Petersen family

Hans Pedersen

Inger Pedersen, née Engel

Engelholm was created when the former Vordingborg Cavalry District (Vordingborg Ryttergods) was divided into 12 estates and sold by the crown in the middle of the 1770s. One of them, until then known as Skovbygaard, was sold to Hans Petersen, a local master butcher. He had previously been indicted for charging double prices for all deliveries to queen dowager Juliane Marie's household but was acquitted due to lack of evidence. He was able to buy the estate after marrying the wealthy widow of a miller in 1773. She was called Inger Engel, and Hans Petersen named the estate after her. Hans Petersen completed a new main building on the estate in 1785, and prior to that had also improved the farm buildings. Their son Peter Benedict Petersen took over the estate after his father in 1803. The manor fell into neglect during the crisis years of the 1800s and 1810s.

Ludvig Georg Cøln and state-ownership, 1825–1830

In 1825, Peter Petersen's heirs sold Engelholm to Ludvig Georg Cøln. He was also hit by economic difficulties and the estate therefore entered administration by the Treasury (Rentekammeret) in 1827.^[1] By 1830, Cøln with his wife, two of their children, a maid and two lodgers in a first floor apartment in Møntergade in Copenhagen.^[2]

Wolff family

Banjamin Wolf

In 1830, the Treasury sold Engelholm to Benjamin Wolff. He had studied law at the University of Copenhagen before travelling to Calcutta, where he was employed by the trading house Cruttenden, Mackillop & Co., of which he later became a partner before returning to Denmark as a wealthy man in 1829. In 1832, he married Julie Sneedorff. They kept a large household at Engelholm. Their guests included Bertel Thorvaldsen and Adam Oehlenschläger. Wolf was an amateur painter and had also built a collection of local drawings and watercolours in India which he supplemented with Danish works after his return to the country. In 1855, Wolf also purchased the estate Grevensvænge.

Wolf's eldest son, Hans Christian Theodor Wolf, who had served as a military officer in the Second Schleswig War, inherited the Engelholm in 1866. He and his brother Germer Wolf changed their last name to Wolff-Sneedorrf the following year in accordance with a wish made by their father in his will. Hans Christian Theodor Wolff-Sneedorrf was also bank manager of the local savings bank in Præstø. None of his sons outlived him and in 1906 he chose to cede Engelholm to his brother, who had already inherited Grevensvænge after their mother's death in 1875. Germer Wolff-Sneedorrf was a military officer with rank of rittmeister and chamberlain. He passed Engelholm on to his son Knud Wolff-Sneedorf in 1925.^[1]