Penniman

During the summer of 1915 rumors began to spread about the Dupont Company wanting to buy Jamestown and wanting to build a munitions plant there. In 1916, it was decided to build the munitions plant in the Bruton district of York County on some farmland next to the York River. In the spring of 1916 a railroad spur was built from the main C&O rail line to the plant sight. This spur is still there.
The first section of the plant opened in the fall of 1916. It was named Penniman after a DuPont executive. It was also known at "Plant #37". At first only about 200 people worked there. Soon the plant expanded to its high point in the summer of 1918 when it was estimated that 15,000 people worked there.
In many ways Penniman was its own town. It had a police department, fire department, post office, mess hall, canteen, hospital, YMCA and YWCA. The Chamber of Commerce for Williamsburg requested that passenger service be started between Penniman and Williamsburg. By 1918 there were three trains a day making the round trip from Williamsburg to Penniman and back again.
The York County Red Cross got its beginnings at Penniman. Its first members were workers at the plant.
As Penniman grew Williamsburg became a boomtown. Rents and food prices began to rise. Local farmers had trouble getting in their crops because the local men were working at the plant for much higher wages.
The 1918 influenza outbreak was particularly bad at Penniman. Deaths from the flu came at eight to ten at a time. Bucktrout funeral home had to requisition a truck to pick up the bodies from Penniman. The undertaker had run out of cemetery space and had to use some of his own land as a graveyard.
When World War I came to an end in November of 1918, workers were laid off several hundred at a time. By 1919 only about a hundred were scattered around the area. By 1923 the plant had been dismantled and returned to being farmland.
In World War II the old Penniman site was used again. A Naval installation was built there and named Cheatham Annex.
A panoramic photo of the Penniman munitions factory can be viewed at: www.zazzle.com/williamsburg+posters It will give you an idea of just how large this plant was.