The Great Getting Out Of The House Southeast USA Vacation Of 2021 - Day 10

We left Savannah and headed northwest.  While we couldn't visit Flannery O'Connor's childhood home we would visit her farm, Andalusia, near Milledgeville, GA.

Flannery O'Connors home at Andalusia Farm.

Flannery O'Connor wrote in a farmhouse, living with her overbearing mother, until she lost her life to lupus.  The house is full of the period furniture.  It felt very much like a typical farmhouse.  Flannery's room had her typewriter next to her bed so she could lay down when the lupus was having the best of her.  The house has a sad feeling.

Flannery's favorite birds: Peacocks

Along with the house there are several outbuildings including pens holding a pair of Peacocks.  Flannery was a bird lover and peacocks were her favorite.

We left the farm (they are in the process of adding a visitor's center) past the cop car who may have been on a stakeout of the hotel across the street, and drove to the cemetery where Flannery was buried to pay out respects.

The second stop for the day was a dark piece of Civil War history, Andersonville.  Andersonville was the infamous Confederate prison of war camp where thirteen thousand prisoners died during the Civil War.  The National Historical Site consists of the camp, a Prisoner of War museum, and a national cemetery.

We visited the museum first.  It was a fairly comprehensive history of how prisoners of war from all US involved wars were treated.  Sadly, this story was also sanitized to some extent.  In one section showing how US Troops were mistreated after being captured reminded me a lot of how many were mistreated in Iraq and Afghanistan by their US captors.  These stories were conveniently left out.  America is a country afraid to learn from its mistakes.

Rows upon row upon rows.

We visited the cemetery next.  The rows and rows of stones were a sobering reminder of the horrors of war.  We checked but there are no Nebraskans in the cemetery.  This makes sense since Nebraska was still a territory during the Civil War and few fought and even fewer were trusted by the Union.

The rows just go on.

We finished the visit with a drive around the field where the prison camp once stood.  The most notable thing was the lack of trees.  Prisoners were exposed to the elements and the hot Georgian sun which contributed to the number of deaths.

On that sobering note we headed west to our next destination.

Photos can be found in my 2021-06 Southeast USA Google Photos album.