Ever since I read the short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, I’ve wanted to learn more about this Southern writer. It turns out the farmhouse where she lived out the last 13 years of her short life is located in Milledgeville.
Milledgeville, just two hours from Atlanta, brims with history. The town served as the capital of Georgia from 1804 to 1868. It boasts the Old Governor’s Mansion, Georgia College & State University (GCSU), and the Old Capitol Building, which is not part of Georgia Military College.
Flannery O’Connor and Andalusia
O’Connor wasn’t born in Milledgeville, but rather in Savannah in 1925. When she was around 13, the family moved first to Atlanta, and then to Milledgeville, her mother’s hometown. O’Connor stayed in “Milly” through 1945 when she graduated from Georgia State College for Women (now GCSU).
After a few years on her own in Iowa and New York, O’Connor moved back to Milledgeville. She lived with her mother at Andalusia, a dairy farm purchased by O’Connor’s uncle, Dr. Bernard Cline. It was at Andalusia that O’Connor wrote many of her prominent short stories and two novels.
The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
Flannery O’Connor
Years later, the Andalusia Foundation opened the site for tours. However, in 2017, GCSU took over the operations and began the arduous task of restoring many of the buildings. In 2023, the college built an interpretive center to highlight not only Flannery O’Connor but also the farm’s history. It was here that we purchased tickets for the guided tour.
In 2017, Georgia College & State University (GCSU) took over the operations at Andalusia. The University recently constructed an interpretive center where visitors can learn about O’Connor’s life and literary works. Students from GCSU lead tours of the farmhouse on the top of every hour for $7 per person.
Andalusia Main House
As we headed to the main house for the tour, we walked past one of three small ponds on the 544-acre land. A few yards farther, the two-story white house, complete with a screened porch and a red roof, came into view. The yard contained a clothesline coming off the back of the house, metal lawn chairs off to the side, and a water tower.
Our guide, an English major at GCSU, met us at the back of the house and took us inside, past a sewing porch, into an empty room. He told us the farmhouse was built around 1860, replacing the original plantation house, which we could see from the large windows. The room we were standing in had been O’Connor’s mother, Regina Cline O’Connor’s, bedroom. He then told us more about Flannery O’Connor’s strong-willed mother as he ushered us into Regina’s office.
Regina Cline was born into a wealthy Irish-Catholic family. Her father, Peter Cline, purchased the elegant 1820-built Cline House on Greene Street downtown (between Liberty and Clarke Streets). He later served as Milledgeville’s mayor from 1889 to 1891. Regina married Edward O’Connor and settled in Savanah. In 1938, they relocated with their only child, Mary Flannery, to Atlanta.
Our docent explained that once Regina and Flannery got to Atlanta, they didn’t like “city life” and returned to the Cline House in Milledgeville. A few short years later, Edward died in 1941 of lupus. Regina’s brother, Dr. Bernard Cline, sent Regina to bookkeeping classes and then put her in charge of running the dairy farm at Andalusia. This gave her a much-needed source of income, especially while raising a teenager.
The office, a gray room with no windows, sat in the center of the farmhouse. An attic fan provided cool air while Regina operated the dairy farm, an unusual occupation for a female at the time. You can see details of Regina’s ledgers from Assorted Regards, a blog by Andalusia staff here. When Bernard Cline died in 1947, he left the farm to Regina and another brother, Louis Cline.
After receiving a graduate degree from The Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, O’Connor moved to Yaddo, an artists’ colony in New York. On a trip to Milledgeville in 1950, O’Connor became ill and was diagnosed with lupus, the same disease that claimed her father’s life. At that time, both she and her mother moved to Andalusia, where she lived until her death in 1964.
Next up was the kitchen. While it looked sparse to me, it featured some of the latest gadgets. The Hotpoint refrigerator on the wall leading to the dining room was purchased by O’Connor with the money she earned selling the rights to her story, “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.” The fridge had an automatic ice maker and a lever on the bottom that pushed the unit away from the wall. According to the docent, O’Connor often tripped on the floor lever with her crutches.
We briefly peered into Louis’s bedroom off the back of the house, which he used during visits from his traveling salesman job. From here, we entered the reading room, with large bookcases, a sofa, and large windows. This was where O’Connor entertained authors and friends at Andalusia. The two Eastlake bookcases were built in the 1870s and came from the estate of O’Connor’s benefactress Kate Flannery Semmes (1868-1958). Cousin Katie, as she was called, leased the home in Savannah to the O’Connor family and took them under her wing. Some historians claim Cousin Katie was distantly related to Regina, while others claim she was just a close family friend.
Unfortunately, the Andalusia staff keeps the shades fully closed to protect the furnishings. Additionally, the curtains, many of which Regina sewed, no longer hang from the curtain rods. This gives the appearance of a dark, sterile place rather than the sunlit home it once was.
