History

The home now known as Rowan Oak was originally built in 1844 for Colonel Robert Sheegog, an Irish immigrant planter and enslaver from Tennessee. The home sits on a total of 33 acres; 4 acres of landscaped grounds, and 29 acres of woods now known as Bailey Woods. In 1872, the Bailey family purchased the home and resided here until 1923. The home was then left abandoned for seven years until William Faulkner purchased it in 1930. In 1931, Faulkner renamed it “Rowan Oak” after two trees: the rowan tree of Scotland, a symbol of peace and security, and the live oak of America, a symbol of strength and solitude.

Soon thereafter, William Faulkner optioned the surrounding acreage (Bailey Woods) and settled in with his wife, Estelle, and her two children from a previous marriage, Malcom and Victoria. Within a few years, their own daughter, Jill, was born. Rowan Oak was the family home of the Faulkners until 1962, the year of William Faulkner’s death. In 1972, Jill Faulkner Summers sold the house to The University of Mississippi to secure it as a place for people worldwide to learn about her father and his work. 

Rowan Oak was William Faulkner’s private world, in reality and imagination, and he was fascinated with its history. His writings were inspired by local stories of Native Americans, runaway slaves, old colonels, and spinsters who gave china-painting lessons and are interwoven into his own memories of coming of age in a South torn between traditional ways and modern development. Faulkner’s years spent at Rowan Oak were productive as he set stories and novels to paper, ultimately winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949, and the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award in 1954 for A Fable. William Faulkner remains one of the most celebrated and studied authors in the world, with conferences, societies and journals dedicated to his life and work.