Holt, Margaret McConnell

Margaret McConnell Holt was a 1930 graduate of the North Carolina College for Women (now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, or UNCG), and who went on to endow a scholarship fund for the UNCG School of Music and to receive an alumni award for her ongoing support of the university. Her father, Dr. D.E. McConnell, began Gastonia, North Carolina's first lending library in his dental office circa 1900. Seventy years later Margaret and her husband, Donnel Shaw Holt, President and CEO of Cannon Mills, donated a collection of original art by North Carolina artists to the Gaston County Public Library in memory of her father. Margaret herself, in addition to compiling the research on the Chinqua-Penn plantation included in these papers, was a well-respected artist, and was included in the thirteenth through seventeenth editions of Who's Who in American Art.

Chinqua-Penn Plantation is located north of Reidsville, North Carolina, was constructed between 1923 and 1925, and served as the home of Mr. Thomas Jefferson Penn and his wife, Beatrice Penn nee Schoellkopf of New York. Mr. Penn worked with the Penn Tobacco Company (founded by his father) until it was sold to the American Tobacco Company. Mrs. Penn was a member of the family that developed Niagara Falls as a source of power. Together they filled the 27 rooms of Chinqua-Penn with lavish furnishings and fine art collected during two round-the-world tours and numerous trips to Europe and the Far East. In 1959 Mrs. Penn gave Chinqua-Penn to the University of North Carolina; it was opened to the public after her death in 1965. UNCG's development office next assumed responsibility for the house and nearby grounds; North Carolina State University in Raleigh received the remaining 900 acres.