Sweet Briar College administrator learns of his ties to school’s founder

By Christa Desrets

Published: November 16, 2008

The history surrounding the landscape of Sweet Briar College was like a calling to Wayne Stark when he took a job as the school’s director of career services nearly eight years ago.

The Ohio native never imagined that he would have a place in that legacy.

But, as Stark discovered this month, his lineage connects him directly to Indiana Fletcher Williams, the founder of Sweet Briar.

“It is kind of fascinating,” he said of the revelation. “I was kind of called here … . It just fits with one of the reasons why I’m here, without really knowing that was the case going into it.”

A former history teacher, Stark enjoyed learning about Sweet Briar’s heritage, and how the early death of Indiana’s daughter, Daisy, led to the founding of the college.

“I really had an interest in the history here, and I’d go exploring and hiking,” he said. “I didn’t think too much about it.”

Fueled by that interest, in late October he attended a lecture by Lynn Rainville, founding director of the Tusculum Institute, a resource center at Sweet Briar for historic preservation.

Rainville spoke about Tusculum, the 18th-century home of Maria Crawford, the mother of Indiana Fletcher Williams.

In her lecture, Rainville mentioned a woman named Sophia Penn, Maria Crawford’s mother.

“Penn — that’s just a huge name in my history,” Stark recalled thinking.

He started going back through “piles and piles of papers and notebooks” filled with his family history that were put together by his great-grandmother.

“And lo and behold,” he said, “I saw that there was a potential connection.”

He just needed Rainville to help connect the dots.

“It was fairly easy to match up to the right generation,” Rainville said. “He’s actually descended from what is basically the grandparents of the founders of Sweet Briar.”

“It does go to show — you always say six degrees of separation.”

Specifically, Stark’s sixth great-grand uncle, Colonel Abraham Penn, was the brother of Gabriel Penn, Indiana Fletcher William’s grandfather.

That makes Stark the third cousin, five times removed, of Indiana, he said.

Rainville said that any one person could have hundreds of thousands of relatives within just a few generations.

So the chances of finding an unexpected connection just by recognizing a single name, is, at best, unlikely.

“If he had been from around here, it wouldn’t have been as remarkable,” she said. “It’s just coincidence that he was interested enough to know the history.

“It’s definitely one heck of a coincidence.”

Many others who work at Sweet Briar and who still live in the area share personal connections to the college that they long have known about since “it’s part of their own family lore,” she said.

Stark, 44, lived in Ohio, Arizona, Northern Virginia, Kansas and Indiana before making it back to what turns out to be closer to home than he realized.

“I actually have this long, big (genealogy) chart in my office right now that has it all mapped out,” he said.