Leeper Farm

           5878 Leepers Ferry Rd White Pine 37890, A Revolutionary War land grant lies at the heart of the history of the Leeper Century Farm, one of the best documented properties in the state. Dating to 1838, the Leeper Farm is located 7.5 miles southeast of Morristown. Lewis F. and Lucinda Jarnigan Leeper began with 615 acres which produced corn, wheat and livestock. Lucinda was the granddaughter of Thomas Jarnigan, an early Tennessee settler and Revolutionary War veteran.

             Lewis and Lucinda had three children and their son Benjamin Leeper inherited 350 acres of the family land in 1888. He continued the common Hamblen County tradition of general farming and in 1895, he built a new farmhouse for his wife Minerva Brown and their ten children. The two-story vernacular building had a functional interior design. Shaped like an off-center “T,” the house has both a front and rear porch. Visitors entered the home through a hallway, which accessed the parlor on the left or the sitting room on the right. The hall also provided entry to the rear wing of the house. Located in the rear were the dining room and the kitchen, with the kitchen door facing the farm’s outbuildings. Minerva probably enjoyed the house’s interior arrangement of space, for it allowed her daughters to keep busy with chores in the kitchen and outbuildings at the rear of the house while she entertained visitors without distraction in the parlor.

Over the years, stories are told of people seeing the daughters playfully jumping rope near and around this early Colonial homestead.

               Lee Leeper Powers, the great grandson of the founders, inherited a sizeable portion of the family farm from his father William H. Powers in 1963. Seventeen years later, his sisters Marilyn and Martha Jane acquired their share of the family farm. Today, the Leeper family farm has 175 acres, farmed by Alan Moore, the son of Marilyn Powers Moore. Alan grows hay and cattle to feed his 60 head of cattle. He also cultivates 2.5 acres of tobacco. This is a privately owned property.