Brown-Pennington-Atkins

In 1915, Carl Melvin Pennington Sr. moved from Byrdtown to Hartsville and purchased the funeral parlor located in M. D. Byrd’s furniture store (current location of Da Massimo Ristorante Italiano on West Carolina Avenue).The Brown brothers, Heyward, Loraine and Claude, opened the Brown Funeral Home in 1922 in conjunction with their monument company, Hartsville Marble Works.In 1929, the Brown Funeral Home was moved from Carolina Avenue to the Brown residence (built in 1903) on West Home Avenue (current location of our funeral home). Leon Pennington, son of C. Melvin Pennington, managed the Pennington Funeral Home until 1939, when he and Heyward Brown merged their funeral homes, forming the Brown-Pennington Funeral Home. The funeral home was remodeled and a chapel was added in 1957.

In1968, the funeral home changed its name to Brown-Pennington-Atkins to reflect the addition of a longtime employee, C.W. (Billy) Atkins, as a new partner. At that time, Walter Brown and Howard Brown, sons of Heyward Brown, became partners along with Carl. M. (C. M.) Pennington Jr., son of C. Melvin Pennington. In 1995, Carl M. Pennington III and Kimrey Pennington, sons of C. M. Pennington, along with Walter Brown, became third generation partners in the funeral home. Carl M. (Mel) Pennington IV, son of Carl Pennington, joined the funeral home in 2001 and is a fourth generation funeral director. In 2014, we opened Hartsville's first on-site crematory.