By 
This month, my search for Florida historic sites led me to the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park in Cross Creek.
Marjorie Rawlings was a prolific Florida author in the 1930s. Marjorie and her husband Charles moved from Rochester, NY and purchased a 72-acre citrus orchard in 1928. Marjorie wrote fictional stories about the old Florida lifestyle, as well as an autobiography and a cookbook, mostly from her front porch. His most famous book, “The Yearling,” was made into a movie. She loved Florida, but Charles didn’t, so she eventually moved back to New York. Marjorie Rawlings was not immediately accepted. She was considered a wealthy city girl, and Cross Creek was a small, tight-knit community unaccustomed to strangers. But Marjorie was a very generous person and it wasn’t long before people welcomed her.
We began our journey by traveling the back roads of Central Florida to the town of Cross Creek, south of Gainesville. After parking in a shady dirt parking lot, we left our car to walk through the citrus grove to the corral. We entered the grove through an old rusty gate and immediately saw a sign with a Marjorie Rawlings quote dated 1942. “It is necessary to leave the impersonal road. To enter through the rusty gate … Exit a world and enter the mysterious another’s heart … nostalgia … that mystical beauty of childhood again … “We signed up for a tour of the house. While we waited for the tour to begin, we waited in a covered area next to the barn and flipped through a scrapbook of photos of Marjorie Rawlings’ life in Cross Creek.
Our tour guide Ray came to meet us and started with the story of how Marjorie Rawlings came to Cross Creek. He lived in an old Florida Cracker style house. Florida Cracker homes were built to be comfortable in the hot Florida climate with space underneath for air to circulate, large covered porches for shade, and lots of open windows and doors to catch the cool breeze.
Ray took us on a tour of the house. We started out on the front porch where Marjorie’s desk and typewriter are still in place, as if they expected her to reappear at any moment. On the other side of the porch was a bed where Marjorie slept on hot summer nights, since the porch was the coolest part of the house. When he looked out the window by the bed, he could see a yellow 1940 Oldsmobile parked in an attached garage.
We then went into the house and into the living room where Marjorie entertained her guests. The living room was furnished with simple but comfortable country-style furniture.
Then we go into the guest bathroom. When Marjorie bought the property, there were two houses, the main farmhouse and a tenant house. The only bathroom was a toilet. After making money from publishing “Jacob’s Ladder”, Marjorie added a bathroom in the hallway between the two houses. When he added the bathroom, the two houses were connected as one.
The last section of the house we visited was the dining room and kitchen at the back of the house. The dining room was a complement and connected the kitchen with the main part of the house. The dining room featured antique Hitchcock chairs, delicate glass, and Wedgewood porcelain. When she needed lighting in her dining room, Marjorie built a ceiling light with a shade created from a butter bowl.
The kitchen was the last room in the house. Most of the houses of this era had the kitchen in a separate building, both for safety in case of fire and to keep heat away from the houses. Marjorie loved to cook and entertain her guests. He tried many recipes on the wood stove. Outside the kitchen there was a corridor with a refrigerator. Along the corridor was a garden that provided fresh vegetables and herbs for all his recipes.
With that we conclude our tour of Marjorie Rawlings’ home. Our guide, Ray, was very informative and answered our many questions about the life of Marjorie Rawlings and her home at Cross Creek.
As we walked through the grove back to our car, I couldn’t help but think that we were traveling from the early 20th century to our modern existence. Who can say which era is better?
Copyright 2011 Beautiful Interiors For Less, LLC
This article may be reprinted under the following conditions: It must be reprinted in its entirety without changes, author information must be included in the article, and embedded links must be active.