Page 20 - Georgia Forestry - Winter2017

Brooks Pennington III & Brooks Pennington IV
Eight Generations
in the Woods
As their names would suggest, Brooks Pennington III and Brooks Pennington IV are two of many Penningtons in Madison, GA. Collectively, the father and son’s extended family — several of whom live on a compound around Pennington Lake — own about 20,000 acres of land, most of it forest. The very first tract came to the family in a congressional land grant in 1784.
“That was in Washington County,” Brooks III points out, speaking with his son from their offices at Pennington Land and Investment Group. “We know that because that was the only county at the time. Everything else belonged to the Creek and Cherokee Indians.”
The Penningtons’ immediate family now owns between 5,000 and 6,000 acres in six counties, and all are managed by Brooks III, 62, and Brooks IV, 27. The latter studied finance at the University of Georgia and has an MBA, and it’s business skills that he uses to steer the land toward profitability and sustainability.
“We’ve put it on an intensive management plan so we know what we have and what needs attention,” he says. (The Penningtons employ a pair of farm managers to help map the land and make agricultural decisions.) “Now we have master spreadsheets of each timber stand, every class of timber and soil type. When they were last burned, when they were last cut, their
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