Tolls” and “The Old Man and the Sea,” at his second home
in Cuba with his ten-foot-long desk shaped like a boomerang.
However, examining famous local authors and their
homes can be fascinating. Nine members of the Georgia
Writers Hall of Fame lived for some of their lives within 30
miles of downtown Eatonton. Here are a few honorees and
little-known facts about their homes.
Flannery O’Connor
Put the name Flannery O’Connor and the word “home”
in the same sentence, and most think of Andalusia, the
farm at the edge of Milledgeville where she lived with her
mother from 1952 until she died in 1964.
But her teenage years were spent in the family estate on
Greene Street a few blocks from Peabody High School and
Georgia State College for Women (now Georgia College),
where she studied.
She lived in the house with her mother and three unmarried
aunts. Flannery’s mother’s father had been the first
Catholic mayor of Milledgeville. The home once served
as the Governor’s mansion for a few months while the
permanent dwelling was being constructed.
It was in this elegant house her love for the literary
world blossomed. Flannery chose the attic as her place
to draw and write.
14 LAKE OCONEE LIVING | FALL 2022
Alice Walker
The house where Alice Walker was born on
Wards Chapel Road was demolished. However,
this house (pictured) was where she spent
almost all of her childhood. It stands far off
Wards Chapel near the graveyard where her
parents are buried.
As the youngest of eight children, her shared
bedroom is lined with newspaper her mother
used as wallpaper to cover gaps in the wooden
walls. Her writing career began here. Even
as a toddler, she pretended to read the Sears
Roebuck catalog, using a stick as a make-believe
pen.
In the late 1970s, after releasing her
award-winning, best-selling book, “The Color Purple,” Alice
settled in Mendocino, a coastal community in northern
California. At a recent Georgia Writers Museum “Meet
the Author” event, she commented, “I have traveled the
world, and now I just enjoy being home.”
Her most recent book, edited by the late Valerie Boyd,
was released in April.
John T. Edge
John T. Edge was born in Clinton, Ga., near Gray. An only
child, his family lived in the home that was the birthplace
of Confederate Brigadier General Alfred Iverson.
John T., as he has always been called, spent his childhood
riding his yellow bike to Old Clinton Barbeque nearby,
where he developed a love for Southern food and its rich
cultural history. He recently did a video on his mother’s
catfish stew.
He wrote these words about his childhood home: “Thinking
of my mother, and of the home in the woods where I
| by the book |
Before moving to her farm at the edge
of Milledgeville, Andalusia, Flannery
O’Connor spent her teenage years in
this house in the heart of downtown that
once served as the Governor’s mansion.
Before it was demolished, this house on Wards Chapel
Road in Eatonton was where Alice Walker spent almost
all of her childhood.