How Many Acres Are There?

The 1947 entry in Sally Fitzgerald's chronology in the Library of America volume, Flannery O'Connor Collected Works, explains that upon his death, Dr. Bernard Cline left the Andalusia property to his sister, Regina Cline O'Connor (Flannery's mother), and another brother, Louis Cline. The text states that the Andalusia Farm included "500 acres of fields and 1,000 acres of woods." That particular description is not exactly accurate. Bernard Cline actually acquired two tracts of land equaling 550-acres in the early 1930s that were the core of a 1700-acre plantation in the 19th century. It is out of this original property that Dr. Cline and his immediate heirs carved a farm complex, hayfields, and livestock ponds. It was some time after this initial purchase that Dr. Cline began to acquire wooded sections north of the farm, totalling 1,000 acres in size, which remained undeveloped during his lifetime and were never part of the Andalusia Farm. This section was later divided and tracts were distributed to some of Dr. Cline's relatives. Developers eventually purchased some of these tracts and created the Northwoods subdivision, which includes O'Connor Drive and Regina Drive. Today, Andalusia is 544 acres in size (six acres were lost to the highway expansion several decades ago), and the Flannery O'Connor - Andalusia Foundation owns approximately 524 of those acres, including the main house, the outbuildings, pastures, hayfields, several ponds, and forests. In two separate transactions in 2003, the Foundation acquired this property from Mrs. O'Connor's Estate and from the private owners of the twenty-acre farm complex . The remaining twenty-acre tract is located just north of the farm complex and is held by the Executor of Mrs. O'Connor's Estate.

Craig