Andalusia, Plantation turned house museum in Milledgeville, United States.
Andalusia is a former plantation property that now functions as a house museum in Milledgeville. The grounds encompass approximately 544 acres containing a main residence, fourteen outbuildings, cultivated fields, and wooded areas.
In the mid-19th century the land was a plantation of 1,500 to 1,700 acres owned by Joseph and Mary "Polly" Stovall and worked by at least 39 enslaved people. After Polly Stovall's death it was sold at public auction to Nathan Hawkins, a former mayor of Milledgeville, and in 1870 to Col. Thomas Johnson of Kentucky. Flannery O'Connor moved here with her mother in 1951 and wrote most of her life's work at the farm until her death in 1964. The house was listed on the National Register in 1980, opened as a museum in 2003, and was named a National Historic Landmark on February 24, 2022.
Flannery O'Connor called the farm "Andalusia" after the Spanish region, a name already attached to the property before her family inherited it. She wrote to editor Robert Giroux that she was "up and around again" but not well enough to return to Connecticut, and hosted visitors there including writer Katherine Anne Porter and Jesuit priest Fr. James McCown. Her short story "The Displaced Person" is the one scholars say most closely resembles the farm.
The grounds are walkable and feature paths connecting different areas of the estate. Visitors should wear sturdy shoes since many pathways are unpaved, and conditions may vary depending on weather and season.
Flannery O'Connor called Andalusia a temporary stop while her lupus was treated, yet she stayed from 1951 until her death in 1964 and wrote most of her life's work in the house. In a letter she reported the farm's news: "This season we have had three peachickens hatch and have killed one rattlesnake. Otherwise nothing goes on around here."
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