A Walk Back in Time

“I do not know how any one can live without some small place of enchantment to turn to.” -Cross Creek 1942

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was born August 8, 1896, in Washington D.C. where she grew up. From an early age she loved writing. As an adult she wrote for various newspapers and magazines but wasn’t having much success. Hoping for some financial independence and allow time for writing, Marjorie and her husband Charles left New York were they were living and moved to a 72 acre orange grove near Cross Creek, Florida.

It turned out to be this magical place and the people she met that inspired her greatest literary successes. She wrote “Cracker Childlings” and “Jacobs Ladder” along with other stories inspired by the persons and places she had come to know. Marjorie did most of her writing on her screened porch at the table Charles had built for her. She learned the weather patterns and the seasons along with the flora and fauna at Cross Creek.

In 1933 she published “South Moon Under” set in the nearby Big Scrub. Her husband had become discontented with life at Cross Creek and they divorced later that year. Her next novel “Golden Apples” was published in 1935. When Marjorie published “The Yearling” in 1938 it became an international bestseller and won the pulitzer prize in 1939.

It’s the story of a family living in the Florida scrub while struggling to make a living off the land. It features 12 year old Jody and his fawn. Cross Creek, published in 1942 is a love story to a place and an account of the neighbors who became her friends.

“The first orange blossoms have opened. For a month or six weeks, we shall be giddy by day with them and at night drawn in a sea of perfume. When the orange blossoms are almost done, the grapefruit blooms and then the tangerines. …after having lived with them for a few years, one knows blindfolded which citrus fruit is flowering and what month it is.” – Cross Creek, 1941

Marjorie died on December 14, 1953 and was buried in Antioch Cemetery in Island Grove, Florida. She bequeathed her Cross Creek home to the University of Florida. It is now a State Park in Florida. The Rawlings home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was named a National Historic Landmark in 2006.

The barn was the center of activity on the farm as you can imagine. The oranges were picked, put in crates in the wagon, and taken to packing houses in Island Grove. The barn also housed the milk cow, a mule and other livestock.