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Nature: Marjorie Rawlings Historic Site |
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 Visitors
to this Florida homestead can walk back in time to 1930s farm life.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings lived
and worked in the tiny community of Cross Creek. Her cracker style home
and farm, where she lived for 25 years and wrote her Pulitzer
prize-winning novel The Yearling, has been restored and is
preserved as it was when she lived here. Marjorie Rawlings was honored as a First Floridian by Governor Crist in March of 2009. The United States Postal Service released a commemorative stamp in 2008 honoring Marjorie and the literary arts. In 2007 the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings house and farm yard was designated as a National Historic Landmark. The National Historic Landmark designation is the highest such recognition accorded by our nation to historic properties determined to be of exceptional value in representing or illustrating an important theme, event or person in the history of the nation. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings began the story of her life in this rural Florida community. Coming to Cross Creek in 1928 with her husband Charles Rawlings, she settled into her new life in this "half-wide, backwoods country," growing oranges, cooking on a wood-burning stove, writing down her impressions of the land and her Cracker neighbors. Immediately, she felt an affinity for the place and made a lifelong commitment to it: "When I came to the Creek, I knew the old grove and the farmhouse at once as home."An unknown writer when she moved here in 1928, Mrs. Rawlings committed herself to this small, remote community and lived in poverty. Seven years passed before she sold her first story, but as the people and environment of Cross Creek fueled her creative fire, her reputation grew and she eventually penned her most famous work. A typical cracker house homestead, designed for optimum cross-ventilation, the house consists of three clapboard units connected by porches and shaded by wide overhangs and the surrounding orange trees and magnolia. It is painted white with green trim and is modestly furnished.  Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings sat most often on the wide veranda at her typewriter,
writing the books that would endear her to the world and capture forever
the beauty of Florida and the spirit of its people. The Yearling, an
American classic and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, is the story of young
Jody Baxter’s coming of age in the big scrub country which is now the
Ocala National Forest. Cross Creek is a chronicle of her life at the
Creek, a "love story," she called it, where she reveals her favorite
haunts, marvels at the passing of the seasons, introduces the reader to
her friends and neighbors and shares with the whole world her love of
Florida. Here, the land and its people roused her, and her writings
blossomed into works that have placed her among the best known names in
American literature.Outside, the citrus grove of orange, grapefruit and tangerine trees surrounded the house. In the magic of the grove, she found her greatest pleasure: "Enchantment lies in different things for each of us. For me, it is in this: to step out of the bright sunlight into the shade of oranges trees; to walk under the arched canopy of their jade-like leaves; to see the long aisles of lichened trunks stretch ahead in a geometric rhythm; to feel the mystery of a seclusion that yet has shafts of light striking through it. This is the essence of an ancient and secret magic." In her groves, Marjorie Rawlings found peace and inspiration. Her book Cross Creek ends with these words: "It seems to me that the earth may be borrowed but not bought. It may be used but not owned. It gives itself in response to love and tending, offers its seasonal flowering and fruiting. But we are tenants and not possessors, lovers and not masters. Cross Creek belongs to the wind and the rain, to the sun and the seasons, to the cosmic secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time." Divorced from Charles Rawlings in 1933, Marjorie Rawlings stayed on at the Creek alone through the Great Depression and into more prosperous times. In 1941, she married Norton Baskin and divided her time between their St. Augustine home and her Cross Creek retreat where she continued to write up until her death in 1953 at the age of 57. |
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Marjorie Rawlings Historic Site in Florida
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings began the story of her life in this rural Florida community. Coming to Cross Creek in 1928 with her husband Charles Rawlings, she settled into her new life in this "half-wide, backwoods country," growing oranges, cooking on a wood-burning stove, writing down her impressions of the land and her Cracker neighbors.
Visitors to this Florida homestead can walk back in time to 1930s farm life. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings lived and worked in the tiny community of Cross Creek. Her cracker style home and farm, where she lived for 25 years and wrote her Pulitzer prize-winning novel The Yearling, has been restored and is preserved as it was when she lived here. When you finish your tour we recommend dinner at the Yearling Restaurant, located just a short distance away. Stop by and sample old Florida, as it was and enjoy the sights and cuisine just as they were in the early 1900's.
Written by: Floridian Nature
Marjorie Rawlings Historic Site
Date published: 10/23/2013
4 / 5 stars
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