Explore the Flannery O’Connor Memorial in Milledgeville Georgia. Stay and Play in GA!
About the Flannery O’Connor - Andalusia Foundation
This admirable collection includes signature pieces from O'Connor's farmhouse, her personal library, memorabilia and rotating exhibits.
The Flannery O’Connor - Andalusia Foundation was incorporated in 2001. The Foundation encourages and promotes an increased understanding of the life, time, surroundings, and accomplishments of Flannery O’Connor. More specifically, the purposes of the Foundation are to encourage scholarship, criticism, and study of O’Connor’s literary achievements and to facilitate and coordinate ways in which scholars, critics, teachers, students, and general readers may learn from one another in their examination of the author’s body of work.
The Foundation fulfills this mission by providing public access to the Andalusia property, where O’Connor lived and worked, and by cooperating with other institutions that provide access to O’Connor papers, artwork, and memorabilia.
The Foundation is organized as a nonprofit corporation pursuant to the provisions of the Georgia Nonprofit Corporation Code. With its tax-exempt status granted in 2001, the Foundation operates exclusively for literary, charitable and educational purposes within the meaning of Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986. It is a completely independent organization and is not affiliated with any other foundation or institution.
Amenities: Parking, Restrooms and Accessibility for mobility-impaired.
Open Thursday-Sunday at 10 am - 5 pm. Free admission, but $10 donation suggested. Free parking.
The Main House is a circa 1850s white two-story, Plantation Plain style structure with a red metal roof and several additions. These additions include three small rooms attached to the rear of the original structure and a three-room extension on the north corner of the house. All of these additions were present when Flannery O’Connor occupied the house. The three-room extension was, in fact, added for additional space in 1959 while O’Connor was living there.
The Hills' House is a modified mid-19th century plantation type cottage. It is smaller and simpler in detail than the Main House and features two front entrances. Robert “Jack” and Louise Hill, resident farmers at Andalusia, lived in this house. Formerly located in the crescent of the
driveway nearer the Main House, it was moved to its current location, approximately 225 feet to the northwest of the Main House, in the late 1940s. O’Connor refers to the Hills, along with their boarder Willie “Shot” Manson, with humor and affection on several occasions in her letters.
The Andalusia farm complex - Visitors will see the main house, including O’Connor’s room, the dining room, kitchen, and sitting room. They may also watch the movie adaptation of O’Connor’s story, "The Displaced Person," which was filmed on location at Andalusia by the Public Broadcasting System in 1976. There is also a gift shop in the main house featuring several unique souvenirs along with books by O’Connor and about her work. Visitors are encouraged to walk around the farm complex to see the dairy workers’ house, the barns, water tower, storage shed, and several other outbuildings. Field trip tours can be arranged by calling 478-454-4029 or by sending a message to wiseblood@andalusiafarm.org .
O'Connor's Childhood Home - Did you know that Flannery O'Connor's Childhood Home in Savannah is also open for tours? O'Connor lived in the house at 207 East Charlton Street from 1925 until 1938. Today, it is maintained partly as a memorial to her and partly as a literary center for Savannah. It is also the location for a fall and spring lecture series as well as other special events. Visit them on the web in here for more information.
About Mary Flannery O’Connor
Mary Flannery O’Connor was born in 1925 in Savannah, Georgia, the only child of Edward F. and Regina Cline O’Connor.
The O’Connors lived at 207 East Charlton St. across LaFayette Square from the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist where the family attended Mass. In the spring of 1938, the family moved to Atlanta where Edward O’Connor was employed as a Federal Housing Authority real estate appraiser. In 1940, the O’Connors moved to Milledgeville to live in the Cline family home on Greene Street.
Mr. O’Connor died of lupus early in 1941, and Mrs. O’Connor and Flannery continued to live in the Milledgeville family home along with Flannery’s aunts. It is here that Flannery would continue to live, with a bedroom on the second floor, while she attended Peabody High School and Georgia State College for Women (now Georgia College & State University).
When Flannery O’Connor left Milledgeville in 1945 to attend the State University of Iowa, she enrolled in the Writers Workshop conducted by Paul Engle. Her thesis there comprised a collection of short stories entitled The Geranium, which would contain the seed of her first novel. She received a Master of Fine Arts degree after two years but remained in Iowa for another year before going to the Yaddo Foundation's
artist colony near Saratoga Springs, New York.
Afterwards she lived in New York City where she was introduced to Robert and Sally Fitzgerald, with whom she lived for over a year in Ridgefield, Connecticut. During this time she was writing her first novel Wise Blood.
In late 1950 Flannery O’Connor began to exhibit symptoms of the disease that had killed her father. Her condition forced Flannery to return to Milledgeville in 1951, but she continued working on revised drafts of the novel even while she was in the hospital. But instead of returning to the family home in town, Flannery and her mother moved to the family farm, Andalusia, where Flannery lived for thirteen years, until her death in 1964.
This admirable collection includes signature pieces from O'Connor's farmhouse, her personal library, memorabilia and rotating exhibits.
The Hills' House
Mary Flannery O’Connor was born in 1925 in Savannah, Georgia, the only child of Edward F. and Regina Cline O’Connor. 
When Flannery O’Connor left Milledgeville in 1945 to attend the State University of Iowa, she enrolled in the Writers Workshop conducted by Paul Engle. Her thesis there comprised a collection of short stories entitled The Geranium, which would contain the seed of her first novel. She received a Master of Fine Arts degree after two years but remained in Iowa for another year before going to the Yaddo Foundation's
artist colony near Saratoga Springs, New York.