Just a week after visiting Andalusia, the dairy farm where southern author Flannery O’Connor spent her final years, we found ourselves in Savannah. I immediately booked a guided tour of the Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home.

In fact, two women we met at Andalusia had recently been to Savannah and said seeing it was a must-do. I’m so glad we took their advice! The home, situated across Lafayette Square (pictured above), offers another facet of the author’s short life.

About Flannery O’Connor

For background, Mary Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) wrote 31 short stories and two novels. She is considered a Southern Gothic writer, up there with William Faulkner, Harper Lee, and Tennessee Williams. However, Flannery preferred calling herself a Southern Grotesque writer instead. She lived in this house with her parents, Edward and Regina Cline O’Connor, until 1938, when the family moved to Atlanta and then to Milledgeville.

After earning a Master’s degree from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Flannery moved to Yaddo, an artists’ colony in Saratoga Springs, NY. She had just relocated to NYC when she fell ill on a holiday trip to visit her mother in Milledgeville, GA. Diagnosed with lupus, the same disease that claimed her father in 1941, Flannery remained at the family dairy farm in Milledgeville, Andalusia, for the last 13 years of her life. It is there, she wrote most of her famous works.

Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home – First Floor

Visitors to the row house may take self-guided tours of the first floor. However, we booked the 45-minute guided tour, which gave us access to both floors occupied by the O’Connor family.

Promptly at 11 am, Executive Director Janie Bragg began the tour in the front parlor. She explained that a distant family relative (or some say just a close family friend), Kate Flannery Semmes, owned three lots on the street. She leased 207 E. Charlton to Edward and Regina O’Connor and lived in the house at 211 E. Charlton. At some point, she tore down the house at 209 E. Charlton so she could have a driveway for her “electric car.” Yes, you read that correctly, Cousin Katie, as she was fondly called, owned one of only two electric cars in the state of Georgia. These vehicles were quickly replaced by the less expensive Ford Model T cars.

Pictured above the radio by the front windows are Edward and Regina, Flannery’s parents. Edward O’Connor was the son of a well-respected Savannah grocer. Regina Cline was from a wealthy Catholic family in Milledgeville. The two, both in their mid to late twenties, met and were married three months later in 1922. Janie pointed out that Edward’s family came to America during the Irish Potato Famine, while Regina’s family had been here some time before. This signified a difference in social status and class. Cousin Katie, a wealthy widow and distant cousin, became their benefactress and furnished most of the O’Connor parlor.

When Mary Flannery was born to the couple in 1925 (notice she was named after her relative), Cousin Katie gave the couple a state-of-the-art wicker pram. It featured shocks, a foot-brake, and a porthole window. The interior was once decked in corduroy fabric. The carriage sported the baby’s initials, MFO’C, in gold leaf.

Above the parlor fireplace hung a painting of Cousin Katie as a baby in a 50-pound gold frame. Other touches by Cousin Katie included an uncomfortable-looking settee and gold-leaf trim in the crown molding.

In the same large room sat the informal parlor. At one time, pocket doors separated the formal and informal parlors. However, by the time the O’Connors lived here, these rooms were open and only separated by an arch. Today, the informal parlor houses a sitting area for current guests, fireplace, and a small gift shop.

First Floor Addition

When Cousin Katie purchased the property in 1910, the house stretched only 40 feet deep. Around 1916, she built an addition which included the dining room, kitchen, and sunroom. We walked through the dining room to the kitchen, where a monitor-top refrigerator stood proudly against the wall. Although it looks ancient by today’s standards, the compressor on top of an ice box was modern for its time. While most of the furnishings are from the O’Connor family, this refrigerator was found at a flea market. However, it is the same model as the one the O’Connor’s used at the home.

When Cousin Katie passed away in 1958, she gave the house to Flannery, who rented it out. Upon Flannery’s death in 1964, Regina took over the property and converted the basement and top floor into apartments. In 1989, a group of professors from Armstrong Atlantic State University (now part of Georgia Southern University) purchased the house and set about restoring it to its Depression-era appearance. It took 18 years and a lot of hard work. A bulletin board shows some of the restoration efforts in the kitchen area. Fortunately, many of Flannery’s acquaintances and relatives, including Flannery’s mother, Regina, who lived until 1995, donated furnishings and gave descriptions of how the house looked in the 1920s. And yes, the pale green, Regina’s favorite color, was the original color on the walls downstairs.