The dining room felt similar with its covered windows. I tried to envision the sunshine streaming through the windows while we looked at O’Connor’s miniature collection in the corner. One thing I noticed was the lack of chandeliers. Instead, the light fixtures reminded me of not-very-exciting ceiling fixtures from the 1960s. We entered the main foyer, which had a staircase and the front door to the porch. Currently, the second floor, which consists of two bedrooms, is closed for renovations.
Lastly, we walked into O’Connor’s bedroom, which had once been the parlor. Talk about depressing! O’Connor’s bedroom was a chaotic mix of bookcases. Next to her bed, a pair of crutches leaned against a huge bureau, which blocked her writing desk. Had she not become ill, I think O’Connor would have preferred to stay in New York. Instead, her illness, which caused her to lose hair and suffer debilitating joint pain, forced her to move in with her mother.
Originally, O’Connor lived in one of the two bedrooms upstairs. Around 1958, Louis Cline added the wing with his bedroom, bathroom, and sitting room. (The kitchen, office, Regina’s bedroom, and the back porch were added by Dr. Cline in the 1940s.) As her condition worsened, she moved to this room on the first floor and the family used Louis’s sitting room as the reading room and area to entertain guests.
The docent said O’Connor put the armoire in front of her desk as a barricade against her mother, who often came in unannounced. O’Connor kept a rigid writing schedule. After attending daily mass, O’Connor would write for several hours until noon. To keep herself from distractions, she turned her desk toward the back of the piece of furniture. In the afternoons, O’Connor would visit her peacocks, of which she had over 40. Peacocks often appeared in O’Connor’s writing, and we noted the decorative peacock feathers on the table in the entrance hall, next to pictures of her father and her uncle, Dr. Cline.
Andalusia Grounds
The tour concluded and the guide encouraged us to walk around the property. The land had been a 1,700-acre cotton plantation during the 1800s. The Hill House was reportedly the original plantation house until Joseph Stovall built the current main house in 1860.
The Hill House got its name from the tenant farmers, Robert and Louise Hill, who lived in the house in the 1950s. Except for a kitchen and bathroom, the other rooms were completely bare.
To the north sat the dairy barn and milk cooling shed. Dr. Cline originally used the land for entertaining and riding horses. At some point in the 1940s, Dr. Cline opened the dairy farm and put Regina in charge of operations. Regina ran a tight ship and later added cattle in the 1960s. Other buildings on the farm included the horse barn and a shed with old farming equipment.
We couldn’t leave the farm without visiting the two peafowl. Astor, the peacock, strutted around with his feathers displayed while Mrs. Shortley, the peahen, ignored us. During Flannery O’Connor’s time at Andalusia, the peafowl constantly ate Regina’s flowers.
Interpretive Center
Inside the interpretive center, we walked around the exhibits. Dresses Regina made were on display, as well as photos of family members, baby clothes, and correspondence bills from the running of the Andalusia farm.
We learned about O’Connor’s first cousins, the Florencourt sisters, Margaret, Louise, Catherine, and Frances, who spent summers with Flannery in Milledgeville. It was Louise Florencourt (1926-2023), who moved to Andalusia to help Regina (O’Connor’s mother) before she passed away in 1995 (31 years after her daughter).
Miss Louise, as she was affectionately called, sounds like a spitfire – she earned her law degree from Harvard in 1953 and worked as legal counsel for the ICC (Interstate Commerce System), FCC (Federal Communications Commission), and the Federal Merit Systems Protection Board before retiring in Milledgeville. After Regina’s death, Miss Louise ran the Flannery O’Connor Charitable Trust and then, with her sister, Margaret Florencourt Mann, opened the farm to the public through the Flannery O’Connor – Andalusia Foundation in 2001, before giving it to GCSU in 2017. Had it not been for Miss Louise’s devotion to preserving O’Connor’s memorabilia and copyrighted works, we wouldn’t be standing in the interpretive center today.
When Miss Louise died in 2023, family members found close to 40 of O’Connor’s paintings in her attic at Cline House. Many people didn’t even know O’Connor painted! Fortunately, GCSU unveiled them in conjunction with O’Connor’s 100th birthday celebration in 2025 and they were still on display during our visit.
In Conclusion
If you find yourself in Milledgeville, Andalusia is worth a visit. All in all, we spent just a little over an hour. Tours begin on the hour, every hour, from 10 am to 4 pm Tuesday through Saturday, and from 2 to 4 pm on Sunday. However, visitors can tour the interpretive center and walk the grounds for free.
For more information about Andalusia, click the website here. The FaceBook page Andalusia, Flannery O’Connor posts lots of pictures and historical tidbits (many I used as a source for this post) as well as the blog Assorted Regards, Between the Lines of Flannery O’Connor’s Andalusia curated by GCSU staff. You can also take a virtual tour of the house here.
Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information
Flannery O’Connor
about life to last him the rest of his days.
A major reference for this post was found at the following: Amason, Craig R. “From Agrarian Homestead to Literary Landscape: A Brief History of Flannery O’Connor’s Andalusia.” Flannery O’Connor Review 2 (2003): 4–14. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26669781.