Gjorslev and the Scavenius Family

In the Board's minutes of decision of 13 July 1921: Mindehøj for the Scavenius family is mentioned and the location is indicated. It was not erected by the Højeruplund Society as such, but by a group of men on Stevns with the Society's approval..

The Scavenius family at Gjorslev can be traced back to Jens Thomsen Brøndum in Skagen. His great-grandson,

Jacob Brønnum Scavenius (Owner of Gjorslev 1793 – 1820) was born in Skagen in 1749. Jacob Brønnun Scavenius studied theology and law at the University of Copenhagen, and travelled to the East in 1877 with the Asiatic Company. In 1792, he returned a very wealthy man. There are several myths surrounding the specific circumstances of his fortune – one is that he married an Indian princess – received a large dowry – and threw her overboard on the way home.

In 1793, he bought the estates Gjorslev, Erikstrup, and Søholm, and in the same year, he married into the Suhr family, a financially advantageous match. In 1798, he purchased the Klintholm estate on Møn. He managed the estates with great skill, initiating the enclosure of peasant land and the fencing and preservation of the forests. Furthermore, he developed the chalk quarrying on Stevns Klint and established the chalk factory near Bøgeskoven. According to Dansk Biografisk Leksikon, it states: “With his work, prosperity developed among the farmers and the estates were consolidated.“A fine legacy, but is it the whole truth? If we delve into the archives, it is evident from letters, court documents, lease protocols, lawsuits, and not least, letters from estate manager Wilhjelm to Scavenius between 1793 and 1820, that Scavenius, from the beginning of the 1800s until his death in 1820, was in perpetual dispute with the peasants over irregularities in the hereditary lease deeds.

Everywhere the issue was the real ownership of the farms, and thus the lease payments to the estate.