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Mrs. Alice E. McCraw died intestate on February 1, 1930, and Hugh T. Cline (Flannery O’Connor’s uncle) was appointed as the administrator of her estate. Under the proceeding of the estate, the 1,700-acre tract was divided into two parts with 895.8 acres of the land acquired by the estate of Judge Allen, who died before the settlement was complete. The remaining acreage was subdivided into three lots belonging to Mrs. McCraw’s Estate (Lot One - 325 acres), Miss Virginia McCraw (Lot Two - 225 acres), and Miss Alice McCraw (Lot Three - 262.5 acres). The 550 acres comprising Lots One and Two almost exactly match the boundaries of Andalusia and apparently were the location for the house and farm complex of the previous owners.
Dr. Bernard McHugh Cline in the parlor of the Cline house
On February 2, 1931, Hugh T. Cline, as Administrator of Mrs. McCraw’s Estate, filed an application to sell Lot One. On October 7, 1931 Dr. Bernard McHugh Cline (brother of Hugh T. Cline and Flannery O’Connor’s uncle) acquired the 325-acre tract and completed the purchase by November 1933. Also in November 1933, Miss Virginia McCraw executed a warranty deed and conveyed
her 225-acre tract to Bernard Cline,
which completed his acquisition of Andalusia.
Dr. Bernard Cline was a physician with a specialty in eye, ear, nose and throat medicine, who practiced in Atlanta. He hired workers to operate the farm, and he came down to Milledgeville on the weekends. He also began to buy other wooded tracts to the north of the farm from other owners, specifically the Hall-Kenan property. In the early 1940s he sent his sister (Flannery O’Connor’s mother), Regina Cline O’Connor, to Atlanta to train her to become the bookkeeper for the farm. When Dr. Cline died unexpectedly in January 1947, he left the farm in a life estate to Regina O’Connor and another brother, Louis Cline, who was a hardware salesman also working out of Atlanta.
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