O'Connor at Andalusia

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Dr. Cline had named the property Sorrel Farm, because of the sorrel-colored horses he kept there. In the fall of 1946, before Dr. Cline's death, Flannery O'Connor met on a bus to Atlanta a descendant of the original Hawkins family that owned Andalusia. It was this descendant who told her the original name of the farm in the 19th century was Andalusia. She wrote her mother, and when her uncle Bernard heard of it, he was pleased and liked the name. From then on the farm was called Andalusia.

A year after they inherited the estate, Regina O’Connor and Louis Cline began expanding the farm operation and established 200 acres of pasture, several hay fields, and livestock ponds. The rest of the property was kept in woodlands for selective timbering. Because Louis Cline continued to work in Atlanta and came to Milledgeville mostly on the weekends, the management of the farm was primarily left in Mrs. O’Connor’s hands with tenant help and hired labor. She was very successful with the farm. As a widow managing a sizeable dairy in the 1950s, Mrs. O’Connor acquired distinction as a businesswoman.

Louis Cline had a substantial income and was largely responsible for providing the farm’s supplies and equipment. In the very late 1950s he added a small suite of rooms on the north corner of the Main House, giving him a

place to stay when he came down from Atlanta. The sitting room portion of this addition became the place where Flannery put her beautiful tall bookcases.

In the early 1960s when farm labor problems were becoming serious, Regina O’Connor decided to get out of the dairy business. She converted Andalusia to a beef cattle farm. But after Flannery died in 1964, Mrs. O’Connor soon moved back to the Cline family house in town on Greene Street and turned the daily management of the cattle over to a series of caretakers. After the cattle were gone, many of Flannery’s swans, geese, and ducks remained at Andalusia along with the peacocks. None of the descendants of O’Connor’s domestic flocks has survived, at least not at the farm.

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