, Letty Reynolds relocated to Rock Spring with her children Mary, Adaline, and Henry.

On Dec. 28, 1876, Adaline Reynolds married Squire Cobb, who was A.D. Reynolds’ enslaved body servant during the Civil War. One of their sons, John G. Cobb, died in 1879 at age 1 and was buried at Rock Spring. After Adaline’s death and burial at Rock Spring in 1882, Squire married Jane Reynolds in 1884. Squire and Jane worked in the tobacco factory at Rock Spring in 1880. Squire Cobb died in Tennessee in 1918.

Delilah Reynolds’ father was Henry Reynolds and she was born on Rock Spring plantation in 1857. Delilah married Robert Reynolds in 1875, and they were the parents of eight children, including an infant son in 1878. Daughters Mary, Nanna, and Adaline all died in June 1888. These children, along with their mother, would have been buried in a family cluster. Robert married Ida Penn in 1887 and was later buried at Mt. Nebo Church Cemetery in 1922.

This burial is one of only two identified clusters where a child is the only recorded death.  The other being Cluster R6. Mary’s parents, Peter and Sarah (Sally) Reynolds, remained in the Mayo area until their deaths sometime before 1900.  Because of the period of their deaths and their residence, they would have also been buried at Rock Spring. Peter and Sally were enslaved at Rock Spring and one of the few to remain on the plantation after the Civil War.

Mack Reynolds was one of three children born to Anthony and Sally Reynolds, who were enslaved at Rock Spring plantation along with their children. Anthony and Sally Reynolds — along with Abram and Mary Ann Penn Reynolds, Letty Cox Reynolds, Rhoda Reynolds, and Peter and Sarah Reynolds — were among the oldest formerly enslaved families still living in the Mayo District after the Civil War.

These families worked the land on the plantation through a Freedmen’s Bureau labor agreement. Anthony and Sally Reynolds were deceased before 1900, and although their deaths are unrecorded they may also have been buried in the cluster already established by their children’s burial at Rock Spring.    

Henry Penn was born to Henry C. and Martha Penn in 1870. The family lived at Mayo River near Rock Spring after the Civil War. When Henry Jr. died in 1871, he would have been the first in a family cluster that includes his father, Henry C. Penn; brother Earnest Penn; sister Elizabeth Penn Reynolds; and mother, Martha Ann Reynolds Penn.

Thomas Reynolds was one of three children born to Anthony and Sally Reynolds, who were enslaved at Rock Spring plantation along with their children. Anthony and Sally Reynolds — along with Abram and Mary Ann Penn Reynolds, Letty Cox Reynolds, Rhoda Reynolds, and Peter and Sarah Reynolds — were among the oldest formerly enslaved families still living in the Mayo District after the Civil War.

These families worked the land on the plantation through a Freedmen’s Bureau labor agreement. Anthony and Sally Reynolds were deceased before 1900, and although their deaths are unrecorded they may also have been buried in the cluster already established by their children’s burial at Rock Spring.    

Westley Reynolds was one of three children born to Anthony and Sally Reynolds, who were enslaved at Rock Spring plantation along with their children. Anthony and Sally Reynolds — along with Abram and Mary Ann Penn Reynolds, Letty Cox Reynolds, Rhoda Reynolds, and Peter and Sarah Reynolds — were among the oldest formerly enslaved families still living in the Mayo District after the Civil War.

These families worked the land on the plantation through a Freedmen’s Bureau labor agreement. Anthony and Sally Reynolds were deceased before 1900, and although their deaths are unrecorded they may also have been buried in the cluster already established by their children’s burial at Rock Spring.    

Sarah Penn and her husband, Samuel Penn, lived on the Rock Spring plantation at the end of the Civil War along with three children and five grandchildren. Samuel and Sarah were likely enslaved on the plantations of W.S. or Greenville Penn located near Rock Spring. On the 1880 U.S. Census, Sam Penn is listed with Celia Tatum, who may have been a relative, perhaps a sister, based on their ages and an examination of their entries on the 1870 U.S. Census.  

The surnames of Cobb and Tatum listed in 1870 under Celia Tatum may also demonstrate the variety of surnames related to slaveholders in the Rock Spring area. If Sarah’s maiden name were known, it would provide a clue to the location of her birth. Samuel would have been a spousal burial next to his wife. Sarah’s burial would have been among the first after the Civil War at what became known as the Sam Penn Graveyard.