We then walked back into the dining room, which is named the Bruckheimer Library. Film producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Pirates of the Caribbean, National Treasure, and CSI franchises) and his wife Linda Bruckheimer made a $100,000 donation after stumbling upon the historical marker in 2000. Today, yearbooks, family pictures, Flannery’s baptism certificate from St. John’s Basilica, and other memorabilia fill the room.

Here, I felt we learned about Flannery as a person, not the writer. Flannery constantly pushed back against the rules. While Regina probably wanted her daughter to become a prim and proper, obedient southern belle, Flannery became a rough-and-tumble tomboy often described as shy, quirky, humorous, and deeply religious.

The precocious Flannery declared herself an adult at age six. From that point on, she addressed her parents as Regina and Ed, not Mother and Father. She took a rather adult view to reading books as she would write her opinion inside the front cover. On a bookcase, we could see her childhood book, Fairy Babies, where Flannery wrote in pencil, “not a very good book.”

Janie showed us Flannery’s report card from nearby St. Vincent Academy. Surprisingly, she received the lowest marks in spelling. Her spelling never improved, as evidenced by a copy of letter written later in life. She spelled the word “since” as “seeince.” By writing how she heard things, she picked up various dialects that gave power to her writing.

However, Flannery didn’t start out as a writer. She considered a career as a cartoonist throughout college instead. We saw lithographs of Flannery’s earliest work. On the table sat a copy of Flannery O’Connor: The Cartoons edited by Kelly Gerard. You can read an excerpt from the book at The Paris Review.

Because we were such a small group, Janie allowed us to step into the sunroom. It contained wicker furniture, including a chaise lounge. Edward was reported to have napped on the chaise lounge during the workday – something considered scandalous at the time! In reality, Edward was a hard worker. While some real estate ventures failed during the Depression, he secured a job with the Federal Housing Administration in Atlanta in 1938. Historians now think his napping was most likely due to exhaustion from lupus, which was undiagnosed at the time.

Regina decorated the sunroom with lots of potted plants and ferns and kept several canaries. We peeked through the window at the small backyard where Flannery entertained chickens. Flannery made clothes for the chickens and walked them on a leash around Savannah. Cousin Katie had the news feature a story about the six-year-old Flannery training a chicken to walk backwards. Unfortunately, the chicken got cold feet and wouldn’t perform. The cameraman simply rewound the chicken walking forward for the story. You can see it here from Pathe News.

Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home – Second Floor

As we headed up the stairs, Janie explained that the second floor looks more middle-class, reflecting less of Cousin Katie’s influence. A sunny bathroom with a clawfoot tub sat at the top of the staircase. This was Flannery’s favorite room. She often picked flowers from Cousin Katie’s yard and attached them to the walls. Many times, she’d shut the door and read for hours in the bathtub. She even held playdates here, reading Grimm’s Fairytales to whoever would stay to listen!

The two twin-sized beds in Flannery’s bedroom, at the back of the house, originally belonged to Edward and Regina. In a corner, dolls and play furniture sat. A child-size table boasted four chairs with triangle-shaped seats, fitting perfectly underneath the round tabletop. This was made by Flannery’s Uncle Louis, who also lived at Andalusia in the 1950s.

Before leaving to go into Regina and Edward’s bedroom, Janie pointed out a small closet, added by Cousin Katie. It wasn’t very deep, but it allowed enough room to hang clothes against the wall on pegs.

The only other room on the second floor belonged to Edward and Regina. Facing Lafayette Square and St. John’s Basilica, pictures of the Last Supper and a young Flannery graced the walls. While the bed frame, matching dressing table, and chest of drawers are indicative of the period, they are not original. However, the bedspread, donated by Regina, is original.

Lastly, Janie pointed out the Kiddie-Koop, a contraption that looks like a chicken coop on wheels. The Kiddie-Koop allowed parents to let their baby get fresh air while protecting them from mosquitoes and yellow fever. In today’s time, the Kiddie-Koop looks more like a cage.

The tour concluded with a view from the O’Connor home. Right across Lafayette Square stands the Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist, where Flannery was baptized and attended. While the Catholic population was in the minority, you wouldn’t know it living in this area.

Conclusion

The Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home provides a stark contrast to Andalusia, the dairy farm where she lived the last 13 years of her life. This historic city home in Savannah is bright and cheery, showing wealth, whereas Andalusia is a farm requiring hard work, far from a major city. The dairy farm wasn’t the first choice for the widowed Regina or her ill daughter, but it seemed to be the only choice available to them at the time. You have to visit the childhood home to see how different life was for the O’Connor family after the Depression and Edward’s death.

The Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home offers guided tours three times a day from Thursday to Sunday. For more information, click the Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home website here.